Main Mrityu Sikhata Hun #5

It will help to understand this a little. One who has not known the divine within himself can never know it in the whole. If I have not yet recognized it in myself, I will not be able to recognize it in anyone else. ‘Self’ means that which is nearest to me; everything else is a little farther away, and farther still. If in the nearest—myself—I do not see the divine, how will I ever see it in those who are farther away?

First, one has to know it within oneself—within the knower. That is the nearest door. But remember, the delightful thing is: the one who enters by the door of the self suddenly finds himself in the All. The door of the self is the very door of the whole. Whoever goes within discovers, upon arriving within, that he has arrived within all, because outwardly we are different, but inwardly we are not different.

If someone goes searching the leaves of a tree from the outside, each leaf is separate. But if he were to enter within even a single leaf, he would reach the tree’s source-current where all leaves are joined. Seen separately, each leaf is different; known from within any one leaf, you reach that primal flow from which all leaves arise and into which they all dissolve.

If we descend within ourselves, we descend into the whole as well. So long as we have not gone within, there is the division of ‘I’ and ‘you.’ The day we enter into the ‘I’ itself, that day the ‘I’ disappears—and the ‘you’ too. What remains is only the Total.

In truth, the Whole does not mean the sum of ‘I’ and ‘you.’ It is not the addition of me and all of you. The Whole means: where neither ‘I’ remains nor ‘you’ remains—what remains then is the Whole. And if my ‘I’ has not yet dissolved, I can only make an aggregate of ‘all,’ but that aggregate will not be the truth. Even if I were to add up all the leaves, a tree would still not be formed—though all the leaves are in the tree. The tree is more than the sum of its leaves; in fact, addition has nothing to do with it. To add is already to assume separateness. The tree is not separate parts. The moment we descend into the ‘I,’ the ‘I’ dissolves. The very first thing to disappear upon entering oneself is the sense of self. Where the self is gone, the ‘you’ is gone, the other is gone; what remains is the Whole.

Even calling it ‘the Whole’ is not quite right, because the word ‘whole’ belongs to the language of the former ‘I.’ Those who know will not even call it the Whole, for they will ask: the whole of what, the sum of whom? Then they might say, ‘Only One remains.’ But even there they hesitate, because the word ‘one’ evokes the idea of ‘two.’ One has meaning only in contrast to two.

Therefore those who understand more deeply do not even say, ‘Only one remains.’ They say, ‘Advaita remains’—non-duality. It’s amusing: they do not say, ‘One remains’; they say, ‘Two do not remain.’ Advaita means where there are not two. Why put it in such a roundabout way? Why not say directly, ‘There is one’? Because saying ‘one’ conjures ‘two.’ When we say ‘where there are not two,’ there is also not three, not even one, not many, not even ‘the whole.’

In fact, the world as we saw it while the ‘I’ was there was divided because of the ‘I.’ What remains is the indivisible. But to come to that, if someone does what my friend proposes—imagining God in everything—that will be imagination, and imagination is not truth.

Years ago someone brought a fakir to me. Those who brought him said he was seeing God everywhere—continuously for thirty years he had had visions of God in everything: in the flower, the plant, the stone, in all. I asked the fakir, ‘Did these visions come through some practice? If they came by practice, then the visions are very false.’ He said, ‘I don’t understand.’ I asked, ‘Did you at some time cultivate the wish or imagination to see God in everything?’ He replied, ‘Certainly! Thirty years ago I began that discipline: I tried to see God in every thing—God in the stone, in the plant, in the mountains, in everything. I made the effort to see that. Then God began to appear to me.’ I said, ‘Stay with me for three days, and for three days please do not make any effort. Do not try to see that God is in everything.’

He stayed, and the next morning he said, ‘You have harmed me greatly. In just twelve hours of not trying, the stone has begun to look like a stone again, the mountain like a mountain. You have snatched my God away. What kind of man are you? You have done me great damage.’ I told him, ‘A God who disappears after twelve hours without practice is not God—only the reflection of practice. When someone repeats something loudly again and again, he can create an illusion.’

No, one is not to see God in the stone. One is to come to the state where, in the stone, nothing remains to be seen but God. These are two very different things. If you try to see God in the stone, God will start appearing in the stone—but that ‘God’ is nothing more than a projection. You have imposed your imagination upon the stone. That God is of your own making, an extension of your fantasy, no more than a dream. And by repeating it you will keep strengthening the dream; it will go on appearing. But this is to live in a web of delusion, not to descend into truth.

Yes, there does come a day when the self dissolves; then nothing is seen except God. Not that ‘there is God in the stone’—rather, ‘where is the stone? There is only God.’ Do you see the difference? It is not that there is the plant and in it there is God. The plant, the stone, the mountain—where have they gone? What remains is only God. And then it does not depend on your practice; it depends on your seeing.

The greatest danger in the world of practice is imagination. The greatest danger is that we can imagine the very truths that ought to be experienced. There is a difference between experience and imagination. A man has not eaten all day; at night he eats in a dream. As far as the dream meal goes, it can give great satisfaction—perhaps even more delight than waking eating, because one can eat whatever one wants, as much as one wants. But on waking, the stomach is not filled, no blood is made. If someone were to try to live on dream-food, today or tomorrow he would die. However satisfying, dream-food is not food; it makes no blood, no flesh, no bone or marrow. In a dream only deception is made.

There are not only dream meals; there are dream gods, dream liberations, dream peace, dream truths. The mind’s greatest capacity is its capacity to deceive itself. But falling into such deception, no one can ever arrive at bliss or liberation.

Therefore I do not tell you to begin seeing God in all. I tell you only this: begin to look within and see what is there. And when you begin to look within, the first person to take leave will be you. You will be the first to go; you will not survive there within. For the first time you will find that your sense of being—‘I am’—was a great illusion. It slips away, it departs. The moment one peers within, the ‘I’ is the first to go; the ego departs first. In truth we have not looked within—that is why it seems that ‘I am.’ Perhaps this is also why we fear to look within: if we look, we might be lost.

