Man Hi Pooja Man Hi Dhoop #10

Anand Arun, among the many mistakes humanity’s past has been entangled in, the greatest has been this: we divided the inner journey and the outer journey, calling them two separate paths. Inside and outside cannot be split; they are conjoined—there is no way to tear them apart.

Just like your body and your soul: your body is the manifest form of your soul, and your soul the unmanifest power of your body. That is the only difference—manifest and unmanifest—but the two are united. You eat food; it goes into the body, but the soul too is strengthened. You meditate; meditation happens in the soul, yet radiance spreads through the body. They are one.

The Creator and this creation, God and the world, are not separate—they are one. Yet in the past this split happened—and perhaps it had to, because it is by making mistakes that man learns. Without mistakes there is no way to learn. But a colossal mistake it was: we split the inner and the outer. Those who set out on the outer journey we called worldly; those who set out on the inner journey we called religious, spiritual.

But the one who goes inward—if he completely blocks the outer—his inner journey will become bloodless, impotent, incomplete. And incomplete truths are worse than untruths. His journey becomes one-sided. He may become silent, but there will be a deep sadness in his silence.

And so it happened: for centuries your saints became sad. Indifference became their hallmark. Peace they found, but no celebration. Silence came, but not the humming silence that turns into song, not the dancing silence—what they found was the hush of a cremation ground, not the peace of a garden where flowers bloom, fragrance spreads, birds sing.

Yesterday we saw Raidas saying, “You are like clouds gathered in the sky, and I am like a dancing peacock!” Until your meditation dances, something essential is missing in it; your meditation is inert. Anklets must be tied to the feet of meditation—only then does truth become a total experience.

Those who went within turned their eyes away from the outer. They closed in on themselves, fell into a kind of repression. They talked a lot about dropping the ego, but shut themselves inside the very walls of the ego. They spoke endlessly of giving up the “I”—perhaps because that “I” tormented them so; the “Thou” they had turned away from, so only “I, I, I” remained.

So if your saints became Durvasas, quick to anger and cursing, do not be surprised. Where the “I” persists, Durvasa is born. If your sages became skilled at cursing, don’t be surprised. It is shocking that sages should be cursing—over trifles wrecking not just one life, but future births too, and you call them sages! The one who ruins a single life you call a criminal; those who ruin lives upon lives, you call seers! This is great sin. And where does such anger come from? Anger cannot arise without ego. Anger is the child of ego, its offspring, its extension.

They withdrew from the outer on every side, fled from all challenges, shuttered themselves within, became repressed and sickly, cut themselves off from everyone, and then imagined—by cutting off from all, they would connect with God! But God is pervading all. If connecting with God was the aim, you would have connected with all. To the extent you cut yourself off from others, you cut yourself off from God—left alone, one-sided, solitary—only your ego remained. Psychology calls this attitude narcissism, after the Greek tale of Narcissus.

Narcissus was a very handsome youth. He was so beautiful that he was enchanted by his own reflection in a lake. But you can see his trouble: step into the water and the surface ripples, the reflection vanishes; sit by the shore, let the water go still, the reflection returns. He sat there by the lake and died. In his memory they named a plant that grows by rivers and lakes—narcissus. It always bends toward the water, forever gazing at itself in nature’s mirror. Even that plant!

Psychology says: become like Narcissus and you become deranged, ill. And your prevalent approach to the inner journey has been Narcissus-like—close yourself in; you are everything; nothing exists outside you. Close all doors and windows—let no sun, no breeze enter, no moonlight, no starlight; let no sound be heard outside—close the ears, shut the eyes! There are stories of saints gouging out their eyes lest they be attracted by forms, piercing their ears lest music affect them.

These are symptoms of derangement. The natural result was that very few people became interested in such a religion—only those slightly unbalanced found a rationale for their imbalance, because madness began to look spiritual.

This may surprise you, but remember: in Western countries, where religion’s influence has waned, more people become insane. This gives Indian egotists an opening: “See, although we are poor, lacking science, technology, money, food, jobs, clothes, roofs; diseases, famines, floods—yet so few go mad here! Surely the influence of our spirituality!”

