Krishna Smriti #19

Ritual and ceremony have their place in life. What we call life is, to ninety percent, nothing more than ritual and rite. To live life, to pass through it, much that is unnecessary appears necessary. Such is the human mind. Throughout the whole history of humankind, thousands of kinds of rituals and action-games have evolved. If all these games are taken seriously, they become a disease. If they are taken as play, they become celebration.

When fire was discovered for the first time—and among the greatest discoveries is the discovery of fire—we do not know who first produced fire, but, whoever did, no greater revolution has yet happened. Much has been discovered since. We have Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Einstein, Max Planck, and thousands of discoverers; but even our splitting of the atom and our reaching the moon are not as great as what happened the day the first man produced fire.

Today it is hard to imagine this, because fire is so ordinary to us—locked in a matchbox. But it was not always so. Ninety percent of what we call human development owes its hand to fire. All our later inventions would not have been possible without it. At the foundation of all of them stands that first discoverer of fire.

Naturally, when someone first discovered fire, we welcomed it by dancing around it. That was the most natural event of life. There was no other way to thank it. And that day fire took a central meaning in human life. All ancient religions, in one form or another, developed around fire or the sun. The night was dark, dangerous; there was the fear of wild animals. The day was full of light, fearless; an attack could be sensed before it came. So the sun felt like a great friend. Darkness became the great enemy. In darkness there was danger, fear, turmoil; with the sun, all danger and fear vanished. The sun came to be thought of as God. And when we invented fire, then, naturally, we gained victory over the darkness of night as well. Even more than the sun, fire became dear. Around fire it was entirely natural that dance, song, love, festivity grew—and they did.

Have you noticed that when Yuri Gagarin returned from the first space flight, the whole earth filled with celebration? In a single day he became world-famous. His name reached even remote villages. Millions named their children after him—across the world, regardless of caste, creed, or religion. To attain such status usually takes a lifetime of seventy or eighty years; the world then may come to know you. This man did nothing else; he simply crossed the earth’s orbit. Yet it was a great event. Wherever Gagarin went, people went mad just to see him; in big cities people even died in accidents at the places he visited.

The human mind fills with celebration before all that is new, whenever the new arrives. Not only at the birth of a child do we beat drums and celebrate; whenever something new is born in existence, our consciousness celebrates its arrival. And it is right that it be so. For the day man ceases to be festive in welcoming the new, that day something essential in him has died.

I said all this so we may understand yajna. Yajna was the invention of those for whom fire had first arrived, and they were celebrating this fire. They danced around it. And whatever was best they had, they gave to the fire. What could they give? They had grain—they offered grain. They had soma—the liquor of those days—they offered that. The best cow they had, they offered to the fire. Whatever they had, they offered it. A deity had descended that had changed life entirely. In its celebration they did all this. It was very natural. But it was not sophisticated; it arose from a thoroughly rustic mind. And the world was rural.

By the time of the Gita such a yajna had become meaningless. By then fire had become a household thing. Dancing around it felt pointless. Throwing grain into it, reciting mantras, was no longer meaningful. And in the interim, thousands had opposed such rites, because they had no idea what it meant for those in whose lives fire arrived—it was something they could only accept as divine; it was such a blessing for them. Hence the Gita grafted new shoots onto the old word, and Krishna coined new expressions: jnana-yajna. Yajna was the old word; he joined it with knowledge. Just as later Vinoba coined bhudan-yajna—yajna was old; he joined it with land-gift.

By Krishna’s time life had become quite sophisticated, quite developed. And now dancing around fire was not meaningful in itself. Now Krishna spoke of kindling the fire of knowledge. Naturally, one must use the old words. If there was to be dance, it would be around the flame of knowing. And if something was to be offered, what offering could grain make? Now one had to offer oneself. Jnana-yajna means: one who dedicates oneself into the fire of knowledge. It means: one who burns one’s identity and ego in the fire of knowing. Not the ordinary fire, but the fire of knowledge in which the person is consumed and finished. Yet the symbol of fire continued—and for deep reasons.

