Maha Geeta #56

In doing lies the wandering. And then you ask, what should I do next! That means your mind is still not sated with wandering. Doing itself is the deviation. Be a witness—do not remain a doer. ...Otherwise, even after coming to me you will reach nowhere; you will wander again. The moment you do, you wander. Doing is wandering; being the doer is wandering. But the mind will not agree without doing; it insists, “Now tell me something—what should I do?”

Do not do—and all will happen. You are sitting there stubbornly insisting on doing. Haven’t you tired of doing yet? What have you accomplished by doing and doing? You have done so much, lives upon lives—what is the result? Still the mind goes on saying, “Perhaps I have not yet done it right; if I do it right now, all will happen.” That is where the mind deceives.

I have heard: In a shoe shop a customer chose a pair and asked the price. Mulla Nasruddin, working there as a salesman, said, “Forty rupees.” The customer said, “I’m ten rupees short; I’ll bring them later.” Nasruddin said, “Ask the owner; if he agrees, fine.” The customer went to request the owner. The owner was just about to say no when Nasruddin tied up the shoes in a box, handed them to the customer, and said to the owner, “Give them, sir—he will certainly come back with those ten rupees. Trust me.” When the customer left with the shoes, the owner asked, “Do you know him, Nasruddin?” Nasruddin said, “Know him? I’ve never seen him before. It’s not even certain he lives in this village. But I know this much: he will come back, and he will surely come back with ten rupees—don’t worry. Because I packed both shoes for the same foot.”

Now try whatever you like—two shoes of the same foot will never fit. When God sent you into this world, He tied two shoes of the same foot on you so that you wouldn’t get lost in the world and would return. The world is a training. Here one has to learn to awaken. That is why doing and doing yields no result. By doing and doing, only defeat falls into your hands. Doing spreads you out into the world. And the moment one begins to awaken in this spread, one enters religion. And the one who fully awakens returns home to God.

You say: “I have taken great pains in pursuit of Your devotion!”

There is a little misunderstanding in that. You did not take pains for devotion; you wanted to take pains—therefore you took them. In taking pains, the ego is gratified. You suffered—though not for prayer. For prayer, no suffering is needed at all. Prayer has no thorns; prayer is a flower. Prayer is as delicate as a lotus. Pains—in prayer? Then where would heaven be? Where would bliss be? Where would joy be?

No, these are not the pains of devotion that you bore. You may have borne them in the name of devotion—that is possible—but the pains are of the ego alone. That you suffered in seeking God—this cannot be. How could one suffer while seeking God! You suffered in the seeking itself. One man suffers seeking wealth, another seeking position, and you suffered seeking God. Your pretexts for seeking are different, but the thrill of seeking, the ego’s gratification in seeking—that is why you took the trouble.

“My every joy has been wiped out in pursuit of Your every joy.”

You don’t know His joy—and did you ever have joy to wipe out? If joy were there, who would be troubled enough to seek God! Have you ever seen a happy person remember God? I can testify: I never remember Him. Why should I? You remember in sorrow. There was never joy. Don’t deceive yourself with pretty verses.

Poems can be beautiful; that does not make them true. Truth is certainly beautiful; but not everything beautiful is true. Truth is supremely beautiful. But don’t take something to be true just because it is beautiful. For you deem all kinds of things beautiful! You take even a body of bone, flesh, and marrow to be beautiful—which is utterly untrue. You take a rainbow in the sky to be beautiful—which in fact isn’t there. You take the dreams of night to be beautiful—and a thousand times you have awakened to find them false! There is not much truth in your sense of beauty; there cannot be—unless truth has blossomed within you.

You did choose a beautiful verse. It isn’t even yours—borrowed as well.

“My every joy has been wiped out in pursuit of Your every joy.”

No, God asks no sacrifice of you. And those who taught you that God wants sacrifice are dishonest. In God’s name they got you to sacrifice at some other altar. Crowds are eager for your sacrifice—for you to become a martyr. Someone says, die as a martyr for the nation. Someone says, die as a martyr for religion, be martyred in jihad! If you die in a religious war, heaven will be yours! But is there such a thing as a religious war? If even religion has war, then what remains for irreligion? Does a religious person have a nation? If a religious person is also divided into nations, he is a politician. Does a religious person have patriotism? Devotion to plots of land? Impossible! A religious person’s awareness does not stoop so low.

Your notions are strange! Someone lowers your flag and you are ready to give your life. And he has done nothing. A piece of cloth is hanging on a pole—you call it a flag. “Let our flag fly high!” Have you ever analyzed your stupidities? And you are ready to be sacrificed upon them, to die for them! In truth your life holds nothing. Your life is utterly empty. You are like a spent cartridge—use me anywhere! “Come, at least let something happen in this!”

But I want to tell you: God does not ask sacrifice of you; God asks celebration. If you want to understand me, understand this word “utsav”—celebration—well. God does not want you to come to Him weeping, whining, making claims: I have sacrificed so much! God wants you to come dancing, singing—fragrant, musical, overflowing. Only your celebration reaches Him. Only in a moment of celebration are you near Him.

So drop this talk that you squandered your joys! Where were the joys to squander? Had they existed, would you have thrown them away? There never were joys—there was sorrow and only sorrow. It is because of that sorrow that you set out to seek. But a person keeps trying to deceive himself.

You’ve seen it: a young man says, there was such happiness in childhood. An old man says, there was such happiness in youth. A dying man says, there was such happiness in life. It seems wherever you are, there happiness is not; wherever you have left, there happiness is. Ask the children! Children are not at all happy. That is the old people’s chatter! These are poems written in old age: Childhood was full of joy. Ask the children themselves. Children are deeply unhappy—because all they can see is their own helplessness. Everyone is scolding, rebuking. Here the father, there the mother; here the elder brother, there the teacher—rebukers of all kinds. The child feels, If only I could grow up quickly—then I would teach them all a lesson!

A little boy in school—the teacher hit him. He was crying. The teacher said, “Don’t cry—understand. I love you; that is why I hit you—so that you improve, so that something happens in your life.” The child said, “I love you too, but I cannot offer proof yet!”

Proof has to be offered later; how can a child prove it now!

