Mahaveer Ya Mahavinash #4

My beloved Atman!
I have traveled to the far corners of the land. I have had the chance to look into thousands of eyes, into hundreds of thousands of eyes. When I look at human beings, on the surface there appears a glimmer of laughter, of joy, of pleasure; but behind it I see dense sorrow, great sorrow. And the outcome of this sorrow has been that the whole earth, slowly, slowly, has become filled with sorrow. If even a single person is unhappy, in consequence he throws sorrow outward. One person’s pain spreads and becomes the world’s pain. The smoke of anguish rising from within a single person fills the whole collective with suffering and hurt. What today appears as sorrow, suffering, and violence all over the world; what seems such a deep urge for destruction—behind it there is only one cause: the inner being of the person is unhappy.
If I am unhappy, then I cannot give anyone anything other than unhappiness. Whatever is within me, that alone spreads without—into my conduct, into my behavior. Whatever is at the center within me, that alone arrives at my circumference. If two and a half billion people are filled within with sorrow and pain, then naturally the outcome is that the whole world becomes filled with sorrow and pain. Naturally then violence and destruction appear everywhere.
In the last fifty years we have fought two world wars. In those two wars one hundred million people were killed. This does not amaze me—nor am I shocked that one hundred million died. In this world whoever is born, dies. The astonishment is this: that we were able to put an end to one hundred million people so peacefully. The question is not that they died; they were going to die a day or two later anyway. No one will live forever. But that we could murder all these hundred million with such calm—this demands deep reflection. How did the animal within us become so aroused? Why did the lowest within us, the darkness within us, become so vocal? What has happened to man—that has become the question. And now we prepare for a third destruction, which will very likely be the final one.
Before he died, Einstein was asked: What weapons will be used in the third world war? Einstein said, I do not know about the third—but I do know about the fourth. The questioner must have been startled: if you do not know about the third, how could you know about the fourth? He asked, What do you know? Einstein said, If there is a fourth, though there is hardly any possibility of it, man will fight with stone tools. Because the third will end all his development, all his prosperity—perhaps it will annihilate him completely.
The very violence against which Mahavira, Buddha, and Jesus warned us—the ultimate culmination of violence can be great death, nothing else. Earlier, violence was slow, limited; life went on despite it because violence was not total, it was partial—there remained some nonviolence in life. Therefore even with violence man kept going.
For the first time we have reached a point where violence can be total, where it can be all-encompassing. After total violence, life has no possibility. If violence becomes complete, it commits suicide. Those violent tendencies which all the religions opposed—especially the Shramana traditions that raised their voice against violence twenty-five centuries ago—their prophecy is nearing fulfillment. The coming war, if it comes, will not spare any kind of life upon the earth.
I used to read and hear: we heat water, at one hundred degrees it becomes steam. If we heat iron, at fifteen hundred degrees iron melts into liquid. At twenty-five hundred degrees that liquid iron becomes vapor and flies off. Do you know how much heat a single hydrogen bomb produces? One hundred million degrees! At twenty-five hundred degrees iron turns to vapor. A single hydrogen bomb will create one hundred million degrees! What could survive such heat? In that furnace it would seem as if the sun had descended upon the earth. No possibility of life would remain.
One hydrogen bomb affects forty-five thousand square miles. To destroy a country like England, France, or West Germany, only fifteen hydrogen bombs would suffice. And you know, at this time there are fifty thousand such bombs ready in the world. Those fifty thousand hydrogen bombs are enough to destroy three such earths.
And every hour—while I speak for an hour—every hour five hundred million rupees are being spent worldwide to prepare such destructive weapons! Every hour! In two hours, one billion rupees! In twenty-four hours, twelve billion rupees! While out of every three human beings on this earth, two are hungry; while out of every three, two are naked. Then surely we have gone mad. Surely we are deranged. We are not in our senses. We are intoxicated—as if we have no idea what we are doing. Our very hands are arranging our death, and we know nothing of it!
Let me tell you a small story—an utterly imaginary story. I heard it somewhere and it stayed dear to me.