Have you seen someone take a torch in hand and whirl it rapidly? A circle of fire appears. It seems there is a ring of flame. In fact there is no circle—only a torch moving fast. If you go close and look carefully, the circle disappears; only the torch remains. Because of the rapid movement, the torch appears as a circle. From afar it looks like a ring of fire. It is nowhere, but it appears. Come near and you recognize: it is a swiftly moving torch. The circle is false, the fiery ring is false. In the same way, if we go near and look within, we find the ‘I’ is utterly false. The rapid whirling of consciousness creates the illusion of the ‘I,’ as the swiftly spinning torch creates the illusion of a circle. This is a scientific fact worth understanding.

Perhaps you do not realize that all our life’s illusions are illusions born of rapid motion. A wall looks solid; a stone underfoot seems so clear and hard. But scientists say there is no such thing as a solid stone. Then we are in trouble! Do you know that the closer science has gone to matter, the more matter has vanished? From a distance it seemed there was matter, and science declared most emphatically that matter alone is real. Now the scientist himself says matter is not. Rapidly revolving electrical particles spin so fast that their motion creates the illusion of solidity. Solidity is nowhere.

When an electric fan spins fast, its three blades are no longer visible; no one can count them. Faster and faster, and it seems as if a solid tin disc is turning; the blades disappear. It could spin so fast that you might sit on it and never realize that blades are coming and going beneath—you would feel you were sitting on a solid surface. If it turns so quickly that before one blade leaves another arrives under you, you will never know there are gaps in between. If the fan spins that fast, you will not notice.

The particles of matter are turning just so fast. And the particle is not matter; it is only electrical energy, spinning rapidly. Its motion gives the feeling of solidity. All matter is only the result of swiftly rotating energy. It appears to be, but it isn’t. In the same way, the energy of the mind—the energy of consciousness—whirls so fast that the illusion of the ‘I’ is produced.

There are two illusions in the world: the illusion of matter, and the illusion of ‘I’—ego. Both are utterly false, and it is only by going near them that one discovers they are not. Science went close to matter and matter dissolved. Religion went close to the ‘I’ and the ‘I’ departed. The finding of religion is: there is no ‘I.’ The finding of science is: there is no matter. The nearer you go, the more the illusion breaks.

Therefore I say: go within, look from very close—Is there any ‘I’ there? I am not telling you to believe ‘There is no I.’ If you believe it, it will be false. If, taking my word, you start thinking, ‘There is no I, the ego is false; I am the Self, I am Brahman,’ you will be in a mess. You will only be repeating a lie. I do not tell you to repeat anything. I say: go within, look, recognize. Whoever looks and recognizes finds: there is no ‘I.’

Then who is? If there is no ‘I,’ there is still someone. It is not that with my absence there is no one at all—for even to know the illusion, someone must be; even for illusion to arise, someone is needed.

If ‘I’ am not, then who? What remains—its experience is the experience of the divine. And that experience becomes vast. With my fall, the ‘you’ falls, that also falls; then only an ocean of consciousness remains. In that state it is seen that only God is. Yet even to say ‘Only God is’ seems wrong—because it is a repetition. When we say ‘God is,’ we are being tautological: ‘is-ness’ itself is another name for God. To say ‘God is’ repeats the same thing; it is a tautology. It is not quite right.

What does ‘God is’ mean? We say ‘is’ of something that also can ‘not be.’ We say, ‘The table is,’ because tomorrow the table may not be, and yesterday it was not. To say ‘is’ about something that was not and may not be has some meaning. But God is not something that ever was not, nor can He ever not be. To say ‘is’ about Him is meaningless. He is. In truth, ‘God’ is simply another name for what-is; the other name of being itself. Existence—existence itself—is what we call the divine.

Therefore, in my view, if upon what-is we impose our ‘God,’ we will descend into falsehood. And remember, ‘Gods’ too come with different trademarks: the Hindu has his to impose, the Muslim his, the Christian his, the Jain his, the Buddhist his. Everyone has his own word, his own God. There is a great home industry of God-making—cast your own God at home, manufacture your own deity.

And then the god-makers fight in the marketplace just like all the other home manufacturers quarrel at their stalls. In that bazaar they fight too. Each one’s God becomes different from the other’s. In fact, as long as the ‘I’ is, whatever I do will differ from you. So long as I am, my religion will differ, my God will differ—because they are constructions of my ‘I.’ I am different, therefore all that is mine will be different.

If there were genuine freedom to construct religions, there would be as many religions as there are people—no fewer. But there is no such freedom. A Hindu father makes his son a Hindu before he becomes independent; a Muslim father makes his son a Muslim before intelligence dawns. Because once intelligence comes, neither a Hindu nor a Muslim will be born. Hence all the nonsense must be poured in before intelligence arises.

That is why all fathers are eager that, while the child is small, his religious instruction be completed—because tomorrow he will grow up and start thinking, and then he will be troublesome. Thought will come and he will raise a dozen questions, and there will be no answers. He will say things difficult to resolve. So fathers are eager to pour religion into their sons and daughters with their very first feed, to mix it into their blood. When awareness and understanding are not yet there, you can teach any foolishness and it will be learned. One becomes a Muslim, one a Hindu, one a Jain, one a Buddhist—whatever you teach, the person becomes that. Intelligence is not yet present.

Hence the person we call ‘religious’ is often found without intelligence. There is no intelligence, because what we call religion is something grabbed before intelligence arises—and even after intelligence comes, it keeps its grip, it claws us from within. We see Hindu and Muslim fighting in the name of God, fighting over temple and mosque. It is astonishing!

Is God of many kinds then? The Hindu’s God is of one sort, and if an idol is broken his God is insulted. The Muslim’s God is of another sort, and if a mosque is destroyed, burned, his God is insulted.

God is the name of That-which-is. He is as much in the mosque as in the temple; as much in the slaughterhouse as in the temple; as much in the tavern as in the mosque. He is as much in the thief as in the saint—not a whit less; how could He be? Who else would be within the thief if not the divine? He is as much in Rama as in Ravana—not a grain less in Ravana. He is as much in the Hindu as in the Muslim. But our home industry of god-making would take a great blow if we were to accept that the same One is within all. So we keep imposing our own God. Even if both the Hindu and the Muslim see God in a flower, there can still be a quarrel—because the Hindu will cast his own God into that flower, and the Muslim his own. Hindu–Muslim is a distant issue; neighboring shops fight as well. Those shops are far apart—Kashi and Mecca are at a distance. But even in Kashi, Rama’s temple and Krishna’s are not so far apart—and there, too, the quarrels are just as sharp.