The truth is different. Here too as many go mad as in the West, but when someone goes mad here, he throws on the shawl of spirituality. He no longer appears mad; he appears spiritual. In the West that person will be admitted to an asylum; in the East he will be worshiped. Such people are called paramhansas—sitting and eating from the same plate with dogs eating from it too. We call them supreme swans! The West calls them insane, saying they’ve lost reason and discernment, can’t make even small distinctions. They defecate right there and eat right there—yet we call them paramhansas! Nowhere else in the world would such a person be called a paramhansa. In the West he would be called schizophrenic—his personality is fragmented, broken. Two people inhabit him: one defecates, the other eats. If he were one person, this would be impossible. His personality has split into two halves.

And I feel the Western view is closer to the truth in this regard—unless one simply throws on the cloak of spirituality...!

I knew a gentleman who lived next door. People considered him very religious. When I first came to live there, they told me, “An extraordinary man lives next door, very religious!” I said, tell me in detail about his religiosity, because I have known so many “religious” people, and when the details emerge, it is astonishing.

All his fame for religiosity rested on this: when he went to fill water at the tap in the morning, if a woman came into view, he would scrub his vessel again, then rinse, then fill. If another woman appeared, he would scrub again. Sometimes ten times, twenty, thirty! He’d be on his way back with the water, and a woman would be seen again. Women are everywhere. His great renown was: Ah, such celibacy!

Now is this man a celibate—or mad?

I told a woman, “I’ll give you ten rupees; today just shadow him. Your day’s work is simply to keep circling the tap where he fetches water. Don’t let him manage to fill water all day.” Ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty times—and finally a fire lit in him, anger arose: “This woman is deliberately teasing me!” The same woman kept appearing—so he smashed his pot on her head. She had to be taken to the hospital. She told me, “For ten rupees you made me do a costly job!”

I said, don’t worry; at least one man has been freed from his so-called spirituality! The whole neighborhood said, “What kind of man is this! If you want to wash your pot, wash it, but you can’t smash it on someone’s head.”

He had never been pushed to the point where Durvasa appears, because usually a woman passing by only meant another wash—and he derived prestige from it, so it pleased him. On days no woman passed, he probably missed it. But everything has a limit.

I went to him and said, “Don’t be angry with the woman—if you must be angry, be angry with me. I arranged it to see what your spirituality is made of. If the sight of a woman makes your water impure, your pot impure—tell me, does the pot see? If anything is defiled by seeing a woman, you should bathe yourself, why scrub the pot? The poor pot doesn’t have eyes! And why change the water—what is water’s fault? And the river from which this water comes—women bathe there; not only women, buffaloes frolic there. And this pipe you draw water from, it runs through drains and all manner of filth—yet that’s fine!

“And tell me, when you were born, were you born from a woman or a man? Did you spend nine months in your mother’s womb? What did you do there? How did you manage nine months? Then you grew up drinking your mother’s milk—how will you purify that? Go to the hospital and have your entire blood replaced. Drain it all and get new blood. But be careful—the new blood must be from someone not born of a woman! Ideally, get rid of blood altogether and fill yourself with water—pure Ganges water!”

He had such prestige. After I moved there, within days he left the area. I told him, “You cannot run. Wherever you go, I will come.” He left the village. No one knows where he went. Likely he became a paramhansa elsewhere.

Whom have you been calling sadhus and saints all this time—escapees, deserters? And only because we split the outer and the inner. On one side, a hollow religious type was produced, almost deranged; on the other, the hedonist—also deranged—thinking, “I am engaged in the outer, how can I go within!” So he doesn’t even attempt the inner. And he fears that if he goes within, he’ll have to break his entire outer setup. He doesn’t want to—too many vested interests.

Your so-called religion gave some people inner derangement, and trapped others outside. I want to shatter this whole net. That is why the worldly will be angry with me and the religious will be angry too. My proclamation is: the inner and the outer are united; they cannot be separated. Do not try to separate them—for only together do they form the whole truth.

