Nirvan Upanishad #12

This means: even the indulgent have a kind of renunciation. When the indulgent person leaves something, he leaves money, not moha. When he leaves something, he abandons the object, not the inner tendency. And by giving up the object, nothing essential changes. Because our bond is not with the object at all; the bond is with the tendency. Keep two things in mind.
Inside there is moha, therefore outside moha expands—over persons, over things, within relationships. Inside there is anger, therefore we search outside for excuses, for causes, by which anger can be expressed.
When someone abuses me, the mind concludes: he abused me, therefore I became angry. The truth is the reverse. Anger was already within me; the abuse was merely a pretext for it to come out. If no one abuses me, anger may not come to the surface, but I will not become non‑angry—the anger will remain preserved within.
Man gathers so much parigraha, such accumulation, that even if all his things are snatched away and he becomes utterly naked—snatched away, or he himself discards them—even then it is not necessary that inner moha has left. Things are only conveniences for the expansion of moha—opportunities. And the smallest thing can become the convenience for the expansion of the greatest moha. It is not that a vast kingdom is needed for moha to spread; a tiny loincloth is enough.
Whether a man steals two coins or two hundred thousand, the indulgent will say: two coins—what a small theft; two hundred thousand—what a great theft. But the renunciate will say: theft is never great or small. Two coins are as much an opportunity for the spread of thievery as two hundred thousand. As far as stealing is concerned, theft of two coins or two hundred thousand is equal. As far as money is concerned, the difference is vast; but as far as theft is concerned, they are the same. And if we go a little deeper, the feeling of theft and the act of theft are also equal. To become a thief it is not necessary to actually steal even two coins; to harbor the intention of stealing is enough.
This sutra says, the renunciation of the renunciates… How delightful! Because then it becomes clear that the indulgent too have a kind of renunciation. The renunciates’ renunciation is of fear, moha, grief and anger—renunciation of the tendencies; the inner, hidden causes, the roots. It is not a question of the object; it is the renunciation of moha. And once moha falls, naturally, no bridge remains between us and the object. Then a renunciate can live in a palace and the palace cannot bind him. And if living amidst a palace the renunciate is bound by it, then a hut will also bind him—no difference at all. If there is no hut, he will sit beneath a tree, and the tree will bind him.
Where there is moha within, there will be bondage anywhere—by the tiniest thing. No great empires are needed to create bondage. Otherwise only two or four people in the world would be bound and all the rest would be free. A diamond is not necessary; even a shell can shackle you.
The renunciate’s renunciation—the sannyasin’s renunciation—dissolves the very foundation from which the turmoil arises. It strikes at the root.
One man keeps cutting the leaves of a tree. If he imagines that cutting leaves is a way to fell the tree, he is in danger. Whenever someone trims leaves, he merely prunes; the tree is not felled—and in the place of one leaf two appear. It seems he is cutting the tree, cutting the branches. But those who know trees know he is actually facilitating expansion. When a branch is pruned, many shoots sprout—pruning happens. For innumerable births keep cutting branches and leaves—you will reach nowhere, because no stroke has been made on the root. The tree lives not by leaves but by roots. Roots hide within the earth; they are not seen. That by which the tree lives remains hidden, underground. Hidden—because what sustains life must be protected inside, else anyone could harm it.
Understand well: the tree keeps its roots concealed for protection. What is apparent—harming it gives no deep harm. Leaves will sprout again, branches will shoot forth again.
The last time I came to Abu the whole way was dry. Not a leaf on the trees. But the roots must have remained green within, for now that I have come again, all trees are green. The sun cannot assault the roots, nor animals, nor man, nor the heat; therefore the roots hide in the earth. And the soul of the trees is there. Sun will blaze, heat will rise, leaves will wither and fall. The tree is untroubled. It is only a matter of waiting a little. Rains will come again, shoots will appear again. If the roots are safe, leaves can appear at any time.