Ask a small child—he is not happy. Every child wants to grow up quickly. That is why he sometimes stands on a chair beside his father and says, “Look, I’m taller than you!” Every child wants to declare, “I’m bigger than you; I’m not small!” In smallness there is certainly suffering. What happiness are you attributing to the child? For everything he has to depend on others—if he wants a sweet, he has to ask; if he wants ice cream, he has to ask. And even if he asks for ice cream, does he get it? A thousand lectures are given—your teeth will be ruined; your stomach will be upset.

And children can never understand—God is really something: He put all the vitamins into tasteless greens and none into ice cream—only illnesses! Whatever tastes good has illness in it; whatever does not taste good—spinach—has all the iron and vitamins and strengthening things. God seems crazy. Obviously vitamins should have been where the taste is!

No child is happy. But when you grow up and the miseries of youth arrive, then you begin to console your mind: childhood was so blissful. It is a lie—you are consoling yourself. Today there is no joy, so there are only two ways to console yourself: there was joy behind, and there will be joy ahead. But the future is not so certain—who knows what will happen! The past, though—that case is closed; you have already passed through it. The path one has passed, one remembers its joys. All the pebbles and stones, thorns and thorny stretches, the dust and heat—these are forgotten. When one sits down in the shade of a tree, one begins to remember how beautiful the journey was!

I was in the mountains with a gentleman. The whole time we were there, he kept grumbling, complaining: What is there in this—so much climbing and nothing of value to be seen. He would get tired and pant and say, I’ll never come again. I kept listening. Then we descended. On the train home a fellow passenger asked, “Are you returning from the hills?” He said, “Ah, it was bliss!” I said, “Mind what you say—are you preparing to come again? To whom are you saying this? And you are saying it right in front of me—that it was bliss!”

He hesitated a bit. Because that is what all pilgrims say on returning: it was bliss. Ask the hajj pilgrim—he will say, it was bliss! Don’t be taken in by talk. What the pilgrim is saying is: Now mine is done—let others be trapped as well. Or: It’s over now; why advertise that I suffered and was a fool—why invite more disgrace? “It was bliss!” All returning pilgrims say: bliss, amazing bliss! What beauty! Heavenly beauty! Such delusions are nurtured.

The old man begins to talk of the beauty and joy of youth. And the young man is only restless—troubled, fevered, seared by lust; lust pierces the heart like embers, stings like a blade. There is no peace anywhere. A thousand anxieties—of business, of work, of the endless chase. The dying man begins to think, How joyful life was!

I tell you this so you remain alert: where there is no joy, don’t assume joy. Know suffering as suffering. The one who recognizes suffering as suffering becomes capable of attaining joy. The one who persuades himself, who hides under false consolations, who wraps himself in blankets of untruth—he goes astray.

“I have wandered everywhere for Your devotion!”

If you wanted devotion, was there any need to wander? To go to Mecca or Medina or Kashi or Girnar or Sarnath or Bodh Gaya? If you want devotion, let the bowing happen here. Devotion is the name of bowing; wherever you bow, devotion happens. Wherever you bow, God becomes present—He becomes present in your bowing. Where will you go to seek Him? Do you know any address? Wherever you go, you will remain you. If it was a matter of bowing, bow here. Do you go to the Kaaba to bow? If you are fascinated by bowing before stones, are stones scarce here? Place any stone and bow. You go to Kashi? Do you think those who live in Kashi have attained devotion?

Kabir lived in Kashi till his last breath. In his final illness he said to his son, “Move me from here; take me to Maghar.” Maghar! There is a saying in Kashi—no doubt minted by Kashis themselves—that one who dies in Maghar goes to hell or becomes a donkey, and one who dies in Kashi—Kashi-karvat—goes straight to heaven. Kabir rose from his bed and said, “Take me to Maghar.” The son said, “In old age has your mind gone astray? People come to Kashi to die from Maghar. If one dies in Maghar, one becomes a donkey.” Kabir said, “I prefer becoming a donkey to taking the debt of Kashi—the favor I will not take. If I reach heaven by my own merit—fine. But to reach heaven because of Kashi—what sort of thing is that? With what face will I stand before God? He will say, Kabir, you came to heaven because you died in Kashi; had you died in Maghar, you’d have been a donkey. I will die in Maghar. If by dying in Maghar I reach heaven, I will enter with pride—I can say I came by my own cause, not by Kashi’s.”

Where are you searching? You are looking for a cause—for some pretext, some back door to find God. I tell you: you go on pilgrimage precisely because you do not want to bow—you do not want devotion. This will sound upside down to you—because you think you are traveling for devotion. For devotion, is there even any need to go anywhere? Wherever you are, bow there. You have been taught: go there where God is; if you bow there you will be liberated. I tell you: wherever you bow, there the feet of God become present. In your bowing—that is the whole art—in your bowing the feet of God become present. If you have not bowed, God does not appear. If you do not bow, He does not pour into you.

You wandered for your own reasons. Do not ascribe it to God. Has anyone ever wandered because of God?

And now you ask again: “Please have the compassion to tell me what I should do next.”

Compassion! I am not your enemy to tell you something else to do now—“Do this!” I will tell you: enough of doing—now abide in non-doing. Sit now upon the throne of non-doing. Be a witness now. See. Not the doer—the seer. Now just sit; whatever God shows, see; whatever He makes you do, do—but do not become the doer. If He gives hunger, look for food. If He gives thirst, seek the lake. If He gives sleep, sleep. If He breaks your sleep, rise. But remain a witness. Leave all doership to Him.

Ashtavakra’s essence is this: be absorbed in seeing—be the seer. If hunger arises, see it. Do not say, “I am hungry.” Say, “God is hungry.” It is He who hungers! If sleep comes, say, He has begun to grow drowsy within me; now I should sleep—let me not obstruct. If thirst arises, drink water. When you are satisfied, ask Him, “Satisfied now? Is Your throat no longer burning with thirst?” But you remain the watcher. Master just this much, and everything is mastered. Master the one thing—everything is mastered. Keep doing a thousand things—nothing will happen. Master this small thing: become the witness.

I have heard: In a doctor’s clinic the compounder was bandaging a little boy’s leg. The boy kept jumping and making a commotion, yelling and crying. Finally the doctor got angry and said, “Move, I’ll bandage.” He told the boy, “Stand straight, kid—or I’ll give you an injection.” When the boy tried to say something, the doctor said again, “If you utter a word, I’ll inject you—stand quietly.” In such a state the boy stood perfectly still, like in a yoga pose. After the dressing was done the doctor asked, “Say, what were you trying to say?” He said, “Doctor, I was saying the wound is on the right leg and you’ve bandaged the left.”

