Mahaveer Meri Drishti Mein #12

No; he will not lose it. Just as you are breathing—whether awake or asleep, whether working or not—breath goes on because it is the condition of life. So it is with the state of consciousness. Once it comes into our awareness, it does not fade. In worldly activity you do not have to keep attending to it for it to remain; it remains of itself.

For example, a man is wealthy and he knows he has wealth; he does not have to remember twenty-four hours a day that he is wealthy. Yet the state of being wealthy remains with him twenty-four hours a day, whatever he is doing—walking on the road, working, getting up, sitting down—no matter. A beggar too, whatever he is doing, his state of being a beggar remains with him. Our states travel with us. The only real question is whether they have truly happened in us—that is the big point.

So even if it comes into our experience for a thousandth part of a moment, it will abide, because we never have any time greater than a thousandth of a moment. That is all the time there ever is. Whenever it happens, it is only in that measure. Once it is seen, it remains. What the Gita calls sthita-prajna is this very thing; there is no difference. The similarity you see between samayik and vitaragata only means this: samayik is the path; vitaragata is the attainment. From here you travel; there you arrive. So naturally the two will accord.

First, it is useful to understand what Tandonji is asking. What I have said about samayik and what I have said about vitaragata will appear exactly the same, because samayik is the way and vitaragata the destination. Samayik is the doorway; vitaragata the achievement. And means and end ultimately are not separate, because the means, developed and ripened, become the end.

So in vitaragata there will be the supreme expression of that which is gradually attained in samayik. Becoming utterly steady in samayik is entry into vitaragata.

They also ask whether what Krishna calls sthita-dhi or sthita-prajna is the same as vitaraga. Certainly, it is the same. Both terms are very precious. Vitaraga means one who has gone beyond all dualities, beyond the twoness, who has arrived in the One. And mark this: sthita-dhi or sthita-prajna means one whose wisdom has come to rest, whose discernment does not tremble. It trembles in one who lives in duality. One who lives between two is always trembling—now this way, now that. Where there is duality there is vibration. For example, a lamp is burning; its flame flickers because the wind sometimes bends it eastward, sometimes westward. So the lamp keeps trembling. That trembling of the lamp will disappear only when there are no gusts of wind—that is, when there is no possibility of being pushed this way or that, and the lamp remains just where it is.

So Krishna has given the example that just as in a closed room where no draft enters, a lamp’s flame becomes steady, so when awareness, discrimination, intelligence become steady and do not quiver, do not sway, then such a person is sthita-dhi; such a person, whose intelligence has become still, is sthita-prajna.

This is exactly what vitaraga means, because vitaraga means where the duality of attachment and aversion has disappeared. Where duality is gone, the very possibility of trembling is gone. And when the mind no longer quivers, it becomes steady, it comes to rest.

Mahavira emphasized the negation of duality; hence he used the word vitaraga. The emphasis is on the negation of duality—that duality should not remain. Krishna did not speak in terms of duality; he emphasized steadiness. So both tried to grasp the same thing from two sides: Krishna through the steadiness of the lamp, Mahavira through the ending of duality. But if duality is negated, wisdom becomes steady; and if wisdom becomes steady, duality is negated. They carry exactly the same meaning; there is not the slightest difference.

And they have asked: if for a single moment, for a thousandth part of a moment—call it time—knowledge has been attained, vision has happened, will it remain steady in day-to-day living?

Where does day-to-day conduct come from, really? It comes from us. What we are at depth—that is where our conduct arises from. If the spring is full of poison at its source, then the waves that spill over, the droplets that appear, will carry poison. And if the source fills with nectar, then in those very drops and waves there will be nectar.

Conduct flows out of us; as we are, so it becomes. If we are unconscious, our conduct is unconscious; whatever we do carries that stupor. If we are in ignorance, our conduct is filled with ignorance. And if we have come into knowing, our conduct becomes filled with knowing.

Suppose this room is full of darkness, and we get up and try to go out: we bump into the door, into the wall, into the furniture. To get out without bumping is difficult. Many times it happens that we just keep colliding and cannot get out; even if we do get out, we do not manage it without knocks. Then someone says to us, “Light a lamp.” And we say to him, “We can light a lamp, but once it is lit, will we really be able to go out without bumping? Will we no longer have to collide? Will this habitual bumping of ours really cease for good?”

He will say, “Light the lamp and see. How will you collide once the lamp is lit? You collided because of darkness; when the lamp is burning, how will you collide? Even if you want to collide, you won’t be able to—has anyone ever collided by wanting to? And when the door is visible, why would you try to go through the wall? You will not try the wall; you will go out through the door. You used to attempt the wall only because the door was not visible.”

If the light is lit within, that light is not such that it burns for a moment and then goes out. There are such lights—a lamp we may light, which can then be extinguished, and we can start bumping again. The lamp’s oil can run out, the wick can go out, a gust of wind can come—any number of things can happen. It is not necessary that a lamp which has been lit will keep burning; it can be extinguished. But the inner light of which we speak is not a light that ever goes out.

Even now, when we do not know of it, it is burning. Even now, when we are not awake to it, it is burning; only we have our back turned to it. It has never been extinguished, because it is the inner part of our consciousness—it is our nature. Turn around, look back, and you will find it ablaze. It does not begin to burn then; it was already burning—only our orientation changes. We find that it is lit.

And such a light as never was extinguished and never is extinguished—where there is no oil and no wick—which is the inherent capacity of our inner life: once we have seen it even once, the matter is finished. Once we come to know that the light is behind, then even if we want to walk with our back to it we will not be able, because who has ever managed to walk with his back to the light, once he knows? Who will? If he has not known, that is another matter.

Therefore, even if it is attained for a single moment, that attainment has become perpetual. And in proportion to it our day-to-day conduct will begin to change—indeed, it will change at once. For what we did yesterday, how will we be able to do it today? We did it because of darkness; now there is light, and therefore it is impossible to go on doing it.