Seeing what man is up to—how he has become so eager to arrange his own death with his own hands—God called to himself the representatives of the three great nations of the world. I have said, it is imaginary, untrue—there is no God somewhere calling like this—but the story reveals a certain truth. He called America, Britain, and Russia. Their representatives came to meet him. God said, My friends! I have seen many centuries. I have watched the long history of man. Never have I seen an age that, amidst such prosperity and power, becomes so deranged as to commit self-destruction! I am astonished—what are you doing? What will be the final outcome of your doings? If I can be of help and man can be saved, then ask for a boon from me. If I can do something for the future of man, I am ready to grant it. Ask—each of you ask for a boon. My longing is that man may be saved.
The American representative said, My Lord! Nothing could be more delightful—grant us one boon. We want nothing else. We have only one desire: let there be the earth, but let no trace of Russia remain upon it. God must have given many boons, must have fulfilled many prayers; he had surely never faced such a request. He turned sadly toward the Russian representative. The Russian said, Illustrious One! We do not believe in you. We do not accept that there is any God. But we will accept you, and in those churches from which your traces were erased we will reinstall you, if only one desire of ours can be fulfilled. God asked, Which desire? The Russian replied, Let there be maps of the earth, let there be maps of the world—but no color, no line for America at all. God turned to Britain. The British representative said, My Lord! We have no personal desire. If both their desires are fulfilled at once, our desire is fulfilled.
Would you call such a century sane? Would you call such human beings awake? Would you call such an age healthy? This age is deranged. The quicker we understand this truth, the better—otherwise our own insane arrangements may become our death. How has this madness arisen? How has this insanity come in? And can any superficial remedy—sermons on nonviolence, literature written in praise of nonviolence, speeches favoring nonviolence—can these break this madness?
It is not so easy to break. This derangement is not imposed from above; it has arisen from within. Its roots lie in the foundations of the human mind. There is something in human nature from which this insanity spreads and develops. Until a thought, a discernment, an awakening arises to transform his very nature; until some arrangement is made to end the animal within his nature, the light and the Divine cannot arise within man. Man is not violent for no reason. Violence has roots in his consciousness. It is necessary to pull those roots out—only then can we create a nonviolent human being. The creation of the nonviolent human being is the sole redemption for this world.
Mahavira said, Ahimsa is the only refuge. Never before was this so utterly true. For the first time it has become completely true. Today there is no path other than ahimsa. I said recently somewhere: either Mahavira or Mahavinash—the Great Annihilation—there is no third alternative.
For the first time history has brought us to such a place that Mahavira and his ahimsa have become synonyms for life. To choose violence now is to choose death. There is no gap anymore between violence and death. To choose ahimsa now is to choose life. Those who desire life, those who desire a future for life, have no other way than to give birth to ahimsa within themselves.
What should we do about this ahimsa? How is it to arise? Where is the root of violence in man? Where is that thirst, that pleasure within, which is satisfied by another’s pain and another’s destruction? Who is that hungry one within who takes delight in the ruin of others? To recognize him, to catch hold of that hunger, is essential.
Man is not a complete unit. Man is not a fully developed being. Man is only a transition, a bridge—between animal and God. Within man lie both possibilities—he can fall downward and be an animal, he can rise upward and be God. And I take this to be the dignity and glory of man. I said somewhere recently: I told people, You can sin—this is your dignity, this is your glory. Because you can sin, you can also be sacred. Whoever cannot sin cannot be holy either. You can commit self-destruction... In this world, except for man, no animal can commit suicide. There is no suicide anywhere except in man. Only man can take his own life.
I call it glorious that you can commit suicide, because one who can destroy his life completely can also attain life in its fullness. Only one who can fall into the deepest depths, the pits of darkness, into sin and the stench of hell—only he can touch the snow-white peaks of purity. Our capacity to fall is the symbol of the greatness of our freedom.
Therefore I do not say that the capacity to fall is evil. It is simply freedom—a matter of choice. Man alone, of all creatures on earth, is free to create his life. So free that he can become the lowest; so free that he can become the highest. Man is a transition; all animals are fixed units. No animal can rise above its animality; none can fall below it either. It is a static unit—stopped, not flowing, not fluid. Man is a fluid unit—he is fluidity. Within him is the capacity to flow—downward or upward.