The reverse cannot happen—that the roots be broken, cut, while the leaves are kept safe, and the roots sprout again. The reverse does not occur.
Where are the roots of our disease? That spread of ours—that expansion—wealth, house, friends, loved ones, family—are these our roots? Those roots are within. All roots are hidden. Moha is hidden inside; its expansion is outside.
A man may run away leaving wife and children and go to the forest. But he does not see that the very moha that fabricated the wife and produced the children has gone along with him. That moha will construct new wives, will make new children. The mind is so cunning it will assign new names, arrange new structures. The roots were safe; shoots will emerge again. Names make no difference.
He will leave the home and build an ashram. Now he will call it an ashram and will be as anxious for it as he was for the house. He will fight for the ashram’s land in court just as he fought for the house. He will collect money for every brick of the ashram as he did for the house. And now there is a great deception—self‑deception is even easier. He will say, I do not do this for myself, I do it for the ashram.
You cannot say, I do not do it for myself—though we try. The father says, I do not do it for myself, I do it for the son. I do not do it for myself, I do it for the wife—responsibility.
He will now say, I am doing it for Paramatma. This is an ashram, not my home. Yet his entire network of relationships remains the same as it was with the house. He has brought moha with him—anger with him—attachment with him—clinging with him.
Therefore the rishi says: the renunciate’s renunciation is not outer renunciation. This does not mean he will not relinquish outer things. It only means that he cuts the roots. Then whatever remains outside becomes dreamlike—home or ashram, mine or another’s, palace or hut—dreamlike.
Another delightful fact: when the indulgent abandons and runs, he fears that very thing which he left. He is always afraid. Because he knows for certain: if that thing comes before him again, the hidden roots will sprout again. If he escaped leaving money, he will avoid any place where money might appear again. If he left woman, he will avoid places where a woman might be seen again.
This is worse than being a householder—this becomes a terrible fear. Scalded by milk, he now blows even on buttermilk. A state driven by fear cannot be an entry into Brahman. And this fear compels him to construct such boundaries that he becomes a prisoner within them.
The next sutra arrives—radical, too much revolutionary. Perhaps that is why no commentaries arose on the Nirvana Upanishad. It is among the neglected, the ignored. When I first decided to speak on it in this camp, many asked me, Is there even such an Upanishad—the Nirvana Upanishad? There is Katha, Chandogya, Mandukya—what is this Nirvana? It is dangerous!
The rishi says: they abandon precisely that by which the very seeds of expansion are destroyed—burnt to ash.
See it this way: because there is fear, we make vast arrangements. When a man builds a palace, raises walls, surrounds it with ramparts, he is frightened—hence so much security. A man walking with a sword at his side is afraid. The statues of heroes we erect—there is always a sword in their hand, mounted on horses, placed at crossroads. These are statues of fear. For what need has a fearless man of a sword? It only proclaims: fear is hidden inside. If we have had to build the atom bomb, it is because man today is more frightened than ever before.
Our weapons develop in proportion to our fear. The day man becomes fearless, weapons will be thrown away. They are not needed. Weapons are the extension of our fear. So as arsenals increase, they report—precisely and proportionally—how frightened man has become: that without the atom bomb he cannot feel safe. The greatness of the greatest nations—Russia, America, China—what is it? Their greatness is the heaps of weapons they possess. But those heaps of weapons announce nothing except the fear within.
And the irony is: however much you multiply weapons, inner fear does not end; it increases. So one trick is to renounce weapons—to give them up. Yet even then it is not necessary that you become fearless. If you abandon gross weapons, you will begin to manufacture subtler ones. You will say: the strength of the weak is Ram. This too is a weapon—greater even than the atom.
So Gandhi does not use weapons, but prays daily: the strength of the weak is Ram. But strength—whether it comes from the atom or from Ram—must come. We are unwilling to be weak; strength must arrive—from somewhere. The search for subtle power begins.
