Nahin Ram Bin Thaon #7

Rama and Sita’s bond is a bond of love, not of husband and wife. Marriage can happen in two ways. One is arranged: parents decide, astrologers and pundits pronounce, family and society cooperate, and the couple’s own wishes are not consulted—society decides. Such a marriage is arranged. It offers great safety, great security.

Because when elders decide, they use the whole arithmetic, the whole weight of their experience—what they have seen, learned, and understood in life. Elders are naturally shrewd. They bring their shrewdness, their cunning, their calculation to bear. And they have seen crucial things that children, by virtue of being children, cannot see. They have seen that moods do not last. They have learned that decisions taken at the height of feeling are destroyed when the feeling ebbs. They have seen that one cannot live for long inside dreams—dreams eventually break.

Romance is a dream. Romance is a dream in which we see the divine in the other. But our inner state is not such that we can go on seeing the divine in the other unbrokenly. There is a flash for a moment, then it is gone, and darkness returns. And when the divine no longer shines through the other, the relationship we built on that glimpse will scatter.

That is why there is so much divorce in the West: society does not decide marriages, children decide for themselves. If a hundred marriages happen this year, twenty-five will break next year. Of the seventy-five that continue, most seem to continue under compulsion—due to other reasons, not due to love: children, jobs, loneliness, the difficulty of leaving, loss of face. For these reasons they persist.

So a marriage that society arranges is very durable. First point. It is durable precisely because it contains no great heights of love; it is the flatland of arithmetic. Account-keeping is primary there, not feeling. Society decides with the head; the heart is given no seat. And the heart is not reliable, for it can say yes this moment and no the next.

Only those established in samadhi know a heart that is steady. The head’s logic and arithmetic can be steadied and made available to all. The head can be educated—schools, universities, examinations—but the heart has no school, no university, no examinations. The heart cannot be educated.

The heart is like mercury—you cannot hold it. Only those succeed in holding the heart who have entered samadhi, who have dissolved, whose ego has completely ended. Their heart is established. The love that rises from such a heart is eternal, timeless; it never ends.

But such love will arise only in a Rama, in a Sita. Society cannot be run on that basis. If we try to make it the basis, more people will be miserable, afflicted.

So, arranged marriage exists. Experience, understanding, arithmetic—all support arranged marriage. It makes things last. Granted, it does not touch the sky, but one’s feet remain firmly on the earth. There will be no great showers of ecstasy, but a small stream of happiness and sorrow will keep flowing.

Those who long for showers of ecstasy—ninety-nine out of a hundred are lost in deserts of sorrow. Those who are content with the little stream of happiness-and-sorrow receive neither the sky of ecstasy nor the desert of grief; they manage to move through life. In their life, happiness and sorrow become two wheels, and the cart moves; and we have named that moving cart “life.”

The arranged marriage will be durable, stable; it will have no great joys and no great sorrows. It is not made from love, so it will not break when love is lost. And since it was not made from love, the question of love’s loss does not arise. It is a social institution. After thousands of years of experience, we refuse the heart a chance and decide by the head. Marriage is a decision of the head.

But love is utterly unique; it has no connection with the head. Love has nothing to do with thought. Just as meditation is beyond thought, so too is love. And just as meditation cannot be handled by the head, neither can love be handled by the head.

Love and meditation are almost two names for the same experience.

When meditation happens in the presence of another, we call it love. When, without any other person, meditation flowers alone, we call it meditation. Love and meditation are two sides of the same coin, two names for the same door seen from different sides. From the outside the door reads “Entrance”; from the inside it reads “Exit.” The door serves both functions. If you arrive at the door from outside, it reads “Love.” If you experience it from within, it reads “Meditation.”

Meditation is being filled with love in aloneness; love is the art of descending into meditation with another.