In being the doer, the wound isn’t even there—and you are bandaging. The real confusion is not there. The illness is not there—and you are bandaging there. The illness is in your witnessing. Your awareness is lost. Your alertness is gone. Your attention is fragmented. Your wakefulness has become dim. The question is there—the problem is there. You say, What should I do? The moment you do—you wander. You walk—you wander. Sit down; don’t do! See—and you have arrived.

The formula for arriving: you do not have to reach by going anywhere. You are the already arrived. This is Ashtavakra’s proclamation—his great utterance: you are exactly where you need to be. Just open your eyes a little.

I was reading last night about the Zen master Rinzai. Someone asked him, “You have attained enlightenment; tell me how you attained it—and what should I do?” Rinzai said, “‘Do’! You be still and watch what I do.” Rinzai instantly closed his eyes, sat a little while with eyes closed, then opened them. He asked the man, “Understood?” The man said, “Understand what—you just closed your eyes and opened them; is there anything to understand in that?” Rinzai said, “Then you won’t understand. The point is only this—eyes closed and opened. There is nothing more to do. Before, I sat with eyes closed; now I have opened them. That’s the only difference. What I was before, I am now. Earlier I was sleep-like; now I am wakeful. Earlier the lamp of awareness was not lit; now it is. The house is the same; everything is the same. Only a lamp has been lit within.”

Nothing at all changes in an awakened one. They are just like you. The difference is tiny—very tiny. You sit with eyelids shut; they have opened theirs. It is only the eyelid’s difference.

So now don’t ask what else to do. Doing creates the world; non-doing finds the Lord. Become a witness now. Now that you have come to me, sit down—be the “alasi shiromani,” the supreme idler, as Ashtavakra says. This phrase is not mine. If it were mine, you would be startled. Ashtavakra says: become the crown of the lazy. Do not do at all.

And note the difference between the ordinary lazy man and the supreme idler. The ordinary lazy man does not act—he lies on the bed—but he keeps making plans for action. The supreme idler does much—whatever God makes him do—but there is no sense of doership, no plan of action. Whatever is asked of him in the moment, he does, and then sits again. When the command comes, he acts; when no command comes, he rests. The ordinary lazy man drops work; the one who drops the doer—that one is the supreme idler. Touch the ultimate peak of laziness. This alone is my teaching too.

