Mahaveer Meri Drishti Mein #23

This question is important, and if you look at it only from very high above, you will not be able to understand it. By peeking a little deeper within, it will become clear why it happens so. For example, you are in this room, and you have never gone outside it—never at all. In this room you are in great joy, great peace, very secure. No fear, no darkness, no sorrow; yet you have never gone outside this room.

There can be two conditions for your staying in this room. One is that you have no freedom to go out. That is, even if you wish to go, you cannot. You are compelled to remain in this room—this can be one condition. The second condition can be that you are completely free to go out, but out of your understanding you do not go—because outside there is suffering, there is pain, there is wandering, there is restlessness. These two conditions are possible.

If you are dependent with respect to going out, then your happiness, your peace, your safety—all of them will, in a few days, become painful to you, because there is no greater suffering than dependence. If you are forced even to remain in happiness, that happiness will also become misery.

Compulsion is such a great sorrow that it will turn even the greatest pleasures to dust. And if the condition for staying in this room is that you cannot go out, cannot even renounce the pleasures, then all these pleasures will become extreme sufferings. And the thirst to go out will become so intense, the rebellion so deep, that it is hard to estimate. And this condition—that you cannot go out—will inevitably become the very reason that takes you out. And it may then happen that there is suffering outside, and yet you will not like to come back in, because from inside there is no permission to go out. This is one situation.

The second situation is that you have complete freedom, to go out or to remain in. But you have never gone out. You have known all the bliss, all the peace, all the knowing inside. But the outside is unknown, and you go out. And only by going will you know what is outside! You will know—you will travel to know, you will wander, you will suffer—then you will return. And now when you come back, the very same happiness will appear to you a million times greater, because in between there has been an experience of suffering, an experience of ignorance—you have passed through pain.

It may be that earlier the happiness inside the room did not even appear as happiness to you, because you had no sorrow; and the light did not appear as light, because you had not seen darkness. Now when you return from the outside world, then you know what light is. Because you have known darkness, because you have known pain, therefore now you recognize bliss. So even if the earlier happiness was there, it would not have been with awareness; you could not have been conscious of it. You would have remained in a kind of swoon—even in that happiness you would have remained unconscious. But when, having borne all the sufferings outside, with great difficulty, step by step, you return home, then you arrive consciously.

That is to say, my point is that the soul returns to the very state it was in. This entire journey of the world does not take it to some new place—right there, where it always was. But arriving after this journey makes the experience conscious, deep, wondrous. That same state now appears as liberation—exactly the same state! That state existed even then, but then it was not liberation; it may even have seemed like bondage, because you had no experience of the opposite.

The soul is free to go out of itself; there is no dependence in this. The soul is free to wander. And this is always the meaning of freedom: where there is no freedom to err, there is no freedom. The freedom to make mistakes is the deepest freedom.

The soul is free—first point. That is, the soul is immortal, the soul is full of knowing; just as deep is this truth that the soul is free—there is no dependence upon it. Freedom means that it may choose to take up happiness or to take up sorrow; it may choose to live in knowing or to lose itself in darkness; it may choose to live in desire or to be free of desire. Freedom means that both paths are equally open to it. And therefore it is very inevitable that the possibility of freedom will take it into those states that are painful. And only then, through that experience, can it return.

So, as I said, Nigod—Nigod is that state where souls are just as they are. Nigod is that state where they have had no contrary experience. Nigod is that state where they have not made use of their freedom. Therefore Nigod is a state of dependence.

The world is that state where the soul began to use its freedom. It wandered, it made mistakes, it suffered, it took on bodies—who knows how many types of bodies it took on—it cultivated and nourished thousands of kinds of desires, and in accord with each desire it took on bodies. This too is its freedom. That is, if I have taken on a body, it is my decision. No one in the world is pushing me, saying, “You must take a body.” It is simply one part of the possibility given by my supreme freedom that I take on a body.

Then, which body shall I take—this too is my freedom: whether I become an ant, an elephant, a human, a god, a spirit—what shall I become? This question also depends on me alone. No one is pushing me for this either. But since my soul is free, I can make use of all these possibilities. And only after using them can I be free of them; before that I cannot be free.

