Nahin Ram Bin Thaon #16

The history of humankind, human consciousness, does not travel in a straight line. In the West there is the notion that man is evolving along a straight line. Darwin, Marx, and others share that assumption. But there isn’t much strength in it. The Eastern vision is that the evolution of life is not linear but circular—vortical. We are not moving forward in a straight line; we are moving around a circle. And this seems far more plausible.

A child is born. With birth, a line begins; in old age, death occurs at the very place where birth began—the circle is complete. In the growth from child to old person, we do not see a straight development: there is a peak, and then the descent begins.

Seasons change; in nature there is no straight line—summer goes and summer returns; the rains go and the rains return—circular, like the wheel of a cart turning.

The sun, the moon, the stars, the earth—all move in circular orbits.

So circularity seems to be the law of life. Human history is circular as well. Heights come and depths come; there is ascent, and there is decline. And where the journey begins, there it is completed too. At such a moment in the circle, when life takes a leap, crisis arises.

Such a crisis is present today. To understand it, two things need to be understood. Just as life is circular, it is also dialectical. Nothing exists alone; its opposite is always present with it.

When the East is religious, the West becomes intellectual. When the West becomes religious, the East turns intellectual. The East and the West divide a wholeness into two halves.

The East was religious in the past; today the East is becoming intellectual. Until yesterday the West was intellectual; today it is becoming religious. The greatest search in the West today is for meditation. People from the West are coming to the East seeking meditation, seeking peace. Is an experience of the soul and the divine possible? That has become the most crucial question of life.

In the East people laugh at this. Wealth is a great thing. And if someone goes from the East to the West, he goes for science, not religion. People are going West from the East too, but for universities, science, technology, nuclear science. People from the West are coming East in search of the soul and God. It is a unique phenomenon that the West is ready to sit at the feet of the East if religion can be found; and the East is ready to sit at the feet of the West if wealth can be found.

It is a moment of crisis, when the wheel of the cart is about to complete its turn. What was above will come down; what was below will rise. Values will be transformed. The spoke that is now at the top of the wheel is going down; the one below is coming up. This is a moment of crisis. In it all old systems will become disordered; chaos will grow dense.

And such chaos has arisen. In it moral yardsticks will break; old beliefs will be destroyed. The entire order we had established until now will be shaken—as if an earthquake has come and where the ground once was there are pits; where there were hills, there are plains; where there were lakes, there are hills. Such is the state. This final phase of the century, the twentieth century, is on the verge of a fierce transformation.

What is the danger? The danger is that the East may lose the deep treasure it possesses. It is losing it. You may read the Gita as much as you like, but in your heart the Gita has no value. You may even go in search of a guru, but even then you go to the guru hoping your health may improve, your fame may grow, you may gain position, you may win an election.

A friend came to me two days ago. He said, “I had a big business, but as my eyes failed and I lost my sight, I had to withdraw from everything. Please do something so that my eyes become fine again.”

He is over sixty. I said to him, “Now you should search for the inner eye. By God’s grace, if the outer eye has closed, all your energy can turn inward. The eye that used to look outside can now look within.” But the suggestion did not please him. From his face, from his expression, it was clear he had not come to hear that. I told him, “Let it go now—it’s enough. What you have is sufficient. Your outer affairs are running well enough. Even if you earn more, what will you do with it?”

“No,” he said, “I had a big business and had to hand it all over to others.”

Even if others plunder it, it will not make any real difference to him; there is enough to live comfortably. He listened, but he did not nod even once. As he was leaving, he said again, “Give me so much blessing that I can get back into business.” I said, “What will you do, running business after business, as if business were the soul!”

This is the state of the entire East. Even if we go to a guru, we go to seek something that we should not be going to a guru for at all. That is why where there is some showmanship, some trickery, crowds of hundreds of thousands gather. If ashes fall from someone’s hand, hundreds of thousands gather. Because there they have the assurance that if this man shows me his grace, anything can happen—he is miraculous. When people start gathering around miracle-workers, understand that people’s reverence for religion has gone. What has miracle to do with religion?

There was a Zen master, Lin-chi. One day, while he was speaking among his disciples, a man stood up and said, “I have heard a lot of talk—show me a miracle! My master, who is no more, had real religion! I would stand on one bank of a river with a sheet of paper in my hand, he would stand on the other bank—half a mile away—and from there he would write with a pen and letters would appear on my paper. If you can show such a miracle, show it.”