The deepest reason was this: in the life of ancient man the only thing that always moved upward was fire. Water flows downward; pour it anywhere and it seeks the low. Do what you will with fire, its flames always leap upward. Before the ancient man, fire alone was always going upward; upwardness, ascent, was its very nature; we cannot make it flow downward. Even if we turn the burning log upside down, only the log is inverted; the flame still runs upward. Fire became the symbol of ascent. Its tongues indicated a journey toward the sky, toward the unknown. It seemed the first thing to break the earth’s gravitation. The earth’s pull—fire seemed unaffected by it. So, for one reason, fire became the symbol of upwardness. Those rishis who danced around the flames, sang, expressed joy, also, in a symbolic sense, expressed their joy at that day when we too would travel upward like the flames!

As the human mind is now, it travels downward like water. Even if you bring it to a mountain peak, it will soon descend to the valley and rest in a lake. Take it to any height, it is eager to go down. As the human mind now is, it is a haste to descend. Those who danced around the fire declared: we bow to the principle of upward movement. We want to make our inner life-breath like fire so that, even if dropped in a trench or valley, it will rise to the summit. This was highly symbolic.

Second, fire had another great virtue, even deeper: fire first burns the fuel, and then it burns itself out. First the fuel turns to ash; then the fire itself becomes ash. This became a deep symbol for knowledge. Knowledge first burns ignorance; then knowledge burns knowledge itself. Hence the Upanishads say: the ignorant wander in darkness; the learned wander in great darkness. Surely this is said in irony about those scholars whose knowledge is borrowed. For those whose knowing is their own do not go astray. Knowledge first burns ignorance; then it burns knowledge; it burns the knower too; and nothing remains. Fire first burns the fuel; then the fuel is gone; then the fire dies; then even the embers go cold; only ash remains—everything is finished.

Those in whose lives the event of knowing happened saw that knowledge is like fire: first ignorance will burn, then knowledge will burn, then the knower will burn—and behind nothing will remain but ash. Only one who is ready to become that empty can set out on the journey of knowledge.

Third: we see the flames of fire rising; we can only see them a little way, then they vanish. Fire is visible only a short distance; beyond that it becomes invisible. Knowledge too is visible only a little—or say: for a short distance its relation remains with the visible; beyond that its relation is with the invisible. Then the visible is lost; only the invisible remains.

For all these reasons fire became a potent symbol of knowledge, and Krishna could use the word jnana-yajna. If these symbols are in our awareness, jnana-yajna will continue forever. The other rituals and yajnas built around fire will disappear, because they arise from circumstances; but jnana-yajna will continue. Thus Krishna, for the first time, freed yajna from circumstance and gave it an eternal meaning. The yajna of the Vedas was bound to particular conditions, tied to an event. Krishna freed it from that event and gave it a timeless meaning. From now on, yajna has its purpose only in Krishna’s sense; its meaning can now be derived only through Krishna. The pre-Krishna chapters are closed. Even now, whoever speaks of the old Vedic yajna is untimely, out of date, speaking uselessly; there is no meaning left in it—that chapter is over. We can no longer joyfully leap around the fire, because fire is no longer such an event in our life.

He also speaks of japa-yajna—Krishna speaks of japa-yajna too. With japa the same secret applies as with knowledge. Japa will first burn the other thoughts; when the other thoughts are burned, the thought of japa too will burn. What remains is the ajapa state. Therefore it too can be symbolized by fire; it too can be called a yajna.

Your mind is full of thoughts. You use a single word as japa, push away all other thoughts, and let your mind sway on that one. A moment comes when even this thought becomes meaningless: why go on repeating it? When all thoughts have dropped, why hold on to this one? Then this too drops. The state you are then in is the ajapa state—there is no japa there. Fire first burned the fuel; then it burned itself.

But there is a danger with japa, as there is with knowledge. There are dangers with everything. There is no path on which one cannot go astray—how could there be! Any path that can carry you across can also be used, if the traveler chooses, to wander. And man is such that he uses all paths less for arriving and more for wandering.

I said knowledge is yajna, as Krishna says. But a person may take knowledge to mean scholarship, information, scriptures, doctrines, words—and collect them. Then he is lost. Such a person has not attained knowing. In the name of knowledge he has plastered something else upon himself. Remember: ignorance does not harm as much as false knowledge does. Not as much harm from ignorance as from borrowed, stale knowledge. Stale knowledge has no fire; it is like cold, dead coals. Pile it up as much as you like—no transformation of life comes from it. If someone takes knowledge in that sense, he will go astray.