And it is in our hands—it depends on our resolve—which direction this flow will take.
The last few centuries broke man’s noblest direction. All old paradigms, all old images have been shattered. We are great idol-breakers. If the idols in temples are broken, there is no real loss. But if the image of life—what a human being is to become—is shattered, then life is destroyed. In this sense we are idol-breakers. We have broken all the old images that we aspired to become—Mahavira, Buddha, Rama—all those images have faded from our eyes. We have become content with what we are.
Whoever is satisfied, dies. Whoever becomes content and concludes, What I am is enough—where the aspiration to rise, the thirst to go beyond, dissolves—there is death. In the last two or three hundred years we have been dying continuously. Man has become content with being man. Man’s contentment with being man is his error, his delusion. All the suffering of this century, all its perversion, is born of this—that man is satisfied with being man.
I do not wish to see you satisfied. I tell no one to be content. I say, let the fire of discontent burn. Do not be satisfied with being human. And the strange law of this world is that nothing is static. Whoever stops going forward will not remain there—he will be thrown backward by the current. Whoever does not move ahead will slide back. There is nothing static here. James Jeans once said, After studying the whole dictionary I have come to know: the word rest—stability, standstill, cessation—has no reality anywhere in existence. Nothing is static. What does not evolve will devolve. Whoever does not go ahead will recede. You cannot stand still.
The day we removed the images of the future from above man; the day ideals dissolved within; the day the longing faded which wished to make each of us a Mahavira, a Buddha, a Christ—on that very day we began to step back toward the animal. Remove the image of God from the eyes, and inevitably the image of the animal will be enthroned in its place. There would have been no harm in rejecting God, but the temple never remains empty. From the throne where you dethroned God, who knows at what hour of the night the animal seated himself.
I am not distressed that we reject God—reject him if you will—but remember who has taken the throne thereafter. And these hands accustomed to worship, anciently trained, begin to worship the beast blindly!
Only one who has become like God can reject God—not before. Only one who has attained to religion can reject religion—not before. Otherwise, the opposite gets installed. Both are within man—both are within man.
Let me tell a story. I read of a painter. He wished to paint a picture of the divine within man. He went in search. He found a person whose eyes held the blue tranquility of the sky, in whose every line there was something otherworldly, delicate; his very presence suggested that something beyond the human had appeared. The painter made his portrait. The painting was completed, countless copies were sold. Village to village across his land it spread—revered, honored. There was much praise.
Twenty years later the painter wished to make a second picture—the animal within man. He thought, Thus the picture of man would be complete in two canvases. He searched in brothels, in prisons, in madhouses. At last he found, in a prison, a man whose eye was human, but from within there peered the beast; whose face seemed human but was transparent—and behind it crouched something ferocious. He painted the portrait. When the second painting was completed, a priceless, memorable event happened.
He took his first painting to the prison, placed the two side by side, to see which work was greater. Enchanted, he gazed; it was hard to decide which was better. Just then the prisoner whose portrait he had just made began to weep. The painter turned and asked, Friend! Why do my paintings cause you sorrow? Why tears? The prisoner said, I had somehow managed to hide my feelings so long. Today I cannot. The first painting is also mine. Twenty years ago you made that first painting looking at my very face and eyes. Both are my portraits—therefore I weep.
The story seems very fanciful—but it is not. And even if it were, it is true of each person. Those two paintings were not only of that man—they are ours too. They belong to each and every one. Whoever lives on this earth holds both within. Both dwell within him. Within him the struggle goes on—constantly colliding between these two shores.
Watch sometime, consider, become a little alert: a moment before, perhaps God was within you; a moment later, the animal sits enthroned. How swiftly we swing between these two banks! And if the very concept of God dissolves, if the aspiration to sit and rise in the spiritual life dissolves, then we remain tied to the animal shore. Our boat remains moored there. Then naturally, when the animal in each individual alone is in operation, when life becomes the gratification of the animal, then the collective clash of two and a half billion animals, their collective distorted desires, becomes the death of culture itself.