Therefore the soul that is in Nigod is unliberated. Unliberated simply means this: it has not yet exercised its freedom.

Exactly—that is the meaning. Unconscious means just that. It will be conscious in moksha. And it will become conscious only when it takes on sorrow, suffers pain, undergoes hardship—only then will it become conscious. When it misuses its freedom, only then will it become conscious.

Yes, we were just on that point. You came a bit late—listen back a little. I am saying: freedom is intrinsic to the soul. And freedom means that wherever I wish to go, there is no bondage on me. If I want to descend into desire, I can go into the deepest desire; no power in existence can stop me. In fact, because the soul is free, every power of existence will cooperate. If I want to go down into lust, the world will build stairs for me. All the energies of the Divine will become available in my hands. I will take on a body—what kind of body? As my craving is, such a body I will take. All of this is part of freedom.

But when this taking of body—this sorrow, this pain, this trouble, this wandering, this endless journey, this coming and going, this repetition again and again—when this gathers force, when suffering deepens, something begins to be remembered: a home I once left. The memory we carry is of nigod. A remembrance that something is going wrong somewhere. We feel we are not meant to be restless; we are meant to be at peace. Peace feels good, unrest feels bad. Why? Because we have, at some moment, lived in peace—otherwise how would this be possible? Suffering feels bad, bliss feels good. Somewhere within there is a deep memory of bliss that says, “Turn back; that was the real.”

But so many aeons have passed since we set out that the picture is unclear—where should we return? What should we do? Again and again we feel that somehow we are wrong, in a foreign land, in an alien world. Where we ought to be, we are not. Something misplaced. Every moment it seems something has been put in the wrong place.

That very sense ripens into religion. The deepening inquiry born of it becomes a re-search for the place from which we first began to use freedom—the point where we were and from which we set out. Now we begin to return. And this return too is our decision—the right use of that same freedom. We turn back.

When we again become available to that very point, the point will indeed be the same—but we will have changed. Understand this. We will arrive exactly where the journey began. The place will be the same, but we? We will be different.

There is a remarkable incident from Mulla Nasruddin’s life. He was sitting under a tree outside his village on a moonlit night. A man came, slapped down before him a bag stuffed with thousands of rupees, and said, “Nasruddin, I am a millionaire. I have heaps of money, but no happiness. I’m roaming the earth to find out how to be happy—and I haven’t found it. People keep telling me, ‘Go to Nasruddin; perhaps he’ll show you a way.’ Tell me, how can I be happy? I have everything—except happiness.”

Nasruddin looked at him for a couple of moments, closed his eyes, then suddenly sprang up, grabbed that bag of money, and ran. The man screamed and ran after him, “Nasruddin! What are you doing? I didn’t expect this from you! You’re stealing my money!”

Nasruddin ran faster. The village was his; to the stranger it was a maze. He twisted through lanes and alleys. It was past midnight; the village was silent. People woke at the shouting, but no one could make out what was happening. After circling the whole village, Nasruddin exhausted the man—he was staggering, crying, “I’m ruined! God, save me! I’m finished! What will become of me?” Nasruddin kept him running round and round.

At last Nasruddin returned to that same tree, slammed the bag down, and stepped behind the trunk. The man arrived, grabbed the bag, and exclaimed, “Thank you! Oh God, thank you!”

Nasruddin said, “This is one method of getting happiness.” He said, “Look, the same bag was with you before, but you tossed it about as if it were trash. It’s the same bag now, but the experience in between… This too is a trick for getting happiness.”

In my understanding, that is the only difference between moksha and nigod. The bag was there—that is nigod, the first point of the journey toward liberation, where we were. The bag got lost—that is the world. The bag is found again—that is moksha. And the losing is essential. Otherwise you would forget what the bag contains, what it means. Losing it is a necessary part. And when, after losing, you find it again, then you know what bliss is. In nigod too it was the same, but it had to be lost so it could be found.