This is truly a ray of truth descending. If it becomes clear that all that is “mine” is false, half the work is done; nirvana is not far. Half the work is done. When it is understood that all that is “mine” is false, we begin to edge closer to truth. For only by approaching truth does one see that everything of “mine” is false. A false person does not easily grasp that all of his is false. The false person gathers every kind of proof: “Me, false? The whole world may be false; I am true!” He does not only persuade others; he persuades himself that he is true. In fact, he tries to persuade others so that, if they accept him as true, he too can believe it. He keeps peering into others’ eyes: “If everyone takes me to be true, I must be true. If my laughter were false, how would others laugh with me? If my crying were false, how would others’ eyes moisten? No, I must be true. Look, the effect is visible in others.” The false person does everything he can so that he himself may come to trust that he is true.
If Krishnapriya has begun to see that everything of “mine” is false, a very auspicious hour has come near.
“Every single statement, every thought, every feeling—love, prayer, even laughter and tears...”
Keep in mind as well: when there is falsehood, everything is false; when there is truth, everything is true. There is no mixture. That “mixture” is itself the delusion of the false person. The false person says, “Granted, some things in me are false—but the rest are true.” It does not happen that way. Either false, or true. It is not that some is false and some is true. That is a deception. Truth and falsehood cannot coexist. It would be like saying half the room is dark and half is light—this does not happen. If there is light, the whole room is filled with light; if there is darkness, the whole room is dark. You cannot draw a line in the middle—a Lakshman-rekha—and order, “Darkness, don’t come beyond this; stay over there, there is light here.” When light is there, it fills the room; when darkness is there, it fills the room.
When you are false, you are false through and through. Whenever someone comes to me and says, “I am somewhat peaceful,” I say, “Don’t talk like that. ‘Somewhat peaceful’—I’ve never heard of it.” I have seen unpeaceful people, and I have seen peaceful people—but “somewhat peaceful”? What are you saying? It would be like heating water and at fifty degrees some of it starts to become steam while some remains water! It doesn’t happen. Steam begins at a hundred degrees—at a hundred degrees. Not a little at fifty, then a little more at sixty, then at seventy—no. It is a leap, not a gradual development. Not steps—transformation, revolution.
The day it is understood, “I am sheer darkness, sheer untruth,” an auspicious hour has come near. This is the seeker’s preparation. Do not be frightened by it. Naturally there will be unrest—because the mind does not want to accept that everything is false: my laughter, my tears, nothing of mine is true, my love, my prayer... This question has been written—and even about this there is no trust that it is true; even this is false!
When this happens, naturally there arises great restlessness. To save himself from that restlessness, a person tries to make some falsehood into a truth and hold onto it as a support. No—do not make anything.
My message to Krishnapriya: knowing that all is false, endure this pain. Do not hurry. Do not whitewash. Do not paint any falsehood to look like truth. If all is false, all is false. “All is false” means the whole personality is futile. If you can hold this sense of futility a little while, the futile will fall away—for the futile cannot live without your support. The false cannot live without your support. Falsehood has no legs of its own—it needs yours. That is precisely why the false claims to be true. Only by claiming truth can the false move; otherwise it cannot move as false at all.
If you say to someone, “What I’m saying is false; please believe it,” he’ll say, “Have you gone mad? You yourself say it is false—how can I believe?” So the liar must prove it true, not false—because people believe truth, not falsehood. And since people believe truth, if the false, too, claims to be truth-like, it gets believed. But what actually moves is truth.
You have seen: counterfeit coins circulate—but only under the name of the genuine! If a counterfeit coin is recognized as counterfeit, it no longer passes; it is stopped the very moment it is unmasked. When it was taken for genuine, it circulated. The counterfeit has no motion of its own; its motion is borrowed from the genuine.
Now think a little: even the false gets along by borrowing a little radiance from the true! Then what must be the momentum of truth itself! When truth becomes wholly, wholly truth, your life becomes dynamic. You become alive. There are flames in your life, there is light. There is breath, there is the Divine in your life.
Falsehood is borrowed. Whatever little shine you see in it belongs to someone else—borrowed from some truth. So when you understand that everything of mine is false, it means “I” am false—because this “I” is only the sum of all those things of yours.
All the items Krishnapriya has written—add them up, and the sum is the ego. Ego is the name of the sum of all falsities. If this becomes visible, the ego will scatter. Like a palace made of playing cards—let a breeze touch it and it collapses. Or like a paper boat—let a gust hit it, it flips, it sinks. This house of falsehood is the ego. It will fall. If my tears are false, a part of the “I” falls. If my laughter is false, another part of the “I” falls. If my prayer is false, then the “I” standing between me and the Divine falls as well. If my love is false, the ego that stood between me and my beloved also falls. Thoughts are false, feelings are false—every way, every posture, every gesture... Then all the supports of ego begin to fall, all the pillars give way. Suddenly you will find only ruins remain. And from those very ruins the soul rises. On the ruins of ego your real nature is born.
Truth is born on the ashes of untruth. Let it happen. There will be pain—great torment. For the mind does not want to accept that all of mine is false. “Surely something must be true!” But remember: nothing “somewhat true” exists. When truth is, it is whole; or it is not.
We are living by the support of falsehood because we do not know truth. And without some support, living seems impossible. We know nothing of truth—what it is. And to live, one needs some support, some excuse—so we live with the false, taking it for the true.
I was reading a poem—
In love’s dense bowers,
under the deep shade of sadness,
come, sit for a moment or two
and share this afflicted heart a little;
in the village of breaths, the fog of memories that has settled,
come, let us thin it with our meetings;
forgotten pledges, scattered relationships,
let us tie again with threads of tears.
Where is the pride of dreams on desolate eyelids?
Where a springtime festival in a ravaged life?
Who knows whether we meet again or not—
at least within our own shadows,
come, let us pass an hour or two.
Within one’s own shadow! One reaches even the state of sitting and resting within one’s own shadow. Nothing is known of truth. But we have to live—so let us live by taking untruth as truth!
A very significant event occurred in this century. Nietzsche proclaimed a hundred years ago that God is dead and man is free. But Nietzsche did not understand that man needs some pretext or other. If there is no God, man will fabricate one. Man will create a false god if God is not—but how will he live without God! It becomes very difficult. Even Nietzsche could not manage; in the end he went mad. He uttered the statement in a deep moment of thought—“God is dead, and man is free.” But one needs the capacity to be free. One needs the capacity to bear truth. Nietzsche could not be a Buddha—he went mad. Far from being enlightened, he became deranged, agitated, insane. What was the cause of his madness? Being without a support. In the diary he wrote during his madness he says, “It seems to me man cannot live without lies. One lie or another is needed. I have dropped all lies, therefore it seems I am going mad.”
If you drop all lies and hold the notion that there is no truth at all, you will go mad. This is the difference between Buddha and Nietzsche. Buddha, too, dropped all falsehoods—but he knew: where there is false, there must be true. Without truth, how could false exist? The very notion of “false” exists only because “true” also is, or can be.
When you say, “My laughter is false,” it implies that somewhere within you there is a faint sense that true laughter is possible. Otherwise, what would be the point of calling it false? When you say, “My love is false,” it means that on some unconscious level, at some depth, you sense it—even if not clearly grasped, even if hazy and fog-bound, without inner light, in darkness groping—you feel that true love is also possible. If, in a society, all coins were counterfeit and genuine coins did not exist at all, how would you call the counterfeit “counterfeit”? To call something false, the genuine is required. Without the genuine, the counterfeit is no longer counterfeit.
Nietzsche said that truth does not exist, and whatever man has taken to be true is false... He went mad. He blocked the path to truth: he pulled down the false, and did not allow the true to enter. “Truth is not; it cannot be; whatever there is is false.” Up to halfway he went rightly: he said the world is maya—illusion. Up to there, all the wise have said the same. But the world is maya precisely because behind this fog of illusion sits hidden Brahman. The world is untrue, a dream; because behind this dream a wakeful witness is hidden. Nietzsche did not accept that. So the crutches of falsehood fell—and he had no trust that his own legs existed. The crutches fell, and he believed there were no legs—Nietzsche fell, became a ruin. Along with falsehood, he himself turned into ruins.
Then in the hundred years after Nietzsche, what followed is worth pondering. Wherever societies accepted Nietzsche’s view, there was upheaval. In Germany, accepting “there is no God, God is false,” Germany produced Hitler. Man needs someone to trust. If Jesus becomes false and God becomes false, then trust is placed in Adolf Hitler. That is a very costly bargain; Jesus would have been better—trust in Jesus would have been better. But man cannot live without trust. The place was vacated, a vacuum arose—and into it Adolf Hitler was born. People wanted someone whose feet they could clasp. People wanted some support—Hitler became their messiah. He led them into deep destruction.
Marx said there is no religion—religion is the opium of the people. In Russia, accepting Marx, the result was that the state became God. The state became everything. Now all bow before the state. Stalin sat on the throne. God was removed, and in God’s place came Stalin. God would have been better—at least as an idea there was some beauty, some grace. At least in the idea there was some height, some open sky, some possibility of going somewhere, some means for growth! Stalin! But man cannot remain empty. Man needs something.
To Priya I want to say: in this hour you will feel like grabbing some support, accepting something—anything—as truth. Don’t hurry. Truth is! Let the false fall away and wait; truth will descend. It is not that there is no truth. There is truth—truth alone is—and it is present all around. Just let the false be removed, and in the empty, open sky that arises within you, from all directions streams of truth will rush in. You will be fulfilled. You will fill up. But for a little while, the courage to remain empty... The very name of this courage to remain empty is meditation. The name of this courage to remain in emptiness is meditation.
Meditation means: the untrue has been dropped, and we wait for truth. Meditation means: thoughts have been dropped, and we wait for thoughtlessness. Meditation means: ego has been set aside, and now we watch for the stainless, the untainted. The door has been opened; now, when the Guest arrives, the welcome is ready.

