Nahin Ram Bin Thaon #10

The more balance there is in life, the greater the possibility of the auspicious. The more imbalance there is, the more certain the misery. Seen deeply, imbalance itself is suffering; balance is happiness. And balance is the greatest art. That is why in this country we have called balance sanyam.

Sanyam means: to settle exactly between two opposites, to find the middle between two extremes. The habit of the mind is to move toward excess, toward the extreme. The mind always wants to go from one corner to the other; it does not want to stop in the middle.

If you are violent, the mind will have you be utterly violent; and when you get bored with violence, it will drag you to the opposite extreme. One extreme of violence is to annihilate the other. The other extreme of violence is to get busy annihilating yourself. First you were killing others; then you start killing yourself—but you will not stop in the middle.

Buddha has said: whenever a sensualist gets fed up with indulgence, he instantly becomes an ascetic. Earlier, if he was mad for the pleasures of the body, now he becomes eager to torment the body. Earlier, if he walked he wanted flower-strewn paths; now he lays thorns with his own hands. Earlier, if he was interested in taste, now he won’t eat until he has made food tasteless. Earlier, if he loved possessions, now he stands naked.

The mind swings from one extreme to the other, like a clock’s pendulum that moves from one side to the other and does not rest in the middle. If it stopped in the middle, the clock would stop. The clock’s motion is in the pendulum’s going from one end to the other. And when the pendulum swings left, you see it going left; but those who look deeply will also see that in going left it is gathering the energy, the momentum, to go right. While moving left it is preparing to go right. And the farther it goes left, the bigger a leap it will take to the right. When it goes right, it gathers power to go left.

This is a formula worth understanding, because whenever you move toward love you accumulate the energy for hate. When you move toward indulgence, you gather the energy for yoga. And when your mind moves toward stealing, on the opposite side you are also preparing to be non-stealing. When you give in charity, you also become ready to exploit. Whoever sees deeply will see that the mind, by its very nature, keeps oscillating between opposites—one extreme to the other.

As long as the mind is swinging, you will remain in misery. Your miseries will change, that’s all. The sensualist suffers; the renunciate also suffers. The sensualist cannot see the renunciate’s misery; to him the renunciate appears full of bliss. The renunciate sees what pleasures the sensualist might have.

Sannyasins come to me, and worldly people come too. The worldly person always looks at the sannyasin with greedy eyes—as if he lives in great bliss! I know sannyasins who have been in renunciation for thirty, forty, fifty years, who have left everything. You have no idea of their misery. There is jealousy in their hearts toward you. They think worldly people are really enjoying, really indulging.

An old sannyasin—around seventy—told me he took initiation fifty years ago, left all and became a renunciate. Now he can’t even admit to anyone that for fifty years one thought has stayed with him: perhaps I made a mistake; perhaps I left the world without knowing it, and there might have been happiness there. And here no happiness has been found. Set out to seek God—lost the world from the hand, and not a footfall of God is heard.

You will not understand this sannyasin’s suffering. He renounced in hope; the hope did not fulfill. He made a bargain. What was in hand is gone; what was to come has not come. Life is ebbing—seventy years old—and it seems he has lost both ways. Neither the world nor sannyas—neither maya nor Ram. Such an echo in his heart is only natural.

It is the nature of the mind to see misery where you are, and happiness where you are not. The dweller of a hut sees happiness in palaces; but those who have lived in palaces have said that they found happiness only after leaving the palace.

Buddha and Mahavira were princes. They left palaces, renounced. Surely they saw something in the hut that the hut-dweller does not see. The opposite extreme keeps beckoning. And to go to the opposite extreme is to keep the mind’s pendulum moving.

After looking into many people’s past lives, an unusual insight became clear to me: those who were sannyasins in their past lives become supreme sensualists in this life; and those who were corrupt sensualists in their past lives become sannyasins in this life. It seems surprising. Logically, it should be the other way. If in the last life you were a sannyasin, then in this life you should become an even greater sannyasin—so logic says. But the reality is the opposite. Whenever I see a great sensualist and look into his past, it turns out he has already touched the extreme of renunciation; now, in this life, he is touching the other extreme.

Normally, you might think whoever was a man in the past life will be a man again; whoever was a woman will be a woman. But it doesn’t happen so. Often the one who was a man becomes a woman in this life, and the one who is a woman now was a man before.