In truth, what is already gotten, we stop noticing. What is already ours, slowly we become unconscious toward it, stupefied—because there is no need to keep remembering it. The very question of its being disappears from the mind because it simply is. It was there even before we were self-aware. So to become conscious of it again, it is necessary to lose it.

Thus the world is the point of losing in the soul’s pilgrimage—and that too is our freedom. But between nigod and moksha there is the difference of earth and sky. The conditions are exactly the same, yet nigod is totally unconscious, moksha totally conscious. And the process of turning nigod into moksha is the world. Without this process nigod cannot become moksha.

Therefore, if we understand the element of freedom, everything becomes clear: the whole journey is our decision, our choice. What we wanted has happened. If tomorrow we no longer want it, it will stop happening. If the day after we drop choosing altogether—that is the meaning of sannyas: when we no longer want, we let go; we do not want anymore—we begin the return. The same point becomes available again, but we will have changed. In this journey of losing we will have experienced the opposite: we will have known poverty, so that wealth again feels like wealth; we will have known sorrow, so that bliss is recognized as bliss.

Hence it is inevitable in the life of every soul that it goes through the world. And that is why it often happens that those who go very deep into the world—whom we call sinners—return with equal intensity. The so‑called ordinary people, who neither sin nor plunge deep into the world, may not return so quickly, because the intensity to return arises only when pain and suffering have become intense. When we pass through so much pain that returning becomes necessary. If we have not suffered much, perhaps returning will not feel necessary.

When Nasruddin ran off, he took the whole bag—so the pain was heavy. If he had run with only two rupees, the man might have tied up the bag and gone home, “All right, let it go.” Then the relish of reclaiming the bag would not have been there, because the bag would have remained practically the same. And the man would have gone on asking from village to village, “What is the path to joy? How can I be happy?” Nasruddin said, “Lose happiness—and you will find it!” It sounds upside down: to get it, lose it. Because if it is already possessed, you will not notice it.

So in the world we lose what we had. In moksha we regain what was always ours. And this entire wheel turns around the axis of freedom. Deeper even than knowledge or bliss is freedom. That is why our longing for liberation is so intense and our resistance to bondage so strong. We want to be free—but we will value freedom only after experiencing bondage.

Even lust is its freedom.

At the deepest level, the bondage of lust is also our choice. Who tells you to indulge in lust? If you feel you should know lust, recognize it—perhaps there is pleasure in it—then seek it; undertake the journey. The journey is necessary so that you come to know that happiness was not there, only suffering. And if the suffering of lust becomes evident, you will drop lust. Even then, no one will come to stop you, asking why lust is being dropped. No one ever came to ask why you were clinging to lust.

Human freedom is supreme, ultimate, total. There is no one above to say to you, “Why are you…?” And freedom is complete only when there is the right to do the bad as well. If someone says there is freedom to do good but not to do bad, then what kind of freedom is that? Keep this in mind: if there is freedom only to do the good…

If a father tells his son, “You are free to go to the temple, but not to the brothel,” then what kind of freedom is that to go to the temple? That is dependency. If the father says, “You have the freedom to go to the temple; you can only go to the temple. You do not have the freedom to go to a brothel; you cannot go there,” then what kind of freedom is that? This is not freedom; calling the permission to go to the temple “freedom” is false. Such a father is imposing dependence in the name of freedom. But if the father gives freedom, he says, “You have the right: if you wish, go to the tavern; if you wish, go to the temple. Experience, think, understand. Do what seems right to you.” Supreme freedom means the enduring freedom to make mistakes as well.

It is not because of freedom that mistakes happen. It is not because of freedom that mistakes happen.

Not necessarily.

And for this too we must have freedom: that if I want to create bondage and put on handcuffs, no one in the world should be able to stop me; otherwise that would also be subjugation. That is, suppose I want to sit with handcuffs on, chains bound to my feet, and the world says, “We will not let you do it,” then that would be dependence. That would be dependence—and the freedom to put handcuffs on myself is still freedom, because the final decider is me.

And what I am saying is this: if happiness is to be known, one must accept and undergo the freedom to suffer. Against that very background—against that dark background—the white lines of joy will emerge.