No event is accidental. In fact, we call an event “accidental” when we cannot discover its cause. There are events whose causes elude our understanding, but no event is accidental.

Let me tell you an incident. Pungaliya is sitting here; some four or five years ago he bought a new car and came to Nashik to pick me up. Usually Manik Babu comes from Poona to bring me, but he stopped Manik Babu, saying, “I’ve got a new car; I’ll bring him.”

So he came with the new car. But his daughter said to him, “I have a feeling he won’t come in your car.” It seemed like a remark without any meaning. If he’s taking me in the car, why wouldn’t I come? Perhaps she thought I might come in another car or something might happen. The matter ended there. That night I too had the thought that some trouble could happen on the way. I said, “It’s all right; no worry.”

Around twelve noon we started from there. The driver was new to Pungaliya. He was driving so fast that two or three times I felt inwardly the car could go off the road anywhere. But nothing of the sort had happened yet. On the way we crossed a car—some Bengali doctor’s—and the woman sitting in that car also felt that this car might topple. And a minute or two later the accident happened. Our car went down and overturned in the sand, all four wheels up. It was a small Standard Herald. And Manik Babu, sleeping at home, dreamt that my hand had been badly hurt. Now, none of these things had any obvious connection with each other.

In the end it so happened that I reached Poona in Manik Babu’s car, because he then came to get me. So the feeling that had arisen in Pungaliya’s daughter—that he would not come in her father’s car—also turned out to be right. Our car had overturned. The doctor’s car came up from behind and stopped. He said, “My wife had just said this car might fall. The way it was going, it might fall somewhere.” I said, “One shouldn’t think such thoughts.” And even as we were thinking like that, the car fell.

From the surface it looks purely accidental—accidental indeed; yet it doesn’t feel entirely accidental. It only seems that perhaps we do not know the causes. The causes are not known to us; they are not within our reckoning. And if the whole science of this were to develop a little and be understood, the causes too would become intelligible.

For example: in parts of Soviet Russia, in the Baku region, for thousands of years the world’s largest fair used to be held, where there is a temple of a goddess—the fire goddess—and on a particular day of the year a flame would ignite by itself. No one had to light it, no fuel had to be added. And when the flame ignited it would burn for eight to ten days; so for eight to ten days a great fair was held and millions gathered. It was an astonishing event, and no cause was apparent, for there was neither fuel nor any visible reason.

Then the communists came; they tore down the temple, stopped the fair. Excavations were done, and deep springs of oil were found—kerosene, petroleum. But the question arose: why did the fire ignite on one particular day each year? Oil springs produce gas; gas can ignite through friction—but it could do so at any time.

Then, through investigation, it was discovered that only when the earth is at a particular angle can that gas achieve the friction necessary; therefore on that special day the fire would ignite.

Once the matter became clear, the fair ended, the fire goddess took leave. Now no one goes there, because now… even now the fire burns there, and even now it does so only on the special day when the earth is at a particular angle; the gas that has accumulated over the year bursts forth and catches fire. Until then it was “accidental”; now it is not accidental. Now we have come to know the cause.

No. What really happens is this—what really happens is this: we all want to be saved. We all want to be saved, and whether we are saved or not, we will find a reason for it. To install a reason is one thing; to inquire into the cause is quite another.

Do you see my point? One thing is that we invent a reason for what we want to happen. And behind even that there is a basic premise working within us: how could anything happen without a cause? That fundamental principle is at work in us. If four people come through without even a scratch, then there must be some cause.

If you understand it rightly, up to that extent the matter is scientific, because even that cannot be without cause. But we don’t know what the cause is, so we imagine anything. We can say there was a good man, therefore all were saved. And if, suppose, they had not been saved, we would still have found some reason—then we would have said there was a bad man, therefore they died.

From this only one thing is clear: man is not willing to accept anything as causeless—and that is right. But it does not follow that the causes he gives are correct. Those causes should be scientifically tested. For example, seat me in it and overturn the vehicle two or four times.

You understand what I mean, don’t you? If, by overturning it with me in it two or four times, everyone comes out safe, then it becomes a bit more solid. And if they don’t, then Pungaliya-ji is wrong; there is nothing of the sort. My point is: without scientific testing there is no way. We do accept that there is a cause—and one thing in that is right: a person is not willing to accept anything as without cause, nor should he. But the second thing is not right: we should not accept any imagined cause—no imagined cause at all.

We should at least be careful to establish the cause through experiment. Because if the cause is true, it will hold without exception. Overturn me two, four, ten times and it will become clear whether people get hurt or not.

And the amusing part is that when injury did occur, it was only I who got a little hurt; no one else was hurt at all. Whatever little happened was to my leg only; no one else was touched. So if there was any bad man in there, it was me! Because not even the slightest scratch came to anyone else.

So these imaginative superimpositions have no value. But nothing is accidental—nothing at all. Because if we accept the accidental, the principle of cause and effect collapses—completely collapses. If even one event in this world happens accidentally, the whole principle is gone; there is no way to save it. Nothing happens accidentally; it cannot happen. Because for anything to be, there is no way for it to be without a cause. There will be a cause.

Now, suppose there is a man who wins a lottery. It seems entirely accidental. Because here we cannot find any cause—what cause is there to find? One man wins a lottery and we see no cause. But if a hundred thousand people have bought tickets and one man wins, then the day our scientific capacity grows enough to analyze the minds of a hundred thousand people, I tell you, we will find the cause that accounts for this man’s winning.

It may be that among these hundred thousand he is the man of the strongest resolve; it may be. And perhaps he has most firmly accepted that the lottery is going to be his; it may be. I am giving only one example—there could be a thousand causes. If, among these hundred thousand, the most strong-willed person is he, his chance of winning is greater, because he has a cause others lack. Many experiments are ongoing on this.