Where once we dreamt of the awakening of supreme power within man, we have settled by attaining the lowest! Where Buddha, where Mahavira, where Christ—who say the Paramatman dwells within you!—and where we, who peep within and find nothing but the rustle of the beast, its footfall!
I hold that ahimsa cannot be taught from above. Violence is the natural outcome of the animal nature within. As long as we are tied to the animal shore, the natural result will be violence. A thousand attempts at superimposition are futile. One can act nonviolent, but one cannot become nonviolent. If nonviolence is to be, actions need not be changed—what must change is the inner shore of consciousness. Try a thousand devices; bound to the same bank, you reach nowhere.
I heard that a sadhu went down to bathe in a river. It was near dawn; there was a little light. The sun was about to rise; the east had turned red. He saw, on the far bank, four people in a boat rowing hard. The boat stood where it was; the oars were churning. He swam across and saw—the chain still tied the boat to the shore!
He asked, Friends, where are you going? The four were drunk; they had come drunken in the night and begun rowing. All night they imagined that great travel was happening. The sadhu said, Fools! First look to see whether you have even cast off the boat—its chain still lies tied! No amount of rowing will help!
All outer acts of becoming nonviolent are like those drunken boatmen. Has the inner chain loosened from that shore or not? If the chain falls away, if the inner shore changes, if the center of consciousness changes, then just as violence naturally flows when tied to the animal bank, so with the change of shore, with the transformation of consciousness, ahimsa naturally flows.
Mahavira has said—he has given a wondrous definition of ahimsa—To be established in one’s own nature is ahimsa.
Ahimsa has nothing to do with the other. Those who say, Not to give sorrow to the other is ahimsa, are unknowing. Ahimsa has no concern with the other. To be established in one’s own nature is ahimsa; to be outside one’s nature is violence. Whoever is outside his nature—whatever he does—violence will flow through it. Whoever is established in his own nature—whatever he does—ahimsa will flow through it. Ahimsa is not a change of doing but a transformation of being. When being is transformed and the shore changes, ahimsa blossoms effortlessly in life.
Ahimsa is not a discipline to be cultivated. No one can practice ahimsa. Sadhana belongs to self-knowledge. Ahimsa comes by itself—like flowers appearing on plants. Ahimsa is a natural consequence, not a sadhana. The meaning of ahimsa as the supreme dharma is precisely this: when self-knowledge is attained, then at the final fruition, as the supreme flowering, ahimsa arrives. It is not to be brought; it comes. What is to be brought is self-establishment—one’s own state.
The most widespread misconception about ahimsa is that we take it as a moral instrument, a moral practice. Ahimsa is not a moral practice. And between the moralist’s ahimsa and Mahavira’s ahimsa there is the difference of earth and sky. The moralist keeps thinking that to hurt another is bad, and tries to become nonviolent. Such cultivated ahimsa is artificial, hollow, external.
Mahavira’s ahimsa is not moral—it is yogic. Mahavira says, Be established in yourself; attain self-knowing. You will find that it becomes impossible to hurt another. For one whose inner being has no suffering cannot cause suffering to another. When the light of self-knowledge and bliss is attained within, spontaneously only bliss will flow from him, only light will flow. There remains no way for anything opposite to that bliss to flow out of him.
Truly, if we inquire, we hurt others because we are hurt. We can be violent toward others because we are violent toward ourselves—filled with inner violence. The other is not the question; ultimately ahimsa is the question of personal awakening. When man awakens within and experiences the one sitting there, violence is dissolved.
In the West, through analysis of matter—its division, its inner secrets—they attained the atom. And by attaining the atom, they found in their hands vast power. The astonishing power of destruction came under control. The East too made experiments. The West experimented upon the realm of matter; the East upon the realm of human consciousness. Mahavira’s experiment is the analysis of the conscious being of man.
By analyzing matter, the atom was reached; by analyzing consciousness, the Atman was attained.
What came from analyzing matter proved destructive—because all the powers of matter are blind. And when they fall into blind hands, bad results are natural. From the analysis and awakening of consciousness, from descending into consciousness, what is attained as Atman changes life, changes the whole vision of things.