If you were a woman in your past life, you carried the hope that men have the pleasures and women only the pains. So you aspired to be a man. But deep down the man too is filled with jealousy toward you, whether he says so or not. Women say it openly—their accounting is cleaner—that they don’t want to be women, may God make them men. A man cannot say it; people would laugh, for this is a man’s world.

Yet deep inside, a man is jealous of the woman. He has neither that beauty nor that graceful body, nor does he seem to have the capacity for enjoyment that a woman has. A woman is less dissatisfied; a man is more dissatisfied. A woman is content with little; a man is not content however much he gets. A woman’s demand is not vast; her small home, her small courtyard becomes her kingdom. A man’s demand is so enormous that even an empire like Alexander’s leaves his courtyard incomplete. Women are less mad; men are more mad. Women commit suicide less; men more. Women remain healthier; men fall ill more.

It is only men’s notion that men are stronger than women—only a notion. Ask physicians; they will say women are stronger. Men’s strength is less; it only looks more. That’s why you see more widows than widowers—men depart earlier. Across the earth, women live on average four years longer than men. If you live to seventy, your wife’s likelihood is seventy-four. She will fall ill less and remain healthier. She has a greater capacity for resistance.

Think a little: could a man carry a pregnancy for nine months? Impossible; his body lacks that capacity. It is only the woman’s capacity to carry the burden of a new life for nine months. And even then pregnancy doesn’t end—it only moves outside. Then she carries the child outside.

So, in a man too jealousy arises; somewhere in the unconscious he wants to be a woman. Hence the sexual organs often change across births. The same is true of every other aspect of life.

The mind can live only by tottering; if it becomes balanced, the mind is lost. Where the mind is lost, there is samadhi. Now, to your question.

Children certainly must be trained in logic, in mathematics. Their brains should be clear, intelligent, capable. Their talent should grow. Children cannot be left like animals.

There is something in an animal’s life, but much is missing. Animals have an innocence, but it is an innocence of stupidity, not of saintliness. They have simplicity, but it is a simplicity of helplessness, not of attainment. Animals are simple because they cannot be cunning. A saint’s simplicity is not because he cannot be cunning—he can be, but he is not. That is his own decision. And whatever is your own decision gives your life its soul. Animals have a soul, but not in the sense that humans have; because a human being chooses.

If you could not possibly be a thief, what value is your honesty? If you could not possibly be angry, what meaning is your compassion? You can do the opposite and yet you do not. That decision of not-doing polishes your soul, hones it, brings a radiance.

So we don’t want the innocence of animals; we want the innocence of sages.

A child must be trained to know the entire cunningness of man, to be acquainted with the whole troublesome world of humans, to pass through that experience. But if that is all you do, you will produce an imbalanced personality. The intellect will be sharp; the heart will be utterly empty. Mathematics will be clear; love will be blurred. He will be able to erase, but not to create. He will be able to win, but not to lose.

And one who can only win is not a complete human being. There are dimensions of life that open only to the one who can lose. The world belongs to those who win; God belongs to the one who also knows how to lose. Wealth goes to the winner; love goes to the one who can lose. Losing has its own victory.

But logic and mathematics teach only winning; losing is taught by meditation. Logic and mathematics teach the art of how to increase possessions in the world, how to enlarge wealth and empire. Meditation is the art of how the kingdom of the soul grows, how consciousness expands until it covers the whole sky.

If children are taught only mathematics, logic, and intellect, they will be crippled—paralyzed, as if one limb works and the other does not. There will be no wholeness in their lives; they will not be total. One leg will always be bound; their life will be a limping race. Since others too are limping, it doesn’t get noticed. Children have a game—a three-legged race—where one leg is tied to another’s and you must run on one. Almost our entire social arrangement is such a limping race. Then if we lose, break, are destroyed, it is no surprise.

Meditation is the second leg. So as you educate the child’s intellect, educate his meditation as well. As he understands science, let him understand religion. As his mind is refined, let light arise in his heart. Not only should he know; he should be. Not only should his things increase; he should increase. Not only outward expansion; inward depth as well. Like a tree rises toward the sky while its roots go inward; and the deeper the roots go, the higher the tree can rise.

You are trees without roots. You only go outward and upward; you have no means to go inward. That is why you tremble at every moment. A slight gust of wind and you panic—for you have no roots.