If we deal the cards with a machine, or a machine throws the dice—the machine has no will. If you throw the dice a hundred times, understand that the number twelve comes twice. That is the ratio with a machine. The machine has no will, no desire; it just shakes and throws the dice. In a hundred throws, twelve comes twice.

Now there is another person who throws the dice by hand, and each time he throws with the feeling that twelve should come. He brings up twelve twenty times out of a hundred. His eyes are closed, his hand cannot see what the die is like, and still he brings it twenty times. A third person tries every trick to get twelve, but cannot bring it even twice in a hundred—that is, not even the two times a machine would bring, which are purely a matter of combinations.

With the one who brings it twenty times, we run the experiment again: now you make sure that twelve does not come. When he throws with that intent, twelve does not come twenty times—say it comes five, three, or two times.

So now the question arises: the inner will does work! Thousands of experiments have been done on this, and it has been established that inner resolve affects even the dice, inner resolve affects the cards; inner resolve organizes and influences events. And inner resolve itself is the outcome of that person’s thousands of experiences and causes. It too is not accidental—that someone just happens to have inner resolve. Inner resolve is the fruit of thousands of experiences and causes he has passed through.

Suppose there is a person who decides, “I will not open my eyes for twelve hours.” He sits, and after only three hours he opens his eyes—then his future resolve will be weakened; the power of his resolve diminished. If he sits with eyes closed for the full twelve hours—no way could be found to make him open them—then he is performing an action whose fruit will be that his inner resolve becomes stronger.

Life is very complex, and in it to say how any event is occurring is exceedingly difficult—today it is difficult. But this much can be said with certainty: if it is occurring, there will be a cause behind it, whether known to us or unknown. Whatever is happening around us…

In the South, the seventy-fifth birthday of a great musician is being celebrated. He has grown old; he has thousands of disciples, and they have all come to offer gifts—perhaps he may not live another year. And he has thousands of devotees and lovers; they too have come to offer gifts. The offerings continue until two in the night—offerings amounting to lakhs of rupees. Kings and queens who learned from him have come to give.

At last, at two o’clock, a beggar-like man, carrying an ektara, comes to the door. The guard says, “Where are you going?” He says, “I too would like to go in and make an offering.” They say, “Nothing is visible with you.” The beggar says, “It isn’t necessary that only what is visible be offered; what is invisible can be offered too.” He leaves his tanpura with the guard and goes inside. Going in, he bows his head at the master’s feet.

The beggar is scarcely thirty, thirty-two. The old master cannot even recognize him. He says, “When did you learn from me? I don’t remember.” He says, “I never learned from you, because I am the son of a beggar. But you played inside the palace; I used to sit outside and listen, and there I learned something. But today I had to come to say thank you. I learned from you—sitting on the steps outside the gate; I could never enter inside, for there was no way to go in. Even today it was very difficult to come. I have brought a small offering. Will you accept it? You won’t refuse, will you?”

The master, casually, says, “No, no, how could I refuse?” But he sees that the fellow has nothing—his hands are empty, his clothes are torn. What offering! What kind of offering! Still, he says, “No, no, how could I refuse? Whatever you give, I will certainly accept.”

He closes his eyes and calls out loudly upward, “O God! Give my remaining life to my master, for what will I do by living!” And no sooner had he said this than the man died.

This is a historical event. If someone’s resolve is that potent, this can happen; it is not very difficult. And that master lived some fifteen years more, who was expected to die within a year. Such a person—if he were to set his number on a lottery…

It will appear to us as coincidence, because the causes are not visible to us. That is exactly—exactly—what Hume says: that everything is coincidence. Hume says so because where are the causes seen? Where the causes are visible to us, we agree. Where they are not, it seems like coincidence, like chance.

But such a “coincidence” would be quite astounding—that a man says, “Let my life end,” and at that very moment his life ends. Coincidence is not that simple. It may happen, but even then it does not seem so easy. And he falls right there and collapses.

A man of such resolve—if he sets his mind on a lottery number—it would not be very difficult for that number to come up. All I am saying is that there are many causes we do not see. Because we do not see them, we keep groping in the dark and think this is happening, that is happening; it looks accidental. Nothing is accidental.

Now, here’s the thing: it can also be predicted who will get it. It can be predicted. There are people who, out of a hundred thousand who have bought lottery tickets, can tell who will get it. Then what will you do?
Then it becomes very awkward, very difficult to keep saying that it is… There are people who told the very day Hitler would die. There are people who told the day Gandhi would die. There are people who say on which day China will attack India; there are people who say there will be an attack.
In one sense we can say, it is all coincidence.

Yes, yes, they died. Two hundred thousand people can die at once. Two hundred thousand people can die at once. Because that is how it appears to us, isn’t it! Someday it may even happen that the whole earth dies at once. It seems to us so accidental that two hundred thousand people died together! Because we have no entry into the inner being of those two hundred thousand individuals. We have no access to the possibilities at work within those two hundred thousand people. And on the surface it looks exactly as if it were purely accidental that the atom bomb was dropped.

But someone should ask: why did it fall on Hiroshima? Hiroshima was not an important city; it could have fallen on Tokyo. Why Hiroshima? Why Nagasaki?

Until we have complete inner access to the causes—which we do not—until we can enter into the people of Hiroshima, no one can say whether Hiroshima had, in Japan, the largest number of suicidal people. I say it. No one can say whether, among all the cities of Japan, the most self-destructive people were in Hiroshima, and therefore Hiroshima attracted the atom bomb. You understand what I mean, don’t you? That is, my point is: why Hiroshima? Why was Hiroshima chosen to die?

You will be surprised to know that if a car meets with an accident, if an airplane crashes—since we do not know the consciousness, no one can say what is going on in the consciousness of the people sitting in that plane and in what manner it can bring about a result. No one can say.