Mahavira has said, Only he can be nonviolent who has attained Abhaya—fearlessness.
Who can attain fearlessness? Can one who is not self-knowing attain it? Can anyone expel fear by force and gain fearlessness?
Impossible—impossible. No one can expel fear. Behind the last fear sits death. Every moment life is surrounded by death on all sides. Until the nectar is seen, until it is seen that within me there is one who will not die—who cannot die—one does not attain fearlessness. So long as we are enveloped by the mortal; so long as we know that all around us everything will be swallowed by death...
And I would even say: life is not with us; we are dying every moment. Death does not just happen abruptly one day. In life everything develops gradually. The day we are born, death begins. On the day of birth, dying begins. What we call death is only the final oblation of that dying. No one dies suddenly. Nothing happens suddenly in this world. We are dying each moment. Moment by moment we are passing away—everything of us is passing away; we are being pressed under darkness and death. Can one so pressed attain fearlessness? No sword will give fearlessness. And those who stand with swords in hand—they are afraid; the sword only announces this fact. Perhaps a time will come when people will laugh at those statues and pictures of men holding swords and say, They must have been very weak, very frightened. One who is not afraid has no reason to carry a sword. Those we call brave are but forms of fear—outcomes of fear. Within the awareness of mortality, fearlessness is impossible. One who is afraid of dying, who sees death—and as I said, everything we have is moving toward death; we really possess nothing that will not die.
Nanak was staying in Lahore. A man came to him many times over the years. He would say to Nanak, Give me some service I can do for you. Nanak kept saying, I have no need; your love is enough. God has given all. One day Nanak said, You have asked many times—today I have found a task for you. From within his robe he drew a needle used for sewing, and gave it to the man: Keep this. After your death, return it to me. What a task he set!
The man was shaken. For a moment he thought: Return it after death? When death comes the fist may remain clenched around the needle, but the needle cannot go along. All night he was troubled. In the morning he fell at Nanak’s feet and begged forgiveness: None of my wealth, none of my power can carry this needle beyond death. Nanak asked, Then what do you have that you can carry beyond?
And should I not ask you the same? Should not each person in the world ask this of himself? One day will not this question stand at the hour of death: What do I have that I can take with me? One who has nothing to carry beyond death—how will he attain fearlessness? One who is not sure he himself will survive beyond those flames—how will he be fearless? From under whose feet the very ground keeps slipping; whose grasp cannot hold anything; whose supports are all destined to sink, whose boat will surely drown midstream, who sees neither shore nor bank—how will he be fearless?
Without self-knowledge, fearlessness is impossible.
Mahavira said, Only one who has attained Abhaya can be nonviolent. He sets a wondrous condition—and into that condition he gathers all fear. Only the self-knower can attain fearlessness, for he knows there is no death. All will die, I cannot die. All will be dissolved, all erased—but that conscious being within has no death. In the very moment this vision happens—in the very seeing of this nectar—fear vanishes from life. One whose own fear is gone becomes nonviolent—he can no longer be violent. The ladder to ahimsa, the path to ahimsa, is the path of self-knowledge.
One must know oneself—become acquainted with oneself. You may know the whole world and remain a stranger to yourself—then your knowledge is worth two pennies. It has no value. I may know the whole world, yet within me is dense darkness—what use is such knowing? What purpose is served? What meaning? What gained? It is deception—a self-delusion. This erudition, this knowledge, is worthless. I may know all about Mahavira, all about Rama, all about Krishna; and this one sitting within remains unknown—then all this information is worth two pennies. It is idle entertainment, a wasting of time. I may read all the scriptures, yet if the reader within remains unread, we must accept that nothing has been done, nothing has been gained.
Mahavira says, By knowing the One, all is known.
That One must be known—and the result of knowing him will be ahimsa. How to know?