Lin-chi said, “We have no such miracle. We know only one small miracle, and it is this: we are content. That is all—we know just this one miracle, that we are content. And this alone we can give—that whoever comes to us, he may become content.”

Perhaps that man could not understand. “Contentment, a miracle?” But I say to you also: contentment is the miracle. And the East is discontent—for wealth, for status, for prestige. When India conducted a nuclear explosion, the entire Indian mind became elated, delighted—as if we had achieved some great attainment! We do not even consider that even if you acquire nuclear power, you will still remain a third-rate power in the world; you will still be sixth in line. In nuclear power you can never be first. You will remain a hanger-on, standing at the back of the queue. There is nothing here to be happy about.

But where you could be first, there your feet are faltering. Where no one in the world can compete with you—where India’s tradition has placed you after the labor of millennia—there you are wavering. And you are standing in a queue for sixth place and think this is a great joy.

Do you really think there is any possibility that you could ever stand first in material prosperity ahead of Russia or America? There you will remain poor beggars. And even that nuclear explosion you carried out is on loan; it was done with others’ help. If their help is cut off, tomorrow you won’t be able to do even that. And it is sheer foolishness—like a poor man selling his house to celebrate Diwali with crackers and sparklers, while the children at home are dying of hunger and outside sparklers are being lit. That is all it is—sparklers! And yet our eagerness is in that direction today.

Our eagerness is for wealth, position, power. And when people from the West come to the East in search of religion, we laugh—these people have gone mad, they’re crazy. And when people from the East go West to become engineers, doctors, nuclear scientists, then Westerners feel a bit disappointed: their quest too is material! They feel disheartened. It seems, “What will we get by going to them, who come to us asking for help? Who are dependent for their daily bread and whose minds are absorbed in materialism?”

This is the crisis: the East is losing what it had found; the West is eager to regain what it lost in past centuries. What is the danger? The danger is that what is ready in your hands will be destroyed. And the West will have to begin from A, B, C—which is a great peril. For religion is established over millennia. Religion is not an ordinary seed.

Some seeds are seasonal—you sow them and the sprouts appear in no time; fifteen days later they sprout, in a month they flower, and in two months they are gone. All the blooms of materialism are seasonal. Religion is not a seasonal flower. It takes thousands of years for its seed to sprout. Hundreds of Buddhas are born, and then somewhere its seed germinates. It is not a thing of a day, something you can do today. A long, very long experiment is needed for consciousness to be transformed even a little.

So if the East has even a small possibility of religion, it bears the hands of Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, Rama upon it.

And there is a curious fact: science can be produced by ordinary people; it does not require an extraordinary soul—only know-how, technical knowledge. For technical knowledge, even a soul is not needed; a computer can do it. For the scientific discoveries to come, Einstein will not be needed; feed all the knowledge into computers and they will generate new theories. In the future, science will not need Einsteins; machines will do the research—the instruments will do it. Even now, it is instruments that work. Even now, the part of your brain that does scientific research is your mechanical component.

But religion is your consciousness. Until there is the purity of a Buddha, the innocence of a Mahavira, the dancing, samadhi-steeped mind of a Krishna, even a glimpse of it is not possible. Science can be explored while walking a flat road; for religion you must touch the peak of Gauri Shankar—Everest. Only then is it attained. Thousands upon thousands of years pass; only then do religion’s seeds sink deep into the soil and sprout.

And India conducted an experiment—not only did the seeds sprout, flowers also bloomed. You are ready to lose that vast wealth of blossoms. And you will, because you no longer see anything there; you stand with your back to it. You do not perceive any essence in it. And the West will have to start from A, B, C. If the West begins the journey of religion, it will begin where we began some five thousand years ago—in the time of the Vedas. To reach where we have reached, it will take the West another five thousand years. Meanwhile, the survival of man will become impossible.

Therefore I say that India holds in its hands an act of destiny. And it is this: what we have discovered—those sutras, those laws we have developed for entering human consciousness—even if you want to abandon them, before you do, hand them over to someone. At least do that much.

But remember, you can hand over only what has happened within you. We can give the Gita to the West; it will turn into trash—for there is little in the Gita itself. The Gita is words; they have been translated into all Western languages; nothing will be solved by that. But how shall we give what was in Krishna? The Gita is only his shadow, his echo. How shall we give what happened in Krishna? Only if Krishnas are born within us can it be given.