I have heard of a great saint—and I call him ‘great’ only because people do, and ‘saint’ only because people do. He was a devotee of Rama. When he was taken to Krishna’s temple, he refused to fold his hands. He said, ‘In a Krishna temple I cannot bow.’ Standing before the image he said, ‘If you take a bow and arrow in your hands, I can bow my head. To bow before these hands holding a flute is beyond me.’

Even to God the devotee lays down conditions: stand in this posture, in this manner, and we will bow. As if saying, ‘Before we salute, you must dance to our tune; only then will we salute. Our bow will follow—first you bow to us: take up the bow and arrow, or hold the flute; sit in this asana, stand like this.’ The devotee prescribes to God what to do—he sets conditions.

It is astonishing that even God must be defined by me, by you! But the ‘God’ we have so far spoken of is a God determined by men. As long as a man-made God stands between us, we will not come to know the One who is not determined by us—the One by whom we are determined. To know That, we must be free of man’s Gods.

But it is difficult—difficult even for the best of men. The one we call good finds it even harder to be free; he too holds on, he too will not let go. He clings to his basic foolishness just as tightly as the fool. The fool can be forgiven; the ‘wise’ man is the hardest to forgive.

Just now Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan has come. He goes about preaching Hindu–Muslim unity. But he is a dyed-in-the-wool Muslim—there is not a grain of doubt about it; there is no question about his saying namaz in the mosque. He is a staunch Muslim preaching Hindu–Muslim unity. Gandhi was a staunch Hindu preaching Hindu–Muslim unity. As the master, so the disciple: the master a staunch Hindu, the disciple a staunch Muslim.

As long as there are dyed-in-the-wool Hindus and dyed-in-the-wool Muslims, how can there be unity? They must be made a little ‘unbaked’—only then can unity be. As long as they are ‘fully baked,’ there can be no unity; they are the very root of conflict. Yet they do not appear to be the root. They tell people, ‘We must all become one,’ but they do not know how oneness can be.

So long as there are different Gods, different temples, different prayers, different scriptures of truth—and for some the Quran is the father and for others the Gita the mother—this turmoil cannot cease. Yet we have grabbed on to these as absolute truths. We say, ‘Read verses from the Quran and tell people to be one; read the words of the Gita and tell people to be one’—not seeing that the verses of the Gita and the ayats of the Quran are at the root of the quarrel.

If a cow’s tail is cut and a Hindu–Muslim riot erupts, we say the hooligans caused it. But note the irony: no hooligan has taught that the cow is ‘Mother.’ It is the ‘mahatmas’ who teach that the cow is mother. And when they teach that, they are planting the seeds of conflict. Some day a tail will be cut; then it is not the tail of a cow that is cut, it is the tail of ‘Mother.’ And when Mother’s tail is cut, the riot begins. Later the hooligans are blamed. At the root of these riots stand the people we call mahatmas. If the mahatmas stepped back from the root, the hooligans are very helpless; they have no power to create such conflict. They need the backing of the mahatmas; only then do the hooligans gain courage. But the mahatmas are spared blame, because we cannot even imagine they could be the root. And what is the root? The God manufactured in every home.

Try to save yourself from your household God. In your home you cannot cast the divine—and whatever you cast will be sheer deception.

So I do not tell you to impose God. What will you impose in the name of God? If a devotee of Krishna looks, he will see only a God hiding in the bushes playing a flute; the devotee of the archer-God will see an archer; others will see yet something else. This ‘seeing’ is the imposition of our desires and ideas. Such a God is not. He cannot be known by imposing our ideas and desires upon Him. We have to dissolve. We must sink with all our ideas and projections; we must end. The two cannot happen together. As long as I am, the experience of God is impossible. I must depart—only then can the experience be. Both cannot be together. So long as I am, I cannot enter God’s door.

I have heard a story. A man renounced everything and came to God’s gate—left wealth, wife, house, children, society, everything. But the gatekeeper stopped him and said, ‘Do not enter yet. Go back and leave behind what still remains.’ The man said, ‘I have left everything.’ The gatekeeper said, ‘At least the “I” you have surely brought along. We are not concerned with anything else; only with the “I.” You say, “I have left everything.” We have nothing to do with everything—we are concerned with the ‘I.’ Go and leave the “I.”’ The man said, ‘I have nothing left. My bag is empty—no wealth, no wife, no children; nothing is with me.’ The gatekeeper said, ‘At least you are in your bag. Leave that. This door is closed to those who bring the ‘I.’ It has always been closed.’

But how are we to drop the ‘I’? If we try to drop it, it will never drop—because how will I drop it? How can I drop the ‘I’? The ‘I’ dropping the ‘I’—how can that be? It is like trying to lift yourself by your shoelaces. The ‘I’ will survive behind every renunciation. A man may even say, ‘I have dropped all ego; I have no ego’—but even that ‘I’ remains. There is an ego of having dropped the ego. What is one to do? It seems very difficult.

It is not difficult. That is why I do not tell you to drop it. I do not tell you to do anything, because doing only strengthens the ‘I.’ I tell you only this: go within and know—see where this ‘I’ is. If it exists, there is no way to drop it—if it is, what will you drop? And if it does not exist, there is still no way to drop it—for how can you drop what is not?

So go within and see, inquire: is there an ‘I’ there or not? And I say this much: whoever goes within and sees begins to laugh. He says, ‘I am not at all.’ Then who remains? That which remains is what we call the divine. And what remains when I am not—will it be separate from you? When the ‘I’ is gone, who is left to divide? It is my ‘I’ that separates you from me and me from you.

The walls of our house: the wall imagines it divides the sky into two. Yet the sky is not divided; it is indivisible. Make the wall as hard and solid as you like—the sky inside the house and the sky outside are not two; they are one. Raise a wall as high as you wish, still the inside-sky and the outside-sky are not two. But the person living inside feels: we have split the sky—one part inside my house, one outside. If tomorrow the wall falls, how will he identify which is the inside sky and which is the outside? How will he tell? Only the sky remains.