It is an important question. Listen closely and understand. I will repeat: liberation is your nature; it is not that I somehow liberate you. Liberation is your very nature. The moment you remember it, you are free. It is simply a matter of remembrance. Your memory has to return. I can help you remember; how could I liberate you? There are no chains on you. You have only believed you are chained. These are chains of belief. I shake you and say, “Look carefully—there are no chains on your hands; there is only the idea of chains.” You never opened your eyes and really looked: there are no shackles on your feet, you are free. To be free is your nature, your treasure.

That is why I say that the moment I give you sannyas I set you free instantly. Sannyas means: you have given me the chance to shake you and you will not be offended. That’s all it means. Sannyas means you agree that if I try to wake you, you won’t be annoyed. Sannyas means you are available—if I strike a blow at you, at your heart, you will not take me as an enemy. That is the whole meaning of sannyas.

And when I say, “The moment I give you sannyas I set you free,” I mean that liberation is not a thing to be acquired or practiced—it is your nature. You were born free. You are living free. You will die free. In the middle you dreamed a dream of bondage.

Imagine this: one night you sleep and dream that you are caught, arrested for smuggling, thrown into jail under MISA, handcuffed. You grow very anxious in the dream—what will happen, how will I get out? In the morning you wake up and start laughing. Will you say in the morning that when you were lying in the jail at night with handcuffs on, you were really in jail? No. You will say, “In truth I was resting in my bed; falsely, a jail happened.” But while you were resting on the bed you didn’t remember it. The dream became heavy, overpowering. Your eyes grew laden with dreaming. You were possessed by the dream, hypnotized by it. The dream was such that you forgot it was a dream. You got entangled in it and suffered all night. But when you wake up you admit the suffering never truly happened—it was only believed.

I tell you: you were born free, you are free even this very moment! I am not speaking to the unfree, I am speaking to the liberated—because the unfree simply do not exist. The day I woke to my own freedom, that very day the whole world was free for me. You are dreaming—that is your dream, not mine. If you are lost in it, you are lost; I am not. Your dream may deceive you; it is not deceiving me.

When I give you sannyas I am saying only this: as I have awakened, so awaken you. Wake up now—this very moment! You want me to give you methods to become free. If I give you a method, it means I too am not free. If I give you a method, it means I too do not accept that you are free. I would be agreeing with you that you are bound: “We must cut chains, bring hammers, open fetters, work hard, break down the prison walls, do great sadhana, much practice.”

Ashtavakra’s saying yesterday was: the one who has known no longer practices like little children. He does not practice! And you have turned the whole of yoga into practice: “Practice! Practice your disciplines!”

Ashtavakra says: you are already accomplished. Only the one who is not accomplished needs disciplines. This is your nature. When I say that the very moment I give you sannyas I set you free instantly, I am telling you that liberation is not needed—you are free. I only remind you.

A man got drunk. He came home but in his drunkenness he could not recognize his own house. He knocked. His mother opened the door. He asked, “Old mother, can you tell me who I am and where my home is? I have had a drink and forgotten my way.”

The mother laughed. “Fool, whom are you asking? This is your house.” The drunk narrowed his eyes, looked again, and said, “No, this is not my house. My house is surely nearby, not very far. Take me to my house.”

The neighbors gathered. They said, “Have you gone mad? This is your house! This is your mother standing here!” He began to cry: “Don’t entangle me like this. My mother must be waiting. It’s getting late—she must be anxious. Please take me to my home.”

Another drunk arrived with his bullock cart. He had been listening. He said, “Brother, come sit in the cart. I’ll take you.” People shouted, “Have you lost it? He’s drunk too! He’ll carry you farther away from your home!”

I want to tell you: wherever you are, as you are, that is exactly it. Your innermost being is in moksha even now. Outside, a dust-storm has gathered; dust has settled on the mirror, so you cannot recognize yourself. The mirror is hazed. But you have nowhere else to go, nothing else to become. Liberation is your nature.

Therefore I say: the moment I give you sannyas, I set you free instantly—on my side it is done; after that it’s your choice. If you insist on dreaming, you’ll spin a new dream. If you want only dreams, you will keep the chain of dreams going. But that is your mistake; I am not responsible. You will not be able to blame me. I have already made the declaration from my side: you are free.

Embrace this declaration. Accept it. Though your mind will protest: “I—free? Me?” You have always been taught to condemn yourself: “You are a sinner, crushed under karmas of many births, corrupt!”

“Me—free? No, no. Mahavira is free, Buddha, Krishna—this is for avatars. Me—free? I’ve a wife, children, an office, a shop. Me—free? No, no!” You don’t have the courage to make this claim. You say, “I have a wife, children, home.”

You are reciting the account of your dream; I am revealing your nature. You are describing your dream: so many wife-and-children, all these burdens—how can I be free? I tell you, all that is your dream—just a dream. Who is yours? Whose are you? Who could be yours? Whose could you be? You are only your own. Everything else is assumption and belief.

I am not telling you to run away from your home either—because who is wife, who is son? The one who runs away is also in a dream. I am telling you: wake up—where can you run? See consciously. Let the world go on as it goes. No problem. Your waking will not wake the world, but by waking you will know something unique. You will laugh inwardly at how the waking ones are sleepwalking! How those whose nature is freedom are living in chains! You will be astonished. What a play! God in bondage! The free nature in chains! The impossible appearing to happen!

I set you free—but your mind does not agree. You say, “Something must be done, then liberation will happen. How can liberation happen just like that?” You want to acquire liberation. Remember, every desire to acquire is the ego’s. The ego says, “I will acquire! As I earned money, I will earn meditation. As I built a house, I will build a temple. As I created a world, I will also create moksha!”

What is created is the world. That which is already so and is only to be recognized by waking—that is moksha. You say, “As I attained posts and positions, so I will attain God.” You call God the supreme post. In your language you have turned him into a position—just a notch above president or prime minister: “I will arrive there and stay.” A post!

God is not a post—God is your nature. You are there. You cannot move a hair’s breadth away from it. However much you try, you cannot fall from it. There is no facility to fall. Wherever you are—hell or heaven—you remain the divine. Your inner nature does not change; it cannot be changed. By “nature” we mean precisely that which cannot be altered; in which no change occurs; which is eternal, always the same.

Now you ask: “Then what becomes of the sanchit?”