The renunciate is one who drops the whole search. And the irony is: Ram’s strength is received only when the weak is so utterly weak that he does not even have Ram’s strength—no power at all. He abandons preparations, because he says: to be afraid is incongruous. Where death is certain, what need is there for fear? Where one must die, what reason remains for fear?
I have heard a story. In Japan there was, as Rajasthan once had—now no more—a warrior class called the samurai. They were Japan’s Rajputs. One famous samurai—no swordsman his equal in Japan—returned home early one day and found his cook making love to his wife. He drew his sword, then remembered: to kill one who has no sword is against samurai dharma. So he handed a sword to the cook—Take it in your hand and fight me.
The cook said, Just kill me. This duel has no meaning. Otherwise you will comfort yourself that you are a great warrior. I have never held a sword; I do not know how to hold it. You will kill me in a moment. Kill me as I am—why this excuse?
But the samurai insisted: it is not proper to kill someone like this; I will be stained forever, and the samurai name defamed. I can give you time—learn swordsmanship for six months if you like. The cook said, it will do nothing—six months? Even six lifetimes will not make me your equal. So the samurai said, Then prepare to die.
The cook thought, Why not try one thing at least? If I must die, though I do not know how to hold a sword, what is the harm now? He said, All right then—give me the sword. The samurai had not imagined the cook would fight so fiercely. But when death is definite, fear disappears. Fear remains only so long as death is uncertain. The cook’s death was certain. He lifted the sword and began to strike—wildly, this way and that.
The samurai panicked, because the cook fought outside all rules! He was afraid, for he had always fought with codes, with manners, with proper forms—he knew what strike the other would make; each move was familiar. But this cook was making strikes not written anywhere in the scriptures of swordplay. And for the samurai, life still remained; for the cook it had already ended. The samurai was a great warrior—but inside there was fear, because his death was not certain. The cook was merely a cook—but because death was so certain, there was no reason for fear.
In a short while the cook pinned the samurai to the wall and placed his sword on the samurai’s chest. The samurai said, Forgive me. I never imagined you were such a fighter! The cook said, I am no fighter. It happened because death had become certain.
The sannyasin knows: death is certain. What fear! Fear has no meaning—irrelevant. That which is bound to happen has, in a sense, already happened. Why fear!
Why do we expand moha? Because by ourselves we are not enough. If another is beside us, a third too, our own people around—then we feel full. But the sannyasin knows: to be alone is destiny—there is no way to truly be with another. None. Make a wife or a husband, a friend, father, son—the other will remain the other. There is no way. We are alone. To be alone is destiny. We can deceive ourselves by keeping others around—No, I am not alone.
And we are very skilled in deception. A man passing through a dark lane begins to whistle. He knows there is no one—he himself is whistling. But hearing his own whistle he feels strength arise. He starts singing. Hearing his own song he feels he is not alone. There is no end to man’s trickery.
Man is alone—therefore he spreads moha, binds people, raises illusions that I am not alone; someone is with me, a companion. And he does not see that the one he made his companion also accepted him for the same reason—because he too is alone. Now note: if two lonely people meet, will the loneliness be doubled, or what will happen? Mathematics will say: doubled. And so it should be. If two sick people meet, the sickness doubles. If two lonely ones meet, loneliness becomes twice as deep.
The sannyasin says: there is no way to be two—we are alone. The acceptance of this, and moha dissolves—the acceptance, the acceptability: I am alone.
What is grief? What is sorrow? There is but one sorrow in the world—born of expectation. All sorrow comes through expectation. We think one thing; something else happens. We expected a man on the path to greet us; he passed avoiding our eyes. Grief arises. What is grief? The ash of expectations. Yet we remain tormented by grief, tormented by pain. It pierces the chest again and again. Still we go on expecting—without seeing by what door sorrow comes: expectation.
Wherever there is expectation, sorrow comes. We wish to be free of sorrow, and we continue to expect. This is Kalidasa’s pose: seated upon the very branch we are sawing. Every day we suffer, and every day we make expectations. We never see this logic, this law—that expectation produces sorrow.