Likewise with japa. If someone believes he will arrive merely by repeating, repeating, he is mistaken. No one ever arrived by japa alone. Japa is used the way, when a thorn is stuck in your foot, you take another thorn to remove it. But you do not then keep the second thorn safely in the wound. Once the first thorn is out, the second is just as useless as the first—and you throw both away. But there may be a fool who says: how can I throw away the thorn that removed my thorn! Courtesy at least demands I keep the thorn that helped me. Then that man is mad.

Buddha keeps telling, again and again, a story: in a village some men crossed a river by boat. When they reached the bank, these eight very wise men decided that the boat by which we crossed—how can we leave it! They thought: the boat on which we sat and crossed, now it is proper that we carry it upon ourselves. So all eight lifted the boat onto their heads and set off toward the market. People asked them: you madmen, we have often seen people on boats, but we have never seen a boat on people—what is this? They replied: you are ungrateful! You know nothing of gratitude. We know the feeling of grace. This boat carried us across; now we will carry it across the world. From now on it will remain on our heads.

Buddha says in jest that many cling to the means so tightly that it becomes the end. The boat is for crossing the river, not for carrying on your head.

Japa can be used with the awareness that it too is a thorn. If you do not regard it as a thorn and fall in love with it, then the other thoughts will be removed, and japa will fill you. One man is filled twenty-four hours a day with futile thoughts, and another is filled twenty-four hours a day with Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram; the pressure on both minds is the same. And the irony is that it may even happen that the one filled with futile thoughts sometimes bears some fruit of meaning in his life, because something else can slip in among his idle thoughts. The other has nothing to come in except Ram-Ram. And now he will not be ready to drop Ram-Ram. He will say: Ram-Ram freed me from all thoughts—how can I leave it! Now I will keep the boat on my head.

To call japa a yajna is a very secret statement. When Krishna calls japa a yajna, he is saying: remember, japa is like fire. First it will burn the others; then it will burn itself; only when it has burned itself too should you understand that it has borne fruit.

So we can use one word to push out the other words, but then we must push out that word too. If, out of attachment, we keep it, japa ceases to be yajna and becomes hypnosis. We become obsessed with that very word, tormented by it; it becomes our madness.

Therefore those who, while doing japa, become absorbed in it will never be able to drop it, because absorption establishes a deep bond. Those who, while doing japa, remain a witness—who do not feel “I am doing japa,” but feel “japa is happening in the mind and I am watching”—such people can one day go beyond japa. Then japa becomes yajna, because then japa becomes like fire: first it burns the other thoughts, then it burns itself to ash. When you are left empty, a void, you attain meditation, samadhi.

Therefore Krishna used yajna with both knowledge and japa. The center of yajna is fire. If we understand the symbol of fire, these two matters become clear. In truth, whoever is ready to burn is ready for yajna; whoever is ready to be effaced is ready for yajna; whoever is ready to be offered up is ready for yajna. Then all other yajnas become small, and only the yajna of life remains.

Krishna says the wise, dropping attachment to the fruits of action—renouncing fruit-attachment—become free of the bondage called birth. These things need careful understanding.

First: freedom from fruit-attachment. Not freedom from action, but freedom from the clinging to results. It is not being said that one becomes free of work, of action—no: one becomes free of attachment to the fruit. The emphasis on renouncing fruit-attachment is precisely to preserve action. Action remains; fruit-attachment does not.

How then, being free of fruit-attachment, will one still engage in action? This needs some reflection. Ordinarily, if we drop the desire for results, we drop action itself. If someone tells you, “Do not desire results, yet act,” you would say, “Are you crazy? If there is no desire for a result, why would action happen?” We take even a single step propelled by some expected result. If there is no desire for a result, why would the step arise? Why move at all?

This phrase, “free of fruit-attachment,” has put many who ponder Krishna into difficulty. Their greatest mistake has been to reinstall “fruit” in a very mysterious way: “Those who renounce fruit-attachment attain moksha, liberation.” Then they start using liberation as a fruit: “If you do this you will get that; if you do that you won’t get this.” But that is exactly desire for fruit. They even made moksha a result—so they could persuade people: “Drop all other fruits. If you want moksha, drop all fruits and you will get moksha.” This is a great injustice to Krishna.