So, Arun, live as breath lives—sometimes flowing in, sometimes flowing out. If someone says, “Once the breath goes in, we won’t let it go out—we’ll hoard it inside! Why let our inner wealth escape?” Then hold your nose and stop your breath—you won’t live long. Or, “The breath that went out is corrupt—it goes out again and again; why take it back in? Fold our hands and refuse it!” You’ll die all the same.

You never make such distinctions with breath; neither have your sannyasins, nor your rishis. In-breath and out-breath are two aspects of respiration. Breath remains fresh the more it moves in and out: what is life-giving is taken in; what is waste is expelled; then purified outside, it returns within. This balance of inhalation and exhalation—such a balance is needed in life.

I understand your difficulty. You say that when you go within, there sprout shoots of silence and peace that are crushed in the outer scramble.

No worry—let them be crushed. Once, twice they’ll be trampled; gradually they will grow strong. This is how strength is built. This is the way of push-ups and squats. In the same way your meditation will become robust. Then the outer rush will not crush your sprouts; instead you’ll witness a miracle: going out will become fertilizer for them.

And you say that when you go out, the sickness and politics you practice become obstacles when you go within.

They need not be obstacles. They become so only because you do not yet understand meditation correctly; you have not yet grown the witness. Live in the outer world as a witness. Then habits will not pursue you. You forget the witnessing; that is why the disturbances and squabbles of the outside drift within.

This is why the past made this mistake. People saw: if we engage outside, the inner gets disturbed; if we guard inner peace, we fear going out lest it be destroyed. So they split: a few will stay inside—the rishis and seers; most must remain outside, because most have to! The rishis need food—where will it come from if all become rishis?

Just consider: if everyone became a Mahavira, all standing naked—whom would you beg from? Who would call out, “Master, today please accept food from our home!” To keep even one Mahavira alive, at least ten people must be tangled in the outer. You flee the outer, but you depend on those who live there! And those who live outside keep coming to Mahavira’s feet, to Buddha’s feet, to hear a little inner voice. They too are not fulfilled; something is missing there.

The worldly seeks satsang. Why? He feels he is missing something. There is wealth, position, prestige—but no self-knowing, no inner experience; no inner music, no light. So he goes to sit with those who have found the inner light—or at least those he believes have. And those who have gone within go seeking those engaged in outer work, for they too need food, a roof, a place to rest. Each depends on the other; neither is free of the other.

Instead of doing this, why not master both within yourself? This is my way. Why depend on others? Suppose, if living in the world is a sin, then to eat the food of those living in sin is also a sin. If stealing is sin and a thief offers donations to Mahavira, Mahavira should refuse: “Theft is a sin; how can I accept this?” And it may be the thief stole precisely to donate, for he too wants the pleasure of giving to Mahavira, wants fame: “Let people know I too am a donor!” Then who is responsible for his theft? Who is partner in the crime?

A well-known sadhu once came to me. He is famous in the Himalayas. He does not touch money—that is the chief reason for his fame. Strange are such reputations! Where derangements are revered, see what brings renown. He doesn’t touch money. I asked, “Why not?” He said, “It is dust.” I said, “But you touch dust happily! If money is dust, touch it. What harm is there in touching dust? Your not touching it shows it isn’t dust.”

He was in difficulty, scratching his head. I said, “You have no objection to touching earth. You sit on it, walk on it. What is the objection to touching money? After all, it’s metal—and now mostly paper! Don’t you touch books? Don’t you touch the Gita?”

He said, “Why wouldn’t I touch the Gita!” I said, “Banknotes are printed on better paper, with better ink. Why the objection? Is it only because ‘ten rupees’ is written there? I can write ‘ten rupees’ on a blank paper—will you touch that?”

He said, “What odd things you say!”

I told him, “There’s a meditation tomorrow morning—please come.”

He said, “That is a little difficult. I told you I don’t touch money, so I have to depend on a man. If he comes with me, I can come—he keeps the money and pays the taxi. He can’t come tomorrow; he has to go to court.”

I said, “People offer you money—where does it go?” He said, “That man keeps it.” I said, “Think over this little trick! You must keep a man; he keeps your money for you. Like rich men keep an accountant—this is your cashier. And what a slavery! You want to come, but you cannot, because the cashier has to go to court. What is wrong with your own pocket? You put your hand in his pocket and take it out; it’s his pocket, his hand, but he draws it for you. The money is offered to you, but he holds it. What salary do you pay him?”