We think we know ourselves. The name is familiar—how much wealth, what bank balance, all that is familiar. Whose son I am is familiar. Whose brother, whose husband—I know all this. But all this is knowledge of the body. This body may be someone’s son, someone’s husband; this body may be young or old. This body will have a name. But the one sitting behind the body is related to none. Whatever is related to anyone—that is not me. Within is a consciousness—unattached, unrelated—neither born nor dead. That must be known. That recognition is self-knowledge.
We remain stuck at the body! Life revolves centered on the body and ends there! The body’s desires, the body’s chase, the body’s longings—the whole life is spent there! And we cannot even see the one who stands behind the prison of the body. The owner of the body, the dweller in the body, that bodiless one who sits in the body—we fail to know him! The race of the body empties everything!
In Maharashtra there was a saint, Eknath. One morning a man asked him: Nathji, seeing you, a question rises again and again—do sin and lust not arise in your mind? Do impurities not wake? Do poisonous animals not stir within? Nathji said, Shall I answer now? Wait a minute—I must speak something urgent, or I might forget; then I will answer. Yesterday, my eye fell on your palm. I saw your life-line is broken. Seven days more—and you will be gone. Seven days after the sun sets, you too will set. I just wanted to tell you, lest I forget. Now ask—what do you wish to ask?
The man’s hands and feet trembled. Seven days more! Only seven! Suddenly sadness descended within him. He said, I will come later to ask my question—now I have no question. Nathji insisted, Stay—the question was precious, a good discussion. He replied, I will come later. Just now, there is no taste for discussion. Death has made everything tasteless.
He rose and walked, but his legs shook—death pressed in! Reaching his door, he fell. His face turned dark, just on the way home. People lifted him, sat him inside, asked what happened. He told them, Seven days more—his voice sounded as if called from a distant pit. He lay down on the bed. The next day he somehow went to seek forgiveness from all—touching the feet of those he had wronged, to whom he had spoken bitter words. He took to bed. Each hour death came nearer. Every moment lengthened, hard to pass. Only one waiting remained. The shadow of imminent death thickened in the room. Death came closer and closer to his cot. Death alone remained—nothing else. All desires, all impurities—death stood in their place. Death was packed in. If he moved his hand he felt death. If he opened his eyes he saw death. With each breath, death was moving in and out. Everything became deathlike.
On the seventh day, a little before sunset, Eknath came to his house. Everyone inside was weeping. Tears were dripping from the dying man’s eyes. The hour had come close, a few more moments and all would be over. All he had built and gathered, all that had filled his ‘mine’—everything would be dissolved. The whole running about was turning to dream. Nathji came near and asked, Friend, I have come to ask you one thing. He opened his eyes—the eyes of the dying had sunk, the flame of life was almost out. Nathji asked, Tell me, in these seven days did any sin, any impurity, any lust arise? The man said, Why do you mock me, Nathji! Death stood so near that there was no room for any sin to rise between me and it. Death stood so close that there was not even the gap required for an impurity to arise.
Nathji said, Your death has not yet arrived. I have only answered your question.
Whether death comes in seven days or seventy years—what difference does it make? Whether this body ends in seven days or in seventy years—what difference? Truly, is there any difference between seven days and seventy years? If one dream is seven days long or seventy years long—what difference does it make?
Nathji said, You are not going to die now—I have only answered. I see death. This body will die. From the day it is seen that this body will die, from that day, all attachment to the body dissolves.
No one can be attached to death. Attachment to death is impossible. We can only be attached to life. We take the body as life—therefore we are attached. But if we repeat and remind ourselves: I am not the body; this body will die; I am nectar, I am the eternal Atman—if we thus think, will something be attained?
By such thinking nothing will happen. This is an illusion. Such contemplation cannot deceive you—indeed it has never deceived anyone. In fact, when I am saying and explaining to myself, This body will die, leave it, drop it, then know that I do not know that the body will die. Whoever knows—even for a single moment—that the body will die, there remains no question of explanation. In ignorance alone is there explaining. Knowledge opens the eyes; the distinction becomes clear—no explanation is needed. I do not tell you to contemplate in your mind, I am not the body. The one who does such contemplation is precisely the one who believes he is the body. I do not suggest contemplation—it is useless. I suggest knowing.