Even when Krishna says that those who drop fruit-attachment become free of the bondage called birth, his statement about freedom is only indicative of a consequence; it is news of a consequence, not a bait. It is not: “Those who want to be free of the bondage of birth should give up desire for results”—for then freedom becomes the very fruit desired. He is only reporting: this is what happens. Renunciation of fruit-desire flowers as liberation. But the one who desires liberation as a result will never find it, because he still desires a fruit. Still, how to act without desiring results?

To understand this, see that there are two kinds of action in our life.

- One is what we do now in hope of getting something tomorrow. Such action is a pull from the future—a leash dragging us. The future, like a halter, tugs at our neck. “This will be gained—so we do this. That will be gained—so we do that.” The gain is in the future; the doing is now. The rope is on our neck now, but the hand holding the noose belongs to the future. Whether we will get it or not is uncertain; the very meaning of “future” is uncertainty—what is not yet. Yet in that hope, we run like animals tethered by a rope.

It is delightful: the word pashu (animal) is beautiful. Perhaps you have not noticed—pashu means “one bound by a paash, a fetter,” one dragged along in a noose. Then we are all animals if we are being pulled by the noose of the future. Animal means: bound by the future, reins in the hands of tomorrow, dragged along. One who lives today only for tomorrow—and tomorrow again for a day after—always lives today for tomorrow and never lives at all. Because whenever time arrives, it arrives as today, and he always postpones living to tomorrow. His whole life passes unlived. At death he can only say, “I merely longed to live; I did not live.” And his greatest anguish at death is that now no “tomorrow” is visible. There is no other pain. If he could still see some tomorrow, he would even be willing to endure death.

Hence the dying man asks, “Is there rebirth? Will I really die?” In fact he is asking, “Is there still a tomorrow left?” If there is a tomorrow, it is manageable, for his way of living depends on tomorrow. If there is no tomorrow now, it is very difficult. Future-oriented living—that is the meaning of fruit-attachment: a future-centered life.

- There is another kind of action: not pulled by the future, but spontaneous, like a spring bubbling from within—arising from what we are, not from what we will be. You are walking on the road; a man ahead drops his umbrella. You pick it up and hand it to him. You do not look around to see if a reporter is nearby, if a photographer is there, if someone is watching or not, or whether the man will say “thank you.” Then the act is free of fruit-attachment. It arose naturally from you. But suppose the man does not thank you—he tucks the umbrella under his arm and walks on. If even a faint line of sadness appears in your mind, then you were unconsciously waiting for a fruit. Consciously you did not know you were doing it for a thank-you, but unconsciously you were demanding it. He did not thank you; he just took the umbrella and moved on—and a line of sadness appears, and you say, “What an ungrateful man! I picked it up and he didn’t even thank me!” Then there was fruit-expectation.

If an act is complete in itself, total—if it has no demand outside itself—it is free of fruit-attachment. Any act that is complete in itself, like a circle closing upon itself, has no expectation beyond it. Rather, having handed the umbrella, you thank him for giving you the chance to perform a complete act in which there was no desire. A person filled with fruit-attachment will be filled with some craving, some expectation. But when an act is complete it gives such joy that nothing beyond it is needed. The act itself is its own reward; the doing itself is the fruit; this very moment is the fruit.

Jesus was passing through a village; around it were fields full of lilies. He said to his disciples, “Do you see these lilies?” They had been looking for a long time—but they were not seeing, for seeing is not just with the eyes, it is with your whole being. Jesus said, “Do you see these lilies?” They said, “We see—what is there to see? Lilies are as lilies are.” Jesus said, “No, I tell you: even Solomon, in all his glory, was not as beautiful as these poor lilies at the edge of this village.” Someone asked, “Why compare them with Solomon? Where is Solomon—the symbol of opulence in the Jewish imagination—and where are these poor lilies blooming by an unknown village road?” Jesus said, “Look closely. Even in his full splendor, Solomon was not as beautiful as this simple lily.” Why? “Because the flower blooms here and now; Solomon always lives in the future. The tension of the future makes one ugly. Flowers bloom here and now. They know nothing of tomorrow. This gust of wind is everything, this ray of sun is everything, this patch of earth is everything; this path, this being—this is all. Beyond this, nothing needs to be.”