At first he dodged. I said, “Don’t lie to me—or you’ll suffer for lifetimes. Tell the truth.”

He said, “What can I hide from you! I must pay him three hundred rupees a month—and still remain dependent on him!”

What a game is this! But his fame rests on not touching money.

Acharya Vinoba Bhave—if you show him a banknote, he quickly closes his eyes. There must be great juice in the note! Why so much? Does the eye drool? What is the matter? It’s a kind of disorder. Show some people a banknote and they shut their eyes at once. The note seems to cast a powerful spell! And he doesn’t close his eyes on seeing anything else—only a banknote. This is a great fear of money. Some morbid inner attachment remains.

Arun, the basic reason is this: we split the outer and the inner into two halves. From this came great mischief. False, hypocritical sadhus were produced, and poor, defeated hedonists were produced. Hedonists think, “What can we do? We are worldly. Let us at least serve sadhus and renunciates—that much merit is enough. Perhaps in a future birth, by God’s grace and the fruit of our merit, we’ll go on the inner journey; but for now we are on the outer; we must complete it; we cannot go within now.”

They got an excuse to avoid the inner; and those who went inner have a eunuch-like inner journey because they must depend on those who go outer. Why create such a mess? Why not live a straightforward life? Earn your bread—earn it. But don’t get trapped by the habits of market and office. When you close the shop, leave those habits locked there; don’t bring them home. When you return from the office, return empty. At home, drown in love, drown in meditation. What else does “home” mean? If you come home with the office in your head, then why come home at all? Better to stay at the office. If you arrive home carrying the office in your head, you haven’t come home.

You say this is your difficulty: outside habits seize you.

Habits don’t seize you—you seize them. You start it first.

A river was in flood—monsoon’s first flood. Mulla Nasruddin and others stood on the bank watching the waters rise. Someone shouted, “Look, a blanket is floating by!” Mulla felt greedy. Without thinking, he jumped in. It wasn’t far, just a few yards. He grabbed the blanket, then shouted, “Help!” People on the bank said, “What is there to help? If you can’t pull the blanket in, let it go.” He said, “Now it’s difficult. It’s a bear, not a blanket. Now it has grabbed me too.”

You grab habits first—remember, you always grab them first. Then sometimes they turn out to be bears. Its back looked like a nice furry blanket. It was a live bear, floating by. Now the trouble—now he shouted for help.

You grab habits; then you practice them; after much practice, they grab you.

Then you ask: how to be free?

Don’t grab habits. Use them. Use the mind, the intellect, logic, mathematics—but use them and set them aside. There is no need to remain encircled by them 24 hours a day. Then at home, dive into meditation, into love; dance, sing, celebrate. But don’t get grabbed by celebration, peace, joy, love either—otherwise you’ll arrive at the office dancing and they’ll call the police! For if you cry at the office, they might forgive you; if you laugh, they cannot. Those who are so filled with sorrow cannot forgive a joyous person.

Use a little understanding; this is called discernment. At home, live in your own delight. The office is the office—it has its own world; live there according to that world.

On the road, the rule may be to keep to the left. It is not an eternal rule—you won’t be sent to hell for keeping right. But you will end up under a bus. It is not a sin to keep right; no scripture says so. In America people keep right, in England and India people keep left. It’s custom.

I heard that Mulla Nasruddin was preparing to go to America. After many days, news arrived he was in hospital—several fractures! I went to see him. Bandages everywhere—face, skull, arms, legs. I asked, “What happened, Nasruddin?” He said, “To hell with America!” I asked, “What’s America got to do with this? You haven’t even gone yet!” He said, “This happened without going. I was practicing—what rules are there? I learned they drive on the right, so I practiced driving on the right. Practiced eating with knife and fork. Everything was fine, but this driving on the right got me into trouble. A bus came along... it’s a lot to be alive!”