The sannyasin says: if you do not wish to suffer, then do not expect. Make no expectations. None. Expectations are in our hands. The day I make an expectation—of any kind—on that very day sorrow will descend. Because no one is born to fulfill my expectations—everyone is born to fulfill his own.
The father has expectations of the son; the son has other expectations of the father. Of course—because the son is a son and the father is a father. Their mutual expectations will make both miserable. And the more we are hurt, the more expectations we cultivate. We think expectations will bring happiness. Expectations bring sorrow.
What is grief? Only this—that what we want does not happen. What we expect does not occur. What we assumed would be does not become so.
Someone asked Mulla Nasruddin for a loan—fifty rupees. Mulla brought him the fifty. The man was astonished; he had not expected that Mulla would quietly get up and hand him the money. After fifteen days, as promised, he returned the fifty. Mulla was amazed; he had not expected the money would be returned. A month later the man appeared again: I need five hundred. Mulla said, This time you will not be able to deceive me—you deceived me last time. The man said, Deceive! Did I not return your fifty? Mulla said, That was the deception, because my expectation was that you would not return it. That was the trick. Last time you deceived me, but this time you cannot. I am not giving you a rupee.
We all live creating juices inside—brewing expectations. That is why, have you noticed, when you are walking and a stranger picks up your fallen umbrella and gives it to you, how much gratitude you feel—because there was no expectation at all. But if your wife picks it up, no gratitude arises—because you expected she should. If she does not, sorrow appears; if she does, no joy.
Wherever expectation sets in, there joy thins, sorrow deepens. When expectations become completely fixed, only sorrow remains—no way for joy at all.
Therefore strangers can sometimes give a little joy; one’s own people rarely can. Not because of them, but because of expectation. The unfamiliar may bring a glimmer of happiness, but the familiar—related, known, family, friends—rarely can.
No son can give a mother contentment. This may sound exaggerated. You will say: if he turns thief, then not. No—even if he becomes a Buddha, he cannot. If he is dishonest, he cannot; even if he becomes honest, he cannot. If he goes to prison, he cannot; if he turns saintly and simple, he still cannot. Whatever the son does—no mother has ever been reported content. No father has been reported content.
What is the issue? The father has his expectations; the son has his own life. And there is another great secret: even if the son follows the father blindly, he still cannot give joy—then he appears a nincompoop, a lump of dung. Father says sit—he sits; father says rise—he rises; father says walk—he walks. Then the father strikes his head: he is dung! If he disobeys, there is pain; if he obeys, there is pain.
Our expectations contradict each other. If the husband does not obey the wife, she suffers; if he obeys completely, she thinks, What kind of husband is this? Worthless—present or absent, the same. The husband should be manly—and also a slave. Very difficult! He must be a man, and he must massage the feet. Both cannot be.
Mulla Nasruddin returned home once and said to his wife, What have you done! The manager has resigned. The wife said, What have I to do with the manager? He said, You phoned him today and abused him so badly that he immediately sent in his resignation. The wife said, Oh, what a blunder! I thought it was you on the phone.
Such are our expectations. If the son is talented, he cannot walk within the lines his father draws. Talent is always free. The father wants the son to be talented; he also wants him to obey. Only the dull can obey. Now the dilemma. Dullness and talent cannot coexist. If he is dull, he hurts; if he is talented, he hurts. What is this game?
The sannyasin, seeing this, stops expecting. He says: expectations are contradictory; I will not expect. Moreover, expectations are demanded of the other. Why should the other be compelled to fulfill them? The other is other! Whenever I expect—even a small, meaningless expectation, like If I pass you on the road, greet me—this costs nothing—yet even such a small expectation becomes a hindrance to the other’s freedom. It is violence.