We return to the very place from which we came, but neither do we remain the same, nor does that point remain the same, because our whole vision has changed. A saint becomes a child again, but a child is not a saint.

Absolutely, choice is possible. Absolutely, choice is possible. Absolutely, choice is possible—but only out of compassion.

I once told a story. In Japan there was a mendicant who would commit small thefts and land in jail. His family was troubled. He had grown old. His disciples were troubled. They would say, “Because of you we get a bad name. And you are such a person that we cannot help but love you. We too get defamed because of you—people say, whom do you revere, someone who steals and goes to jail! Now you are old; stop this.”

But he would say, “Then who will bring news to those locked in prison of how delightful it is outside! I go to give them that news. There is no other way, so I commit some petty theft and get sent to jail. And there, to those who are confined, I tell them about the outside—what freedom is like out there! Who else will tell them? If only thieves keep going there—and it is only thieves who go there.”

But this mendicant’s going is very different. In one sense he does not go at all, because he does not steal for the sake of stealing—when the handcuffs are put on him, even then he is not a prisoner; when he is being locked in the cell, even then he is not a prisoner. He is a man from outside the prison, come with the intent to free other prisoners.

So when someone like Buddha or Mahavira or Jesus comes to the earth, it seems to us that he has come; in truth he does not come. In truth—in the sense that this world is no longer a world for him. This world is no longer a world for him. It is no longer a journey of experience for him; that is finished. Now it has no hold on him, no bondage. Now there is no juice in it for him. There is only so much compassion in him that, for those who are still wandering, he would bring the news that there is another realm—where arriving has happened, where arriving is possible. Out of this compassion he may descend, but that compassion is the final desire.

This compassion too is the final desire. Because if you look very closely, even in compassion a little ignorance remains. A very slight ignorance—which you cannot quite call ignorance, yet you cannot call it knowledge either. A very fine line of ignorance remains, namely: first, that someone can be liberated. For those who, by their own freedom, remain unliberated—how will you liberate them? Second, that someone is in suffering—this too is ignorance, because that suffering is entirely his own decision. And third, that anyone can be brought back before his time—this too is not possible. His experience will have to be completed. So if we ponder all this, that is why compassion is the final, the last ignorance. Yet even to call it ignorance feels improper, because such “ignorance” is born out of so much love! Therefore he may take birth once, perhaps once or twice—no more than that. Because by then even that compassion will have thinned out; it too will have melted away.

Yes, that too will dissolve.

“Before the time” does not mean that anyone’s time is fixed. “Before the time” means that it has been fully lived through, fully experienced. It does not mean there is a particular date set on which you will return. No date is fixed, but your experience must be complete. Before that, you cannot be sent back.

Absolutely, it depends only on you. Otherwise you will become dependent; then your liberation can never happen. If someone were to liberate you, that would be a new kind of dependence; you could never truly be free. And this is what I call the soul’s supreme freedom—to suffer sorrow, to journey through hells, to descend into pains; into envies, into jealousy—into everything; it has complete freedom. And no one can bring it back unless...

That is exactly what I am saying: in truth, there is no need.

Truly, there is no need. But what I am saying is that compassion is the final desire—and it is their choice. That is, what I am saying is that we have freedom, ultimate freedom. If I become free today and still wish to return, there is nothing in the world to stop me.

If I feel like knocking on your door—even while knowing full well that no one can be awakened before their time; that everyone has their own morning, and it will arrive when it is due—then too I may come. Everyone must complete their sleep; only then do they wake. And to wake someone in between can even be harmful, because they may fall asleep again. After all, one’s sleep should be completed, shouldn’t it! If I go and knock at his door at five, he may wake, turn over, and go back to sleep. Perhaps he would have risen at six; now he may rise at eight, because that interruption has harmed him—even knowing this!