There are two or three most extraordinary incidents in Meher Baba’s life. A house was built for him—built especially for him—and he went to enter it. Standing at the doorway—there was an inauguration, the place decorated with flowers, lamps lit—he stood there for two minutes and turned back. He said, I will not go into this house. People asked, What do you mean, not going into this house? He said, That’s all. I don’t particularly feel anything, but right at the door I suddenly froze… I am not going in. That house collapsed that very night. It isn’t clear even to him what happened, but on the threshold he felt a sudden hesitation and refused.

Once Meher Baba was flying from India to Europe, and at Aden he refused to board again. His ticket was through. The plane stopped at Aden; he got down at the airport, and then suddenly he said, I cannot get back on that plane. And that plane crashed.

An incident took place in Japan during the last world war. An American general was flying on some military business from one camp to another. He left home at eight in the morning. His typist came running to his house around eight-fifteen and asked his wife, Where is the General? She said, Why? The girl said, I had a dream last night; I must tell him. I was very frightened, but at first I thought not to say anything—so I am late. What did you dream? the wife asked.

She told her dream: I saw that the plane the General is taking today collides en route. There are three people in it—the General, the pilot, and a woman. It collides, though no one dies. It collides, and all three survive. Because I had this dream, I thought I should tell him…

The wife said, Your dream is wrong right there, because only the General and the pilot are going; there is no woman. There is no woman at all. And they have already left. Still, the wife and the typist drove to the airport. By the time they reached, the General had gone. But at the airport they learned that a woman had also gone along. A woman had come there and said, My husband is ill—she was the wife of a military man—my husband is ill and I have no way to go right now; if you would take me along I would be very grateful. The General said, The whole plane is empty; no problem, come. A woman had gone.

Then the wife too became alarmed. And while they were still at the airport, word came that the plane had collided, but no one had died. And the girl—the typist who had had the dream—had described exactly how big the rock was with which they collided, what the place was like, what kinds of trees were there—she had said it all. Every word came true. If this is not a dream, then the matter is accidental. But if this dream is behind it, then the matter is not accidental at all: some forces are at work, some causes are at work, which, half an hour or an hour later, will come into alignment and bring that plane down.

Life is not as simple as we take it to be; not everything is understandable. But at least this much is clear: nothing is without a cause. The basic foundation of the law of karma is that nothing is causeless. The second basic foundation is that what we are doing is exactly what we are reaping—and there are no gaps of lifetimes in it. And whatever we are reaping, we should know that we are certainly doing something to bring about that experience—whether it be happiness or misery, peace or disturbance.

But the religious person will say the matter does not end there; there are causes even further back. The person who died—for science, a person is only born; before birth there is nothing. That is why science is not fully scientific. Because when science says there are causes behind the birth of a blind child, how can it finally deny that there are also causes behind being born at all, not only behind being blind? That is, it concedes this much: a child will be born blind because in the genes there is some cause that makes blindness inevitable. But why will he be born in the first place? Why will this person be born at all? Science takes the meeting of genes as the beginning. What lies behind that?

Religion says that behind that, too, there is a chain of cause and effect; that, too, cannot be broken. So religion says: the person who died—at the time of death, situations can arise such that the person himself does not want eyes. Understand this. Situations can be such that the person himself does not wish to have sight. Or the entire sum total of his karma at that moment may be such that eyes are no longer possible. And if such a person dies, only such a soul will be able to enter the body of those parents in which the conjunction for blindness has come together. In other words, there are dual causes.

For example, I know a girl who lost her eyesight. And she lost her eyesight only because she was forbidden to meet—to see—her lover. And in her mind a feeling arose so deep—If I am not to see my beloved, then what is there left to see?—that this feeling became such a powerful resolve that her eyes failed. And no treatment could restore her sight until she was allowed to meet her lover. When she met him, her sight returned. Her own mind had withdrawn its support from the eyes.

So in the moment of dying, at the time of death, the entire organization of the soul’s life—its mind, its resolves, its feelings—everything is at work. Carrying all these resolves, all these feelings, this entire karmic body, this entire body of intention, it leaves this body. Not every new body will be taken up. It will be drawn, by a natural law, only toward that body in which its desires, its karma, its feelings can be fulfilled—fully and completely.

So two causes are meeting here; that is, two causal series are crossing. One belongs to the body’s genes, and one belongs to the soul. The body will be formed out of the body’s genes—but who will choose that body?

Suppose we build fifty houses, fifty kinds of houses. You come to buy a house. You do not pick just any of the fifty. You look over the fifty, and then you choose one. It is you who choose that one house, isn’t it? You have reasons within you for that choice. Perhaps your aesthetic sense wants a very beautiful house. Perhaps your concern is convenience, so you want a house full of conveniences. Do you want it big or small, and what kind?—that is within you.

So there is a double causality. The engineer is building the houses, and if he builds fifty houses he too has reasons for building those fifty; he will not build just anything. He has his own inner reasons, his vision, his ideas, his assumptions. Then you come to choose; out of the fifty you choose one. Here the meeting of two causal chains happens: the engineer’s causal chain—indeed, it may be that you choose none of the fifty and go back, saying, Nothing here pleases me!—and your own chain. The two intersect, and you choose a particular house.

The body we have chosen—we have chosen it; it is our choice. Whether unconscious or unknown to us, the body we have chosen is indeed of our choosing.

Certainly! Nothing can happen outside of cause and effect. That is ours—our decision, our choice.

Yes, yes. It can certainly be improved—certainly. Then those children who are going to die within two years will not be born in that village.

Understand what I mean. There is a village where right now eight out of ten children die. So only those children are attracted to this village whose chance of living beyond two years is not there. If the lineage of this village is improved, it means the engineer has built different houses. Now the travelers who were never attracted before will be attracted. You understand what I mean, don’t you? Now the children who will be born in this village will be those who have come to live a hundred years; earlier they would have been born somewhere else.

Everything can be done at the village level; then the planets will change—it makes no difference. That is, whether one village changes or another is not the issue. If we fix the lifespan at one hundred years for the entire Earth, then those destined for less than a hundred years would no longer be able to be born here; they would have to choose other planets.

