Lagan Mahurat Jhooth Sab #8

Satyanand, when there is purity of intake, there is purity of sattva. By “intake” is meant whatever is taken in from the outside. What is within is sattva. What is one’s very nature is sattva. And whatever overlays it is intake. So do not understand intake as only food. Food is just a small part of intake—and it is not even very important; it is a very secondary part.

Whatever we take in from outside—sound, words through the ears; forms through the eyes; fragrance through the nose; touch through the hands—our five senses are five doors through which we invite the outer world inside. Each sense has its intake. Eighty percent of our intake we take through the eyes, and the remaining twenty percent through the other four senses. Of what we take through the tongue—food, taste—that is utterly secondary. But because of the unknowing, the secondary has become primary. Some mad people spend their whole lives worrying only about this—what to eat and what not to eat; what to drink and what not to drink; whether one can drink milk that has been kept so long or not; whether one can take ghee of such-and-such an age or not.

Yesterday I received a letter from the owner of Unjha Pharmacy. He is a Jain. And two Jain monks told him that he prepares some medicines in which there is, in some small proportion, alcohol—and this is very contrary to the Jain scriptures. “You are selling liquor. Even if it is only five percent, it is still alcohol. So stop manufacturing such medicines.”

The owner of Unjha Pharmacy must have fallen into anxiety—what to do now. If he stops producing those medicines, the whole business will go. And what the monks are saying is also, in a way, true—it is scriptural, it seems to fit. He had never written to me before. In such a time he remembered me, that if anyone can save him… So he has written to me: “Now, whatever you order. Should I stop these medicines because they contain five percent or three percent alcohol? Or should I continue their production? As you say.”

Satya Vedant, I suggested Dongre’s Balamrit precisely so that there would be a little tangle. If there’s a tangle, you can look for a way to get free of it. The tangle was there; it simply wasn’t visible. Dongre’s Balamrit made it visible. The illness was there; the Balamrit has expressed what was hidden.

Good that the tangle has surfaced. Now that it’s clear, it can be broken.

This is the state of the bazaar:
the customer is pale
and the shopkeeper is flushed red.
The milkman says—
Why is there water in the milk?
Ask the cow.
The cow says—
I’m drinking water,
so I’ll give water.
The milkman is squeezing the life out of me;
I’ll squeeze yours.
The coal-seller says—
In the brokerage of coal
we’re blackening our hands.
The pots may be empty, granted,
but thanks to us
the stoves are at least burning.
The cloth-seller says—
At the price it came,
how can we give it to you at that price?
To make you a hundred-percent man,
should we not even take fifty percent from you?
The washerman says—
Ram, at a washerman’s word,
abandoned Sita.
You can’t abandon even a single shirt?
If a hundred-rupee shirt got burned in the furnace
you start fuming!
In this country people throw honesty
into the furnace
and devour the whole country.
The tailor says—
What did you say, it’s tight at the belly?
Don’t pop your eyes.
Instead of blaming the tailor,
control your belly.
Take it as it’s made.
Don’t make the kurta fit the belly,
make the belly fit the kurta.
The doctor says—
Whatever else you lack,
at least you have a brain.
In this country,
people without brains are doing wonders—
using the chair
as if it were a cot.
The betel-leaf seller says—
The spittle from our paan shop
will be found from the chest of Janpath
to the back of Rajpath.
Just chew some paan and see—
your soul will blossom.
The grain dealer says—
You buy,
and we sell,
we see each other every day,
but there’s a third one too—
some bigwig’s son—
who is not visible
yet is fleecing the whole world.
We only short-weight;
he beats with a stick.
The bookseller says—
What did you ask for—Premchand’s Godaan?
I’m hearing that name for the first time.
What a novel you’ve chosen!
We sell love stories and make old men young;
just ordinary shopkeepers,
yet we’re building
the nation’s character.
The thief says—
The profiteers are eating up the profit,
and we, by breaking their strongboxes,
are fulfilling rights and duties
together.
Peer into any safe and see—
your soul will tremble—
in some corner or other
you’ll find the corpse of democracy.
The beggar says—
Donor!
Even poison doesn’t come for five paise
that we could take in your name
and be rid of this socialism.
In thirty years this government
has produced so many beggars
that the government itself
will take forty years
just to count them.