You are trying to tally the accumulated account. What is sanchit? A dream you saw just now, another you saw yesterday, and one the day before—the dreams of yesterday and the day before you call “accumulated”? When what you see now is a dream, then what you saw yesterday was a dream, and the day before was a dream. What is this “accumulated”? If you recognize this present dream as a dream, all the dreams of many lives become dreams. The matter is finished. On waking in the morning will you say, “In the dream I borrowed money from someone—now I must repay it. You say I am free—fine—but the court will catch me. I must repay the loan I took in the dream!” That you gave money in the dream and must get it back! That you killed someone in the dream and must ask forgiveness! That someone insulted you in the dream and you must take revenge! Sanchit—what?

Understand this: “sanchit” only means you carry the notion that you did something. You were the doer; therefore there is karma.

Ordinarily you think that deeds bind you. The proclamation of Ashtavakra and the like is quite different: they say it is the sense of doership that binds you, not the deeds. Because of the sense of doership, then deeds bind. If the sense of doership drops, the matter is cut at the root; deeds no longer have meaning. Then whatever God did, he did; whatever he made happen, happened. What was his will, occurred.

On the one hand you say, “Not a leaf moves without his will”—and still you perform accumulated karmas! You do virtue and sin—when not a leaf moves without his will! Who are you? Why have you come in between? Say simply: “Whatever happened, happened through him. Whatever didn’t happen, didn’t happen through him. If I struck someone, it must have been his doing. If someone struck me, it must have been his will. Now there is no anger, no give-and-take left. Giving and receiving are equalized.” The feel of this is called liberation.

In liberation there is no accounting of sanchit. With sanchit you are dragging the old assumption again: I did deeds, so now something must be done about them! I sinned, so I must do virtue; I must balance sin with virtue—then perhaps liberation.

You are great bookkeepers. You are shopkeepers. You do not understand God. God is a gambler, not a shopkeeper. God is a player, not a shopkeeper. You cannot digest this—it sounds outrageous. You cannot accept that the virtuous is just like the sinner. Both dreamed. You say, “The virtuous also dreamed, the sinner too—but surely there is some difference!” There is no difference. Whether in the night you became a saint or a thief—what difference? In the morning does anything remain? In the morning both are dreams—equally dreams. Good and bad alike.

The one who goes beyond auspicious and inauspicious is free. The one who goes beyond sin and virtue is free. And how will you “go beyond” by doing? Doing is what binds you. There is only one way to go beyond: don’t do—watch the doing! Let what is happening, happen. You are at most an instrument. The dream flows through you.

“So then what becomes of sanchit?”

There never was any sanchit. There is not even a past; what then of a future! Sanchit has no past, no present, no future. Does a dream have a past? A future? A present? A dream seems to be, but is not—merely an appearance.

“Does it get attenuated?”

You keep repeating your language. In the morning when you wake up, does the dream get attenuated? It ends. “Attenuated” would mean it is fading bit by bit: you’ve awakened, and the dream recedes ten inches, then twenty, then a yard, then two yards, then a mile—slowly, slowly. You sit drinking tea while the dream trickles away, attenuating.

If someone gives you a good shake in sleep and you wake up in a flash, the dream is gone—completely gone. How can a dream survive?

No—you have great faith in retail; here I speak wholesale. You seem to be a retail trader. You say, “It will get attenuated—slowly, slowly... we’ll climb step by step.” As you wish! If you are that attached to going slowly, then crawl. But I tell you: go as slowly as you like—you won’t get out of the dream. Because crawling is also part of the dream. “Slowly, slowly” is also part of the dream. Time itself is part of the dream.

Wake up this instant! That is why I say: the very moment I give you sannyas, I set you free at once. If you want to be stingy, that’s your choice.

People are such misers—miserly even about liberation! Forget about giving—here I am saying, “Take the whole thing!” and they say, “How can we take it all at once? We will take it slowly! Give us a little; don’t give so much.”

You have become misers in giving and misers in receiving. You have lost your nerve. Your courage is gone.

“And if liberation does not happen immediately after taking sannyas, does it mean the blanket of accumulated karma is still thick?”

Drop this blanket! There is no blanket at all.

One night Mulla Nasruddin slept. In the middle of the night he sat up and began haggling with a customer—he runs a cloth shop. He quickly tore a blanket. His wife screamed, “What are you doing?” He said, “Be quiet—at least don’t interfere when I am in the shop!” Then he woke up—he had torn his own blanket. There was no customer, no buyer.

What blanket—thick, thin—what blanket? Why are you so frightened of being free? Why are you so eager to save the bondage in some way or other? There is fear. The fear is this: liberation is not “yours.” Liberation is liberation from “you.”

Liberation does not mean that you are liberated. If you remain, where is liberation? Liberation means: you are gone—liberation remains. Hence the panic. So you say, “Little by little, slowly. Otherwise, we might get lost at once...!” You are afraid of disappearing. “We might be annihilated...!”

Perhaps the river, too, is afraid before entering the ocean. She hesitates, looks back. Such a long journey from the Himalayas to the sea—so many memories, so many dreams, passing under so many trees, so many suns, so many moons, so many people, so many ghats, so many experiences! Just before falling into the ocean she must think, “I will be lost. Let me hold back.” She must pause, hesitate, look back at the path she traveled. This is your condition. You don’t want to let go at once. You want to save something. And as long as you want to save, it will be saved. You are your own master. I will go on waking you; you go on saving.

But let me be clear from my side: there is no blanket—neither thin nor thick. You are utterly uncovered. You are utterly naked—sky-clad. What blanket could cover the soul?

Kabir has said: “Just as it was, I returned the sheet; I had worn the sheet with great care.”
I tell you it was returned “just as it was” precisely because there is no sheet. If there were a sheet, how could it be returned just as it was? Think a little. If there were a sheet, could it be returned untouched? Something or other would have gone wrong. Worn a whole lifetime, it would have become dirty, gathered litter. You would have needed to wash it. It would be disheveled, its color faded by sun and rain, threadbare. And Kabir says, “Just as it was, I returned the sheet; I had worn it with great care.”

There is no sheet—that is why it was returned just as it was. And if there were a sheet, even with all your care it would get messed up. There isn’t one.

So then... I tell you: there is no sheet. You are the sheet. And as long as you want to preserve yourself, the “sheet” remains. The day you agree to vanish, nothing remains—only liberation remains.