The sannyasin says: since I long to be free, so do all beings long to be free. No—no expectation. Without expectation there is no grief, no sorrow. Without expectation no distress arises. If grief is to be abandoned, the roots of expectation must be left; grief falls away. Whenever anger arises, it seems another is responsible. The formula of anger is: the other is responsible.
Mulla Nasruddin went to a new job. At the interview the owner said, Mind you, you do not look responsible—the way you carry yourself. In my advertisement I wrote: for this post I need a highly responsible person. Mulla said, That is why I applied—because whenever anything goes wrong, I am always held responsible. Wherever I have worked—twenty-five places—whenever anything goes awry, I am proven responsible. And you wrote you need a responsible man—so I came.
The key to anger is this: it is always the other who is responsible. If you would drop anger, understand: I am always responsible. Then the reason for anger disappears. Then the roots of anger are cut. The sannyasin does not swear oaths—I will not be angry. He understands the kingdom of anger, its secret, its roots—and is free.
Freedom is not difficult. But if you cling to old formulas and keep taking vows, you will be in trouble. Inside, you go on believing the other is responsible; outwardly you say, I will not be angry. This cannot be. Anger will remain inside; it will search for routes—and it will find them, strange routes.
I have heard of a Christian priest who took a vow never to use abusive words. The very day he was ordained a village feast was given in his honor. He took the vow—and fell into trouble that same day. The vow-taker always falls into trouble, because a vow is not understanding. The intelligent man takes no vows. Understanding is enough; vows are not needed. The unintelligent tries to compensate for lack of understanding with vows. But when there is no understanding, it will not appear by taking vows.
The priest had taken the vow. At the feast the server, while serving, spilled an entire pot of curry on his fine clothes. Fire flared inside; curses rose to his lips. But he had taken a vow; so he said, Brothers, would some householder kindly say, on my behalf, the words that are absolutely necessary at such a time—for I have taken a vow.
This is how it will be. Because vows are not understanding. The unwise take vows; the sannyasin does not. It may surprise you—the sannyasin takes no vows. He lives by understanding alone. Understanding is his only vow. And whatever falls into understanding—dissolves.
They taste only the rasa of union with Parabrahman.
One taste alone is theirs, one rasa alone. Not from persons. Not from things. Not from objects, not from relationships. Their rasa and taste is only with Paramatma. But even there they do not craft relationships of fear, moha, grief or anger. This is to be understood well.
Ordinarily, those we call devotees, they too weave relationships of fear, moha, grief and anger with God. They sulk even with God. They expect even of God that he should obey them. They form expectations that as they say, so should God do. They can get angry with God. Then they have merely projected all their diseases onto God. They are not freed of them.
The sannyasin makes no expectation of Paramatma. This becomes his relationship. Whatever Paramatma does, he consents. He does not grow angry—It should have been otherwise. He does not make moha even there; otherwise anything can become a pretext for moha.
I have heard of a saint devoted to Rama. He went into a Krishna temple and refused to bow—Until you take bow and arrow in your hands, I will not bend my head.
A strange moha! Madness. This is derangement. Only if bow and arrow are in your hands will my head bow. Then even in my bowing there is a condition—Take up the bow, else my head will not bend. Now my head has become more important.
We all have our mohas. We pass a mosque as if nothing is there; we bow before a temple. Even among temples there are differences—our own temple. Before our own temple we bow; before another’s temple we pass by. Moh is standing there too.
The sannyasin has no moha. Therefore I say: for the sannyasin, temple, mosque and gurudwara are one. If the mosque is near today, pray there. If the gurudwara is near tomorrow, pray there. If the temple is near, pray there. And if nothing is near, sit anywhere—that is the temple, that is the mosque, that is the gurudwara. But the mind carries great mohas.
The sannyasin has but one rasa, one taste—toward the Supreme. And that taste can arise only when those four prior tastes have fallen; otherwise it does not arise. If these four tastes remain—of anger, of moha, of grief—this current flowing toward the Supreme does not spring forth.