So the question is not whether you will awaken or not. The question is that the bliss I experience upon awakening unsettles me—this very bliss tells me, “Go, knock at someone’s door.” If we look very deeply, you are not the center of compassion. Whether you awaken or not is not the point. The one who has awakened experiences such bliss that his final desire is to give word to his loved ones. Let him give word to his loved ones—even if those dear ones abuse him for breaking their sleep at the wrong time: “Who is this enemy banging on the door!” That is another matter; that is not the question. Seen very deeply, this compassion is his own choice. It has very little to do with you.

Desire too is one’s own choice. Suppose I begin to love you—then that is my choice. It is not necessary that you love me. Nor is it necessary that my love brings you joy. It may be that my love causes you pain, or puts you into difficulty. All this may be, and yet I am filled with love for you. This is my inner affair. And I will love. What it will bring to you cannot be said. My love will try to bring you benefit, goodness, auspiciousness—but even that is not necessary.

I call compassion the final desire. When all desires in someone have withered away, it means that person has attained bliss. All his desires have waned; he has attained bliss. One last desire remains: that this bliss become available to others as well. Now there is nothing left to gain for oneself—nothing at all. He has attained bliss. Now one final desire remains, which says: let this bliss also be available to others. And that too is an intense feeling—yet it is still a choice.

Therefore it is not necessary that all masters return. That is why I say: out of sheer playfulness, someone may simply dissolve silently into liberation. But someone may pause, turn back. Even he will dissolve after one birth, two births—where else is there to go? There is nowhere else to go. But he can make this last attempt.

Yet, very deep down, this too is part of ignorance. Because if there were complete knowing, even this would end: “All right—each has their own freedom, their own journey.” But such a perfectly knowing one would appear to us extremely hard—extremely hard. For if, while walking along the road, someone lay thirsty, perhaps he would not even give him water, because he would say, “Each to his own journey.” To us he would seem very harsh—harsh to the extreme: “Each to his own journey. Even your thirst is your choice. What you have done before, what has happened, the way you walked—that is how you arrived.”

Yes, the personality remains until then. Personality remains as long as even the slightest, most attenuated craving is still there—even the craving for compassion. Only when desire is totally negated does the personality dissolve.

So the one who is complete—such a person will seem very harsh to us; perhaps we won’t even be able to understand what kind of man he is! Someone may be drowning in a well and he will stand there watching. Each has his own journey, his own choice. Such a one will be hard to grasp, hard to recognize.

If someone puts his hand into fire, he will stand and watch. He will say, “Each has his own experience, his own knowing. Put your hand in the fire, then you will experience that the hand burns; then you will know that it burns. Why should I create a useless obstruction by saying it in advance? My saying it will not help. You will put your hand in only then will you know. And if, without putting your hand in, you come to know, you may fall into other troubles. Because I tell you, ‘A hand burns in fire,’ and you agree, but you have no experience—then tomorrow, if your house catches fire, you may lie there inside wondering, ‘Who burns?’ Then who will be responsible? I will be responsible! It would have been better if you had put your hand in and gotten burned; then, when your house caught fire, you would have walked out, because your experience would work.”

Only one’s own experience works.

Therefore, in the final moment when personality takes its leave, compassion manifests. It is like the redness of sunset. Have you ever wondered what that redness means?

There is redness in the morning too, but that is the redness of rising—the redness of desire. The sun will grow and climb; it will spread and expand; it will blaze and scorch; it will reach noon, come into its youth. Morning’s redness is just the news of birth. It too is desire—but developing, expanding.

In the evening the sky turns red again: the redness of sunset, but of departure. It is the final redness—but now not of expanding, of contracting. Now all is contracting. The whole sun is shrinking, the rays are returning, the sun is sinking.

Yet returning rays also cast a redness. Rising rays did the same. And if a person didn’t know, it could be hard to distinguish rising from setting. If someone had been unconscious for two or three days and was brought suddenly back to awareness and asked, “Is the sun setting or rising?” it would take him a while. For the rising and the setting sun look alike. In one, the net of rays is spreading; in the other, it is drawing in. In one the redness increases; in the other, it diminishes. But redness is in both, rays are in both. It can take a little time even for such a one to discern whether this redness is of contraction or expansion.