You haven’t understood my meaning. You will go into another birth, and you are made of what you have done and what you have undergone. It is essential to understand this.

Consider this: I spill water in this room—knock over a glass of water. The water flows, makes a path, and goes out through the door. Then the water is completely gone. The sun comes, everything dries; only a dry line remains. There is no water now, but the route the water took remains.

You spill another glass of water. Now, out of a thousand possibilities for this second water, nine hundred and ninety-nine are that it will take the same path, because that is the path of least resistance; there isn’t much struggle there. To make another path, you would have to clear the dust, remove the debris; only then could the water carve a new way. Since a path already exists, this water will catch that path and flow along it. The old water wasn’t there—only a dry trace remained.

So my point is that the fruits of actions do not carry from one birth to the next, but a dry trace of the actions and their fruits that we performed and underwent remains with us. I call that samskara. The karmic fruits do not go on: if I hurled an insult in a past birth, I bore its fruit right there. But I hurled the insult and you did not; so I bore that fruit, and you did not. Thus I am a different kind of person. I carry a dry trace of having insulted and having borne the result of insulting. That dry trace is with me. In this birth, there is a likelihood that if someone hurls an insult, I will hurl one back—because that dry trace, being the path of least resistance, I will immediately seize.

Last night we both slept, we all slept. You lived the day in your way; I lived it in mine. What I lived is gone—but I did live it, didn’t I! So the dry traces have remained with me.

Yes! Of course one can be. One certainly can be. It is those subtle imprinted lines of ours that are at work. It is those subtle imprinted lines of ours that are at work.
Our very consciousness, its attractions; what we have done and suffered—these have given us a particular conditioning, a particular samskara-bondage. That particular samskara-conditioning channels us along particular paths.
Those particular paths will be bound by cause in every form—whether one is born in a wealthy home or a poor home, in India or in America, whether beautiful or ugly, fated to die early or to live long—in all these things, what one has done and undergone, one’s samskara-nature will operate. None of this is without cause. None of this is without cause.
Therefore someone says to me, as if tomorrow socialism will arrive...

Cause-and-effect did end. Suppose you put your hand into the fire; you pull it out—so the act of putting it in is over. Your hand got burned—that too is over. The burning in the hand also ended. But the burned hand remained with you—a burned hand. Not the fire, not the putting-in: the burned hand. You understand what I mean, don’t you?

No fruits and all that are going to carry over; the fruit is already finished.

These marks—these marks—are neither the burn nor the fire.

The fruit was the burning itself; you have already experienced it. Now your hand is no longer burning.

This is what I am saying: it's a dry scar. Only a mark remains that your hand was burned. You were in the fire...

So each of us carries along only the reports of having undergone our respective fruits. And those reports do affect us. They affect us in the sense that they suggest to us the path of least resistance. A man who has committed murder repeatedly over the last ten lives has a strong likelihood of committing murder in this one too. The reason is that his tendency, his feeling, his samskara of killing, cultivated over ten births, has kept growing deeper. And to him that seems the simplest: if there’s a quarrel with someone, the first thing that occurs is, “Kill him.” No other option occurs to him. This is the nearest path; a dry groove has been etched there—water catches it and flows.

But what I am saying is: if someone has put his hand in the fire, then this person has the tendency to put his hand in the fire; even in this very life there is the fear that he might put it in the fire again. Because his habit, the arrangement created by repeatedly putting his hand into the fire, creates that fear.
But this does not mean he is bound to put his hand into the fire. If he wishes, he need not. You understand my distinction, don’t you? It ultimately means that you do not have to perform the nirjara of karmas. The shedding of karma keeps happening along with the counter-effect; only a dry line remains. Your waking up to this dry trace is enough. Therefore moksha or nirvana can be sudden, instantaneous.
In our old notion, it cannot be sudden, because however many karmas you have done, you will have to undergo their fruits now. When you have undergone all the fruits, then your liberation can happen—one. And in the process of undergoing those fruits, if you again do some karma, then bondage will be created again. And this will be an endless chain.
That is, I am saying that each time you do a karma you also undergo its fruit; the nirjara happens right there. What remains is only the tendency to do the karma—no karma, no fruit, only the tendency. And if you become filled with awareness, the tendency falls away now, this very moment. There is nothing opposing its departure.

It is needed. It is needed...

There is no need for a theory; this is a fact. For example, suppose I was angry all day today: whenever I got angry, I suffered. I was abused, there were quarrels, there was turmoil, I became disturbed. Then I went to sleep at night. You did not get angry all day; you met people with love, remained joyful; you also went to sleep.
In the morning we both wake up from the same room. I don’t find my slippers by my bed; you don’t find yours either. Your likelihood of flaring up at once is very small; mine is very great. The dry line of yesterday is with me. My “type” has formed, hasn’t it! The person who has been angry all day will say, “Where are my slippers?” For him the commotion starts again right from the morning.

You understand what I mean, don’t you? Those karmas and all that are gone. The abuse I hurled yesterday is gone; the pain of that abuse is also gone. But I—the person who abused all day—still remain. And there must be some difference between you and me, mustn’t there! Because you did not abuse all day and I did, and if in the morning it turns out that there is no difference between us, then the whole order collapses. You do understand what I mean, don’t you? A difference will surely remain between me and you, because we lived in different ways. I lived in anger; you lived in love. So a difference will remain between us. That difference will be of tendency, of proclivity.

There will be no fruit.

Yes, the fruit is gone. The fruit is gone!

Yes, total conditioning will remain with us. And it is our unconsciousness toward this overall conditioning that keeps it running. Suppose yesterday I was angry the whole day. In the morning I see, “I was so angry, I suffered so much,” and I wake up. Then it is not necessary that I must be angry at my slippers—there is no inner compulsion to be angry; only unconsciousness would make it inevitable. If I go on behaving asleep, as I did yesterday, anger will continue. If I wake up, anger will break.