A few will arrive. But how few meditators there are—there will be just as few lovers. We do not run the world by meditators; we cannot run it by lovers either. Thus, to the world’s eyes, both meditator and lover are mad. The world calls both blind. It thinks only the head has eyes. It has no inkling that the heart might have other eyes; and even if it comes to know, it does not trust them. For the heart lives moment to moment. It is a natural, flowing stream.

The heart keeps no accounts of the past—what happened yesterday, the day before. The head keeps the entire accounts of the past and, based on that past, decides in the present: it brings all that has been known into the now to decide what to do. The heart has no stored wealth. It is weightless, without past, without memory. It responds this very instant—new and fresh. The heart is always fresh, like morning dew.

The head is always stale. The heart is always fresh, like a new bud in spring. The head is forever old, decayed; it is always a ruin. The heart is eternally here and now. That is why to the head the heart appears blind and mad.

There are not many meditators, nor can there be. We readily accept this about meditators, but we do not accept it about lovers—we like to imagine we all are lovers. I say to you, drop this delusion. As few as the meditators are, just so few are the lovers. For love too is an event of meditation. And as Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, and Christ—count them on one hand—have been meditators, so too have Sita, Radha, and Meera—counted ones—been lovers.

What you take to be love is sexual desire; and what you take to be the chase of sex as some great accomplishment of life is not at all important. It is merely a process run by nature, a push thrust upon you so that nature may secure its continuity.

Seeds break, trees grow, trees bear seeds. Birds sing to attract each other, mate, lay eggs, hatch young. You are doing the same. Among fish, birds, trees, and you—so far as lust is concerned—there is no difference.

Lust is a natural event. Love is unnatural, suprahuman, beyond nature—transcendent. Keep this in mind, and then try to understand.

Rama and Sita’s love is love—it is not marriage. And if you have read Valmiki’s Ramayana—otherwise you should. After Valmiki, Tulsidas and others wrote Ramayanas, but their purity is lost. Valmiki’s Ramayana is pure. It is pure because Valmiki worries neither about policy nor about religion; he tells it as Rama likely lived.

Tulsidas is very concerned to preserve Rama’s image. So wherever something might pinch morality, he drops it; wherever a spot might appear on Rama’s image, he removes it.

Tulsidas is an idealist. Valmiki is a realist. Thus many things in Valmiki will trouble you, because you cannot imagine such things happening around Rama and Sita.

Rama arrives in Sita’s city, strolls in a garden, sees Sita, and falls in love. We cannot even think this. We would say, “Some vagabond boy might do that—see a girl and fall in love—but is this Rama’s way?” Yet Rama fell in love before marriage. Then marriage became the journey of that love’s fulfillment.

Sita too fell in love seeing this young man. Two hearts met; society’s sanction would come later. The happening of two hearts meeting had already occurred. And I can say, even had Sita married someone else, it would have been only on the surface. The freshness, the virginity with which love was born between these two hearts—such virginity could not have come again in another love. That would have been borrowed, merely of the body.

Even had Ravana abducted Sita, he could never have possessed her. That event had already occurred; someone else had already “received.” Had Rama married another, the music that arose from Rama and Sita’s meeting—from that sudden, unarranged, unplanned happening—could never have arisen again.

Rama and Sita are seldom studied from this angle, because we do not study love—we want to avoid it. Their falling in love is the first event; the rest unfolds from it. Fail to see this and pointless puzzles arise in their life that you cannot solve.

A pundit once visited me. He was a devotee of Krishna and an opponent of Rama. Only a pundit can be like this—either pro-Rama and anti-Krishna, or pro-Krishna and anti-Rama—because a pundit is always for and against; he has no heart to understand. If he truly understood, he would see Rama and Krishna as one.

He said to me, “Everything else in Rama’s life may be fine, but banishing Sita—on the word of a washerman, on a rumor—casting a pregnant Sita out to the forest—this is unworthy of the ‘supreme upholder of dignity.’ It reveals a great lack of love. Rama may have been a statesman, but he was not a lover. What kind of love is this?”