This is precisely my purpose: that a meditator be born within you. If India can produce even ten or fifty meditators in whom the light of Buddha’s wisdom shines, then there is no problem. For the question is not whether religion survives in India or in the West; that is not the question—let it survive. On which soil its temple stands is no great matter; all soil is alike.

But you are handing that temple over in ruins. If people from the West take it, what they will get will be bricks and mortar—ruins, broken fragments. And even if the West carefully builds a temple out of those, it will be fit for a museum—lifeless. That is what is happening. It will be dead. People will go to see it in a museum; beyond that it will have no use. Life will have departed from it.

You still have a temple that has not yet fallen. And to those who have eyes, it still appears alive. But it will soon crumble, because you are occupied with bringing it down, with effacing it. You are taking the bricks of that temple to build steps for your home. You are selling the images from that temple to fill your safe. You have no idea what you are doing! The reason is simple. Just as a fish is born in the ocean and cannot see the ocean—being born there, familiar with it from the beginning, she forgets it—so too you were born in a temple you cannot see; you have forgotten.

My whole effort is that you begin to see that living temple. Then either you become the priests of that temple—which, for you, is natural. And if that is impossible, then hand that temple over, while it is still alive, to those who long for it, who have become thirsty for it. Before the temple of religion falls, either you preserve it or let the West preserve it—but do not let it become a ruin, a museum piece. Through it, the door to humanity’s survival can open.

For the race for wealth only erases; ambition only destroys and ultimately brings madness. No one has ever been content through ambition. However great the ambition that succeeds, every success brings more discontent. Alexander too dies weeping; having gained everything, it still feels as if nothing has been gained. Only religion brings contentment—therefore contentment is the miracle. A beggar can be content, and we see that even Alexander dies discontent.

Religion holds a mysterious key by which the doors of the heart open and the rain of nectar can descend. Those keys I call meditation. And through this meditation, only one miracle will happen: you will become utterly content. But there is no greater event in this world than that. There is no greater mystery in this world than that a person becomes content.

Think a little—just think—what it would be like if you were content. What would that moment be in which not a single desire arises; where there is no interest in the next moment; where you are whole here and now—as if all the flowers of the heart have blossomed and you are filled with fragrance. And such fragrance that an ah-ho—an exclamation of gratitude—arises, and you can thank God. You can say, “Even one more breath in this bliss is enough; being has become meaningful.” Imagine such supreme blessedness and fulfillment—if you were to have it for even a single instant, the agonies of many lifetimes would be worth it.

Hence Lin-chi says, “We know only one miracle.” I too know only one miracle.

Friends come to me and say, “Why don’t you do something so that ashes appear from your hand? Millions will come.” But they would be the wrong millions. Millions would come, but millions would be wrong. And among those millions, the few who are rightly close to me would be lost, they would be distracted. For those who are rightly close to me would not be able to survive before that crowd—the crowd would surge ahead. It would be a crowd of the ambitious, a crowd of the insane. Those who gather to see ash falling from a hand are mad; they should be in an asylum. They are diseased. And once you invite the diseased, they will not let the healthy remain.

Economics has a simple rule: counterfeit coins drive genuine coins out of circulation. If there is a fake rupee in your pocket, you will try to spend it first, keeping the real one hidden. So fake coins push the real coins out of circulation; no one uses the real coin first; you try the fake first, and only if it won’t pass do you spend the real. Wherever the fake person arrives, he pushes the real person to the back—because the fake wants to go first.

Religion has nothing to do with millions; it concerns very few. But remember, if even one person becomes religious, unknown rays of peace begin to descend into the lives of millions. That person becomes like a sun from which light begins to flow. If even one person becomes content, a crack appears in this world’s mad discontent. One link in the chain breaks. If even one person becomes a Buddha, the measure of everyone’s madness diminishes—for the Buddha’s silence is contagious; Buddhahood is contagious.

Just as diseases spread—one person filled with disease infects an entire village—so Buddhahood is contagious. If even one person attains Buddhahood, this whole earth becomes of a different quality. Its entire gait, its style of living, everything changes. Even if a Buddha merely passes by your village while you sleep in your house, you cannot remain what you were before the Buddha passed. You cannot be the same, even if you stayed asleep at home.