So ultimately, in my view, the shedding of karma has already happened; what remains is a dry trace. And that dry trace is our unconsciousness. If we stay unconscious, we will keep acting the same way. If we awaken, the doing stops right now.

That is why I say liberation can happen in a single moment. What you have done over millions of lives has no further claim on you. There is no condition beyond this: just wake up. Do you see the difference I am making? The basic difference will be far-reaching.

In the traditional explanation, if you have created karmas over millions of births, their fruits are still to be suffered. Until you exhaust them, there is no way out. And in the very process of suffering them, time will pass. In suffering them, new karmas will also be created—how will you avoid that?

If the old explanation is correct, then I say no one could ever be liberated. The reason is clear: whatever sins and evils I committed yesterday are all accumulated; their fruits must be suffered. And how will I suffer them “purely”? If someone comes to insult me—because I insulted him in a past life—then karma will start again, won’t it? He will insult me, and since I had the tendency to insult, that tendency is there. When he insults me, the chain of insult begins—I will do something in return. And the chain will go on. Where does it end? If even a single karma remains, then in the very experiencing of it, new karmas will be generated. They will keep being generated. And if even one is ever left over, how will this production ever stop?

My understanding is: if that view were true, no one has ever been free. But there have been liberated ones in this world. And they became free because karmas do not remain pending for the future; karmas are settled behind you. What remains is only the sleeping tendency. If a man stays asleep, he goes on repeating the same karmas. If he wakes up, repetition stops. No one is compelling me to be angry except my unconsciousness. And if I am awake, I can say, “All right—I've gone down this road so many times, suffered so much.”

That is why Mahavira tried hard to remind each person of their past lives. The sole purpose of this remembrance is to see what you have done and what you have suffered; how many times you have traveled these roads—will you keep walking the same ones? If a person recalls even two or four past births and sees that he has earned money many times, been dishonest many times in earning it, loved many times, been angry many times, won fame many times, suffered humiliation many times, enjoyed honor many times—he has done everything that he is doing yet again now.

And if he sees clearly, “I have done all this so many times,” it becomes meaningless. Why repeat it again? If that insight strikes home, he wakes up immediately and says, “Enough—I have done this enough. What is the point of doing it again? How many times did I amass wealth—what came of it?”

Such awakening becomes the cause for breaking that dry line that holds him. Therefore the possibility of sudden enlightenment exists. In truth, whenever liberation happens, it is sudden.

Yes, you can say so.

Yes—yes, absolutely.

No—no.

Yes, it disappears completely.

There is no such thing as injustice. Then there is no injustice because whatever we are doing, we are undergoing. It cannot be otherwise. There is one more thing to understand here. What was the old notion? The old notion was that if I slap Mahipalji, then in some birth he will slap me. That is the idea of the fruits of karma. This would mean that if I were to slap Mahavira, then until he slaps me back, he too cannot be liberated. In other words, my act would become the cause of his non-liberation.

Just consider: if I slap Mahipalji, can he be liberated in this very lifetime? He cannot—until, in the next birth, he slaps me. Because otherwise, who will slap me? How will that account be settled?

Yes, I slapped him; if he keeps watching the slap with a witnessing attitude, he does not bind new karma, because he remains only a witness. I slapped and he observed—meaning he is not doing anything. If, because I slapped, he slaps me, that is not the fruit of my slap; that is his karma, the fruit of which he will have to undergo. This must be understood correctly.
I slapped him, and if he quietly watches and understands, “This poor fellow is crazy—he slaps,” and does nothing else—understands and goes on his way—then he has created no karmic bondage. I acted and I bore its consequence. He did not connect himself to the chain of my karmic bondage. But if he slaps me, answers back, that is not a reply to my slap. The reply to my slap I myself am suffering; the reply to that slap, he will be the one to suffer. That is his own karmic chain; I have nothing to do with it.
And there is no injustice at all, no injustice whatsoever. There is no injustice for this reason: if I slap, I undergo the suffering. And as for the one whom I slap, the question arises that injustice has been done to him.

Understand this a little. Yes, yes—we’ll talk about this, we will.

If I slap someone, I have acted; I bear the suffering, I bear the fruit. But the one I slapped—people will say an injustice has been done to him. And I say there is no such thing as injustice. What I’m saying is: my slapping is only half the story. And I slap only the one who attracts a slap. The other half, which we do not see, is his attraction. We don’t see it. It is impossible—impossible—that I could slap someone who does not attract a slap.

So the one who attracts a slap is the one who gets slapped. And for attracting it, the suffering he has to endure, he endures. That attraction is his share. No one in this world is a sole master; a slave also wants to be a slave with him—otherwise the relationship cannot happen.

We put the blame on the master: why did you make this person a slave? But we never ask: did this person want to be a slave? If he did not want to be, it would have been impossible to enslave him. It would have been impossible.

There was a fakir, Diogenes. Some people caught him on the road—he was a naked fakir. They seized him. He asked, “Where are you taking me?” They said, “We capture slaves and sell them in the markets.” Diogenes said, “Very good! Let’s go.” They were surprised, because usually when you catch someone for slavery he tries to run, to escape. Diogenes said, “Let go of the chains; I will come on my own. For one who does not want to go with you, you cannot take him even in chains. I’m coming anyway—remove these chains.”

They took him. He walked along with them. Because Diogenes used to say: whatever happens, I go with it—I don’t put any obstacle in it. They stood him on the platform where slaves are auctioned. He was a strong fakir, very healthy, like Mahavira—naked and beautiful. The seller shouted, “Who will buy this slave?” Diogenes said, “Quiet. Don’t say that. I will do the calling myself.” Standing on the platform he announced, “If anyone wants to buy a master, come forward.” He said again from the platform: “If anyone wants to buy a master, come.” People were shocked; a crowd gathered. They said, “What kind of joke is this!”