Let me repeat: liberation is not “yours.” Liberation is greater than you, vaster than you. Liberation is like the ocean; you are a narrow river.

Understand.

First thing, you say: “You say that just by listening one can attain the Divine.”
Certainly. Because if something were truly lost, you would have to do something else. Just by listening you can be available to it. That’s exactly the case. You had added two and two to make five, and I come and say, “You’re being foolish—two and two don’t make five, they make four.” Will you then say, “Can two and two become four just by hearing this? Now we must exert ourselves, stand on our heads, sing bhajans and kirtans, practice austerities, fast—then two and two will become four”? Two and two are four! They won’t become so because of your fasting, and they are not otherwise. Even when you are writing two and two as five, they are still four. The five is your mistake, your delusion.

The world is maya—which means: the world is your delusion; it is not, as such. So it can happen just by listening.

“You say just by listening one becomes available; while listening to you I feel I have known everything.”
Right there the mistake happened. You felt you had known; you became a knower, a pundit, a learned man. “I have known!”—and the slip happened. The ego saved itself again—in the guise of knowing.

If you have understood me rightly, you will know there is nothing to know. What is there to know? If you have truly heard and understood me, you will be freed from knowing. What is there to know? Life is the supreme mystery—a profound mystery. It does not come into knowing. It cannot be known; it is to be lived. It is not a problem to be solved. Life is not a question waiting to become an answer.

I am not giving you answers; I am waking you up. You keep grabbing at answers; I am waking you. That is precisely where the slip keeps happening. You listen to me and collect a few statements. You say, “Exactly right—this makes sense.” And there you miss. I am not just telling you some “points.” I am only giving you a slight push so you open your eyes a little. Don’t go back as a knower.

I want you to understand that all knowledge is false. Knowledge as such is false. The very meaning of knowledge is that you have become separate: the knower has separated from the known. Division has arisen. Nonduality is broken; duality appears. The veil drops—and the trouble begins.

I am waking you in That which is One, nondual. Wake up in that ocean! Do not become a knower. Otherwise you will leave as a knower, and before you reach the door the knowledge will slip out of your hands. Knowledge will not help.

I tell you: accept the absoluteness of your ignorance. This feels very hard to you because everything I say goes against the ego. The ego says: be a doer. I say: don’t be a doer. The ego says: “All right then, at least become knowledgeable—be a pundit! No harm in that.” And I tell you: there is no one more foolish than the pundit. Scholarship is a device to protect stupidity. Become simple. Say, “What is there to know? What can I possibly know?” Has man known anything yet? What do you know—have you ever thought about it? You say, “This woman has lived with me for thirty years; she is my wife.” Do you know her? What do you know? Even after thirty years, what do you know? Leave that—she has been with you for thirty years; you have been with yourself for countless lives. Do you know yourself? What do you know? The picture that appears in the mirror—you take that to be yourself. Your father gave you a name—you think that is you. Who are you?

Scientists say they know. A wrong notion. Ask a scientist: what is water? He will say, it is composed of hydrogen and oxygen. What are hydrogen and oxygen? Now he is stuck. He shifts a little and says: electrons, neutrons, positrons. And what are these? He says: nothing definite can be said; they cannot be pinned down. Then why not say clearly, “We don’t know”? After going round and round—“we don’t know”! If you don’t know the electron and neutron, then you don’t know hydrogen; if you don’t know hydrogen, you don’t know water. The whole thing collapses.

It is like I arrive at the station and ask you, “Where is Shree Rajneesh Ashram?” You say, “In Koregaon Park.” I ask, “Where is Koregaon Park?” You say, “Near Blue Diamond.” I ask, “Where is Blue Diamond?” You say, “No one knows for sure.” Then what is this? If Blue Diamond is unknown, Koregaon Park is thrown into doubt; and if Koregaon Park is doubtful, then the ashram—how will I ever reach? You say, “Well, you figure that out; up to Blue Diamond we’ve told you. But what Blue Diamond is—no one knows.” Is that called knowing?

Science too is a deception. Knowing simply does not happen. Nothing has ever truly been known. This whole vastness is unknown, unfamiliar, unknowable. Here, knowing is an illusion.

My effort is to free you from the illusion of knowledge. And you say, “Listening to you I feel delight; it seems I have known, that the thing has come into my fist.” That is exactly where you miss. You are clutching at smoke. When you go outside and open your fist, you will say, “It’s all gone wrong—there is nothing in my hand.” In that moment it felt fully grasped, and now it has scattered. You are falling into illusion.

I am not giving you knowledge. I am giving you wakefulness. Wakefulness means: knowledge has never happened, cannot happen, and will not happen. Wakefulness means: life is the supreme mystery.

“Perhaps the Divine who made it knows—or who knows, maybe even he does not!”
This is something astonishing. God! The Vedic seer says: “What is all this?”
“Perhaps—perhaps the One who made it knows; or who knows, maybe even He does not!”
They must have been very courageous people. The gist is: even God may not know.

In truth, whatever becomes known turns trivial. Once it is known, what remains? To know is to define. Existence has never been defined. Has anyone ever said what it is? That is why Buddha fell silent. Ask him, “Is there God?”—he is silent. “Is there a soul?”—he is silent. That, precisely, was Buddha’s answer! He says: Stop this prattle about soul and God. Who has known? Wake up! Drop the worry about knowing.

So there is, first, the race of the doer—that is the race of ego. Then there is the race for knowledge—that too is the race of ego. The doer says: do good, don’t do bad. The knower says: know the truth, don’t know the untrue. But both are making distinctions. The religious person says: it cannot be known at all.

If, hearing me, it dawns on you that it cannot be known, then tell me—how could you ever lose it? If you leave here having seen that it cannot be known, can you ever lose that seeing? Then it becomes your treasure. Open your fist or close it, shake your hands—whether the fist is open or closed—this will not fall. It is your wealth now. How could you drop it? Is there any way to drop it? Knowing can be lost, it can be forgotten; but this deep sense of not-knowing—that nothing is known...

The Upanishads say: He who thinks he knows—know that he does not. He who does not know—know that he is the one who knows.
And Socrates said: I know only one thing—that I know nothing.
These are the proclamations of the supreme knowers.