The next sutra says: their stainless power is aniyamakapan.
This sutra is a great revolution. This is the sutra I have been speaking of. Aniyamakatva—indisciplinarity—freedom from discipline—is their stainless power. They do not regulate themselves; they do not bind themselves in disciplines; they take no vows, adopt no rules. They fix no boundaries. They do not say, I will do this. They take no such oaths. They live in non‑regulation.
Strange! Because we think the sannyasin should live in discipline—left‑right, regimented. Our so‑called sannyasins are absolutely left‑right. But this rishi says: aniyamakapan!
What wondrous and loving beings they must have been! What courage; what deep understanding! They say: the sannyasin has no rule. Sannyas has no rule. In truth, to be beyond all rules is sannyas. The mind will be perturbed: If all rules break, everything will be disordered, anarchic; all arrangement shattered.
It will not be so. Because to arrive at this state the rishi says: moha, greed, lust, anger—all must be dissolved; only Paramatma as rasa remains—then aniyamakapan. When there is no lust, no anger, no moha, no greed, no fear—what need remains for rules? And if even now rules are needed, when will freedom be? And for whom only Paramatma remains as rasa—what need has he of rules!
No—the sannyasin cannot run on rails like a train. He is free like a river. The ocean is his only quest. Free like a river. The fixed rails on which the carriages run—that is the householder’s way of living. The householder runs on tracks—and often reaches nowhere; mere shunting goes on. Because the wife pulls this way, the husband that way, the son another way—shunting goes on. Gradually the carriages corrode and collapse on the spot. No journey ever completes. And rightly so, for the householder is less like a passenger train and more like a goods train. And goods trains—always shunting, as you have seen.
The householder moves burdened with heavy loads. So burdened he cannot walk—and keeps adding more. Each day the burden increases. The old remains; he keeps accumulating the new. In the end he dies under his own load. Rules are necessary in the householder’s world—so many diseases—if guards with guns do not stand all around, there will be great difficulty. For the sannyasin there is no question of rules, because sannyas is precisely the abandonment of that for which rules were made. Understand well.
Rules were made only as poor substitutes—weak devices—for that which the rishi calls us to abandon. A policeman stands on the road because it is known: the moment he is removed, the rule of driving on the left evaporates.
A friend of mine—a Padmashri, for years an MP, a poet, all virtues—and the great virtue of being Indian—went to London for the first time. Returning from a friend’s home at one in the night, they were in a taxi. The road was empty—no one. No policeman, no traffic. The driver stopped at a red light. My friend said, When there is no policeman and no car, let’s go on. This is an Indian’s virtue—and if one is a Padmashri, the virtue should be stronger. The driver looked at him amazed and said, Please open the window and look. An old woman has stopped her bicycle and is shivering in the cold—because the light is red. You sit in the comfort of the car; what is spoiled by a minute? If a policeman were standing, one might even slip through by deceiving him; but when no one is standing and everything is left to us, then to go is not to deceive another—it is to deceive ourselves.
The rishis have called the sannyasin free. We keep no rule on him because we trust: he will not deceive himself. That is his sutra. And to one who knows that one cannot deceive oneself—then a new discipline is born—an inner discipline. A discipline not organized from without. The sannyasin does not say, I will speak truth. Whenever the occasion arises, he speaks truth. He does not say, I will not steal. Whenever the occasion arises, he does not steal. This is an inner discipline, not an outer one.
Aniyamakapan—to be un‑disciplined. It is better to say un‑disciplined than indisciplined—free of discipline, not deficient in discipline. Because within, a new discipline has been born—hence the outer can be removed.
But if someone thinks—and the mind does think, and many have thought—and much disturbance has arisen in this land because of it—If someone thinks, This is wonderful: let me become a sannyasin and enter non‑regulation now—then know: non‑regulation comes only after great regulation. The stature of non‑regulation arises from a long journey. It is born of great sadhana. If one decides to enter non‑rule right now, one will enter only anarchy and become very miserable. For one’s own expectations from others will remain—that they follow rules.