If you had roots that touched the nethermost depths, you would invite storms. And when the storm came, your joy would know no bounds. That would be your moment of celebration; you would dance. For the storm challenges you, and only against the background of challenge do you come to know your being in its fullness—before that you do not know. Then you would thank the storm and say: come often.

Right now a little breeze and you are frightened—death has come! You cry, O God, save me. You do not thank God for sending the storm; you say, save me, hide me from it. You are afraid because you have no roots. Roots go inward. The deeper the roots, the stronger the outward spread.

In one sense, meditation is the opposite of intellect, the way roots are the opposite of the tree. The tree goes up; the roots go down—opposite directions. In this sense, meditation is the opposite of intellect. But in another sense, the tree’s entire spread stands on the roots. They are not opposites. The whole glory of intellect depends upon meditation.

Therefore, the kind of intelligence that exists in a Buddha cannot exist in an Einstein. Because Buddha does not have only an upper web of intellect; he has a lamp of meditation burning within. From that inner lamp, intelligence is illumined. Whatever wrong the intellect could have done, it cannot do. The lamp of meditation will keep it aligned, will guide it. The horses of intellect will not run anywhere and fall into a ditch; the charioteer is seated within—the wise awareness of meditation is the inner master.

Give your child intellect and give your child meditation. Give him roots and give him skyward expansion. And remember that balance between the two is the great thing. Let no limb become too much or too little. If you can do this, then only have you truly fulfilled the role of a mother or father; then only have you truly given birth to a child. Otherwise you gave birth to a body, and the soul found no support in you. The birth of a body is a very ordinary thing. Animals and birds accomplish that. There is no special merit of yours in it.

And remember one more thing: when you refine a child’s soul, you are refined along with him. It is impossible to refine another and remain unrefined yourself. If you have loved your child, given him a journey of intellect and the roots of meditation, you will suddenly find that in creating him you too began to be created. When a sculptor makes a beautiful statue, not only the statue becomes beautiful: in the making, the sculptor also becomes beautiful. Because it is impossible to give birth to beauty without becoming beautiful. It is impossible to give birth to balance without becoming balanced.

If you are truly a father, the birth of a son in your house will change your whole life. Because if you now try to make your son beautiful, healthy, peaceful, how will you remain unpeaceful? Whatever you do for the son, you will first have to do for yourself.

A husband and wife can remain carefree only until a child is born. With the birth of a child a new link arises. Playtime is over. Life is now a profound responsibility—and responsibility is full of juice, because it is full of love. This child will begin to change both mother and father. If you truly love him, you will change. If you do not love him, you will go on shouting that the child is going astray, society is bad, everything is getting worse.

A child never goes astray because of society; he goes astray because of you—and you are society. And note the irony: what you call “society” is everybody’s children. But the father remains the same as he was before the child was born. The mother remains the same as she was before the child was born. So yes, the child is born—but there is no love in your heart for him. Your love would change the whole society.

Let this settle deeply: whatever you create, that also creates you. The creator cannot be free of his creation. When a beautiful poem is born, a beautiful poet is born along with it. If it is not so, know that the poem is borrowed, not born; bought from the market. Therefore, when you meet a poet and find that the fragrance of his poetry is not in him, know that the poetry could not really be his.

In this country, in ancient times, we called the poet a rishi. Not now—for now it would not be appropriate. Rishi meant poet. Strange, isn’t it? Today there seems a huge difference between rishi and poet: neither do rishis show poetry nor poets show rishihood. Both are lost somewhere.

Our ancient understanding was that when poetry is born from someone, that birth changes his entire inner current, his consciousness. How can beauty be born of the ugly, if it is truly birth? If you have adopted a child, it is different. If you tinker with someone else’s poem, add rhyme here and there, paint another’s experience and present it as your own, that is different. Then you are not a poet—you are a versifier. And however pretty versification is, it is shallow.

That beauty is like a woman who has plastered her face with powder and lipstick to deceive. On the stage, all right; in life it won’t work. A little rain and the powder will run. Then the woman will look uglier than she ever would without powder, because holes will open everywhere in the beauty and ugliness will peep through.

A truly beautiful woman avoids powder. Powder can only hide ugliness; it cannot create beauty. Even a beautiful woman becomes ugly if she smears powder, because the false can never be beautiful. Even a simple housewife—whom you would call homely, whom you would not put on a stage—if she does not cover, does not hide, does not smear herself with cosmetics, does not pose—then in that ordinary woman a flame of beauty burns: simple, clean, fresh, at least authentic.