Today India is discontent, filled with great anguish, and yet Westerners come and experience peace among you. You will be surprised; Western travelers write reports, books, saying, “If you want to see a peaceful person, go to India.”

It is astonishing. We too are amazed—what peace can they be seeing in you? You have none. And yet so many Buddhas have passed among you; a little of their shadow has fallen upon you. You yourself do not know it. In your very bones, flesh, marrow—unknown to you, without your effort, even against your resistance—the Buddhas’ shadow has fallen. Like someone passes unknowingly through a garden and the fragrance of flowers clings to his clothes without his knowing. It can even happen that he himself cannot smell it, because his nose is accustomed to stench.

A man had fallen unconscious on the road. It was blistering hot. A crowd gathered. Someone held a shoe under his nose. The street was a market of fragrances. A shopkeeper came running with a precious perfume. “If he smells this, he will revive instantly,” he said. He let him smell it, and at once the man—who had been unconscious—began to convulse, flailing arms and legs as if suffocating.

A man in the crowd said, “Don’t kill him—don’t do this. I know his problem.” The basket of the man who had fallen—he was a fishmonger—lay next to him. “Sprinkle a little water on this basket,” the man said, “and let him smell its scent. That is his fragrance.” As soon as they held the basket to his face, from which came the smell of fish, he took a deep breath and regained consciousness. “You rogues were killing me,” he said.

He for whom the smell of fish is perfume will pass through a garden as though through a place of stench.

You have passed by the Buddhas in the same way. Even so, unknown to you, despite your resistance, their fragrance has caught hold of you. It has entered your bone and marrow. That is why Westerners come and see peace in you. You yourself may not see it; they are searching for the Buddha. Even a faint ray they glimpse in you and they feel...

But there is no merit of yours in this. In fact, you are unfortunate—in the sense that where you could have been Buddhas, you carry only a shadow. And you are ready to sell that shadow. Give you two rupees and you will sell your Buddhahood. If the Buddha were with us and the West wanted to buy, we would trade him for an atom bomb. We would take the atom bomb and discard the Buddha. What would we do with the Buddha? Can any war be fought with him? Can you farm with Buddhahood? Can a factory be built with it?

This is the crisis: the East has a temple that has been built by the toil of thousands of Buddhas. The West has no such temple. The West is searching, and you are unconscious. So either hand this living temple to the West. Remember, the temple belongs to the one who is ready to pray. A temple has no hereditary owner.

There was a church in Jabalpur. It had been closed for a long time. When the English left India, the worshippers of that denomination left too. There were very few of them; the church remained locked. Its chief priest lives in London. Some Christians came to me who did not belong to that denomination, and they said, “We have no church. What do you say—if we begin worship here?” I said, “The church belongs to whoever worships there. Begin.”

But the police do not accept that, nor do the courts. They opened the lock and began to worship; I even went to inaugurate their church. Then I had to go to court, because from London a case was filed that this was illegal occupation of someone else’s property.

In court I said only this: I know only that the temple belongs to those who pray. What other title can there be to a temple? Is a temple a piece of real estate? Those who sit in London cannot worship here; they have locked it up. Is a locked temple better, or an open temple in which people are praying?

The magistrate said, “We will not enter into such grave matters. We are concerned with the law; this property belongs to someone else.” I said, “You may be concerned with law; I am concerned with prayer. Now what shall we do?”

If India cannot preserve this temple, then hand it over alive to those who are seeking it.

People ask me, “We see many foreigners around you—not so many of our own!”

What can I do about that? I am handing the temple over. The temple is yours, but you have stopped praying. And this is not a visible temple. If it were visible, there would be complications in court. This is an invisible temple, and I will hand it to those who wish to worship. They will carry it away. What India has discovered must be delivered alive to the West. Or else India must be awakened—so that delivering it becomes unnecessary.

But it must be saved. The discovery of Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Rama must be preserved—otherwise we will have to labor for five thousand years again. This is my effort.

Discerning the essential from the non-essential is the greatest wealth—but the mind can never do this. The mind itself is non-essential; that is the hindrance.