I said, “With so many wounds it must hurt.” He said, “Yes—when I laugh.” I asked, “Why do you laugh?” He said, “I laugh thinking what a fool I am. Living peacefully here, I got the craze to go to America. Now I won’t go anywhere. I’ll stay home. Without going, such trouble—what must be happening to people in America!”

But nothing bad is happening there: everyone follows the same rule, so it works. Where all keep left, left is fine; where all keep right, right is fine. But one must follow a rule. These rules are merely formal; they have no eternity, no metaphysical element—they are practical.

So I know, Arun, living among people you will have to practice a little politics—people are full of politics. You’ll have to wear a few masks; if you tell people the plain truth as it is, you’ll be in the hospital—and then it will hurt when you laugh!

On the road you meet someone; inwardly you say, “Oh God, save me—how did this devil’s face show up first thing in the morning!” But you don’t say that to him; you say, “How fortunate to meet you so early! I’ve been longing to see you. Your darshan is so rare!” And inside you keep praying, “Lord, get me through these twenty-four hours somehow! Such ill omen in the morning!” Keep the inside inside, the outside outside.

I know in the outer life there are masks and politics, because everyone else is full of them. But wear the mask to go out; there is no need to keep it at home—remove it when you arrive. Come home with your real face. That is why there is home.

Make home a temple! This is the essence of my teaching—make home a temple. For that is the abode of love. Light the lamp of worship there! Let incense burn there! Keep all masks aside there; leave all politics at the door.

But politics goes on with the wife, with the husband, with the children! Even with little children you deceive, tell lies. Then obstacles arise. But the responsibility is yours—not the outer journey’s. It is your delusion, your lack of discernment. As you enter home, drop all nets and entanglements at the door—where you remove your shoes, remove all this too. At home, be a simple human. When you go out, put on shoes and masks again. See it as a play. And if you move between outside and inside as a play, witnessing is born.

I call that witnessing sannyas. Sannyas is neither the inner journey nor the outer—rather, the awakening of the witness between the two. Go within and go without… yet remain separate, untouched by both, free of both, with no identification. That witnessing I call sannyas.

Truth is the sun, truth too the dark, enchanting clouds;
truth is the obstruction between, truth you and I as well;
and yet this feeling of a shared abode descends—
because both are true: the darkness and the light.
I am with you, beloved—and yet alone!

Cultivate this—
I am with you, beloved—and yet alone!
Because both are true: the darkness and the light.

The inner world is true—just as true as the outer world, not a bit more or less. They are two faces of the same coin, two halves of the same circle. Half the moon is within, half without; together they make the full moon. And the one in whose life the full moon rises is free.

I am giving sannyas a new meaning, a new gesture. That is why you face difficulty—you forget, you get tangled in the old definition of sannyas.

After a long time,
today the south wind of spring is blowing again!
The hem of my kurta
and the pallu of your sari
flutter together,
and the mind, who knows
to which unknown directions
drifts away—
after a long time!
After a long time,
today the sky opens again;
a sunbeam glistens,
the prisoner in the dark room—
my feeling—
sprouts wings and flies,
after a long time!
After a long time,
today the palash blooms again;
from silk-cotton boughs embers fall;
from amaltas leaves my words
go seeking meaning,
flying from earth to sky—
after a long time,
today the south wind of spring is blowing again!

I am bringing a new breeze. I am not treading any worn-out groove, any old routine. I am asking you to do what has never been done before. So there will be difficulty—difficulty in understanding, and even more in doing. But if you can, we may bring a new human being to birth on this earth—and it is urgently needed. Without a new human being, the earth has no future. The past has rotted. What we did in the past did not work. Buddhas came, Alexanders came; Genghis Khan, Tamerlane; Mahavira came, Jesus came—yet man did not become soul-full. Lamps burned here and there, but mostly it was a night of new moon.

Now the moment has come that unless we give birth to an entirely new, whole human being, the earth has no future. My experiment in sannyas is an effort to give birth to that new human. That is why old sannyasins are angry with me—Jain, Hindu, Muslim, Christian—all are upset. Their anger is that I am breaking their rut, their tradition.

And if only they were angry, it would be no surprise; worldly people are angry too, because I am breaking their rut as well. I am bringing sannyasins into the world.