When I told him that in my eyes it is an extraordinary act of love, that only a lover could do such a thing, he could not fathom it. I maintain that Rama could send Sita to the forest only because love is so deep that the thought does not even arise in him that Sita will doubt him, that she might think Rama has done wrong. Sita will accept. This love is so nondual. Sita will understand that this is right.

The whole world may cry “injustice,” but Sita did not. Rama’s sons, Lava and Kusha, did; Lakshmana had doubts. Anyone who reads the Ramayana will question it. But Sita did not. She accepted.

When we love someone, we accept them completely as they are. Whatever they do to us cannot be bad. It may look bad to the rest of the world, but it does not look bad to the lover.

The lover has already dropped the ego. Rama can send Sita into exile because sending Sita is not sending the “other”—it is sending himself. No difference remains.

Therefore, when we inflict suffering on another, a thought arises in the mind. But when we ourselves go into sacrifice or suffering, the question does not arise. Sita is so much Rama’s own that in sending her, no thought of wrongness arises. Just as Rama once went to the forest at his father’s word, so Sita goes to the forest. Where there is love, there is no question—there is a supreme acceptance.

What happened between Rama and Sita is an exclusive event of love. Being husband and wife is secondary—a social procedure, society’s seal—not the foundation.

And in Sita’s heart the question of another man will never arise. Where love is lacking, the thought of another arises. And in Rama’s heart the question of another woman will not arise. Where we are unfulfilled, the “other” attracts us.

Love is nonduality; the very question of the second disappears. The day you fall in love with someone, all women are contained in that woman, all men in that man. That woman becomes your nature, that man your manhood, and the whole world falls away. Hence our hunger for love; and until such love is found, there is no fulfillment—no matter how many partners you change. And you have been changing them.

In the West they are in a hurry, so they change within one life; you are not so hurried, so you change across many lives—no fundamental difference. Here we know the journey spans many births, so there is no haste: one life, one wife; next life, another wife, another husband—convenient. In the West, Christianity says there is only one life, so there is less convenience—they must do in one life what you spread over many. They are rushed because time is short; you are not because time is plenty. But essentially there is no difference.

See a beautiful woman and for a moment you forget your wife. For a moment smoke of desire fills your mind. For a moment you crave to possess. Whether you mutter “Rama, Rama,” avert your eyes, run away, refuse to look back—none of it changes anything. You cannot hide from inner desire by turning your eyes, nor suppress it by chanting “Rama.” It is there. And it will remain until love happens in your life.

There are two journeys: either love happens, and then meditation happens; or meditation happens first, and then love happens. There are two kinds of minds: a feminine mind, where love may flower first and meditation later; and a masculine mind, where meditation may flower first and then love. Either way, once the first step is taken, the second inevitably follows.

So recognize yourself. If your search for the divine is going to be through love, and you feel no pull toward meditation while love is your flavor, then do not make futile efforts at meditation. Find ways to drown in love.

And it does not matter who the love is for—your wife, your child, your cow, a tree—it makes no difference. The question is not the “other”; the question is the process of loving. Love even a stone, and the same can happen.

So do not think the stone images we keep have always been meaningless. Many times love has happened there. By a stone image too a devotee has found God. Because it is not the stone that matters; it is the inner heart.

Observe a devotee and how he behaves with his stone image—more tenderly than you have ever behaved with a living, conscious person. His care, his concern: he wakes God in the morning, rings the bell at the door, “Wake up, Nandkishore, morning has come.” We may laugh—how foolish, how mad. He brings water: “Brush your teeth,” offers the twig, washes hands and face, dresses the deity. He is absorbed as a mother with her child, a beloved with her lover. In that absorption, the whole world is gone; that stone image is the entire existence. He cooks, offers food, and only then will he take prasad. At dusk he puts God to sleep—God is tired. At noon he closes the door; at night he hangs the mosquito net.