So whatever the mind tells you is essential, take it to be non-essential. Don’t listen to the mind. The greatest austerity of a seeker is not to listen to the mind. And the mind goes on offering advice whether you ask or not. Whether you listen or not, it keeps repeating what it wants to say. The difficulty is that by sheer repetition you end up listening. You are not so alert that, though the same suggestion is repeated again and again, you slip past it; you end up taking it in. When counsel is poured into your ears relentlessly, it starts feeling like your own. And the mind is skilled at giving counsel. The mind says, “This is essential.” What, according to the mind, is essential? Sense pleasures are essential—taste is essential, sexual desire is essential, beauty and form are essential. For the mind, the “essential” is tied to the senses. Wherever the senses can indulge, it calls that essential. But all sensory pleasures lead nowhere; they only deplete you. You are left empty, drained. All sensory pleasures are like scratching an itch.

If you have ever had an itch—you haven’t? then somehow create one just once for the experiment—there is such relish in the scratching! As you scratch, a sweetness arises, a soft mellowness spreads, as if a great delight is approaching. But the more you scratch, a moment comes when that sweetness, that felt mellowness, turns bitter and harsh—you scratch yourself raw and bleeding; pain sets in.

At the beginning, the senses’ pleasures feel sweet; at the end, pain lands in your hands. All sense pleasures are like scratching an itch. And even when you have scratched the itch, suffered the sting, even bled—when the itch returns, again your hands are eager to scratch.

One peculiarity of the mind is that it does not connect the beginning with the end; it does not link cause and effect. It does not conclude, “The pain that came later was the fruit of the sweetness at the start.”

The mind that arrives at such a conclusion becomes renunciate. The one who sees that every pleasure ends in pain makes the world non-essential. This is the key. All the pleasures that the mind calls pleasures ultimately become pain. Wherever the mind says, “Pleasure,” there suffering is born. Yes, from the surface there is an appearance of pleasure. But when you dig, you find pain.

If you go on listening to the mind—as you have been doing for lifetimes—it will keep leading you back to the very pleasures you tasted yesterday, in which you already suffered. But you never connect the end with the beginning. If you properly join the first and the last, all pleasures will be revealed as hidden pains.

Then it will seem that pleasure is only an invitation to pain. It will seem that pleasure is merely the decorated doorway to hell. But the decoration at the door attracts you so much that you enter hell, and you never see that it was the decoration that took you in.

The gate of hell must be decorated; otherwise who would enter? Heaven’s gate is utterly undecorated. If you expect heaven’s door to be festooned, you will never reach heaven. Heaven’s gate is plain; there is no decoration there. There won’t even be a signboard: “This is heaven. Welcome!” That much is not needed.

Falsehood advertises; suffering extends welcomes; hell sends invitations.

In a shop in Kashi there’s a sign over a ghee counter: “Genuine pure ghee sold here. Anyone who proves it is fake will be rewarded Rs. 500 on the spot.” And in red below: “Such rewards have been paid here many times.” Don’t doubt—the reward is certain, the ghee is pure!

The greater the untruth, the bigger the show. Truth is plain and direct; untruth makes elaborate contrivances. How else would anyone go to hell unless a fragrance beckoned and someone stood at the door to welcome you?

I have heard: A man died and arrived at the gates of heaven and hell. Cautious fellow—worldly-wise—he wondered, “Shall I enter heaven at once or go to hell?” As people do, he started asking passersby, “Which way?” Once you go in, who knows if there is a way out—better to be sure first. A deity said, “That’s difficult to decide like this. I’ll show you both—then choose.” He took him to heaven. There was such peace that the man felt gloom.

If you walk into peace from the thick marketplace of your madness, it feels like gloom. You have mistaken the market for life itself; so peace seems like a graveyard. He thought, “This heaven feels like a cremation ground!” We only fall silent at the cremation ground; nowhere else do we keep quiet. Death holds a little silence for us; life we have made thoroughly noisy.

He felt, “So dull—no bustle, no color, no music, no song—nothing; just stillness.” He said, “This doesn’t appeal. But I shouldn’t decide yet; better see hell.” In heaven he had seen no one laughing or guffawing.

Remember: guffaws are found in hell, not heaven. Where there is suffering, people laugh. Laughter is a way to hide suffering. Where peace and fullness are, why would anyone laugh? So when you see someone laughing uproariously, don’t assume he’s attained the ultimate; his laughter is hiding some pain. It’s a trick to forget himself, a form of entertainment.