I want to break all boundaries, break the dams. I want man to become capable of living both inwardly and outwardly. Let him be as skillful with matter and science as he is with the soul and religion. No need to choose. This is not a choice between God and the world.

The old formula was: Brahman is truth, the world is illusion. Thus sannyasins said God is true and the world false. The worldly believed the world true and God false. They went to temples and mosques, did worship and recitation, but their whole life said otherwise; their behavior proclaimed that such things are for saying—reality is that the world is true. Their behavior declared the world’s truth and proved God false.

I tell you: Brahman is true and the world is true. It must be so—how can falsehood arise out of truth? The world is born of Brahman—how can false arise from the real? And it is in this world that Brahman is realized—how can truth be experienced in the false? The world arises from Brahman, and in the world Brahman is experienced. They are two faces of one coin.

So many will be angry with me. And it will be complex to understand me. More than understanding, when you bring this into your life, many obstacles will arise. But they must be faced. Without them you will not be baked, not become mature.

I will finger the tresses of the seasons long,
untie each knot, season after season;
each knot of life must be loosened!
I will finger the tresses of the seasons long,
untie each knot, season after season.
Perhaps there is a fragrance of primal flowers somewhere,
a dim picture of acacias on the shore;
those old rules whose peevish gaze
keeps nagging—let them be forgotten.

I will gather the hay of dew for long,
weigh drop by drop over lifetimes;
perhaps a cadence like a shard of moon,
perhaps a cramped little heart I might find.
Those eyelashes at which I endlessly gaze—
somewhere the sun lies like a sooty bar.

I will jostle the pan of restraint for long,
and I will risk each danger again and again.

Take as many risks as you can—each one is worth taking! And the sannyas I give you is the greatest risk in this world: to live inside and outside together. It is the greatest challenge to your intelligence. But it is precisely such challenge that will sharpen your being, bring luster to your soul. Centuries of rust can fall away only through such challenge—there is no other way.

I invite you onto a thorn-strewn path, to a long journey. Peaks are to be climbed! Everest is to be touched! Difficulties will come, but make each difficulty a step. I am teaching you that art.

As your meditation deepens, you will find living both inside and outside becomes a joy; both become equal; you become the third—free of both, transcending both. Sometimes you will see yourself in the outer world of acting; sometimes in the inner realm of supreme silence. Yet you will know: I am neither outside nor inside—I am both, and beyond both.

The third question:

Jagdish Dave, they only appear opposed—they are not. On the contrary, they are allies, complements. Yes, if you try to practice both at once you may feel blocked. Cultivate one, and the other will come on its own.

Think of many paths leading to the summit of a mountain. They are not opposed, because they all reach the same peak; therefore, they cooperate. But don’t try to walk two paths simultaneously, otherwise you will never reach the summit. You will run two steps on one path, then run back to take two steps on the other, then return again—and this coming and going will keep you exactly where you are. You won’t get anywhere; you won’t even finish the ABC of the journey. You’ll remain stuck.

So I say: choose either one. If you choose witnessing, one day you will find that as witnessing grows dense, absorption begins to arise—like a fragrance from witnessing. And then a wondrous state appears: both witness and absorbed! Like the lotus in water and the water in the lotus—submerged, yet not submerged. In the water, yet untouched by the water.

In the early morning you have seen dew drops on lotus leaves, shining like pearls—yet they do not wet the leaf. They are on the leaf—and yet somehow not on it; and the leaf is on the water—and yet not quite. Whether it is lotus in water or water in lotus, both remain untouched. In just this way, absorption arises within witnessing, and still you remain a witness.

But this is a matter of experience; I cannot really explain it to you. If you try to understand it conceptually, it will sound contradictory: you will say, “How can both be?” And I understand your point. If you practice witnessing, it seems absorption would be impossible, because absorption means: drown, forget yourself completely. Whereas witnessing means: remember yourself, be aware of yourself—do not forget, not even for a moment; let right remembrance, right awareness, remain.