Mahavira’s path is not the path of contemplation; it is not the path of thinking. It is the path of knowing—of opening the eyes and seeing. Mahavira’s path is not the path of blind faith—it is deeply scientific. First know, see—then accept. Before that, no belief is of any use. They are the hollow supports of a drowning man—false props, false crutches. No false support will help. No such illusory refuge will work. One has to know.
And it can be known. This very process of knowing is what we call darshan. What India birthed is not philosophy. The unknowing take philosophy and darshan as synonyms. Philosophy is thinking, reflecting—speculating about the unknown.
But about the unknown, what will you think? That which you have not seen, not known, not met—what can you cogitate about it? All such thought will be wrong.
India does not counsel thinking but seeing—opening the eyes.
India says, Truth is seen, not thought.
The whole approach of Mahavira is of darshan, not of contemplation. Darshan is possible—the seeing of the one within who sees. Seeing is his very power, his capacity, his nature. Who sees this whole world? I see you; I see the world. Seeing is my capacity. Only, the seeing with which I look at everything, I do not know how to use upon myself. The very seeing that reflects upon the world, I do not know how to reflect upon myself. The eye is open upon all—but I do not know how to open it upon myself. This alone is the difficulty.
There is a way. Mahavira says: He who sees the seen can see the seer. And upon seeing the seer, all sorrow, all pain, all ignorance falls away.
I am seeing—of this much we are certain. Even if it is a dream, I see—this much is certain. I dreamt last night; in the morning I saw that the dream was false. The dream may be false—but I saw it: that is true. This world may be maya; it may be futile, insubstantial—but I have seen. Seeing is true. The seen may be untrue; the seer cannot be untrue. The seen may be deceptive, a mirage; the one who sees cannot be the mirage. The seer alone is the one truth standing at the center of life. But that seeing is veiled. Before that seeing stands the other, the alien. If I remove the other from before the capacity to see, if the other is removed from before the seer, then that capacity which used to look at the other, finding no object to rest upon, turns back upon its own support. If there remains nothing outside to see, then the one who saw everything sees himself.
To dissolve the other from before the seer is meditation—it is samayik.
To dissolve the other from before the seer, to set the other aside, to remove the other and be established in oneself—that is samayik. I open my eyes and see you. If I close my eyes, I still see you—your images, your reflections, your memories whirl. If I open my eyes, I am outside; if I close them, I am still outside. Formed by the outside, images surround me; impressions gathered outside, samskaras from outside, keep encircling. Now real objects surround me; when I close the eyes, thoughts of objects surround me. But I am still outside—eyes open or closed. This perpetual being outside is my bondage. For a while one must close the eyes not only to objects but also to thoughts.
Mahavira called this Nirjara. Whatever has come upon me from the outside—that alien has encircled and bound me. To dissolve those external impressions is Nirjara. To abandon the outer and allow only that to remain which is not from the outside—in that very instant something is seen that changes everything, transforms all. One rises onto a new plane, into a new dimension, onto a new ground. Mahavira’s scientific understanding of Nirjara is amazing. That is the way—the yoga, the all, the science—the laboratory through which a person goes into himself.
Consider: is there anything in our mind that has not come from outside? Anything in our consciousness that is not a reflection of the external? Is there anything that is not dust from the outside that has settled upon us? Whatever has come from outside, we must close our eyes to it. We must see it, but know that it is the other—that it has come from outside—and that it is not me.
If a person, sitting within even for a little while, keeps awakening only this discernment—that whatever has come from outside is not me, if he only keeps this awareness alive within: This is from outside; it is not me. This is from outside; it is not me. This is from outside; it is not me—if he goes on negating until nothing from outside stirs in the mind—
He will be amazed. I took them to be mine—hence they came. Those impressions from outside remained only because I held them as my own. The moment I know they are not mine—that they are travelers from outside; they come and go—I am the one who does not travel. I am not a guest; I am the host. They are guests; they will come and go. I am their host.
To distinguish the guest from the host is self-knowledge.
To distinguish guest from host—to know the difference between gguest and host—is self-knowledge.