It is not that evening will not come; it will come of itself. Do your expectations bring it? It is not that seeds will not set and fruits will not form; they form of themselves—by your expectations? But we are like that mad old woman—you all know her, because we all are like her. One day a crazy woman, angry with her village, left. People said, “What are you doing? Where are you going?” She said, “I am going; you have tormented me. From tomorrow you will know!” They asked, “But what do you mean?” She said, “I am taking with me the rooster whose crowing makes the sun rise in this village. Now the sun will rise in another village.” She reached the other village. Morning came, the sun rose—the rooster crowed. She said, “Now those fools must be crying; the sun rises in this village now.” Is there a flaw in the old woman’s logic? Not a bit! Earlier, when her rooster crowed, the sun rose. And when, in the other village too, the sun rose when the rooster crowed, it became absolutely certain—what will happen to that village now! Roosters do not fall into such delusion, but the owners of roosters do. Roosters crow because the sun rises; the owners think the sun rises because their rooster crows.

Our minds are like that. The future comes by itself; it keeps coming—it will not stop because we forbid it. Fruits come of themselves; they will not halt because we forbid them. It is enough that we make our act complete; we need not exist beyond that. This is all Krishna says: let your act be complete—the act must be total. Total means that nothing remains for you to do beyond it: you have done it wholly, and the matter is finished. Therefore he says: leave the fruit to God. Leaving it to God does not mean that some controller is sitting somewhere to keep your accounts. Leaving it to God means simply this: do—and the response from the Whole to that doing always comes; it will come. If I shout in the mountains and someone tells me, “You just shout; do not worry about the echo—the mountains echo by themselves. Leave the echo to the mountains. Do not be needlessly anxious,” because your anxiety will not let you utter the sound rightly—and then perhaps there will be no echo. Fruit-attachment does not let action happen. Those entangled in results miss doing, because the moment of action is the present and the moment of result is the future. If your eyes are fixed on the future, it is no wonder you miss the subtle moment of the present. Your gaze is ahead, your attention is ahead—and where attention is, there you are. If attention is not on the present moment, whatever happens, happens inattentively—without depth, without completeness, without joy.

Krishna’s vision of action without fruit-attachment means only this: do not break off even a small part of yourself for the sake of the future in such a way that it interferes with the work at hand; complete what you are doing. When the future comes, be total in the future too; kindly be total now. Be total in this very act now. The future will arrive. From your totality the fruit will arise—do not worry about it; leave it peacefully to the Divine. This means: what we are doing should be our joy. Only then can we be free of the future and its fruits. Let our doing be born of our joy; let it spring from our joy, bubble up from within like a spring—not for any future; not like an animal, but like a spring. A spring does not gush for the sake of some future.

You may think rivers flow for the ocean. You are mistaken. That they arrive at the ocean is another matter. Rivers flow by their own momentum; they flow by the power of their original source. The Ganga flows by the force of Gangotri. That she reaches the ocean is quite a different matter. Through the whole long journey the Ganga has nothing to do with the ocean; whether the ocean will be reached or not has no relation to her flowing. Her inner energy is such that it carries her on and on. And on every bank she dances—not only at the shore of the ocean. She dances at every bank: among rocks, in mountains, in pits, in highs and lows, in joy and sorrow, in wilderness, in desert, among trees, in greenery, among men and not-men—everywhere she is dancing. Wherever she is, on whatever bank, the dance is complete there. From that dance she reaches the next bank—that is another matter. But to reach the next bank she is in no hurry from any bank. One day she reaches the ocean too. Reaching the ocean is the fruition of her life—that is a fruit. But there is no craving for that fruit. A spring is gushing—out of its inner energy.

Krishna is saying: live so that your action keeps issuing from your inner energy. In my view this is the difference between the householder and the sannyasin. The householder lives every day for tomorrow; the sannyasin lives, springing from today’s energy. Today is enough. Tomorrow will come; it will also come as today, and we will live it as today.