Just so, we have partitioned consciousness by raising the walls of ‘I.’ When the wall of ‘I’ falls, it is not that I will start seeing God in you; rather, you will no longer appear—and the divine will be seen.

Understand this fine distinction well. It is not that I will begin to see God in you—that is wrong. Rather, you will not be seen, and God will be seen. Not that God will be seen in the tree—no; the tree will not be seen, and God will be seen. When someone says, ‘God is in every particle,’ he is quite wrong—because he still sees the particles and he also sees God. Both cannot be seen together. The truth is: every particle is only God. It is not that God is inside the particle as something separate while the particle encases Him from outside. What-is is God. ‘What-is’—its name in love is God. ‘What-is’ is what we call truth; in love we call it God. It makes no difference.

Therefore I do not tell you to start seeing God in all. I tell you: start seeing within yourself. The moment you truly see, you will dissolve; and with your dissolution, what appears is the divine.

Going to temples is indeed pointless—trying to remove them is just as pointless. Where there is no God in the first place, why get into the fuss of removing them? Let them be where they are—what is there to remove? This trouble arises often. For instance, Mohammed told people that God is not in idols. So Muslims thought they must destroy idols. And then a strange entertainment began in the world: on one side the crazy ones making idols, on the other side the crazy ones breaking them. The idol-maker is harassed making idols; the idol-breaker is obsessed day and night with how to break them.

Now someone should ask: When did Mohammed ever say that God resides in breaking idols? He may not be in the idol—but who said He is in the act of breaking? And if He is in breaking idols, then why not in making them too? If He’s not in the idol, how will He suddenly appear in its destruction?

I am not saying temples should be removed. I am saying we should understand the truth that He is everywhere. When this truth is known, everything becomes His temple. Then it is hard to separate temple from non-temple. Wherever you stand, there His temple is; wherever you raise your eyes, there His temple is; wherever you sit, there His temple is. Then there will be no pilgrim-spots, because the whole world will be a pilgrimage. Then fashioning separate images becomes meaningless, because whatever is, is His image. What I am saying is not: go and demolish temples, or stop anyone from going there. I have never said God is not in the temple. I am only saying: one who sees Him only in the temple has no clue to God.

One who truly knows God will find Him everywhere—in the temple too, and where there is “no temple,” there as well. How then will he distinguish what is temple and what is not? We call that place a temple where God is. And if He is everywhere, then everywhere is a temple. Then there is no need to build special shrines—and no need to tear any down.

We often make this mistake: instead of understanding what is being pointed to, we get busy with the opposite—what to remove, what to break, what to erase. We rarely pause to see what is actually being said.

This has been humanity’s chronic error. Among the basic blunders humans make, one is this: whenever something is said, we immediately hear who-knows-what that was never said. Someone might think I am an enemy of temples. But it would be hard to find anyone who loves the temple more than I do. Why do I say so? Because I want the whole earth to be seen as a temple, for everything to become temple.

Yet hearing me, someone may conclude, “Tear down those little temples and all will be solved.” Demolishing them won’t solve anything. The work is fulfilled when the whole of life becomes a temple.

Both kinds of people are wrong. The one who sees God only in the temple—what is he seeing outside it? Whom does he see beyond the temple? His temple is small; God is vast, and cannot be contained in small shrines. And the other one, who starts breaking temples—“Remove them so we can see God”—he too is wrong. Such little temples cannot be God’s dwelling, but neither can they be a prison that blocks Him, so that if you destroy them, He would be set free. Understand what I am saying.

I am saying that only when we enter meditation do we enter the temple. Meditation is the temple with no walls. In entering meditation, one is inside the temple. One who lives in meditation lives in the temple twenty-four hours a day. And one who does not live in meditation—what will he do even if he goes to a temple? We think it’s simple: you leave your shop and you’re suddenly in a temple. Yes, it’s easy to take the body there; the body is simple—carry it anywhere. The mind is not so simple. A shopkeeper is sitting counting his money; he can get up and take his body to the temple at once. But the body will go to the temple—and the mind? The body will enter the shrine, and he will be deceived, thinking, “I have come to the temple.” But if he peeks into his mind, he’ll be shocked—the mind is still at the shop counting money.

I have heard: A man was very troubled by his wife—as all men are, of course. He was very troubled. He was religious; his wife was irreligious. Usually it’s the other way round, but anything is possible. I suspect only one of the two can be religious; both together hardly ever are. Perhaps the husband became religious first, so the wife avoided it. He kept trying to make her religious.

There is a basic flaw in the religious person—he wants to make the other like himself. That is dangerous, a kind of violence. It is enough to let someone understand you; to force them to become your copy is to seize their neck—a spiritual sort of aggression. Most gurus do exactly this. Hence it’s hard to find anyone more violent than gurus. They grab people by the neck and try to mold them: wear this cloth, keep your hair thus, shave your head like this, do this, don’t do that. “Eat this, drink that, sleep like this, get up like that”—they hammer the person flat.

So the husband was very eager. Making the other religious is very satisfying; becoming religious yourself is a revolution. Making the other religious confirms your own righteousness; only the other remains to be fixed. The wife wouldn’t listen. He asked his guru to come one morning and set her straight.

Around five in the morning the guru came. The wife was sweeping the front steps. The guru stopped her and said, “I hear from your husband that you are irreligious—you don’t worship or pray, and you never go to the home temple he’s built.”

It was five a.m. The husband had already gone and was sitting in the temple. The wife replied, “I don’t remember my husband ever going to the temple.”

The husband was right there. His fire flared up—religious people flare up quickly. And it is the easiest thing to inflame those sitting in temples. Perhaps they sit there to hide their fire, who knows. A religious man can be terribly wrathful. Let one person in a house turn religious and the whole house is in turmoil. His anger rose. He hurriedly finished his mantra—“What a blatant lie! I am in the temple and my wife tells my guru at the door I never go.”

The guru said, “What are you saying! He goes constantly.” The husband started loudly chanting “Ram Ram” so the guru would hear. “See,” said the guru, “he is chanting so loud.” The wife said, “Don’t be deceived by that chant! As I understand it—he may be chanting—but I don’t believe he is in the temple. He is at a cobbler’s shop buying shoes.”