Witnessing is the path of the meditator—of Mahavira, Buddha, Lao Tzu. The very essence of the Zen way is witnessing. Yet absorption comes, and it comes deeply—but at the end. When the path is complete, when you are steady in witnessing, suddenly you discover a subtle fragrance rising—the fragrance of absorption.

Or practice absorption. That is the lover’s path, the devotee’s path—of Meera, Chaitanya, Raidas. Dive! In the beginning you may worry, “What will happen to the witness?” Don’t be afraid. Keep diving deeper—on the day you are utterly drowned and the I-sense disappears, in that very moment the witness will surface. But then it comes like a fragrance.

How is this possible—this wonder, this seeming paradox? Let me give you the arithmetic behind it. For now you will only hear it; one day, when you experience it, you will understand. The arithmetic is simple: the disappearance of the I. In witnessing the I dissolves, and in absorption the I dissolves. The processes differ, but in both states the I, the ego, is gone—and that is the only obstruction.

As you become a witness, you will be amazed: when you began it felt, “I am the witness.” But as witnessing grows dense it feels, “I am melting, flowing, evaporating, turning into vapor.” When witnessing is complete you suddenly find: witnessing is, but there is no “I.” There is awareness within, but no sense of I. Therefore absorption arrives. When there is no I, how can you remain unabsorbed? The I alone was stopping you, it was the wall. When the wall falls, the sky enters. The courtyard wall falls and the courtyard becomes sky. That is absorption!

And if you begin with absorption, at first it feels, “I am becoming absorbed. Ah, how I am descending into rapture!” But so long as the I is there, what absorption is there? You are only persuading yourself. The I will return again and again. Slowly, as absorption deepens, the I melts. Then absorption remains—you are drowned, but there is no one left who is drowned. The I-sense is gone. And where the I-sense is gone, witnessing is born; it cannot but be.

Therefore, Jagdish Dave, choose one of the two and start. And remember, this is not an intellectual question; it is existential. The secret opens only through experience; it has always opened that way. Say what you like, explain as you wish—this is not a matter of explanation. Choose whichever is dear to you. Know yourself a little; observe your inclinations, your temperament. And whichever attracts you… If witnessing delights you, good; if absorption delights you, good. Witnessing is the path of Buddha, Mahavira, Lao Tzu—the Zen path, the path of meditation.

The word “Zen” comes from “dhyana.” Buddha did not speak Sanskrit, so he did not use the word “dhyana.” He spoke Pali. In Pali it is “jhāna.” When Buddhist monks reached China, they took the word “jhāna” with them. Chinese, lacking an alphabet and having no exact sound for “jh,” wrote the closest they could: “Ch’an.” From China it went to Japan. The Japanese, taking this great path from China, faced a difficulty: in their language, written as “jhāna,” it would be read “Zen.” And so in Japan it became “Zen.” But it is nothing but a transformation of “dhyana,” meditation. English too lacks many sounds—like our aspirated “dh.” We have fifty-two letters; English works with twenty-six—half do the job.

So either take the Zen way—the path of meditation. There the sole method is to be a witness. Absorption arrives.

There is a story about a Zen monk who, upon attaining Buddhahood, tucked a wine bottle under his arm and went to the marketplace. What will a Zen monk not do! That is why I love them; I get along with them. What a lovable man he must have been! Enlightened, he carried a wine bottle into the market.

People said, “You—and a wine bottle! You have attained Buddhahood; a bottle doesn’t befit you.”

He said, “I must keep this bottle with me always to give you the news: when one becomes a perfect witness, a kind of intoxication arises like that of wine. This bottle is not for drinking; it is to remind you. I set out with witnessing and arrived at absorption—such absorption as you have known only through wine. I thought I was going to the temple; I reached the tavern!”

It is a lovely point. All his life he kept that bottle with him. Perhaps it held nothing but water. But in a Zen monk’s hand, even water becomes wine.

There is a sweet story about Jesus: when he came to the seashore, he turned the whole sea into wine. The clergy cannot explain it. There is no one more muddleheaded than priests, because they have no experience. Jesus went even further—why bother with a bottle? He turned the entire sea into wine!

For one who attains meditation, the whole existence becomes inebriating; the whole existence turns to wine.