Let me tell a small incident from the life of Mohammed. He is one of those few sannyasins I would like to see in the world. People bring him offerings every day—sweets, coins, something or other. By evening those who have come eat and drink; at dusk Mohammed tells his wife, “Now distribute everything, because evening has come.” Whatever there is is given away. By evening Mohammed becomes a fakir again. His wife would ask, “This isn’t right; it is proper to keep something for tomorrow.” Mohammed would say, “We will wait again tomorrow for whoever brings it today. And when today passes, tomorrow will pass too.” Then he would say to his wife, “Do you consider me an atheist, that I should make arrangements for tomorrow? Making arrangements for tomorrow is atheism. It announces a lack of trust in the cosmic energy, in the world-soul: the one who gave me today may or may not give tomorrow—so let me arrange it myself. But how much can I arrange? What can I arrange? How far will my arrangements go?” Mohammed says, “Distribute it; in the morning we will wait again in trust. I am a theist, so I cannot save for tomorrow. Otherwise what will God say? ‘O Mohammed, do you not trust even this much?’” So every evening everything was given away.

Then came Mohammed’s death. On the night of his passing, the physicians said he would not survive. His wife thought, “At least today I should keep something; medicine may be needed at night. Alright, in the morning someone will bring something—but who will bring it at midnight?” She hid five dinars under the pillow. By midnight Mohammed was writhing in pain. He threw off his blanket and said to his wife, “I think poor Mohammed is not poor today—something has been kept in the house.” The wife was shocked: “How did you know?” Mohammed said, “I can see it in your face: tonight you are not as relaxed as you always are. You must have kept something. Those who worry keep things; those who keep things become worried—it is a vicious circle. Take it out and give it away, now! Let me die in peace. On this last night, lest God say, ‘On the last night, Mohammed, you failed!’ And when I go before him I should not have to stand like a culprit. Where is it?” Frightened, she brought out the five coins she had hidden for night medicines. Mohammed said, “Call anyone in from the street.” She said, “Who will be there at midnight?” He said, “Call out.” She called; there was a beggar outside who came in. Mohammed said, “See—if someone can come to take at midnight, a giver can also come at midnight. Give it to him.” The five coins were given; then Mohammed pulled the blanket over himself—and that was his last act. He sank right then. As if those five coins were the obstruction; as if they were the burden; as if that knot of five coins was weighing down the sannyasin.

Let each act, each moment, each day be complete in itself. Then tomorrow still comes—it always has—but then tomorrow is new each day, not stale. And however tomorrow comes, it does not frustrate. Tomorrow fills us with sorrow only when it falls contrary to today’s expectations. And when does the future fall in line with our expectations? Never. Because the future depends on the vast, while our expectations depend on the petty. How can the petty be fulfilled in the vast? They don’t even register there. It is like a single drop in a flowing river deciding, “It will be very good if we flow west tomorrow.” Where is a single drop decisive in the whole current? The river will go where it goes, and the drop will be with it—but tomorrow the drop will be unhappy, because it had decided to flow west and the river is going east; then sorrow and pain will fill it. Expectations and fruit-desires fill one with sorrow, disappointment, frustration, failure. One who lives each moment totally knows no sorrow.

Therefore, be total in what you are doing and leave the fruit to the Divine. One who does so, Krishna says, becomes free of the bondage called birth. Now he is saying something very interesting: “the bondage called birth.” He is not saying birth is bondage. In fact the person filled with fruit-desire is eager to be born—because to complete a result, tomorrow must exist. One who lives in fruits lives in the urge to be born; he will have to be born. And for the one who lives in fruits, birth becomes bondage; it is not freedom. He has no joy even in birth; his joy is only in obtaining some result. Birth is not a joy to him; it is an opportunity to procure fruits and be delighted. Death will be sorrow to him, because death will cut off all the paths by which he could have lived in the future. And birth will seem a bondage, because he does not know life—which is freedom. Once one knows life, birth disappears and death disappears. What Krishna has said there is incomplete; it should be completed. He says: one becomes free of the bondage called birth. I tell you: one becomes free of the bondage called death as well.