That’s why, as the world’s suffering increases, entertainment multiplies—films, television, radio, music, theater, clubs—these are inventions of the unhappy. If a person is happy, why would he go to a club? Sitting in his courtyard he would be so content there’d be no question of going anywhere. Why would he start the nuisance and noise of radio? All that noise would shatter the music already within. Why tire his eyes on television? The empty sky is enough—more than enough. No—the unhappy invent pleasure and entertainment.

In heaven there was silence; people were seated, looked “sad.” No conversation, no gossip. They don’t even print newspapers in heaven—there is no news. News needs disturbances. In hell, newspapers in every home—splendid! Nowhere else will you read such papers, for events happen there.

The man said, “Show me hell—then I’ll decide.” He went to hell: band and drums, sheer festivity at the gate—like a wedding procession! Everyone seemed in high spirits. The Devil himself came to welcome him. In heaven he hadn’t even glimpsed God. When he asked, people said, “No idea—He must be somewhere, absorbed. We only know ourselves. Whoever knows himself, there God is.” But no sign of God there; in hell the Devil stood at the door with his cohorts, embraced him warmly. The man said, “This is the place! The plaques are swapped—where it says ‘heaven’ it feels like hell; where it says ‘hell’ it feels like heaven. I choose this.”

The deity stepped out, the door closed, and the Devil grabbed his neck.

“What are you doing?” he cried.

“That was just the guest reception,” the Devil said. “Now the real hell begins. Now starts what you read in the scriptures.” That was only the welcome—arranged for guests—not the real hell. “This lobby is for visitors; now come to the real thing.” Then he saw the flames, the boiling cauldrons, the seething fires, people thrown in.

This is the state of the senses: at the door, a reception for the guest; inside, hell.

If you want to distinguish the essential and the non-essential, then wherever the senses say, “This is essential,” become alert, be cautious—that is sadhana. And wherever the senses say, “There is nothing here,” don’t run away. Dig there—there you will find the essential.

When you sit to meditate, your mind and senses will say, “What are you doing! There’s nothing in this—why waste time? In this much time you could read the paper, listen to the radio, chat with a friend, go to a hotel. Why waste time? Sitting idle like this does no good. Do something. What will come of sitting empty?” Your mind will say, “Get up, get busy—you could turn this time into money; mint a few coins.”

People come to me and say, “We have no time to meditate.” And the same people I hear in the bazaar, gossiping. “What are you doing?” “Killing time,” they say, chewing paan at a paan shop, smoking a cigarette—killing time. These very gentlemen are killing time. If I say, “Meditate,” they say, “We have no time.”

They do not see how their senses have advised them. Wherever the senses have relish, they say, “Kill time”—for that is their use of time. When they sit to meditate, their mind and senses say, “Where is the time? Why waste it? Who knows how much pleasure you could have snatched in this while! Sit like this and you’ll become dull.”

Wherever your senses and mind say, “There’s nothing here,” be alert—there is something. Dig there. That digging is called sadhana. And if your life’s very style becomes this digging, that is called sannyas.

Where pleasure is at the door, suffering waits within. The one who is willing to face pain at the door reaches the spring of joy. The one who first accepts discomfort becomes capable of bliss. The one who first demands pleasure ends in pain.

Essential means: perhaps pain is met first, but joy follows. Non-essential means: pleasure seems to come first—at least appears to—and pain follows. Essential means: the door will be without any pomp, but behind it heaven is hidden. Non-essential means: there’s a grand welcome at the door—Diwali, Holi—and behind it is hell, suffering and pain. Behind the thorn a flower is hidden; behind the flower thorns are hidden.

And what comes at the end stays with you. So the one who keeps the end in view finds the essential; the one who fixes on the beginning wanders in the non-essential.

This long wandering in the non-essential is our worldliness. The leap from the non-essential into the essential is what we call liberation, nirvana, Ram—call it what you will. And the one who sees that the senses mislead, that they are deceptive, goes into the refuge of Ram and says, “There is no refuge without Ram.”

You are in the refuge of the senses.

Look at it from another side. There are many senses—at least five you count—and not only five, for each sense has many forms; each sense is a crowd. Whoever takes refuge in the senses becomes fragmented—too many masters. If even two masters enslave you, it’s hard enough; with many masters, what will become of you?

There is an old story in Christianity: God was testing Job—his faith, trust, surrender. He took everything from him—everything—but no complaint arose in Job’s mind. Only his wife was left. Much commentary has been made on why God tested him thus, and why—even though all was taken—Job did not complain.