So the old Indian view was: when poetry is born from someone, when a person is a poet, he is a rishi. Because that beautiful poem will have left behind a beautiful heart where it came from. If the Ganga is so lovely, Gangotri must be holier still.

We go to worship Gangotri even more than Ganga, because that from which Ganga was born must be greater than Ganga. So the poet is always greater than the poem—if he is truly the source. However many poems flow, the poet is greater, for he is the original spring. The poet becomes a rishi.

The converse is also true: whenever someone attains rishihood, he becomes a poet. That is why in Sanskrit kavi and rishi are synonyms. In no other language on earth is this so. Poet and saint are not synonyms anywhere—only in Sanskrit. It has a very deep meaning.

Whenever someone becomes a rishi—rishi means one who has attained truth, one who has attained beauty, one who has found inner dignity; whose lamp is lit; who has awakened; whose flowers have blossomed; who has reached where his destiny lay; who has touched his ultimate peak—we call him rishi. Whenever such a person is, poetry must be born from him. Perhaps not in meter, not as verses written down; but whatever he does is poetry.

Look at Buddha’s walk—there is poetry in it. Look at Buddha’s eyes opening—there is poetry in it. Whether Buddha speaks or remains silent—there is poetry in it. Buddha’s whole life is a poem. It is not necessary that Buddha writes metrical verse, paints pictures, composes songs, or sculpts statues—not necessary. But now Buddha’s very being is poetic. The footprints he leaves on sand—one could hardly find a more beautiful pattern.

A rishi inevitably becomes a poet; a poet is inevitably a rishi.

If you have truly loved your child… And what else can love desire but to make your child divine? Love is never satisfied with less. If you want to make your son a doctor, you have not yet loved. If you want to make your son a big shopkeeper, you have not known love.

I am not saying: don’t let your son be a shopkeeper or a doctor. He may become a doctor or a shopkeeper—that may be a halting place, a road. But where there is love, it is never content with less than the divine. Whom you love, you will wish to become God—ultimately divine.

Love is the alchemy that gives birth to God. Whoever is satisfied with less, that is not love. Something else is there—worldly bargaining, business, ambition for money, other juices—but not love. And whenever love is, the possibility of giving birth to God arises.

So give the child meditation and give him intellect—and give him balance between the two. And in giving it, you will unconsciously find you are changing. By the day your son’s image is fully polished, you will already have been polished. Suddenly you will see: in making him, you were made. And if the child is going astray, it means you are astray, and your love is not enough for you to change yourself for the child.

Then a strange thing happens: the father goes on doing exactly what he wants the son not to do. The mother keeps doing exactly what she always wanted her daughter or son not to do. And children do not learn from your teachings; they learn from you. Children’s eyes are clear and sharp; no dust of life has settled on them yet. They see right through your words. Children do not get caught in the net of your words. They don’t care what you say; they see you. Their grasp is direct.

That is why it is very difficult to lie to children. Because when you lie, it is not only the words that lie—your whole face says “false,” your eyes say “false,” your hand that touches the child says “false.” The child is still close to life; you may not catch it, but the child recognizes at once. Your whole vibration says you are lying. You cannot deceive children until you corrupt them enough.

We all work hard at corrupting them. We feel insecure until they are corrupted; we are afraid. Parents teach: don’t lie. And the child finds every moment that parents lie. What is the lesson? Only this: tell your children not to lie—and lie yourself! The child gets it.

He will tell his children not to lie—and he will lie. That is what your father did to you; that is what you are doing to your children. Children see that they are preached celibacy while their parents are full of lust. They see it. Your behavior is clear to them. They too will preach celibacy to their children. A great hypocrisy goes on.

Our society is a vast hypocrisy. We don’t see it because we were born inside it—like fish do not see the ocean because they are born in it. Our hypocrisy is so deep that if we started seeing it we would be very disturbed, very scared: what is going on? We don’t even think what we are saying and doing, and what the consequences will be.

You give children intellectual education, not meditation, because for intellect you can hire teachers—rent people. That’s easy. There are schools and universities—you send them there. If one rightly understands most parents’ motives, they perhaps do not send children to be educated; they send them to be rid of a nuisance. The household disturbance gets set aside. On Sundays the disturbance returns home.