The first birth, where personality is a ray, is where desire spreads—desire as expanding longings: sunrise. When all desires have contracted and only the round disk of the sun remains, sinking—final; yet still there is redness—of setting, but still there. This is the last redness. This is compassion. It will set. And many times we miss. We take it that the sun is rising; by the time we understand, it has already set. Then we derive no benefit. This happens very often.

Buddha would come to a village, Mahavira too; Jesus came, Krishna came; they must have come to your village as well, and you must have lived in such villages. But it may be that you thought, “This is sunrise; this man is caught in desire,” and you missed—and by then the sun had set. Then you sit and weep. Then nothing can be done; there remains no way to know. For rising and setting look the same. So it may be that when Buddha came to a village many thought, “This too is all desire.”

In one village Buddha passed three times in his life. There was a man who stayed at his shop. People told him, “Buddha has come,” and he said, “He’ll come again! Right now there’s a lot of business; it’s the season—the time to buy and sell! When he comes again, I’ll go listen.” Three times Buddha passed through that village.

After all, what can Buddha do? How many times can he pass through a village! Buddha has his limits too. There are so many villages. And what can he do if the customer rush never ends and the shop must never close? The third time Buddha passed, the man had grown old. Again people said, “Won’t you go?” He said, “Today there’s too much work. When he comes again!”

Buddha did not come to that village again. But one day news arrived that, in the neighboring forest, in the next village, it was Buddha’s last day. People were gathering from far and wide. He was near death and had said he would soon sink, set. So whoever had anything to ask should hurry.

The man closed his shop—perhaps he didn’t even manage to close it. The family said, “What are you doing? There’s still plenty of time. There’s work; there are customers.” He said, “That’s true, but I won’t get to meet that man again. I have missed too much already.” He ran to the other village.

There, Buddha asked the gathered crowd, “Is there anything more you want to ask?” They said, “We have asked so much and known so much; there’s nothing left to ask. Now it is for us to do.” Buddha said, “Then I will take leave.” As was his habit, he asked three times. For a person might hesitate once and not ask, might not find courage the second time, but on the third might ask. So he asked thrice: “Anything to ask? Anything to ask? Anything to ask?” But people were weeping. “There is nothing to ask; what remains to be asked?” Then Buddha said, “I take leave,” and he went behind a tree, sat in meditation, and began to disappear.

Then the man came running and asked, “Where is Buddha?” People said, “Silence! Do not speak now; he has gone. He has gone behind the tree. He is peacefully sinking into himself, returning, submerging—leaving personality, entering nirvana.” The man said, “What will happen to me? I have missed; I had something to ask.” The monks said, “Are you mad? For forty years he circled in this region; where were you?” He said, “The shop was crowded. It was crowded today as well, but then I thought the sun was still rising; I never imagined the setting would come so soon. But I must ask; don’t delay, the sun is sinking.” The monks said, “Be quiet; don’t call loudly—otherwise he is so compassionate he might return.”

Just then Buddha emerged from behind the tree and said, “Don’t do that—otherwise for centuries people will carry my name with the stain that Buddha was alive, and a man came to ask and went away empty-handed from the door. I am still here. What do you want to ask?”

This returning is as much a returning as if someone were to come back from liberation. There is hardly any difference. But this is the final desire, and even this last desire is meaningful. Because of it, such a possibility of knowing has existed in the world. Because of it, thoughts have been born here. If it were not, there would be no news of light in the world. If no one were so compassionate as to “steal” just to come into the prison, the prisoners might forget that there is a world outside. It is not certain that, hearing them, we will awaken; but one thing is certain: these awakened beings plant in us some subtle longing to turn back, to awaken. Their presence—their words, their walking, their sitting—gives us some inner jolt, perhaps reminds us of our home.

That is why this compassion is meaningful. In my view, nothing in existence is meaningless. Desire is meaningful, compassion is meaningful; nigod is meaningful, liberation is meaningful. The world is not less meaningful than anything. But behind everything the supreme fact is freedom. We are exercising the element of freedom. How we do it depends on us. Whether we use it for our good or for our ill depends on us. Whether we use it for our happiness or our misery depends on us. And that too is freedom.