Diogenes said, “I remain the master in every situation. These people caught me and brought me—I said, ‘Stop, remove these chains.’ They quickly removed them. Because I said, ‘I’m coming anyway; what’s the point of chains? I am the master.’ Ask them how much I scolded and corrected them on the way—ask how much I put them right. And in truth they were frightened, and I stood there with great authority. So I said: don’t buy by mistake thinking I’m a slave. Only one who wants to be a slave can be a slave. I am the master. If someone wants to buy a master, then buy.”

A king became angry. “What is this nonsense!” He bought him, took him home, and said, “Break his leg. Break his leg.” Diogenes put his leg forward. He offered it himself. The king said, “We’re going to have this leg broken!” Diogenes said, “What are you ‘going to have’ broken? I myself am offering it. I am the master. You will be breaking it only if I try to save it. Break it! But remember, you’ll be at a loss—since you’ve bought me, then I will be of no use. If the leg breaks, what use will I be? Your choice. Here is the leg.” The king thought: it’s true—if his leg is broken, he becomes another burden. Diogenes said, “I will still be the master—because with a broken leg I will just sit, and then I’ll be the master sitting.” The king said, “Leave it—don’t break his leg.” Diogenes said, “You see? Whose mastery prevailed? Whose mastery is operating?”

I am saying that when a person is a slave, in some form, passively, he invites slavery. When a person with the tendency to be a master meets a person with the tendency to be a slave, they fit together. One becomes the slave, one the master. Understand it like this: when we plug something in, the pins alone don’t matter; the holes inside matter too. When the pins and the holes match, the connection happens; otherwise it doesn’t.

When I slap someone, it is not enough to say I slapped him; that person, in some passive way, is functioning as the hole—inviting the slap. Otherwise it would be impossible.

Therefore I say: injustice is impossible. But that does not mean—your second point—that we should not try to remove injustice. No, we should. Why? Because we need to create a world where no one attracts a slap and no one is eager to slap. Injustice is never in the event. Injustice is in this condition—understand this. No event is unjust; the event is always justified. Whatever is happening is exactly what could happen, exactly as it could happen.

As you asked: satis used to occur. They occurred because some women were willing to die in the fire, and some people were willing to burn them—so the rule functioned. There was nothing unjust in the event. The women who were not willing to burn were not burned even then. And the women who are willing even today—though the institution of sati is gone—set themselves on fire with a stove, take poison, do something. My point is: not all women became satis; only some did.

And if you go to calculate, you will find that the proportion of women who set themselves on fire today is not greater; it is about the same. This is something to think about deeply. The institution of sati was a convenience for those women who wanted to burn. There are people who want to burn them too—they still arrange it. The arrangements change.

Even by pushing, you can make someone perform sati.

For example, we say the English came and enslaved us—that is only half the story. We were prepared to be slaves—that is the other half, which does not occur to us. And as long as we were prepared to be enslaved, we remained slaves. Whether it was the English, the Huns, or the French—that was secondary; enslavement would have happened, because we were prepared for it.

But this does not mean I am saying the practice of sati should continue. I am saying the practice is wrong. It is wrong because the one who burns is doing wrong, and the one who allows herself to be burned is also doing wrong. Both are in the wrong. The world should be such that no one is eager to burn, and no one is eager to be burned. Such a good world we should create. But what is happening is justified. It could be more just, or more unjust. Yet whatever happens is always justified in the sense that only that could have happened. When the quality of man, his life and consciousness, change, something else will begin to happen.

There is only one injustice: that the present order of life is plunging us into great misery. And it is we who are creating the misery; no one else is creating it. A better order is possible, one that leads us more into happiness, more into bliss. And we should strive for such an order—individually as well as collectively.

For example, take Russia, where there is socialism and everyone’s property has become equal. People ask: where property is not equal, isn’t there injustice? But where property is not equal, is there any karmic line, any samskara in that country’s consciousness for equality of property? If not, then why is “injustice” happening? In a country whose consciousness has not acquired the samskara of equality, the inequality that exists there is justified—justified in the sense that our consciousness is our outcome.

If Russia’s consciousness has collectively reached the point where equality of property has become part of its samskara, fine—they have established equality. And the result will be that in Russia those souls will begin to take birth in whom the feeling of equality has arisen, and the souls with a feeling for inequality will stop taking birth there. Difficulty arises only when we look from one side. If we look from both sides, look in totality, then in Russia the souls that can live only in inequality will cease to be born.

The evolution of consciousness—look! In the evolution of consciousness, equality is a very highly developed state. Inequality is the ordinary state. Even to be ready to regard yourself as equal to another is a great attainment—that the other is my equal! The mind keeps saying, “How can another be equal to me?” Inequality is the natural impulse. That is why creating disparity has been the norm.

Consciousnesses that create equality have appeared—Mahavira is one of them—but they were individual. Gradually their density has increased, and it has reached a point where now a substantial portion of equalizing consciousnesses is present on the earth. The day the consciousnesses with the tendency toward inequality keep waning—when that tendency keeps diminishing—on that day equality will prevail across the earth. It takes a long time. But even that “long time” looks long to us only because our reckoning of time is very small.

It is hardly a million years since the human being came into being. And what we call “civilized man” is barely ten thousand years old. The earth itself is about two billion years old; and the earth is quite a new thing, not very ancient. There are stars whose age is beyond reckoning. In a stream of endless time, what meaning do five or ten thousand years have? None at all. Humanity is still in sheer childhood. In the arrangement of evolution, we are still like children. We haven’t even become young yet; becoming old is far away. So only a few things have just begun to manifest.

As with a child: he turns fourteen and the sexual feeling arises in him, and people say, “What was he doing for fourteen years? For fourteen years he had no sexual stirrings? Half his life went by and only now it arises?” But there is a stage in a child—when he is fourteen, fifteen, sixteen—nature considers him fit to enter into the sexual impulse.