It looks like madness. Bring a psychologist to test him; he will say this is pathological, perverse—because psychology knows nothing of the lover’s heart.

It has nothing to do with who or what is loved. The beloved is only a pretext. Under that pretext the inner stream of love, blocked within, begins to flow. The dammed-up spring starts to bubble. Stones lodged in the channel are removed. The beloved merely helps to move the stones; the spring is within me. Once it begins to flow, you know for certain it never depended on the beloved; it was my nature. I myself had piled stones upon it. The beloved helped remove them, and the stream flowed unhindered.

So if love is your flavor, be ready to be mad. Then with whom to love is not the question. A statue of Krishna will do; a statue of Jesus will do; even a rough stone will do.

I have heard of a fakir. A man went to him and said, “I want to seek God.” The fakir said, “The search is arduous, and God is a great leap. First, practice smaller jumps.” The man asked, “What are the smaller jumps?” The fakir said, “Love someone. Practice small jumps. God is the final leap where you will not remain at all—you will be lost in the infinite abyss; not even your ashes will be found. Wait for that last leap; perhaps you do not yet have the courage. First, small pits.” The man said, “I love no one. I have only thought how to free myself from wife and children so I can reach God. I never looked at anyone with loving eyes, for fear love would become a bondage.”

Of course love becomes a bondage if the ego is inside. If there is no ego, who will be bound? Love is bondage for us because the binder is present inside, and love tightens from all sides. When love tightens, we writhe within. But if the “I” is inside, love cannot be. In the name of love we then run lust, craving, attachment, desire. And with ego within, lust and craving bind.

We have called lust “bestial.” Perhaps you do not know what “bestial” means. Pashu means “that which is bound.” Pasha means a noose, a bond. Pashu is not “animal” as species; whatever is bound is pashu. And only that which stands inside can be bound.

The lover cannot be bound. Those who know love have called it the ultimate freedom. They have said love is moksha—liberation—because in love you disappear. Who will be bound? Even if nooses exist, they will flutter in emptiness. Try to tie emptiness and your rope itself will knot; nothing inside can be caught.

The man said, “I avoided love because love is bondage. And you tell me to love?” The fakir said, “Still, think again. Hard to find a person who, despite all efforts to avoid love, has not loved someone at least a little—because love is your nature. Close your eyes and look.”

The man pondered. “If I must admit it, I have a cow; I feel some attachment to her.” The fakir said, “Enough. Let the cow be your first practice. Go and love the cow with your whole heart. Let her fill your memory and your every pore. Stand up, sit down—let it be cow; walk—become cow-immersed.” The man said, “You are telling me madness! What will people say? It sounds insane.” The fakir said, “Love is always madness. Only those ready to be intoxicated are showered upon by God as love. Go. Try.”

They say the man found God through the cow. He never returned to ask the fakir for the next leap. Looking into the cow’s eyes, drowning there, he remembered God’s eyes.

And the cow has eyes—such unblemished eyes that Hindus have called her mother. They are as clear as a cloudless sky. Not even human eyes are so unblemished. Sit by a cow’s eyes and look. If love is in your heart, at once waves of love begin to rise from the cow toward you. The cow has no social constraints, no moral instruction, no “mine” and “other,” no calculating head keeping accounts, doing arithmetic. She is pure heart. If love is in you, she immediately sends love-waves back.

You will be surprised—today in the West there is much research on plants. Leave aside cows; they say even plants respond to love. A scientist working in this field devised instruments—electrical devices attached to plants. As in a cardiogram a graph is traced, the electrical waves in plants trace onto paper.

He found that when a person who loves the plant stands near it, caresses it, rejoices in it, a different graph emerges—the plant is elated. A gardener approaches with shears—the graph changes at once. He has not yet cut, only approaches with shears, and the graph changes. And the moment he cuts, not only the cut plant’s graph changes; the nearby plants’ graphs change too—they feel its pain.