This is one reason why persons like Mahavira or Buddha denied God. In denying God, they did not deny godliness. God is refuted, but not the divine. God is denied, but godhood is wholly affirmed. If you accept a God, freedom will be broken; it can no longer be complete. And if, with God present, freedom is still complete, then God is meaningless. If he is, and we call him creator, regulator, and then say man is absolutely free—Mahavira says these two cannot be reconciled. His very existence would be an obstruction. His regulation would be a form of dependence.

They deny a personal God so that no possibility of dependence remains. This does not mean they deny the divine; it means they deny the personality of God. They make the divine a diffused being. They say: he is all-pervasive, but not a controller. The all-pervading supreme freedom itself is what we call the divine. They put no one above it, for to place someone above would fracture freedom with dependence.

Otherwise it could be, as the ordinary theist believes, that by his will the world was made—then we seem utterly dependent: we are not in the world by our will but by his. Then by his will the world will be dissolved and we will be liberated; until his will turns, there is no way! Then the world becomes very meaningless, a puppet show, with no significance left.

Where there is no freedom, there is no meaning. Where there is absolute freedom, there is meaning in everything. And to declare absolute freedom, they had to deny God any place at all.

For the ordinary believer, God is a regulator, controller, creator. Then freedom ends.

For the supreme believer, the truly religious, God means freedom—God equals freedom, total freedom. The pervasive essence of absolute freedom, particle by particle, in all—that aggregate name is the divine.

If we understand this, there is no reason to blame the sinner. It is enough to say, “The way you have chosen to use freedom will bring suffering.” Nothing more needs to be said. He may reply, “I still want to experience suffering.” There is no reason to condemn; no question of condemnation arises. I say I want to climb down into the pit. You say, “There will be no light in the pit; the sun’s rays don’t reach there; it is dark.” I say, “But I want the experience of the pit. If you have experienced the pit, tell me the steps to go down. You must have gone, for you say the sun’s rays don’t reach. I too want to know. I want to go into the pit so that the craving to go into the pit can take leave.” Where is the condemnation?

In my view, there is no condemnation even for the most sinful, and no praise for the most virtuous. That is not the point. He is using his freedom; you use yours. And the irony is that you too are using it for happiness—what is there to praise? If anyone deserves praise, it is the one who uses his freedom to enter suffering—what a strange man! Courage is needed for that. He bears suffering and uses freedom to go into it. He may come back having known so much sorrow that, for him, there is no end to the depths of joy.

Everyone must go into darkness to come to light. And everyone must lose themselves to find themselves. It sounds very contrary, but this is how it is. And if someone asks, “Why is it so?” the question is meaningless. It is so. If someone asks, “Why is there such freedom?” the question has no meaning. It is so. There is no knowing it otherwise; there is no other way to know.

Fire burns. If someone asks, “Why does it burn?” we say, fire burns. If you don’t want to be burned, don’t put your hand in the fire; if you want to be burned, put it in. Beyond that, fire burns. And why does fire burn? There is no “why” to that. Why is ice cold? Ice is cold and fire is hot. The way is this: if you don’t want cold, don’t go to ice; if you want it, go. Beyond that, ice is cold and fire is hot. Things are as they are.

Freedom is the fundamental condition of existence—a state of affairs. It is so. There is no otherwise. There is no going beyond this. If someone asks, “Who gave this freedom?” remember: given freedom is not freedom. If someone asks, “Who gave it?”—given freedom is not freedom; then it becomes like “Indian independence.” No one has given freedom. If someone asks, “Who took freedom?” then freedom is taken only where there is bondage; otherwise, there is no question of taking it.

If freedom is—it is neither given nor taken; it is. It is the nature of existence, the state of things, the very swabhava. What remains is how to use it. Someone uses it for suffering—let him. Someone uses it for happiness—let him. The one who moves toward happiness may shout, “Look, if you go that way, there will be pain.” Still the one going toward pain can say, “When you went, I did not shout. Why are you troubled? Let me go.” The matter ends there. There is nothing more to it.