Mulla Nasruddin was caught in a swindle. The magistrate asked, You deceived this man who trusted you so much? Nasruddin said, Your honor, had he not trusted me, how could I have deceived him? If I could deceive him, we are equally responsible. Because he trusted, I could deceive. Had he not trusted, this crime would not have occurred. If punishment must be given, give it equally to both—and make him the principal culprit. I am number two; he is number one. He trusted; I deceived. My deceit followed his trust.
The deceiver depends on your trust. The one who makes himself anarchic depends on your order.
Today’s hippies, or the new youth across the world becoming anarchic, dropping rules—they live and we do not notice that they depend on the order of the rest of us. If we abolish the whole order, hippies will vanish at once—they cannot live. They live because a great order continues. Those we call revolutionaries cannot live if the conformists do not survive. If one man stands in gaudy, outlandish clothes at the crossroads, he can stand there only because everyone else is dressed in orderly ways. If all others also dress like him, he will flee—he will not stand there, for the exhibition loses meaning. Perhaps then he will stand at the crossroads in orderly clothes, because his joy was in appearing different. Those who take delight in breaking rules can do so because rules hold everywhere.
Mulla Nasruddin was once brought to court. The magistrate said, A thousand times I told you, Mulla—stop drinking. Again you have come back with the same offense. Mulla said, Your honor, I fell into bad company. The magistrate said, I will not accept this. What bad company? Nasruddin said, The whole bottle was there, and the three men with me all said they do not drink. All three were stubborn—they had stopped drinking. Such bad company—I had to drink the whole bottle myself. So I fell into bad company—that is the result. Not my responsibility. If those three scoundrels had drunk a little and shared it, this mess would not have happened. I had to drink it all.
If the whole world becomes dishonest, dishonesty collapses. If all people become thieves, thievery collapses. To stand, theft too needs the support of the non‑thief. And the thief expects that you will not steal. You will not steal.
Within this order the sannyasin does not create disorder. He simply steps outside the diseases for which order was created. He transcends. And he expects nothing of you. And whatever happens to him in his aniyamakapan—he is ready for it.
Diogenes wandered naked. The police caught him; he went and sat in jail. The emperor summoned him: Diogenes, you did not protest! He said, I had no expectation. One protests only when there is expectation. To be naked is my whim; to confine me is yours—I agree. The matter is finished. Where is the quarrel? If I assume I shall remain naked and you must not confine me, then trouble arises. I am free for myself; you too are free for yourself. You do not want a naked man on the street—you confine me. I want to be naked—I will be naked in jail. No disturbance. Our views are entirely the same. The emperor said, Release this man—he is beyond our rules. Rules have no meaning for him. We cannot punish him.
In my childhood I was fond of physical exercise. A teacher of mine, when he punished, would say, Do twenty‑five sit‑ups. Whenever he told me to do twenty‑five, I would do a hundred—because I enjoyed it. He said, This will not do. I say twenty‑five and you do a hundred. He had a fixed regime for punishment. He made me do it once—and never again. A few times I asked him, I made a mistake—shall I do sit‑ups? He said, Leave it—no need. Punishment is fun only so long as the punished suffers; if he enjoys…
Then I found a trick. No teacher could punish me. One teacher would send a pupil outside the room. I began to enjoy the outside. He said, What kind of punishment shall I give you! I said, I like outside more than inside—punish me happily.
Our rules and arrangements hold only so long as I demand one rule for myself and another for others. The sannyasin accepts the same for all—then he can be unregulated. Then no need to bind him to rules.
Because of such sutras, those who first read the Upanishads in the West were frightened: Everything will collapse; all will be destroyed. But they did not see that nothing will be destroyed—because before arriving at this sutra, the sannyasin has traveled through and beyond all diseases. Only then do we tell him: do not take medicine. We tell him to throw away the medicine when he is no longer sick.