This does not mean that birth and death are bondages. It means that birth and death appear as bondages in ignorance. For the knower, birth and death simply are not. This sense of bondage is the perception of an ignorant mind; the sense of freedom is the perception of a wise mind. He is not saying birth is bad. As we are, birth will seem a bondage to us. As we are, we even turn love into bondage. I receive so many wedding invitations; they say, “My daughter is entering the bondage of love; my son is entering the bondage of marriage.” We even turn love into bondage, whereas love is freedom. It would be proper to say, “My daughter is going to be freed in love.” We say, “She is going to be bound in love.” We even make love a bondage. Not that love is a bondage, but as we are, we make even love a bondage. As we are, we make birth a bondage; as we are, we make death a bondage; as we are, we turn life itself into a chain of bondages. One who lives in the moment, in the present, free of fruit-desire, unattached; one who lives life as a play, who acts while not acting, who does not act yet acts—such a person turns everything in life into freedom. For him even bondage becomes freedom; for us even freedom becomes bondage. It depends on our way of being.

Therefore, in Krishna’s saying there is no condemnation of birth as bondage. As we are, we have made birth into bondage; but if we begin to live without fruit-attachment, birth will not remain bondage for us. Such a person attains jivan-mukti—freedom while living. This very life is liberation. Here and now is that life. It depends on how we look.

I have heard: a rebel fakir, a Sufi, was imprisoned by a caliph. Chains were put on his hands, fetters on his feet; the Sufi who sang incessantly of freedom was put behind bars. The emperor came to see him and asked, “Are you suffering?” The fakir said, “Suffering? How can a royal guest suffer? You are the host; how can there be suffering? I am in great joy—you have brought me from a hut to a palace!” The emperor said, “Do not joke.” The fakir said, “I take life as a joke; that is why I can say so.” He asked, “Aren’t these chains heavy? Do they not hurt?” The fakir looked at the chains and said, “They are very far from me. There is a great distance between me and these chains. You may be in the illusion that you have put me in prison, but you cannot imprison my freedom, because I can make even the prison into freedom.” Everything depends on how we see.

Mansoor was crucified; his hands and feet were cut off. Hundreds of thousands gathered to watch, and Mansoor kept laughing; his laughter only grew. When they cut off his feet he laughed as he had; when they cut off his hands he laughed louder. People asked, “Mad Mansoor, is this a time to laugh?” Mansoor said, “I laugh because you think you are killing me, while you are cutting someone else! Remember: when you were cutting Mansoor, he was laughing. Know this—you cannot even touch Mansoor; cutting is far away. The one you are cutting is not Mansoor; Mansoor is the one who is laughing.” Then the executioners, his enemies, said, “Let us see how he laughs”—they cut out his tongue. But Mansoor’s eyes were laughing. The multitude said, “You have cut out his tongue, but he is laughing—his eyes are laughing.” The executioners gouged out his eyes. Yet Mansoor’s face kept laughing; every pore of him was laughing. People said, “You will not make him weep. There is nothing left to cut, but his whole being is laughing.”

Life becomes exactly as we are. Birth becomes exactly as we are. Death becomes exactly as we are. If we are free, birth is freedom, life is freedom, death is freedom. If we are bound in fetters—animals—then birth is bondage, life is bondage, love is bondage, death is bondage, everything is bondage. Even God then appears as a bondage.

I did not say the ratio is sixty–forty; I offered it as an example. The ratios can be many—70–30, 80–20, 90–10, 51–49, even 50–50. And when it is 50–50, asexuality arises. Then the person, in terms of sex, is outside the duality—what we call napunsak, or impotent.

It is a curious thing that in this land we have put the word Brahman in the neuter gender. Is Brahman male or female? No—Brahman is “impotent” (neuter). That which is omnipotent, the all-powerful, we have assigned to the neuter gender. For how could it be female? That would make it a side. How could it be male? That would make it a side. It is impartial. Being impartial, it is fully fifty–fifty; only then can it be impartial. The image of Ardhanarishvara is a conception of Brahman. In it the feminine principle and the masculine principle are half and half. It is both at once—precisely because it is not merely one or the other. If it were only male, from where would the feminine arise in this world? If it were only female, from where would the masculine arise—where would it begin, where would it be born? It is both together; therefore it can give birth to both.

And so long as we are woman and man, we are two broken halves of the Divine. The mutual attraction between man and woman is the pull to be one, to be complete. They are each half. Our imagination and icon of Ardhanarishvara is very unique. The world has made many images, but for the profound psychological truth in Ardhanarishvara there is no comparison. In Ardhanarishvara we are saying only this: the Divine is both at once, and whole. One aspect is feminine, one aspect is masculine; or say it is the union of both, the midpoint of both; or beyond both, on the far side of both.