People keep asking me, “You explain so much to people—what comes of it?” I say, the very asking is wrong. To ask that is to interfere with their freedom. My job was to shout—that was my choice. No one asked me to shout. It was my joy to do so. That was my choice. It was their joy to listen, or not to listen, or to listen and ignore. In all this, they are free. Beyond this there is no need to ask anything. There is nothing more to be said.

We all live in our freedom; sorrow or happiness are our decisions. Therefore there is great playfulness, great relish in life. Because there is no one anywhere to forbid, no owner anywhere; we ourselves are the owners. And once this is understood, what remains to be understood?

That is their decision.

Then it may happen that Nasruddin has to look for him—“Where has that man gone?”—and the situation gets reversed. It could come to such a point that Nasruddin gets tired of searching, becomes unhappy, gets troubled. Because he was no thief at all; he only had to return it to the poor man.

No one makes it happen; you do. You do. If someone else were making you do it, what sense would that make? You do.

Yes, exactly so. You yourself decide. Freedom means that you are the one who decides. And you yourself decide.

There is no prarabdha at all—it is your own decisions. Your own decisions.

Yes, yes—decisions one has made become prarabdha (destiny). For example, suppose I decide that I will sit in this room—then only one thing can happen, right? Either I sit in the room or I sit outside. The very moment you decide, prarabdha begins. Decision means I am creating prarabdha. Now I can do only one thing: either sit outside or sit inside. If I sit inside, that becomes my prarabdha. With the decision, the process has begun. Along with this I cannot be outside. I cannot be in both at once. If I go outside, I will not be inside. So the pleasures and pains of being inside will be inside; the pleasures and pains of being outside will be outside. That then will be my prarabdha, because I made the decision and I will undergo it.

Now a man decides, “I will sit in the sun.” Fine—then whatever result the sun is going to bring, that will be received. No one else in the world is responsible for this. The sun’s work is to be the sun; your work is that you decided to sit outside.

Your face will get dark; that responsibility is yours—that becomes prarabdha. But if today your face has darkened, it may take ten days to set it right. So for ten days that prarabdha will keep following you, because what has happened will then have its own sequence.

So what we call prarabdha is the accumulated essence of the decisions made in our past. We had made those decisions; their arrangement has been made. We have to go through it.

Absolutely. It is not even a question of self-effort and destiny. There is really no meaning to self-effort as something separate. You are free even now. And whatever you do today will become a decision, and from that a certain kind of destiny will be created.
Look very closely and you will see: even liberation is a destiny. The man who decides—decides, decides, decides—to be free, ultimately becomes free. The world too is a destiny.
Destiny simply means this: you made a decision, and then you reaped the fruit of that decision.

I have nothing to do with the scriptures. What have I to do with them! It was the writer’s joy to write them; it is your joy to read them—or not! What difference does it make! No, they do not bind you anywhere. What have they to do with you? What purpose do they serve?

It is. It is.

Absolutely—it is one's own.

No one will ever come to stop you and tell you how long you have been wandering. There is no question—because there is no one. There is no one who will come and tell you that an eternity has passed.

He cannot, because a man may use his freedom for the first time to put his hand into fire; but after being burnt, to use it that way again is difficult. Do you get what I mean? A man can use his freedom to put his hand into fire.

A child can place his hand on a lamp and try to grasp the flame. He has used his freedom. But the hand gets burnt; experience happens. Now there is little hope that this child will again try to catch the flame, because that experience now stands with him. Now it is difficult to use his freedom in the same way.

So one who has become free cannot arouse desire in order to suffer the world’s miseries—this is impossible. This impossibility is because of his experience, nothing else. If he wished, he could come—but he cannot wish it. That is, if he chose to, there is no one to stop him.

If Mahavira were to wish to leave Siddhashila and return to Delhi, no one could prevent him. Who is there to stop him? But Mahavira cannot come, because now experience is with him. He has had enough of Delhi; he has endured that suffering enough. That experience has gone so deep that it has no meaning, no purpose.