The scientist was astonished: even if a chicken’s neck is wrung near a plant, all the plants weep—their graphs change. Not only that: the man who harms plants or kills a chicken—if he returns the next day, as he steps into the garden, the graphs change. The plants are aware: a harmful person has entered. Even months later, at his entrance, the plants grow wary.

Plants are much less developed expressions of life. If you can love a cow and gaze into her eyes, they become the doorway—with “Love” written outside and “Meditation” inside.

If love is your rasa, your flavor, be ready to be mad. Then the question “whom to love” does not arise. A Krishna image will do, a Jesus image will do, an unhewn stone will do.

Or, if love is not your rasa—as it is not for some—do not be sad or anxious. Meditation is your path. Then be alone and drown in yourself. If you cannot drown in another, drown in yourself. There are only two ways to drown: either dissolve in yourself, or dissolve in another.

Mahavira dissolves in himself. Therefore he says there is no God. A meditator has no need of the Other; God is an “other.” So Mahavira says there is no need for God. Appa so paramappa—“the Self is the Supreme Self.” That which is hidden within—the soul—is the Supreme; there is no other God.

This is not atheism. It is the believer’s statement—from the side of meditation. Lovers are puzzled by it; they think he is an atheist. Meera would be upset to hear it; Sita would be upset; Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would say, “What is this?” He would call it atheism.

Mahavira is not an atheist; this is the meditator’s theism.

And if Mahavira were to see Meera weeping, dancing, singing, “Mine is Giridhar Gopal, none else,” he would ask, “What is this? What madness? What delusion of mind?” He could not call it religion—because it is the lover’s religion, the lover’s theism.

The lover’s theism will always look a bit intoxicated, a bit mad, a bit wrong to the meditator. The meditator’s theism will always look like atheism to the lover.

Thus Hindus have grouped Jains, Buddhists, and Charvakas together as nāstik—non-theistic—traditions. Charvaka, fine; but they count Jains and Buddhists too. These three, they say, are non-theistic.

The reason is: the lover cannot conceive how you can drown in yourself. It seems like trying to lift yourself by your own bootstraps, or a pair of tongs trying to grasp itself. How can one drown in oneself? To drown, the “other” is needed; the other is God, in whom we can dissolve.

But the meditator says: as long as the “second” remains, some tension remains—concern for the other, thoughts of the other, prayer, worship—the mind goes on. How will you drown while the other is there? Only when the other is utterly absent can sinking be total.

Both speak truth. In my eyes, these are two names for the same door.

Between Rama and Sita an exclusive love happened. No other practice was needed; love did everything. This love was so unique that Hindus put Sita’s name first and Rama’s after—Sita-Rama. Because Rama is male; in his love, meditation’s shadow will be there. Sita is feminine; in her meditation too, love will be there. Lovers reversed the names.

Only Hindus say “Sita-Rama,” “Radha-Krishna.” The Hindu current has flowered through the doorway of love. Meditators have arisen here too, but they fell outside the main stream. The main current of the Hindu flow is love.

So Buddha, Mahavira, Patanjali were here, but they were flung outside the Hindu stream; they did not become the source. They are ancillary rivulets flowing alongside. Whoever wishes to understand the Hindu mind must understand the alchemy of love.

What happened between Rama and Sita can happen between you and anyone. Do not think, “Where shall I find a Rama, where a Sita? Where are they now?” If you think so, you are lost from the outset. In truth, whenever you love someone, there you will find Sita; whenever you love someone, there Rama appears. For no beloved will settle for less than seeing her lover as Rama; no lover will settle for less than seeing his beloved as Sita.

So the saying “Husband is God”—even if husbands exploited it and it brought great harm, even if women were oppressed by it—contains a fundamental truth. Whenever you love, the human disappears and the divine is revealed. Love is a chisel that brings the statue out of the stone; it lifts the veil. Your “humanity” is a veil; the lover removes it and sees your conscious essence. Your being woman or man is only a surface form, a formality. The lover removes it and Sita appears.