Satya Vedant, there are many entanglements. If you drink Dongre’s Balamrit all this will come to the surface. It must have already begun to appear. That’s why you can’t shake off Dongre Maharaj. And his sayings will sting. Words are the precious thing! What astounding things he has said!

First: “Do not trust any human being.”
And who is Dongre Maharaj? An animal? A bird? A donkey, a horse, a camel, an elephant—what? “Do not trust any human being!” That’s where the trouble begins. Where is there any room to proceed further? And then he explains, “Do not abandon trust in God.” A man explains to you, “Do not abandon trust in God,” and also says, “Don’t trust man!” See what a knot he’s tied! Try all you can, it won’t open. The more you try to loosen it, the tighter it gets. Open it from this side, it tangles from that side; open it from that side, it tangles from this. If you trust him, you’ve trusted a man—his dictum collapses. If you don’t trust him, you can’t trust God either, because it’s men who talk about God.

“Do not trust any human being!”
And the same people say that God dwells in every particle. And who dwells in a human being? He dwells in every particle—except the human?

I tell you: the question is not whom you trust, the question is trust itself. I say, trust even the most dishonest person, trust even the cheat. What can he take from you? Suppose he picks your pocket, steals a little money—what have you lost? He is the one who loses. For a few coins he loses his soul; what of yours is lost? Yes, if you lose trust, your soul is gone too. Don’t lose trust for a few coins. Let the coins be lost if they must—do not lose trust.

I came from Indore to Khandwa, and had to go further. The train stops about an hour at Khandwa. A beggar came. I was alone in a first-class compartment, sitting by the window. He said, “Give me something.” I gave him a rupee. He must have thought, “This man is very simple!” And since the train was stopping for an hour, he couldn’t resist. After a while...

(Just then the power went out for a short while.)

“Do not trust any human being.” Then what to trust in a microphone? Even the electricity deceived us! The bulb is right in front of me; my engineers say, “Start speaking when it lights.” It didn’t light—still hasn’t. Satya Vedant, Dongre Maharaj is right! What on earth should one trust! If I trusted it, I’d just sit here...

A little later the man came again, this time wearing a cap. He asked again; I gave him another rupee. He looked at me intently—“This is too much! Did my cap fail to fool him?” The third time he came wearing a coat, asked again, I gave again. Now he stood there thinking: “Is this man crazy? Can a cap and a coat deceive so much?” A fourth time he came back, now carrying only a stick in his hand. He asked again; I gave again.

He said to me, “Brother, may I ask you something?” I said, “Ask.” He said, “Is it that you couldn’t recognize even in four times that I’m the same man?” I said, “I was thinking the same: even in four times you couldn’t recognize that I too am the same man. And I didn’t put on a cap, nor change my coat, nor pick up a stick.” I too was amazed. I was thinking, “He keeps asking me—this poor fellow can’t recognize me! He thinks: now a different man, now another.”

He liked what I said. I said, “Come in, sit down! The train stops an hour; why keep coming and going? Every five or ten minutes I’ll give you a rupee—just sit here.”

He was a bit afraid. “Hey,” I said, “come on in, don’t be afraid!”

He said, “No, no, I’m fine outside.”

I said, “Don’t be afraid at all. Come in and sit peacefully.”

But he wouldn’t come in. I said, “I’ll give you a rupee at intervals—just sit. It’s as if some blind fellow has left me with a bulging purse; you take some too—what difference does it make! I brought nothing, you brought nothing; nothing is mine, nothing is yours. It’s a game—this side to that. And money’s job is to circulate—so in English they call it ‘currency,’ meaning it should keep flowing. If someday your heart is full, return it—whatever you like.”

The moment I said, “return it,” he walked off. “Hey,” I said, “where are you going? At least take a rupee!” He said, “I don’t want it! Are you a man or a madman? What kind of upside-down talk is this?”

He didn’t come back. I had to get down and go look for him. I went down. He was sitting by a wall. The moment he saw me he stood up and said, “I don’t want it. I don’t want to take anything. That’s enough for today.”