Schools are arrangements to save parents from their children. You shove them there. You have hired guards who keep the children entangled in things that are ninety-nine percent rubbish, not needed at all—things they will learn only to forget—without essence. The teacher is a kind of watchman who stands with a stick between parents and children, giving you peace for five to seven hours.

What kind of love is it that becomes disturbed by children? That is not love. These children are accidents that have befallen you—mishaps you have to carry somehow.

And why do you send them to school? Not so that their souls may be refined. You send them so they learn society’s entire hypocrisy and arrangement. They learn society’s whole net, mathematics, cunning, and return proficient, become members of society. You are preparing them. Your ambitions remained unfulfilled; you wanted to earn millions and could not—your son will complete it. You are preparing him. And if the son fails in exams, you are upset—not because he failed, but because your ambition wobbles. How will this son fulfill it?

Children are extensions of your ambitions. They are your desires. You want to ride on their shoulders. That is why if the son brings home money, the father is happy and embraces him. If he loses money and comes home, there is no welcome.

Jesus tells a very sweet parable—understand it. Jesus used to say, and because his whole emphasis was on love, the story is indicative. He said: A father had two sons. The father was very rich. One son was obedient; the other was rebellious. One increased the wealth; the other broke and wasted it.

At last there was no way but to separate them. The father divided the wealth in halves. The elder stayed with the father, invested, bought fields, made orchards. The younger disappeared from the village as soon as he got his share. Soon news began to come that he had squandered everything in gambling, drank it away, lost it in the dances and songs of prostitutes—everything turned to dust.

The father sent word: come back home. The younger, who had left, a gambler and drunkard, could not believe that after wasting everything his father could still call him back.

Love is not easy to trust. When theft happens, you trust. When hatred happens, you trust. Love is such an impossible thing—where do you see it?

The boy too could not trust. But he was in tatters, destitute, begging. He thought, let me go back. Begging like this—better to lie in a corner of the house.

When news of his return came, the father organized a great celebration. Sweets and food were prepared. The whole village was invited.

The elder son was returning from the fields when some villagers said: the limit has been crossed—what misfortune! You live at home, serve your father, earn, toil; yet carpets were never spread for your welcome, no bands and music for you, no feast. And that vagabond younger brother is returning after squandering everything, and arrangements are being made for his reception. Go, join the welcome. Lamps of ghee have been lit, bands are playing, guests have assembled. The father is waiting at the village gate for the wayward son. The elder felt hurt, went home and sat sullen.

When the father returned with the younger, he found the elder gloomy and asked, why are you sad? The elder said: my sadness is natural. I am never welcomed; I serve you, I earn for you; what you gave I made fourfold. And this vagabond returns after wasting all—and he is welcomed! The father said a few things worth understanding.

The father said: love does not discriminate between the earner and the non-earner. Love is assured about the one who is near; it strives to bring back the one who has gone far. You are all right; you need no special celebration—my blessings flow to you every moment. But the one who has strayed needs a special arrangement so that he can be reassured.

And Jesus used to say: just as a shepherd returns at dusk with his flock and suddenly finds one sheep missing, he leaves a thousand in the dark forest and goes in search of the one. He does not worry about the thousand, but goes to fetch the one that strayed. And when he finds it, he carries it on his shoulders back home.

Jesus said: love is not ambition. I say the same to you. Love has no demand. Love does not want to get something by means of the child; love wants the child himself as divine. It is not the child’s deeds that are the big question; it is the child’s soul.

But education can be given in school—who will give religion?

We have made religious schools too—they are fake. Because there can be no school for religion. We send children to a pundit who knows nothing of religion himself, who lives as you live. You do one kind of shop; he runs a religion shop. Both are shopkeepers. We send our children to him to learn religion. He teaches as if religion were geography or history; he makes the child memorize lessons. There are even exams in religion. The child passes and returns with a certificate.

This is deception. There is no exam in religion; all of life is the exam. No one can give a certificate in religion; only death can. At the moment of dying, death will give the certificate whether you were religious or not. Before that, none can. If at the moment of death you remain blissful, you have passed. If you are miserable, you have failed. The entire life is the education of religion; death is its exam.

Which pundit can accomplish this? Which scripture can accomplish this? None can. And you have no idea of religion—how will you give it to your child? How will you give meditation? You yourself have never known it, never flowed in that juice. Whatever you want to give your child must be with you first. A wealthy father can give wealth; a meditative father can give meditation. What you do not have—how will you give it? A loving father will give love. We can give only what we have.