A man once asked a Hasidic mystic, “I understand most of it, but why didn’t God take his wife too? If everything was to be taken, He should have taken the wife as well; only then would the test be complete. Why leave the wife? It means something was left.”

The mystic said something unique: “You don’t know the secret. God took everything, and when He saw Job had passed the test, He returned everything doubled. He didn’t take the wife because then He would have had to give back two wives—and bearing one is hard enough; two would have been too much even for Job, that man of deep faith. Two wives would have split him in two—for two masters had arrived!”

Every sense is a master; you are torn into pieces; your fragments start pulling in different directions. You become like an ox-cart with oxen yoked on all sides. Each ox pulls its own way; one drags you into a ditch, then another. How could such a cart keep to the road? The stronger ox wins for a while, then another weakens, another goes mad; the cart’s frame loosens, and you reach nowhere. You die where you began.

All the senses tug at you. The eyes say, “Come, relish form.” The ears say, “Listen—there is no joy but sound.” Sex calls; food beckons. Taste and smell pull. You are dragged in all directions. In the midst of this, your state is anguish. No fruit—only your bones are pulled loose. You are wrenched, broken, wasted—and reach no shore. This is your condition in the refuge of the senses. You have made the senses your resting place. And whoever chooses many masters goes mad.

Therefore the ultimate state of a purely sensuous person is insanity. Your final destination is the madhouse. If you haven’t reached it, it only means you didn’t go all the way with what you were doing. You remained lukewarm, stuck in the middle. The oxen pulled, but you did not feed them properly; so there was commotion, yet you somehow stayed on the road. There was no journey, but you didn’t topple into a pit—didn’t stray. This we call a “good” man: one who somehow stays put. He gives the senses a little food—not too much. The more you give, the more madness grows.

So among us there is only a difference in degrees of madness, not a fundamental difference. One a little more mad, one a little less—fifty degrees, sixty, seventy. Some stand at ninety-nine, waiting to cross. Only degrees vary. Where there are many masters, the result is derangement—fragmentation.

To go into Ram’s refuge is to have one master. Do not think Ram means the son of Dasharatha. Ram is the Brahman hidden within you. You are Ram. You are not the body; you are the soul. If you are the body, the senses will drive you insane. If you are the soul, the senses will slowly become surrendered to that soul.

It is not that one surrendered to Ram does not eat. Nor that he will not open his eyes to the beauty of the sky. Nor that his ears will not be delighted by music. They will. But a revolutionary difference has happened: his senses are surrendered to Ram; his Ram is not surrendered to the senses. The soul is not the slave of the senses; the senses are the servants of the soul.

Then a fundamental shift occurs. You will gradually find: when the senses are the masters, the more sexually stimulating the music, the better it seems. As the senses surrender to Ram, that kind of music no longer sounds like music; it feels like a disturbance, a dissonance. It obstructs; it breaks the inner note. It feels like a blow. Western music often feels like a blow—it shakes you, does not soothe you. As your senses surrender inwardly, your music becomes kirtan and bhajan—your music fills with spirituality. Music will then calm you; only then does it feel like music. If it makes you restless, it is dissonance.

A moment comes when only the state of emptiness sounds musical to you. Only when there is silence all around, not a single note being struck—then you find supreme music is happening. That is the supreme Nada. We have called it Omkar. It is not a note, not a strike upon the strings of a veena—for that too is a blow. Even when we strike strings in rhythm, it is still a blow.

As the senses surrender inwardly, you experience the music of emptiness. As they surrender inwardly, lust wanes and love deepens. In music, the notes disappear—emptiness remains. In sexuality, sex falls away—love remains.

So too with all the senses. The eyes gradually lose their relish for form and delight in the formless. Beauty for the eyes will no longer be in form; the body will be felt as a hindrance to beauty. If you could truly see a person, you would find: no matter how beautiful the body, it reduces beauty—for a body, however beautiful, cannot be truly beautiful. The body obstructs beauty. Beauty is perfect only when there is no body—then nothing remains to intrude.

In China the sages say: when music is complete, the musician breaks his veena—because then even the veena becomes a hindrance. When the sculptor becomes truly consummate, he throws away the chisel—because whatever is made with a chisel cannot be beautiful in the ultimate sense. The formless cannot be made with a chisel; only form can. However beautiful the form, it will remain incomplete—open to improvement. The formless is perfect; there is no possibility of improvement there.