I said, “I just came to chat; if you feel like it I’ll give you another rupee.”

“No, sir, forgive me! Why are you after me?” He started telling me that I was after him!

Satya Vedant, what an amazing thing Dongre Maharaj has said: “Do not trust any human being!”

In truth, trust is the precious thing. Trust does not belong to man or to God. If you ask me, I don’t call a theist the one who trusts in God; I call a theist the one who trusts. What has God to do with it? The theism is in trust itself. And if you can’t trust people, where will you learn the lesson of trust? Only by trusting people will you someday be able to trust God. There is difficulty in trusting people—that’s true—because the one you trust will deceive you.

Mulla Nasruddin was on trial. He had abused the trust of a simple villager. The magistrate said, “Nasruddin, this straightforward, innocent man—everyone in the village knows him. Was he the one you found to cheat? Weren’t you ashamed?”

Nasruddin said, “Sir, whom else should I cheat? He’s the only one who can be cheated. The rest of the village are accomplished rascals—they’re the ones cheating me. He alone, poor fellow, innocent, is the one I can cheat. And you cheat only whom you can, sir. Why get into trouble trying to cheat the one you can’t?”

He spoke to the point: you give only what you can, to the one you can.

There is risk in trusting people. Because if you trust, someone will rob, someone will snatch, someone will grab. But that is the opportunity—that is the challenge. If even then you trust... mind the words “even then.” If someone is favorable to you and you trust him, what is the value of that trust? It’s worth two pennies. If someone keeps deceiving you and you still trust, then there is some strength, some soul, in your trust. No matter how much deception comes and your trust does not break, then your trust is unwavering. Then you have found a trust that no one can shake. Only such trust knows God.

Dongre Maharaj knows nothing—neither man nor God.

And second he said: “Poverty is not a sin. Treat the poor with respect.”

I agree, but in another sense. For centuries it’s been said that poverty is the fruit of sin. The sins you committed in your past lives—now you are reaping them; that is your poverty. Poverty is not a sin, poverty is the fruit of sin. And if you bear this poverty cheerfully, contentedly, you will be rich in the next birth. Therefore, poverty is not to be eradicated. And the natural corollary is: treat the poor with respect.

We’ve been doing this for centuries. And that’s why no country is as poor as ours. We honor the poor; we consider poverty a spiritual practice.

I tell you: poverty is not an individual’s sin; it’s not his fault. And I also tell you that this doctrine—that poverty is the fruit of past-life sins—is utterly wrong. It has nothing to do with past lives. Accounts settle immediately; they don’t wait for lifetimes. Put your hand in the fire now, and you’ll burn now—not in the next birth. In this world, the rules are cash, not credit. But this trick has been taught to you, and because of it a consolation has arisen.

A few more days, my love, just a few more days;
we are forced to breathe in the shade of oppression.
Let us bear a little more tyranny, writhe a while, weep a while—
we are crippled by our forefathers’ summit.
The body is imprisoned, our feelings are in chains,
thought is incarcerated and speech interpreted.
Yet such is our courage that we go on living.
And what is life but a pauper’s coat
on which, every hour, patches of pain are sewn?
But now the term of oppression has few days left,
a little patience—the days of lament are few.
In the scorched desolation of the age,
if we must live, we cannot live like this.
The nameless, heavy tyranny of alien hands
must be borne today, but not forever.
This dust of sorrows clinging to your beauty,
the tally of defeats of our two-day youth,
the uselessly burning pain of moonlit nights,
the heart’s futile throbbing, the body’s innocent cry—
a few more days, my love, just a few more days.

We’ve been consoling ourselves like this: just a few days more, just a few more. One more birth—and then all will be fine. These deceptions are to be broken. Now is the time to break them.

And he said, “With birth, everything is fixed.”
Utter, pointless nonsense.

And he said, “Do not be hostile to the world, but the world is not worthy of much love.”
How can both be true at once? Only one can be. If it is not worthy of love, then enmity it is. If it is worthy of love, then there can be no enmity.

That’s all for today.