The husband was beside himself. He rushed out: “This is sheer falsehood! I am sitting here praying.” The wife said, “Look a little more closely—were you truly praying? Or were you at the shoe shop buying shoes? Didn’t you quarrel with the shoemaker?”

The husband was stunned. It was true. “But how did you know?” he asked. The wife said, “Last night, as you fell asleep, you said to me, ‘Tomorrow morning I must buy shoes. He’s quoting a high price; I’ve managed without shoes this long, but I must go in the morning.’ From experience, the last thought at night becomes the first in the morning. So I guessed you must be at the shoe shop just now.” The husband admitted, “I can’t deny it—this is the truth. I was chanting ‘Ram Ram’ loudly, but when she spoke, I saw I was at the shoemaker’s; he was demanding too much, I had grabbed him by the neck—an argument had started—and amid that inner quarrel I was chanting even louder. She is right; perhaps I have never been to the temple.”

Entering the temple is not so easy as stepping within four walls. Perhaps your body arrives there—but the mind? And the day the mind goes to the temple, who cares whether the body went or not? For that day you suddenly find His vast temple around you from all sides. Where can you go that is outside His temple? Go to the moon—Armstrong went—did he step outside His temple? Where could you go that is not within His temple? For there is nowhere outside it to go. But those who think, “This is His temple,” immediately think outside this place His temple is not. They are mistaken. And those who think, “We’ll demolish this shrine because He isn’t in it,” are equally mistaken.

What fault does the poor temple have? Temples can be very beautiful—if the delusion drops that He is only there. But a Hindu’s temple cannot be joyous, a Muslim’s mosque cannot be joyous, a Christian’s church cannot be joyous. God’s temple can be joyous. Hindu, Muslim, Christian politics runs so deep it won’t allow even the symbol of God’s temple to remain pure. That is why Hindu temples and Muslim mosques now look ugly. A decent person hesitates even to look. Dens of mischief have gathered there; schemes are hatched there. And it is not necessary that plotters know what they are doing—no one devises mischief knowingly; only in ignorance. They have plunged the whole earth into this condition.

If temples ever vanish from the earth, it will not be because of atheists; if temples vanish, it will be because of the so-called theists. They have nearly vanished already, and are vanishing. If temples are to be saved, we must first see the great Temple—then the small ones save themselves; they remain as symbols. As when, out of love, I give you a handkerchief—it costs a few coins, yet you lock it away in your chest.

I once visited a village. People came to see me off at the station. Someone garlanded me, and I took it off and gave it to a girl standing nearby. Six years later I returned. The girl told me, “I have carefully preserved your garland.” The garland had dried; others could no longer smell any fragrance, but she still could—because it was given by me. I visited her home; in a beautiful box she had kept the garland. No flowers remained; nothing but dry stuff. Anyone else would say, “Why keep this trash in such a lovely box? Throw it away; the box is valuable, the contents worthless.” But she could discard the box, not that “trash.” In that dry garland she saw something else—a symbol, a remembrance of love. For the world it may be trash; for her it is not.

If temples, mosques, and churches could become such remembrances—symbols of the human aspiration rising toward the Divine—that is all they are meant to be. Look at the steeple of a church, the minaret of a mosque, the dome and finial of a temple reaching for the sky: they are symbols of man’s inner urge to rise, of the pilgrimage in search of God. They say: man is not satisfied with houses; he wants to build temples. He is not content with earth alone; he wants to rise toward the sky.

That is why lamps are lit in temples. Ever wondered why? Clarified butter—ghee—burns in them. Why ghee? Consider the lamp’s flame: it never goes downward; it always rises. Even if you turn the lamp upside down, the flame still runs upward. You cannot drive it down. The lamp is constantly ascending. That rising flame is a symbol of human longing. We may live on earth, but we want to make the sky our home. We may be bound to the ground, yet we long to open into the free sky.

And have you seen how swiftly the flame rises and dissolves? It rises—and is gone. You cannot find where it went. That too is a symbol: what rises upward dissolves. The lamp is solid; the flame is subtle—no sooner does it rise than it disappears. Whoever rises upward will vanish. The lamp says that too. And in love we offer ghee in the lamp. God won’t object if you use kerosene; but our feeling is this: only what is pure like ghee can rise. In reality, kerosene also burns and rises; there is nothing lacking in it. But these are symbols; the feeling is that purity is what can ascend.

Temples, mosques, churches are such symbols. They could be very lovely—full of aesthetic beauty. The images humans have made are marvelous. But they have become ugly, because much nonsense has become attached to them. The temple is no longer a temple; it has become a Hindu temple. Not even that—it has become a Vaishnav temple. Then narrower still—this sect’s temple, then that faction’s. Breaking and breaking, they have become political headquarters, where organizations and sects are fed and people are endangered. Slowly they have become shops, where exploitation runs and vested interests rule.

So I do not tell you to demolish temples; I tell you to remove whatever is useless clinging to them—wipe away the impurity of vested interests, save the temple from becoming a shop, save it from organizations and sects. Let it remain a pure remembrance of the Infinite—a symbol reaching toward the sky. Then a temple is very beautiful.

And I say: as long as temples are centers of politics—and now they are—if a temple is “Hindu,” it has become political. Politics means organization; religion has nothing to do with organization. Religion means sadhana—inner practice; politics means organization. Remember this: religion relates to practice, not to organization. Politics lives on organization; organization feeds on hatred; hatred feeds on blood—and all that disturbance goes on.

Do not demolish temples. Cleanse the symbol that has been defiled. Then it will remain a sign of great beauty. If in a village there stands one temple that is neither Hindu nor Muslim nor Christian, the village will become beautiful; the temple will be its ornament, a reminder of the Infinite at its heart. Those who go there will not imagine that inside the temple they are closer to God and outside they are farther away. They will understand that a temple is a place that affords convenience, beauty, peace, and seclusion for turning inward—nothing more. Then a temple is not a place to “go to God,” but a suitable place to enter meditation—and meditation becomes the path to the Divine.