Your eyes will still see beauty—but not beauty in form, beauty in the formless. You will still relish food—but the substance will become secondary; what will matter is the life-force hidden in it. In that state the seers of the Upanishads said, “Food is Brahman.” You cannot imagine how food could be Brahman, how bread could be Brahman. Scholars will give you futile explanations.

“Food is Brahman” is the realization of that state in which the senses are surrendered to the inner self. Then even in bread you see Ram. The bread becomes the wrapper; Ram is the essence within. The bread enters the body and passes, but Ram remains within. Then through your senses you begin to find Brahman in the world.

As long as you are surrendered to the senses, you see the world even in Brahman. The day you surrender to Ram, you begin to see Brahman even in the world.

“There is no refuge without Ram” means: your refuge is within; your destination you carry with you. And you search here and there in vain. Listening to the senses you have journeyed and journeyed—how many earths, how many moons and stars, how many births, how many styles, how many forms you have taken! You did whatever the senses dictated. You reached nowhere, you are tired—yet you keep listening to them.

Because I travel at night, I sleep with earplugs. All sounds are shut out; the air-conditioner hums, but I don’t hear it. When I catch a cold, a sound comes in my breath. Then I must remove the earplugs—otherwise they act like a stethoscope, and the inner sound becomes too loud and sleep impossible. When I remove them, the AC and traffic return; I no longer hear the inner sound. It keeps going, but I don’t hear it.

This is exactly the state. As long as your senses listen outwardly, the inner sound is unheard. The day the inner sound is heard, the senses turn inward; the outer is lost.

There are two states: one, “there is refuge in the senses”—a state of mind. The other, “there is no refuge in the senses, not even a halt; not only is there no destination there, there isn’t even a real journey—everything is futile.” Then there is refuge in Ram. Ram is within you. You are Ram. So when I say, “Leave everything to Ram,” I am saying, “Leave everything to the within.” Let the outer be surrendered to the inner—let the periphery surrender to the center. This is the meaning of “there is no refuge without Ram.”

You are sacrificing the center for the periphery. You are ruining the house for the fence. You are demolishing the palace to fix the railing. You are guarding the body and losing yourself.

Awaken! Meditation will do only this much: it will close the outer for a while so the inner sound can be heard. Once the inner note is heard, you will run, drunk like a madman.

You have heard the story: when Krishna’s flute sounds, the gopis can no longer do their chores; their hands and feet falter; the water-pot slips, the churning-stick is forgotten—they run, intoxicated. This is only a symbol. The gopis are the senses—feminine. The day the inner flute begins to sound—it is sounding even now, but when you turn your attention a little within and you hear it—the senses forget their churning, their milk, their pots, their tasks, and run mad with joy. This is the final state: within, Krishna’s flute plays; all the senses dance around him—the periphery dancing around the center. This we have called the ras, Krishna dancing with the gopis circling round.

Your condition is the reverse: the gopis are running, and you run after them. And remember: no gopi ever consents to the one who runs after her. If you chase a gopi, she goes after someone else—you become useless. Your very chasing reveals you are not master of yourself; how will you be master of another? The man who runs after the senses—the senses see how futile he is. You have nothing—you are running after the trivial.

Be alert. Meditation will make you alert. It will change the dimension of your journey. Once the inner sound is heard, revolution happens. The senses will remain in their place, healthy. Their dance will continue—for it does not hinder. But they will stay on the periphery, in their place, moving with you as your shadow. And one who has found this inner Ram, this inner center, has nothing left to attain. Only then contentment bears fruit; before that there is no contentment.

So Lin-chi is right: we know only one miracle—contentment. I too tell you: I have only one miracle—contentment. The day you taste a little contentment, you will see that all other “miracles” are a conjurer’s tricks—childish things, not signs of maturity. Maturity aspires only to this: a fulfillment in which not a grain of lack remains; a completeness so total that nothing remains to be attained; a saturation so entire that every pore of your being overflows with thankfulness, wonder, and gratitude to the divine.

It can happen. All the arrangements for it are within you. Only a little re-ordering is needed. All the tools are present; only a slight re-organization. You have the flour, you have the water, the fire is lit. Knead the dough, make the bread, bake it, and hunger will end. But you sit with flour here, water there, fire burning—and you weep. You have everything—only a little arranging!

That arranging is sadhana.

Enough for today.