Humanity too will have a stage where nature will acknowledge: now you can be equal, now you have attained that capacity. That may take ten thousand years, because it concerns the whole human race, not a single person. Yes, an individual can become available to the tendency toward equality at any time. That is what we call samyaktva, samata—equanimity: in whose mind the very distinction of who is lower and who is higher has disappeared; the question itself is gone.

So a Mahavira, a Buddha, can attain this—there is no impediment in that. But for the human race to come to this plane takes thousands of years.

It is not “injustice” in the sense that everything is justified by its own causes. It is injustice in the sense that life could be more blissful, more peaceful, more fragrant; in that direction we should make an effort. You say, then why should we even try? But understand: even the trying we do is itself part of the entire arrangement of our karmic conditioning; your question of not trying is also futile.

Yes, there is. The reason is that you cannot endure suffering—you cannot even look at it—so you try to change it. When we start thinking in terms of not doing, we slip into error. It is very difficult to muster reasons for non-doing. And the very day you can gather a reason not to do, that day there will be equanimity, and liberation will happen. You understand what I mean, don’t you? We have only collected reasons for doing. The day we come to the state where we can say, “Not doing is enough; now we do nothing.”

Then we will be outside the law. That very state is called moksha—the state that has gone beyond doing. But one who is still within doing will keep on doing something or other, will keep on doing, keep on doing.

Yes, yes, all right! That’s right. And what Pungaliya-ji says should also be understood. He says there could be a person who, in slapping, does not suffer—who even feels delighted. Quite possible. There could be a person who slaps someone and does not feel any suffering at all, and feels delighted. So we might wonder: then what will happen to him? But we don’t realize that the person who takes delight in slapping has ceased to be truly human; he has fallen far below the human—very far below. And in slapping he has lost much more than the one who, after slapping, feels miserable.

Keep this in mind. The one who feels sorrow after slapping undergoes only a small consequence; but the one who is delighted in slapping has already incurred a heavy consequence—his level of evolution has dropped right down. He has become utterly primitive; he has lost what humanity has evolved over ten thousand, twenty thousand, twenty-five thousand years. He has gone back there. His evolution has regressed so much that it will take births upon births for him to return to the point where slapping brings sorrow. You understand what I mean, don’t you? That is, he too is reaping a fruit—a very heavy fruit, not an ordinary one. And its result is very deep, very deep.

Yes, ask.

You are right. Generally speaking—generally speaking... Do you think repression is not karma? In fact, what is our difficulty? Repression is karma. Repression is also karma, indulgence is karma, being a prostitute is also a karma.

Repression too is one of its acts. Understand?

Yes—then repression too leaves a dry trace. There is a sannyasin, there is a sadhvi...

There are thousands of bare lines. In fact, what happens is that we fail to understand the complexity. We think there is just one line or two. There are thousands of our karmas, thousands of lines, thousands of crossings of lines—a web. We are the outcome of that entire web.
There is a prostitute, and whenever she engages in her work as a prostitute, only then is she miserable. Across from her lives a nun, and day and night she thinks, What a marvelous life she has! How good it would be if I became a nun! So two lines are being imprinted. She is doing the act of being a prostitute—one line is being drawn—but an even stronger line is being drawn by the fact that she is afflicted by being a prostitute, does not want to be, and wants to be a nun.
Opposite, the nun is living; from morning till evening she disciplines herself, practices celibacy. But whenever the lamp is lit in the prostitute’s house and fragrance wafts out and music begins to play, then her mind wavers, and she thinks, Who knows what bliss the prostitute must be enjoying! So the nun too is making two lines: one line of being a nun, and one line of the attraction toward being a prostitute.
Now on the coordination of all of these it will finally depend whether the nun becomes a prostitute or the prostitute becomes a nun. You understand what I mean, don’t you? Yes, in life thousands upon thousands of lines are at work. There is no straight line, no straight road. A thousand footpaths are crossing. And...

And even so, it isn’t that you are born with a single-layered personality. You are born carrying infinite possibilities. A child is born: there is the possibility of his becoming a sannyasin, because he has also drawn that line; there is the possibility of his becoming a hoodlum, because he has drawn that line too. He is born with infinite possibilities. Countless faint lines will beckon him. Whichever proves strongest—he will be swept along by that.

So our whole difficulty is this: when someone explains principles, they are presented as straight lines, you understand? And life is the cutting and crossing of many lines. When I sit to explain, you grasp one rule, and immediately another thought arises in you: what about that? And there is no way to explain everything all at once.

You understand, don’t you? There is no way to explain everything together. If I explain anger, I will explain anger; if I explain hatred, I will explain hatred; if I explain love, I will explain love; if I explain compassion, I will explain compassion. And you are all of these at once—compassion too, love too, hatred too, anger too—you are all of them together. They are all your possibilities. If someone speaks to you with love right now, you immediately become loving; if someone shows you a knife, you become full of anger. You are all of it.

So a person is multi-causal, filled with infinite causes. And when we sit to explain, we have to choose a single cause. Language is linear; life is a web of infinite lines.

Therefore, much is lost in language—because language moves straight in a single line. If I explain compassion, I will go on explaining compassion. Now how can I, at the very same time, explain anger along with compassion? How can I explain hatred? That is difficult to do. So I explain them separately. They become separate lines. But in a person these are not separate lines; they all stand joined together, all joined together.

Absolutely with him, absolutely with him, absolutely with him. Everything will come along.

What is right is exactly what you will be able to do—and will do. You understand, don’t you? What you can do is what you will do. If you try to go by some fixed idea of what is “right,” you’ll get into trouble. If I say it’s not right to spray Flit, you’ll curse me all night, because the mosquitoes will bite anyway. And if I say it is right to spray Flit, you’ll feel you have committed violence—and I will have to reap the fruit.
So it’s not a question of right or wrong. Think, and live. Do whatever seems right to you.