Young men and women ask me: would it be right to bring a child into the world? I tell them: first go deep into meditation. Because when the child stands before you, what will you give him? If meditation is not with you, the child’s presence will make you feel utterly weak and poor. You will have nothing to give. First go deep into meditation; then become a mother or a father. Then you will be able to fulfill the great responsibility—not as a duty, but as a joy.

Give the child meditation, and give him thought. With thought he will succeed in the world; with meditation he will succeed in God. Give him thought so that his intellect is refined; give him meditation so that his heart goes on becoming pure.

And where the purity of the heart and the activity of the intellect meet, the most significant of all happenings in this world begins to happen. There activity and passivity come into balance. There night and day both come to rest. There the vision of that which is beyond both life and death begins.

There is death each moment—and each moment there is your birth too. It is not that you were born one day and a hundred years later you will die. You die every moment and every moment you are born anew. In every instant the old ends and the new begins. That creation once happened and that dissolution will happen one day—that is only a story. The fact is that creation is happening now and dissolution is happening now. It is not that God once created the world and then began to rest, as Christians think—six days He created and on the seventh He rested; that is why the seventh day is a holiday, the work was finished in six days, and then He kept resting. No, not so. And for the Divine, rest is not even possible. For you rest is necessary because you get tired. If God too got tired, He would not be vast; the source of His energy would not be infinite, it would run out. If God were to become tired, creation would end that very instant.

No, it is not that God created on some day; rather, God is creating every moment. Creation is eternal. Creation is not a historical event; it is eternity. Moment to moment the making is going on. These plants are growing, buds are turning into flowers, eggs are hatching, birds are preparing to fly. Not a single thing is at rest. In the Vast there is nowhere any repose. There is no holiday there. There, creation is an eternal festival.

And what is true regarding the Vast is true regarding you too, because you are a tiny reflection of the Vast. A drop is true of the ocean; you too are a drop of the Vast. You too are being made and unmade every moment. Whatever has passed is gone; what is to come is being formed. Between the two is your being.

This Purānic tale is sweet: at the moment of dissolution everything is destroyed, only a tiny child—Bal-Krishna, or whatever name we give him—an innocent little child remains. From him the entire creation starts again. Its meanings are multidimensional; try to understand them all.

First, all the old and the elders die; a little child remains. All the clever, the experienced are destroyed. All the smart, the learned fade away. One innocent child remains. There is a protection in innocence which is not there in cleverness. One simple soul, who knows nothing, not even pralaya can erase him. All the wise, the pundits, the bearers of scriptures are lost. Sadhus and saints are lost; a child remains. What could this mean?

Lao Tzu says that once he saw an ox-cart carrying some people. The cart overturned. Two men died, falling into a ditch. One man who survived was half-dead, with broken arms and legs. But one man was not hurt at all. The cart had overturned; he had fallen to the roadside, landed upside down, and lay there upside down. Lao Tzu was amazed. He went near and asked, “What is the matter?” He found that man was drunk—he had been drinking. Those who were in their senses perished. The one who was unconscious did not even know the cart had overturned. As he was in the cart, so he was outside it.

Consider it; this often happens. You will often find a drunk lying by the roadside. You try falling the way he falls—if you were to fall like that, you would land in the hospital. The drunk falls and stumbles home every day. No bones break, no fractures. There is some knack the drunk knows. His knack is only this: he is not self-aware. When you are aware, you try to protect yourself; when you are not aware, what is there to protect?

When the cart overturned, those who were awake, in their senses, must have been frightened; their bones must have tensed, their nerves stretched. They tried to save themselves. When they were falling to the ground, they were fighting the ground—somehow to save themselves—they had become rigid. That very tension gets injured; in that tension muscles tear, bones are dislocated. The drunk fell, and he did not even know there was any battle, that the cart had overturned, that he needed to save himself. He must have fallen as if the drunk himself were not there; as if a sack had fallen, a bundle had dropped in which there was no one inside. And a bundle has no bones to break. The drunk fell as if there were no one inside.

When there is no one inside to save, to defend, then no stiffness arises. When there is no ego, there is no resistance. Without resistance the drunk fell. They went to sleep. They must have taken it as God’s blessing and begun to rest. Lao Tzu says, the drunk survives; the conscious one breaks. The reason the drunk survives is that he has no sense of “me.”