Not every person can make his home that silent; it is difficult. But at least a village can together create one house that is silent. Not every person can hire a teacher at home for his children; even if he did, he cannot provide a proper school building, garden, playground. If each person tried to create a separate school for his child, it would be impossible; very few would be educated. So we build one school in the village—what the home cannot provide, we gather in the school. In the same way, a village should have a place for practice, for sadhana. That is all a temple or mosque means—nothing more.

But now they are no longer places of practice; they have become centers of disturbance—from which quarrels and fires spread. So do not demolish temples; do ensure they cease to be sources of unrest. Do ensure temples come into the hands of religion, not into the hands of “Hindu” and “Muslim.” In a truly religious village, children would enter a mosque as simply as they enter a temple; they would go to a church as easily as to any Shiva shrine. Such a village is religious; its people are good. The parents there are not enemies of their children; they love them and lay a foundation that their children will never fight. They say to them: the mosque is also His house, the temple too; go wherever you find peace—seek Him there. The whole world is His home. Just once catch His glimpse; for that, go within—go anywhere. That day a true temple will be built in the world. Until now it has not.

Therefore I am not among those who demolish temples. I say: temples have already been demolished—and those who appear to be their protectors are the very ones demolishing them. When we will see this is hard to say. Often the thought turns upside down, and people imagine I am among the temple-destroyers. What purpose would that serve me? Yes, whatever is non-temple-like that has gathered around the temple—let that depart. It is right to work for that.

One last question—and then we will sit for meditation.

Some souls certainly do not at once take another body after leaving the old one. The reason? There is a reason—and perhaps it is not one you would ever have imagined.

If we divide all souls, all personalities in the world, they will appear in three kinds. First, those of very low, degraded consciousness; second, those of very high, noble, utterly pure quality; and third, the great crowd in between that is a mixture of both, that goes along combining the bad and the good.

Look at a damaru, the little hourglass drum: it is broad at both ends and narrow in the middle. Now invert the picture—thin at both ends and wide in the middle—and you will understand the state of the world: small at the extremes, thick in the middle, the damaru reversed. On these two ends are only a few souls. The very lowliest souls find it difficult to locate a new body, and the very highest souls also find it difficult to locate a new body. Those in the middle have hardly any delay. Here one has not even quite died, and there a new journey has begun. There are reasons. The reason is that for the ordinary, mediocre, middle-range souls, suitable wombs are always available.

I want to tell you that the moment a person dies, immediately hundreds of couples—hundreds of pairs—appear before him making love. And toward whichever pair he feels drawn, into that womb he enters. But very high souls cannot enter an ordinary womb. They need an extraordinary womb where extraordinary possibilities of personality can be expressed. So the higher souls have to wait. The lowest souls also have to wait, because even for them a womb of their “measure”—that is, extremely unfit—does not easily appear; that too is not ordinary. Thus both the superior and the inferior must wait. The ordinary takes birth at once; for them there is no difficulty. For them wombs are always available in the marketplace. They are immediately drawn to some womb.

This morning I spoke about the bardo. In the bardo process, the dying person is also told: Now you will see hundreds of couples engaging in sex. Think a little, pause a little, linger a little before entering a womb. Do not be in a hurry. Wait—wait a bit! Enter a womb after a little deliberation. Do not rush in all at once.

As when a man goes to the market to buy something: he walks into the very first shop; whatever is hanging in the showroom catches him and he buys it. But a wise customer will look at ten shops, turn things over, compare, haggle, search and inquire, and only then decide. The foolish one quickly goes for the first thing that strikes his eye.

So in the bardo process, the dying person is told: Be alert! Do not hurry. Do not hurry. Search, reflect, consider—do not hurry. Because countless people are continually engaged in intercourse; hundreds of couples appear clearly before him. And the pair that attracts him is precisely the pair capable of providing a womb suitable to him.

Thus the superior and the inferior souls wait. They must wait until a womb befitting them appears. The inferior soul does not find a womb low enough where it can fulfill its possibilities; the superior soul also does not find one.

The inferior souls that are held back we call pretas—ghosts. And the superior souls that are held back we call devas—deities. Deva means those superior souls who have paused. Preta, bhuta—ghost—means those souls who, being inferior, have paused. For the ordinary people, wombs are continuously available. He dies and immediately enters. Not even a moment’s delay—no delay at all. Here it is not yet finished, and there he begins to enter.

That is also possible. Because those souls who do not get a body begin to suffer greatly without one. Base souls suffer intensely without a body. Noble souls become extremely blissful without a body. This difference should be kept in mind. A noble soul continually experiences the body, in one form or another, as a bondage, and wants to become so light that even the burden of the body does not remain. Ultimately it wants to be free even of the body, because the body too seems like a prison. In the end it feels that the body makes one do certain acts that are not worth doing. Therefore, it is not much attached to the body. A base soul cannot live even a moment without a body, because all its juice, all its pleasure, is tied to the body.

Some joys can be had without a body. For example, consider a thinker: the joy of thinking is available even without the body, because thought has no relation to the body. So if a thinker’s soul wanders and does not get a body, that soul feels no urgency to take a body, because the joy of thinking can still be enjoyed. But suppose a man takes delight in eating; the relish of eating is impossible without a body. Then his very life-breath begins to writhe, wondering how to enter somewhere. And if a suitable womb is not found, then he may enter the body of someone with a weak soul—by a weak soul I mean a soul that is not the master of its body—he can enter that body in that weak soul’s state of fear.

And remember, fear has a very deep meaning. Fear means that which contracts. When you are afraid, you contract. When you are elated, you expand. When a person is afraid, his soul contracts, and a great deal of space in his body is left open where another soul can enter. Not just one—many souls can enter at once. Therefore, in a state of fear, some soul can enter a body. And the sole reason for doing so is this: its appetites are bound to the body; it tries to satisfy them by entering another’s body. This is entirely possible; there are complete facts; this is a total reality. Which means, first, that a frightened person is always in danger. The fearful one may be in danger because he is in a shrunken state. He is living in one room of his own house; the remaining rooms lie empty. Others can become guests in those empty rooms.