This state of the middle, which I have called God, Brahman—Jesus used a very fine phrase for it: “eunuchs of God.” Jesus said that whoever wants to attain the Lord must become a eunuch for the Lord. Strange words, but exactly right. Whoever wants to attain God must become like God. Therefore, in their full glory, neither Buddha nor Krishna are male or female. In their full glory they are both. In their full glory they are a mingling; in one sense, a transcendental sex—they have gone beyond both dualities and stand outside them. But among us there is duality, a duality of measures.

And as to what you asked about the third sex that sometimes appears among us—what is its cause? The same cause. If within, physiologically, at the bodily level, the two elements remain equal, then sex does not develop in either direction; gender does not develop properly. Two equal, balanced energies cancel each other. This too is possible. Earlier it would sometimes happen accidentally that a woman later in life became a man, or a man later became a woman.

In London not long ago there was a big, sensational court case. A girl and a boy married; after the marriage the girl became a boy. The case in court was that the girl had deceived everyone—that she had been a boy all along. It was a difficult case. The girl said she had been a girl, and this development happened later. But at that time science was not very clear about it. In the last twenty–twenty-five years science has become quite clear, and many kinds of events have occurred in which sex transformation took place—some man became a woman, some woman became a man. If these are marginal cases—if there is a 49–51 margin—change can happen at any time; with slight chemical differences, change can happen. And now it has become very feasible; the time is not far when no man will have to suffer being a man all his life, and no woman will have to remain trapped as a woman all her life. It can be changed at any time. Sex will be transformable, because all its chemical formulas are now understood: if the quantity of one chemical in the body is increased, if the hormones are changed, the feminine can appear in that person; then a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man. Woman and man are the same kind of person; there are only differences of measure between them. Everything is due to those measures.

Ardhanarishvara is an indication that the source of the universe is neither woman nor man; it is both together. But should I tell you that someone who is impotent, a eunuch, will come closer to God? I am not saying that. The Divine is both; the impotent is neither.

Keep this difference in mind.

God is both at once, whereas the one we call impotent is not both. The impotent is merely a lack, an absence; God is presence. In God there are both woman and man—hence the image of Ardhanarishvara, half woman and half man. We could also have made an image of God like a neuter, in which there is neither male nor female; but that would be an absence. God is the presence of both, the positivity of both. And the one we call impotent—poor fellow—is the absence of both. He has no personality; hence his suffering has no end. So when Jesus says “eunuchs of God,” he is saying something quite different. He is not saying people should become impotent. He is saying that in God, for God, they should be neither woman nor man—and then they will be both, they will become both.

The reason is that the Jain scriptures were created out of a masculine mind. Jain sadhana is a masculine sadhana. Its whole process is aggressive, attacking. And so the Jain scripture cannot even conceive how a woman could attain moksha. If we ask a devotee of Krishna, he will be in great difficulty! He will say, how could anyone other than a woman attain liberation? How will a man be liberated? Because a Krishna devotee, even if he is a man, makes himself a woman and falls in love with Krishna.

When Meera went to Vrindavan she was stopped from entering the temple, because the priest there would not look at women. When Meera was stopped she said, ask that priest one question: Is there any man other than Krishna? And being a priest of Krishna, are you still a man? Then the priest said, let her come. I have realized my mistake; I was in error.

Around Krishna there is the passive, the surrender, the quality of letting go—that which is the feminine mind. Around Mahavira there is the movement of the masculine mind. Mahavira himself is a practitioner of the masculine mind; his entire sadhana is of the masculine. Therefore Mahavira can neither think nor accept that a woman can attain liberation. So, in Mahavira’s lineage, a woman has to wait a little; she has to take one more birth, become a man once—only then can she go. And I hold there is no mistake in this. If one has to do precisely Mahavira’s sadhana, no woman in the world can do it. A feminine mind simply cannot do Mahavira’s sadhana; only a masculine mind can. And if one wants to practice the sadhana of the masculine mind, then with Krishna there will be great difficulty; it will not be possible. The masculine mind will not find harmony with Krishna.

These two minds within us—everything depends on these two minds.

Then tomorrow morning, whatever questions there are, we will talk in the morning.