This tale says a small child remains and all die. All who wanted to save themselves die; a small child remains. It often happens that a building collapses—the elders all die; a little child survives. A fire breaks out—the elders, in running and panic, are caught by the flames; the small child lies in his cradle smiling and survives. It often happens.

There is a secret to it. The secret is this: the small child is not protecting himself. He who does not save himself, God saves him. He who is saving himself is fighting with God. He has declared by that: we do not trust You; we will make our own arrangements. And your arrangements will not work in pralaya. They are not working even now; you only imagine that you are saving yourself. In this struggle of life, where dissolution is happening every moment, you are perishing, because you are not like the small child; otherwise you would be saved.

This story has a still deeper meaning: as soon as the past is destroyed—whatever has gone is gone—and the future has not yet come, will come; in the present moment you are always like a small child.

But you carry the past in memory. You know accounts, bank balances, ledgers—what you did and did not do—you carry it all in memory. It exists nowhere in reality; it is only lodged in your mind. You also carry the future in your mind—what to do, what not to do, whether plans will happen or not, how they will happen—you carry all that web too; it is nowhere either. In existence there is only the pure present moment; there all the past has gone and the future has not yet arrived. In that present moment, who are you? What is your experience? What knowledge do you have?

In that present moment you have no accounts. In that present moment you are like a small child, a newborn just out of the womb. If you ask him, “Who are you?” he cannot answer. He knows nothing; the slate of his heart is perfectly clean, nothing has been written there yet. This unwritten heart is the pure child-heart.

The meditator remains each moment with such a child-heart. Meditation means: wipe away whatever rubbish from the past clings to you; unlearn what you have learned; make the known unknown again; dissolve what you have accumulated. Become fresh, light, new—as new shoots sprout on a tree. Let all the old leaves fall; let autumn happen every moment so that behind each autumn there is a spring and a new sprout appears. Become utterly fresh, utterly new—on whom nothing is written, on whom there are no footprints of the past, not even a single line—become so pristine every moment. This is the meditator’s experiment. The meditator keeps freeing himself from the past moment to moment—he dies to the past—and does not allow the future to be born. There is no need for it; it will be born by itself. Do not worry about it; it will go on without you.

Neither is the sky there by asking you, nor do the moon and stars revolve by asking you, nor do the rivers flow by asking you. Time too moves without asking you. Do not trouble yourself over it. Wipe off the past; let that dust not cling to you. Do not beget the future; it will beget itself. Then you are like a newborn—innocent—and this innocence, this guilelessness, is meditation.

Then from within you the Vast creation will arise; your whole life-energy will become the creator’s energy. Then you are God. Whoever is like a pure, simple child—that is God. Wherever you become clever, there you become worldly.

This can happen; it has happened. Buddha became like a newborn child, Krishna became like a newborn child. It may surprise you to know that we have not portrayed Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Rama with beard and moustache. Two possibilities: either there was some hormonal deficiency in their bodies—in which case their manliness would be in doubt, they would prove somewhat effeminate. And for one or two it might be so; a man with a more feminine personality can also attain enlightenment—there is no hindrance. But for all of them? The Jains’ twenty-four Tirthankaras are without beard and moustache; all Buddhas are imagined beardless—not only those of the past, even the Buddha-to-come, Maitreya, is pictured without beard; Rama and Krishna too are without facial hair. There is another reason.

Surely beards and moustaches grew on them, because Buddhahood is not against facial hair. But we have depicted them without beard and moustache. There is meaning in it: we do not want to let them grow old. And we know they never truly grew old. They grew old physically; their backs may have bent. But we know their consciousness never grew old, never became ancient. It remained always like a newborn child—always fresh. To give news of that freshness we have kept their bodies also fresh and new and youthful. The youthfulness we have portrayed is not bodily; it belongs to consciousness.

Certainly, when creation ends, when pralaya happens—past is erased and the new has not yet been born—who will be the bridge between the two? If we were made to write the story, we would save some wise old man, some pundit, a knower of the Vedas—thinking, “This man will be suitable to begin a new creation.” But this tale saves a small child.

The knower of the Vedas cannot be innocent. The innocent person is himself the Veda; he is not a knower of the Veda. And the whole current of nature wipes out the old and decrepit and brings forth the new. God’s accounting seems unique. Today when scientists think, they think the opposite.