Do not go to Ayodhya in search of Sita. Do not go into the past to find her. And do not sit waiting for Rama. If there is love, wherever its light falls, Rama will be seen; Sita will be revealed.

Each person must understand clearly what his thirst is. The greatest difficulty is precisely this: to know one’s thirst accurately. Otherwise, the lover sits to meditate—time is wasted; the meditator pursues love—time is wasted. Inside, the opposition continues.

Take Mahavira to the Rasa-lila—inside, resistance will continue: “This is all futile.” Ask Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to sit beneath the bodhi tree like Buddha—his mind will remember cymbals and drum; without cymbals and drum, what kind of bodhi tree? That tree is not for Chaitanya.

Between these two there is no contradiction. They are distinct ways. Each person has an original way of traveling. We all reach the divine by unique paths. Whenever a consciousness reaches the divine, that event has never happened before and will never happen again. It happens for the first and last time. There is no repetition in this world; the ultimate experience cannot be repeated. Each approach is unparalleled and matchless.

Recognize your destiny, your rasa. Then choose the method of love or of meditation. If it feels hard, if you feel confused, begin with love first. Experiment with love. If you fail, try meditation. If meditation feels like your path, practice meditation. If you fail, try love. And in this journey, no failure is failure. If you fail in meditation, whatever meditation has come will serve in love. If you fail in love, whatever love has come will serve in meditation.

In this creation of God, no stone goes to waste. Every stone finds its use in the building. Often the rejected stones become the very foundation.

The traditional trataka—the conventional understanding of trataka—is indeed concentration. And concentration generates power; siddhis are acquired. But the union with the Divine, the supreme rest we seek, does not happen through it. Concentration is a function and an extension of the ego. You do not dissolve; you become more solid. You do not melt; you freeze like ice. Your power increases, not your bliss.

But what I am calling trataka is not the use of concentration; it is only the experiment of seeing—just looking.

Understand the difference. Trataka means gathering the entire mind and fixing it on one point—on the sun, on an image, on a mark—on anything. It means narrowing the mind so that it does not run here and there. All the currents of the mind turn in one direction. The mind goes on flowing toward a single point. Not even a single ray of awareness scatters elsewhere. Without scattering, everything comes to rest on one point. The effort is to keep it fixed there—to bind, to catch hold of the mind and seat it in one place.

What I call trataka is only trataka in name. I say: become empty within. There is no need to keep dragging your mind toward me; become empty inside and just look at me. In this looking, do not employ any device inside. In this looking, stand empty and silent, and simply see. Keep your eyes unblinking toward me. It is not for you to come to me through the eyes; it is for me to come to you through the eyes. The eye is your doorway. But if inside you are excessively full, there is no space. If you are empty within, if your throne is vacant, then through the doorway of your empty eyes I can enter.

In traditional trataka the seeker is bringing his consciousness to a point. In this trataka the seeker is not going anywhere; he is simply becoming empty within, and keeping his eyes open so that I can enter him. This is fundamentally different.

And this process of just looking is very unique. Because when you only look—without even trying to do trataka—then in that very “doing,” seeing would become impure; waves of thought would arise in the mind. When you simply look, your eyes become as clear as the sky. When you do not try to see anything, when you merely see, you become utterly quiet and tension-free within.

Sometimes lie down on the ground and just look at the sky. Do not think. If clouds are forming, do not see shapes in them, do not see elephants and horses—do not think anything. You are only seeing. Your eyes are as if they are not eyes but the lens of a camera, which does not think—only sees. Whatever passes, you lie there like a mirror. Whatever passes before a mirror is reflected. But the mirror does not think whether the cloud is black or white, whether it should be so or not, why the clouds have come, whether rain is near. Do not think anything; just go on seeing. Simply keep your eyes open; do not blink.