Whatever has come from outside is guest. Let me know it, see it, become acquainted—and remain aware that it is not me. Mahavira called this the science of discrimination—bhed-vijnana. Little by little, stabilize this discrimination; abide in this distinction. Gradually, whatever I recognize as guest—there will be no reason to fight it. To know is enough. Know: it is not mine; it has not come from within. Let it come, let it go. I remain the witness—on the shore, the detached seer.
Slowly this awareness of the detached seer—this right-seeing—will dissolve the other; it will cause the other to vanish. The seen will melt away; the dreams will fall. And one day, suddenly, where the world appeared, emptiness will stand. As if the projector had been turned off—the machine that ran the film has stopped. The screen remains bare—white, without images. In just this way, through the experiment of samayik, through the practice of the detached seer, one day the projector will cease. Before you, the world will dissolve; empty sky will remain—shunya.
Mahavira called the complete state of this emptiness Shukla-dhyana. In the very moment when nothing remains, when all the seen is void—at that very moment—more precisely, exactly in that instant—when there is shunya there, the one who saw all turns back upon himself. The one who flew over others’ houses, who made other soils his base, who wandered in other lands—finding no base in the void, finding no support in emptiness—there is nothing that can remain in shunya—he becomes self-supported, self-established, returns to himself. The Atman returns to the Atman.
In that moment the nectar is seen, that which has no death. In that moment is seen that where there is no possibility of fear. As the Gita says: na hanyate hanyamane sharire—Even when the body is slain, he is not slain. That which the pyre’s flames cannot burn; which nothing can destroy or distort—achyuta, eternal, nitya—when that is seen, naturally, effortlessly, life becomes nonviolent. Because of that vision, ahimsa spreads through life. Other than this, there is no path to ahimsa.
Self-knowledge is the path of ahimsa.
And if we would save the world, if we would give man a future and a destiny, then it is necessary to bring this scientific process of self-knowledge to each individual. Mahavira—his insight—must be carried beyond all enclosures to everyone. Mahavira is not telling people to be nonviolent; he is telling them to be self-knowing—and ahimsa will come of itself. Let self-knowledge awaken; let people know themselves; let them recognize the nectar, the eternal, the awakened; recognize that which has never fallen into bondage—that free one. Then we can transform the whole world into a new humanity.
The answer to the atom is the Self. The answer to science is religion. The answer to spread perversion is culture. Only the self-knower is cultured.
The ignorant is natural—prakrit. And if the ignorant becomes satisfied in his ignorance, he turns perverse—vikrit. The ignorant is natural; if he abandons his aspiration to rise toward knowledge, he becomes perverse. But if he is filled with aspiration to rise, he goes on becoming cultured. The day perfect self-knowledge dawns within, that day the person becomes truly cultured.
We have to give culture to the world—and culture cannot be violent; only perversion can be violent. If we are to gift culture to the world, we must give the thirst for self-knowledge. We must awaken the longing. Within each person something sleeps that can be alight—but lies dormant; that which can awaken—but is asleep. That which can be unclouded and alert—but is unconscious and senseless—we must call to it.
A call must be given within each person: Wake up, and awaken yourself. Your awakening can be the protection of the whole world. The awakening of each individual can save the whole world. The establishment of each person in himself can be the path by which the world’s perversion is transformed into culture.
These few things I have said. With much affection and joy I look into your eyes, I recognize you. You have listened to these things with much love—for that I am very, very grateful.
In the end I make only one prayer: Call and awaken within the one who sleeps. If it could awaken in Mahavira, if it could awaken in Buddha, there is no reason it cannot awaken in us. They too were of flesh and bone. They too were surrounded by the very same distortions and limitations that surround us. If they could awaken, then it is an insult to us if we do not awaken. It is a disgrace if we do not awaken. If even one human being has ever awakened, every other human being can awaken. Why should that other not be me? This is my prayer: let each one make every effort to be that other person; be filled with that aspiration; become utterly discontent—cry out with thirst within—and awakening is certain.
With this prayer I complete my words, and I bow to that sleeper within each of you who, if he awakens, can become God—and if he sleeps, can become a beast. Accept my pranam.