Scientists say it is utterly uneconomical that the old die and children are born. Economically it is indeed dangerous. For the old man is ready in every way—educated, experienced; we have spent seventy years on him; somehow a little wisdom has come, and he is close to dying. The house that has been completed is ready to collapse. And a small child will take his place, with whom the same labor must be repeated. This is utterly uneconomical. No state could allow it—except out of helplessness. Otherwise we would save the old and stop the children. For a child? Pure waste! We will have to do the same all over again—he will repeat the same foolishnesses, the same mistakes, the same schools, the same teaching—and at the end, when he is finally ready to be of some use, death will come.

So scientists are trying to find how to save the old. They have succeeded in one task: how to stop children—birth control. Half the process is complete; children can now be stopped. Now the second work begins: how to stop the old, not let them go. And there are many old whom we consider very useful.

Einstein—if we could hold on to him, he seems immensely useful. Centuries will pass before such a man may be born again. And if we could keep Einstein for a hundred years more, who can say what he would not do? For just when his intelligence was becoming completely mature, his time to depart came. If we could preserve him another hundred years, new edifices could be raised upon that intelligence. And Einstein could give something which children—how will they give? So this effort is on.

You may not know that thousands have insured that after their death their corpses be preserved, because there is a suspicion that by the end of this century the art of reanimating individuals will be in our hands. In America, at several places, deep-freezing arrangements have been made where some corpses have been secured. It is expensive; only millionaires can do it. It costs some ten thousand rupees a day to preserve one body. A few bodies have been secured. Those people, before dying, deposited all their money, created trusts. The trust will preserve their bodies until science discovers the art of reanimation. If in twenty or twenty-five years the art is achieved, they can be revived. In this hope they made all arrangements. There is a great movement: how to save the old.

If not today, then tomorrow, science may devise some trick. If birth-control is possible, then death-control is also possible; it is the other half of it. And the day we are able to stop the old, that day we will completely enforce birth-control, because there will be no space for both. The mathematics of space here is such that when the old moves aside, room opens for the child. Whenever a child is born in your home, you should at once become alert: now some old one has come close to dying. For where is the space? Every breath asks for space; the old will have to move.

But it is worth contemplating that God’s process is to remove the old, erase the prepared, and bring in the unprepared; to drop the old leaf and give birth to the new sprout. God is in favor of the new and against the old. We are in favor of the old and against the new. Therefore whatever is old we call superior; and whatever is new we say, “It is new—what guarantee is there?”

Hence, the older a scripture, the greater we deem it. The older a religion, the more precious we call it. That is why all religions try—truly or falsely—to show that their religion is very ancient, their book very ancient.

We have a taste for the old. But God has no taste for the old; God’s taste is for the new. God says: if it is old, it should die; if it is new, it should come into life. There is some virtue in the new that appears to God which we do not see. We see some virtue in the old.

What is our attachment to the old? Because the old is experienced, knows, has lived, has matured. The new is inexperienced, does not know, immature—a chance to go astray. But from God’s side, if we understand, the more experienced one is, the more clever he is, the more skillful, the more shrewd. And the more clever he is, the less innocent; the less childlike simplicity is possible in him. And the doors of this existence are open to the guileless heart. And this existence showers bliss only upon those who are so simple that in their trust there is not even a grain of distrust.

A childlike trust alone gives birth to sainthood. A small child has complete trust in you. It does not even occur to him that he “has” trust—because even that thought occurs only to the distrustful. When doubt has entered the mind, then one thinks, “I have faith.” The child’s faith is so total that he does not even know he has faith; faith is simply his nature.

This tale is sweet. At the end of creation, when pralaya happens, a small child remains—because God is the one who saves, not scientists. And God is always on the side of the new.

Therefore I say: there is no element more revolutionary in the world than God. There is no one more revolutionary in the world than God. This is the fundamental tone of revolution: let the old go, let the new come. The old has already died—hence it is old. The new is wholly alive—hence it is new.

And if you learn this art—and this very art I call meditation—that you never become old, then God will always protect you. The day creation is destroyed, that day you will be saved; the day of the great dissolution, you will still be saved. A piece of earth suitable for you will be preserved.

But the art for that is: remain a newborn child; do not become old. The body will grow old; the body will also depart. But you—do not become old. Let your soul remain new, like a fresh sprout, like a drop of the morning dew—let your soul remain fresh, and God will always give you protection. Wherever you became old, there you went against God; there you invited your death.

You are immortal if you are ever new. Newness is immortality.

Enough for today.