In a little while you will find that the outer sky has entered within you. Soon you will find that the inner sky and the outer sky have become one vast sky. The thin little wall between them has vanished. Then you will see: what is outside, what is inside? Where is the within, where is the without? Where does the inner end and the outer begin? All boundaries are lost. You too are sky.

Exactly so is the experiment of my trataka. I sit here as emptiness. You sit there full—how can meeting happen? I am eager to flow into you, but your vessel is kept upside down. I am ready here to enter you from every side, but you have not left even a single pore. You have built walls of strong cement and concrete all around. You writhe, you cry; I can hear your thirst, I can see your pain; your search is filled with sincerity, but you have become locked within a circle made by yourself.

And your difficulty is that you have taken your prison to be your dwelling place. You have taken your chains to be ornaments. You keep them with care. You fear they may be stolen. You protect them; you have posted guards of every kind. There is no enemy greater to you than yourself.

Yet your pain is real. You do writhe; there is nothing false in that. You want to come out; that arrangement, that aspiration, is there too. But you do not know that in coming out, you yourself are the obstacle. You are like a man who wants to run but is binding chains to his own feet—and perhaps thinks that by tying chains the legs will become strong and he will be able to run properly. You are engaged in many acts contrary to yourself.

That is man’s misery. He thinks what he is doing is beneficial; and the unwholesome results. Until this becomes clear, there can be no end to your suffering.

One thing must be understood very deeply: you yourself are the maker of your pain; no one else. You are responsible; the responsibility is yours. You sow the seeds of suffering—and while sowing the seeds you think you are sowing seeds of pleasure. Because in a seed nothing is visible—neither pain nor pleasure; the seed is closed. When you sow, you sow thinking of pleasure. Years later, when the fruits begin to come and sorrow arrives, then you think, “Who gave this sorrow?”

And there is such a gap between the seed and the coming of the fruit that you have forgotten these seeds were sown by you. The gap is so long, and the seed and fruit are so different, how would you remember that these are the very seeds we once sowed? Often you think our seeds of pleasure must have gone waste—rotted, decayed, found no proper soil—and these seeds of sorrow, which others threw upon us, these have borne fruit.

You will be surprised to know that in parts of Africa, as recently as a hundred years ago, there were many tribes who had no idea that the birth of a child has any connection with sexual intercourse. And there was a reason. Scientists say that the same belief prevailed across the world in ancient times. Because a child is born nine months later—this gap of nine months is so great—we are surprised because now we know. How could anyone connect an act nine months earlier with the birth of a child? Then not every act of intercourse results in a child; out of hundreds of acts only one or two produce conception; and the birth happens nine months later. So the thought there was that the cause of childbirth lies elsewhere—God’s grace, the worship of deities, charms and talismans, a saint’s blessing—some visible cause. That intercourse could be the cause did not occur to them.

Exactly the same situation prevails deep within humanity. You do not even suspect that the seeds of your sorrow are sown by you. The gap is greater than nine months. And the seeds are subtler—much subtler than sexual intercourse. Sometimes the fruit comes nine years later, sometimes ninety years later. These seeds of sorrow are not all seasonal. Some bear quickly; some take years. Some are like small flowers that bloom in season and are gone; and some are like great deodar trees that pursue you for a long time. From such a tiny subtle seed a vast tree that touches the sky will be born—this thought does not even arise.

But you alone are responsible. In the field of your mind no one else is throwing seeds—nor can they. There is no way to do so. For into the soil of your mind no one else has any entry. You alone sow there; you alone water; you alone tend; and when fruits come, you alone harvest. You are there alone.

When this recognition becomes dense, the seeker is born in you. Then you will truly get eyes. Then you will stop sowing those seeds that are poisonous. Then you will start cutting the weeds. Then your entire energy will become devoted to producing nectar.