Sometimes noble souls also enter a body—sometimes. But their entry happens for very different reasons. Some acts of compassion cannot be done without a body. For example, a house is on fire. No one is going in to save anyone from that fire. A crowd stands gathered outside, but no one has the courage to step into the flames. Then suddenly one man steps forward. Later he says, “I don’t understand under whose power I moved ahead. I myself had no courage.” He goes in, begins to put out the fire, puts it out, brings someone out safely. And that man himself says, “It seems this was not in my hands; someone else made it happen through me.” In such a moment—when for some auspicious deed a person cannot summon courage—a noble soul can also enter. But such incidents are rare.

A base soul is constantly eager for a body. All its appetites are tied to the body. And keep this in mind too: for middling souls there is no hindrance; for them wombs are continuously available.

That is why noble souls sometimes take birth only after hundreds of years. And you will be surprised to know that when noble souls are born, almost the whole earth sees noble souls born together. For instance, Buddha and Mahavira were born in India twenty-five hundred years ago. Both were born in Bihar. At the same time there were six other astounding thinkers in Bihar. Their names have not remained because they did not make disciples. And it was not for lack of stature—they were of the very rank of Buddha and Mahavira. But they showed great courage; they did not make disciples. Among them there was Prabuddha Katyayana, Ajita Kesakambali, Sanjaya Belatthiputta, Makkhali Gosala, and others. At that time, right in Bihar, eight men of the same genius, the same capacity, were born together. And only in Bihar, in that small region, for the whole world. These eight souls had been waiting a long time; and when the opportunity came, it came all at once.

It often happens that there is a chain—of the good as well as of the bad. Around the same time in Greece Socrates was born; a little later Aristotle was born; Plato was born. At the same time in China Confucius was born, Lao Tzu was born, Mencius was born, Chuang Tzu was born. In that period, in the corners of the whole world, some extraordinary people were born all at once; the whole earth was filled with wondrous people. It seems all these people were waiting; their souls were waiting, and an opportunity came and wombs became available. And when the time for wombs becomes available, many wombs become available together. Just as a flower blooms: the season of flowers comes; one flower opens; and you find that a second has opened and a third too. The flowers had been waiting, and they bloomed. Morning comes—the sun they were awaiting rises—and some flowers begin to open, buds break; a flower opens here, a flower opens there. All night the flowers had been waiting; the sun rose and the flowers blossomed.

Exactly so for base souls as well. When on the earth an environment suitable for them arises, then they are born in a chain, all at once. Our age too produced people like Hitler and Stalin and Mao suddenly together. Dangerous men appeared at once—men who must have had to wait for thousands of years. Because men like Stalin or Hitler or Mao cannot be produced quickly.

Stalin alone killed some six million people in Russia—one man alone. And Hitler—one man alone—killed some ten million people. Hitler invented means of killing such as no one on earth had devised. He committed such mass murder as no man had ever done. Timur and Genghis Khan all proved childish. Hitler built gas chambers. He said, “Killing one person at a time is very expensive. If you kill one at a time, bullets are very costly. Killing one by one is costly; burying one by one is costly. Carrying each corpse outside the village is very costly. So how can collective murder be done?”

Even collective killing has methods. You can do it in Ahmedabad or somewhere else, but those methods are very expensive. Killing one by one is very troublesome, very inconvenient, and takes a long time. If you kill one by one, the work cannot get done. You kill one here, and over there another is born. Killing like that brings no benefit.

So Hitler built gas chambers. In a single chamber five thousand people could be made to stand together; by pressing an electric button they could be vaporized at once. Just line up five thousand people, press the button—they are gone. Gone in an instant; after that the hall is empty. They have become gas. Electricity came so intensely from all sides that they became gas. No graves had to be made; no one was stabbed in the chest to spill blood. No one can pin the charge of bloodshed on Hitler. If the God of the old books is in charge, he will find Hitler absolutely innocent. He spilled no one’s blood, stabbed no one; he invented a device that had no description anywhere. He invented a completely new device—the gas chamber—in which a man is made to stand, the heat of electricity is intensified, he becomes vapor at once, turns to air at once, the matter is finished. After that it is difficult even to find any mention of that man, difficult to find a bone, difficult to find that person’s skin. He is gone. For the first time, Hitler—for the first time—sent people up in this manner, as water is heated and turned into steam. Where has the water gone? It is hard to trace. The man vanished like that. By building such gas chambers he blew away an estimated ten million people.

A man like that finds it very hard to get birth any time soon. And it is good that he does not; otherwise there would be great difficulty. Now Hitler will have to wait a long time; it may take a very long time for Hitler to return again. A very difficult matter. Because such a base womb has to become available once again. And what does it mean for a womb to be available? It means that the mother and father—that mother and father’s long lineage—is nourishing wickedness: a long lineage. In a single life no person can generate so much wickedness that his womb becomes worthy of Hitler. How much wickedness can one person do? How many murders can one person commit? To bear a son like Hitler—to have a son like Hitler choose someone as his mother and father—only a tradition of long, harsh cruelty spanning hundreds, thousands, millions of years can be effective. That is, for hundreds and thousands of years people must have been working in slaughterhouses; only then will the breed become capable, the seed such, that a son like Hitler will prefer it and enter it.

Exactly the same is true for a virtuous soul. But for the ordinary soul there is no difficulty; for it, wombs are available every day. Because there is such a crowd of them and so many wombs all around are ready for them; and it has no special demands. Its demands are very ordinary: eating, drinking, making money, sex-pleasure, respect, honor, position, becoming a minister—such common desires. A womb for such desires can be found anywhere, because such ordinary desires are everyone’s. Any mother and father can offer a chance of choice to such a son.

But if someone is to kill ten million people, or someone is to live with such purity that even the pressure of his foot does not fall upon the earth, or someone is to live with so much love that even his love does not cause anyone pain, that his love does not become a burden to anyone—then such souls may have to wait.

On this subject there are one or two more questions; we shall be able to talk about them tomorrow morning. Whatever other questions you have, write them down and give them. Now we shall sit for the night’s meditation.

So understand two or three things. First, I notice that you tend to sit very close together. The result is that each person has to sit carefully lest he fall on someone else. With such careful sitting you will not be able to go deep. Therefore do this first: spread out. Sitting in the dust is not as bad as sitting close. Sit on the dust; there is no harm. Go up to the verandah. But make no noise; move quietly...