Know that in knowing there is no knowing; know that only in not-knowing is true knowing. If you leave me carrying this exultant not-knowing, no one will be able to rob you of it. Bandits cannot loot it, pickpockets cannot cut it away. No one will be able to sow doubt in your life. Wherever there is knowledge, doubt is possible—someone can bring a contrary knowledge and create turmoil, bring arguments and create trouble.

I am not giving you knowledge. I am giving you something more precious, which you do not yet understand. The day someone understands it, in that very moment he is free. And he who is liberated in ignorance—his liberation is great, profound! His nirvana cannot be taken away.

What have you known? Reflect. Have you known anything at all till now? Nothing at all. You collect junk, you collect information—and you think you have known? Someone asks, “Do you know this tree?” You say, “Yes, it is an ashoka tree.” Is that knowing? You said, “ashoka tree.” Does the ashoka tree know its name is ashoka? What on earth have you known! You yourself gave the name—ashoka. You yourself declared it is an ashoka tree. You hung up the placard, and you yourself read it. You have not even been able to convince the tree that it is “ashoka.” What do you know? Just workable conveniences—surface-level—labels you have stuck on.

There is no knowledge anywhere here. Neither in the scriptures is there knowledge, nor with the scientists. No one has knowledge. Knowledge as such does not exist.

When this sense becomes clear within you, who will be able to snatch your awareness from you? How could it be snatched? Then you will live in an eternity—beyond time, beyond space. Your peace will deepen. In that very moment, that arises which can be bowed to. Its arising is mysterious—not knowledge-full.

And the last question—
I have put it at the end because it is not a question, it is an answer. As if I had asked, and some “knower” turned up and delivered the answer: “I–you–He, these are not real distinctions, they are verbal. Depending on one’s taste or specific state, through them the Divine is invoked.”

Now this is an answer, not a question. If you have received this answer, then why have you come here? What are you doing here? The matter is finished. And if you have not yet received this answer, then to whom are you offering it, and for what reason?

Man has a great urge to tell his knowledge. The less he has, the greater the urge. Hence it is said: a little knowledge is very dangerous. You have not even known what you are saying—or why you are saying it. I did not ask you. There was no need for you to give this answer. But still, since you have given it unasked—thank you! Keep bestowing on me like this, and someday even I may become a “knower”! Kindly maintain such grace!

A man was wandering the street at midnight. A policeman stopped him and asked, “Sir, do you have any reason to be walking the streets so late?” The man beat his head and said, “If I had any reason, I would long ago have gone home and presented myself before my wife; it is precisely because I have no reason that I am wandering.”

If you truly knew—if what you have said has really become known to you—you would have stood before the Divine; then the temple door would open. Do not get entangled in these verbal smartnesses.

“I, you, He—these are not real distinctions.”
Who said they are real distinctions? Do you think any distinction is real? Distinctions as such are unreal. Who planted in you the notion that distinctions could be real?

And you say, “I, you, He—all are merely verbal distinctions.”
They are words, of course; by their very nature distinctions will be verbal. Whom are you trying to explain this to? Who said they are not words? And if there were no words, how would I speak, how would you write? It’s all words.

“Depending on a particular taste or state, one invokes God through them.”
Do you know God? And as long as any particular state or particular preference remains, has anyone ever had a relation with the Divine? Ashtavakra says: drishti-shunyah—visionless. When vision becomes empty, no viewpoint remains! When no state remains, no condition remains—when you go beyond states and conditions—only then does the Divine manifest.

So if any preference is still left, what you are invoking is not God. It is your call, the call of your preference. What has that to do with the Divine? Certainly, people of different tastes keep giving God different names. But does that give God names? As I told you, even the ashoka tree does not know it is an ashoka tree. And God too has no idea of the various insanities you commit in his name.

Sufis call to God as woman, as beloved. Some call to God as father—the Christians, for instance. Some call one way, some another. This only reveals your taste—or your illness. The call does not reach God thereby; because God is neither father nor mother, neither brother nor son, neither wife nor beloved.

The Divine is not a relationship between you and someone. The Divine is that moment in which you are no more—where the caller is gone. So long as you are calling, the call will not reach God. When the caller himself has dissolved, when no call remains, when no one remains to call—when deep silence descends, when the void comes, shunyadrishti, all becomes a state of emptiness—only then.

Kabir says: “Searching and searching, O friend, Kabir was lost in wonder!” When Kabir himself was lost in the very search—then, then the meeting happened.
Kabir has said: As long as I was, You were not; now You are, and I am not.

So call in special states, with preferences; give God names—these tell only about you. They reveal nothing about God.

But who had asked for this answer? It seems within you knowledge is fidgeting, wanting to show itself. You are in a very dangerous state. If you have not spared even me, what must you be doing to others! Whoever falls into your clutches, you will cram your knowledge down his throat. You must surely be committing violence upon people—whoever you can, you will not miss the chance.

Remember, such knowledge is of no use to anyone. Until someone comes to you to ask, do not say it. What is uttered unasked is accepted by no one. Even when someone comes to ask out of thirst, people accept with difficulty—only with much hesitation; and if they still accept, blessed they are! But when you yourself roam about hunting for victims, carrying your knowledge, hoping to dump it on someone—then no one will accept it. People will only be annoyed. That is why people dodge “knowers”: “Here comes the pundit—run, escape from here, or he will chew our heads off!”

Never try to give what has not been asked for.

It is said that in the world the thing most given and least taken is advice. Advice is doled out so much, endlessly—and no one takes it! Because you give it for free—who will take it? You give it unasked, without reason—who will take it?

No, don’t go about flinging this kind of knowledge. If someone comes to you with inquiry, tell him. If someone asks, tell him. But if no one asks, if no inquiry has been made, don’t harbor such impatience. Such impatience is dangerous, violent. Because of such “knowers” a great aversion to knowledge has arisen in people’s minds. Because of them, life’s ultimate mysteries have also become boring—the juice has gone out of them.

Keep quiet! If it becomes known to anyone that you have come upon something, that some awakening has visited you, people will come on their own. If someone asks, then speak.

Here no one was asking you—at least I did not.

But the ego seeks out ways, ever-new ways. By any means it wants to establish itself: that I am something, I am special. And that very specialness is your prison.

(That wasn’t the last question, because it was an answer.)
The last question:

I won’t take even that risk of speaking on him. If you ask about him, I will say only this:
Hari Om Tat Sat!