A Christian priest was speaking with me. I asked, “How do you explain this?”

He dropped his gaze. “I’m always embarrassed when someone asks. It doesn’t seem right. Wine isn’t a good thing. Why would Jesus turn the sea into wine?”

I told him about an exam in an English school—a Bible class. The teacher gave a prompt: “Write an essay on how Jesus, at the seashore, turned the whole sea into wine.”

One child wrote his answer in a minute and stood up. The teacher said, “So quickly! This is such a difficult question that great scholars have wrestled for centuries and failed to solve it. Let me see your answer!”

He did not know who that child was, or what his future would be. The child had written a single sentence: “The sea saw her Master—and blushed!” The sea beheld her Beloved and turned rosy. No wine at all! That story was created to say this. That child later became Byron—the great English poet. In a single line he offered the interpretation the learned could not.

In English the sea is feminine, so it fits even better: the sea saw her Lord, her Lover—like a beloved who, seeing her lover, lowers her head and blushes; and the longer the waiting, the deeper the blush. Once in centuries a Jesus walks the earth! One sentence says it all.

This is my understanding too. Jesus did not turn the sea into wine; the whole existence became wine—ecstasy spread.

Walk the path of witnessing, and one day such divine intoxication will pervade: wine in every ripple of the breeze; wine in every ray of the sun; wine in every color of the flower.

And if the path of absorption appeals to you—of Meera, Kabir, Raidas—if you feel drawn to dive, to be absorbed, to dance and sing and lose yourself; if you like the way of the Sufis and the Bauls…

That is the way of the madly-in-love; hence the name Baul—in Bengal the lovers-devotees are called Bauls, from “bawla,” mad. Such abandon—dancing, singing! They need little—an ektara and a small drum, that is enough. No temple, no image, no ritual. The ektara will sound, the drum will beat, and the Baul will dance—and his dance is his meditation. His dance is his worship. “The mind itself is the worship, the mind itself the incense.” Everything happens within him. Choose the path of absorption; one day you will become a witness.

But do not attempt to walk both paths together; that will divide you, obstruct you. You may reach nowhere and get tangled in great confusion and contradiction.

The last question:

Youth is arriving, youth is arriving;
a blazing sun is arriving.
The garden breezes are at their frolic—
a revolution is arriving anew.
Is that the sun in the East or in the tavern?
Someone is arriving with a goblet of wine.
Is it a rainbow, or from the court of the sky
a minstrel is arriving, lifting his rebab?
Is a lotus blooming, or from the garden’s pool
a rising sun is arriving?

I have brought wine for you! I have brought a song for you! Drink and sing! To drown you in wine, to soak you in songs!... I have no eagerness to give you sermons. I am not a preacher—I am a madman. Join me, and you too will go mad. I want to save you from the preachers; they are the ones who have deformed you.

Your stubbornness made me drink even more, sir—
O Sheikh, such excessive admonition is itself harmful.

The preachers kept explaining: don’t do this, don’t do that. And whatever they kept forbidding, people only did more and more of it. Because the more one is told “don’t,” the more it feels there must be something there worth doing. In prohibition there is an invitation. So I don’t tell you: don’t do this, don’t do that. I say: as you are, I accept you. If you are acceptable to the Divine, how could you be unacceptable to me! As you are, I accept you. Just as you are, I say: come and drown! I even say to the preachers: you too, come and drown!

If you drink, O Sheikh, you’ll keep a little warmth—
lest the breezes of heaven chill you cold.

This is my short message. Learn just the art of drinking—drink love, drink meditation, drink the Divine! And the Divine is available unconditionally. There is no requirement that you first acquire such-and-such worthiness, and only then the Divine will be available. You are; you are alive—that much qualification is enough. Simply come alive—that is my message. For among you are many who are dead; who died long ago and now go on moving about as dead. In them I want to awaken once again the resonance of life. I want to bring a revolution in them, an inner revolution—so that within them awareness arises anew that life is a supreme opportunity. Supreme, because in it the Divine can be found. Do not go to Kaaba, do not go to Kashi.
The mind itself is worship, the mind itself is incense!
That is all for today.