You have absolutely no experience of nectar, of bliss. You have known pain, you have known pleasure; you have never known ananda. So the difficulty is great, and it is real: how to long for that which we have never known? How to grow the crop of that for which we have not even tasted a flavor? How to call, to invite, to search for that with which we have had no direct feel, no touch? You have experienced misery; you have experienced pleasure; you have had no experience of bliss. Then how will the search for bliss begin?

You seek bliss—you will say, “We are seeking.” That is not bliss; it is only your pleasure enlarged by imagination. You think bliss will be something like super-pleasure. You think, as there is pleasure in sex, so in bliss it will be a thousandfold. But that is multiplication—an expansion of pleasure. You met your beloved and felt pleasure; you think meeting God will be the same kind of pleasure, infinitely multiplied. There the difference is of quantity, not of quality. You think when great wealth is obtained, a kingdom is obtained, there is pleasure; when God’s kingdom is obtained, the same pleasure will be infinitely multiplied. But the difference is of magnitude.

I tell you, the difference is not of magnitude at all. Bliss is something you have never known. You cannot weigh it on the tiny scale of pleasure. Through the dimension of pleasure you will not recognize it. But you are seeking pleasure and merely calling it bliss.

Therefore there is my experiment of trataka. This trataka is a deep experiment of satsang. When I say to you: be silent and empty; just look at me so that I can enter you—then in my entering you will receive the first taste. That taste will make your endeavor alert. For the first time that taste will tell you what a drop of bliss might be like. Then you will set out in search of the ocean; then I have nothing more to do. That taste itself will pull you and take you. Then no one will be able to stop you. Even if the powers of the whole world come as obstacles, even if the Himalayas stand before you, you will cross over. Once your taste is awakened, all hindrances are small. And until your taste has not awakened, the ocean may be roaring right behind your back, yet you will not even turn to look—because there is no purpose in looking. Your eyes remain fixed where you have tasted pleasure.

Those who keep a lion at home have the experience that the danger begins from the very day it gets the taste of meat. Keep feeding it greens and bread, and if from childhood it has never been given the taste of meat, of blood, it will remain vegetarian.

I have heard of a hunter: he reared a lion cub—strictly vegetarian. Not once did it get the taste of meat. But one day the hunter was sitting in his garden and his foot was injured; a drop of blood oozed out. The lion sitting beside him licked that drop of blood. That was enough—the turmoil began. Now it is impossible to keep this lion at home; it has acquired the taste.

To give you just such a taste is the purpose of my trataka. If you get even a little taste—if a single ray descends—you will find the sun. If you gain hold of a single drop, the ocean is not far.

This is the meaning of satsang: to be with one who has known, so that the race to know begins in you. To be near one who has lived, so that your lamp flares up and catches the flame. Hence the sages have always said: without a Master this will not happen.

The reason is not that the Master will teach you and then it will happen. The reason is that without the Master the taste will not happen. This is not a matter of instruction—that the Master will teach you, give you a method, give you mathematics, give you a map, hand you a book and say, “This is the guidebook; proceed by it.”

No, that is not the point. You can go without it. For the Infinite there are infinite paths; there are roads from every side; no guidebook is needed. From anywhere you can reach there. There is no question of maps; the map will be an unnecessary burden. Many have perished beneath it. Someone carries the Vedas on his head, someone the Bible, someone the Gita. Because of it he cannot move at all: the map is so big, lugging it around—and without carrying it, where to go?

No, without a map you will arrive—because there is no map. It is everywhere. The real question is the taste. That which gives you the taste—that is scripture. That which gives you the taste—that is the true Master. Where you get the taste—that is the place of pilgrimage.

And once you have sipped a single drop, suddenly you will find this world has become futile. A new dimension of meaningfulness opens; a new journey begins. The old dream is broken; a new awakening starts.

Trataka means: I become your taste. Give me a little space—just a tiny aperture—let a little light enter your darkness; that is enough.

The traditional notion of trataka is not my notion. For me, trataka is not an exercise in concentration but an experiment in meditation.

That is all for today.