Do not talk. You spoil the whole atmosphere again. After an hour of discourse you spoil the entire atmosphere. Move quietly. There is no question of talking while moving. What has moving to do with talking? Use your legs and move.

Yes, and friends who need to leave should feel absolutely free to go; once we begin, no one will leave midway. And friends for tomorrow—if you have changed and come, fine; otherwise depart quietly. Yes, those who must go, go quickly, so that there is space for those who are to sit. And no one will sit or stand here as a spectator; there is no need for spectators here.

Yes, the children who are sitting up there on the steps—please move away from there, sit separately. Sit at a distance. There is no benefit in sitting here like this. Sit at a distance below; do not sit in a bunch. And sitting close is a danger for you too—you will start talking. Move a little away from there.

Yes, those who wish to lie down should quietly lie down right now, so that later you do not fall on someone. Lie down quietly. In a moment it will be dark; fix your place and lie down. And later too, if it feels as if you are going to fall, do not hold yourself back; let go completely and fall.

First thing: close your eyes... close your eyes... close your eyes... let the body relax... let the body become completely relaxed, as if there is no body. Feel that all the energy of the body is moving inward... we are returning inward from the body. We have to draw all our energy inward, summon all our energy inward. So for three minutes I shall give the suggestion that the body is becoming relaxed, becoming relaxed. Experience it just so. Experience it and keep letting the body loose, keep letting go. Slowly it will feel as if the body has gone. And when the body falls or starts to fall, do not stop it; let go completely and let it fall. If it bends forward, let it bend forward; if it falls back, let it fall back. Do not keep any hold on the body from your side. Let go of every hold. This is the first stage. Now I shall give the suggestion for three minutes. Then I shall speak about the breath, then about thoughts. And at the end we shall dissolve for ten minutes into silence.

Feel the body relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... let go, as if the body is not there at all. Drop all your grip. The body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is becoming completely relaxed. Let go; drop all your force upon the body... as if the body has died, no life remains; we have slipped within—how will life remain in the body? We have slipped within; the body has remained like a mere shell.

The body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing more and more... the body has become completely relaxed. Let go... it will feel absolutely as if it has gone, gone, gone. If it falls, let it fall. The body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing... the body is relaxing more and more... the body is relaxing... the body is becoming completely relaxed. As if we have died, as if the body is not there at all... the body has utterly vanished, the body has completely dissolved.

Let the breath also relax. The breath is becoming calm... the breath is becoming calm... feel it: the breath is becoming calm... the breath is becoming calm... the breath is becoming calm... the breath is becoming calm. Feel it: the breath is becoming calm... the breath is becoming calm... the breath is becoming calm... the breath has become calm... the breath has become completely calm. Let go—of the body too, of the breath too. Let go. The breath has become calm.

Thought too is becoming quiet... thought is becoming quiet... thought is becoming quiet... feel it: thought is becoming completely quiet... thought is becoming quiet... thought is becoming quiet... thought is becoming quiet... inwardly feel it: thought is becoming quiet...

The body has become relaxed, the breath has become calm, thoughts have become quiet... within, everything has become a void... we are sinking into this void, sinking, sinking—as if someone keeps falling into a deep well: falling, falling, falling—and keeps on falling... keeps on falling... and does not reach the bottom, keeps on falling. Thus we are falling within into the void... falling within. Let yourself go; drop all holding! Keep sinking into the void, sinking, sinking! Then within only consciousness will remain, lit like a flame—seeing, knowing within—only the seer, the witness.

Now keep only the witness-attitude. Keep watching within. Outside everything has died; the body has become completely dead; the breath has become calm; thoughts have stopped; we are falling within into the void. Keep watching... keep watching... keep watching. As you keep watching, deeper peace and deeper emptiness will appear. In that very watching, I too shall be lost... only a single light, a single flame will remain.

Now for ten minutes I become silent; you dissolve... within... and within... and within! Drop everything; drop holding. Only keep watching. For ten minutes remain in the attitude of the seer, in the attitude of the witness.

The mind is becoming quiet... keep watching... look within... look within. Let only pure witnessing remain within. The mind is becoming quiet. The body will begin to appear lying far away, as if it were someone else’s body lying there. You are moving away from the body, as if you have gone very far from it. The breath is heard very far away, as if someone else were breathing. And go within—still further within... keep watching... keep watching... and the mind descends into the void.
(Silence, solitude, stillness...)
The mind is becoming quiet. Sink deeper, sink deeper... keep watching within... the mind is becoming quiet... the mind is becoming quiet... the mind is becoming quiet... the mind has become utterly quiet.
The body is left far away... as if the body has died... we have withdrawn from the body. Let go, let go completely; do not hold on inside even a little, as if you yourself have died... Let go completely... let go completely... the mind is becoming more and more empty...
(Silence, solitude, stillness...)
The body has been completely dropped. Look within: the body remains lying far away... we have come very far away from the body... the mind has become utterly quiet... Look within: I have utterly dissolved... I have utterly dissolved... what remains is consciousness—only knowing remains, and all else has dissolved...
(Silence, solitude, stillness...)
Slowly take two or four deep breaths... the mind has become utterly quiet. Slowly take two or four deep breaths. Keep watching each breath; the mind will seem still more quiet. Breathe slowly, and keep watching the breath. The breath too will feel separate, it will feel very far from oneself... breathe slowly... see how far the breath is... how separate the breath is.
Slowly take two or four deep breaths... then slowly open your eyes... slowly open your eyes. Let no one get up in a hurry; and if the eyes do not open, do not force them. Then take two or four deep breaths... then slowly open your eyes and, with the eyes open, keep looking outside for one minute... Slowly open your eyes and look outside for one minute... Look outward calmly; become the witness of the outside as well. Then rise slowly, sit up slowly. If you cannot manage to get up, take a few deep breaths and then rise. If even then you cannot get up, remain lying down; do not be frightened, do not be disturbed. Rise slowly. Do not start talking all at once; rise slowly.
The morning meeting will be here at 8:30; our night session is complete.