Mulla Nasruddin fell sick. Ten days later he recovered. The doctor asked, Did you follow the instructions on the medicine? Mulla said, No. I became all right because I did not follow the instructions and did not follow the medicine. The doctor said, Meaning? Mulla said, I threw your medicine from the seventh floor. Had I followed after it, the decision would have been final—I had put your prescription in it too; threw it all—was saved. Had I followed the medicine, I would have died.
The rules we follow, without which we feel we cannot live—the reason is the hidden diseases within. If there are no diseases, and yet one goes on following rules, one will die, get into trouble. If the sannyasin follows rules, he will be harassed, become sick—because he will keep taking medicine when there is no illness.
Therefore the rishi says: their stainless power is aniyamakapan.
A wondrous phrase—stainless power. We think discipline creates force—discipline is power. The army’s strength lies in discipline; the more disciplined, the more powerful. Power seems to arise from discipline. But the rishi says: aniyamakapan is their stainless power. This is another kind of power—and he adds, stainless.
Understand: the power that arises from discipline is tainted. Therefore wherever tainted power must be used—police, courts, army—wherever one disturbance must be created to suppress another—there we impose discipline. Tainted power is born of discipline.
If Hitler wrought such havoc, it was because of the German capacity for discipline. In India Hitler cannot be born. Try as you like—you cannot provoke that havoc, because it is hard even to produce discipline. The German genius is the capacity for discipline. Therefore the danger from the German people remains. They can fall into havoc anytime; if someone calls correctly, they can become disciplined—it is in their blood and bone.
We are Indians—discipline is not in our blood and bone. Because of this—strange good fortune—we have suffered many pains, but we have not given pain to others. We have borne much slavery, but we have not gone to enslave others. To do that takes great discipline—that we cannot. Why has discipline not arisen in this land? Because our highest ones were discipline‑free. And people follow the highest.
Hitler is not our highest. Nor Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor Genghis, nor Tamerlane. If we think rightly, compared to Tamerlane, Genghis, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao—we have not produced even one such man. Five thousand years of history, such a vast people—and not one Genghis. We cannot—because to raise such a peak you need the entire structure, a brick under each brick.
We could produce Buddhas, Mahaviras, Patanjali. Very different beings—unregulated. Discipline‑free, unpredictable—no one can announce what they will do tomorrow, what they will say—no one can say. On this earth we attempted another experiment. And perhaps, ultimately, our experiment will be of use to the world. In the meantime we may have to suffer—but in the end our experiment may be the one that serves.
Today Western psychologists have begun to accept that teaching any people too much discipline eventually is a road into war. If even one nation becomes disciplined, it will impose war on others—because it will be convinced it can annihilate them; it has disciplined power. Hence psychologists are saying: do not teach discipline to children. If we are to abolish war, give children freedom—do not line them up in ranks. Do not put them in uniform. Give them individuality, not the arrangements of crowd and group. Then wars may be abolished; otherwise, not.
No one can say that within the next hundred years what the Indian rishis said will not become the world’s supreme wisdom. It may. Because for the first time discipline holds in its hands such deadly weapons that if the world now becomes disciplined, it will be destroyed; it cannot survive. We must now seek directions where we can simplify the person so much that he can live free of rules.
The power that comes from non‑rule is very stainless. The difference—understand it thus. There is power there too. Fire burns—producing heat. Come close—you are scorched. Touch it—you burn. But there is also cool light which merely touches—there is no heat. Night brings the moon—there is light. Day brings the sun—there is light. But the moon’s light is cool; it does not strike. It touches—and still you hardly feel the touch—very cool.
Power too has two forms: one very hot—when it becomes violence and pierces the other. And one very stainless and cool, like the moon—when it merely caresses, touches, and no blow falls. No sound of footsteps. Even the tread of feet is not heard. If Buddha passes near you, he passes as if no one has passed. But Genghis Khan cannot pass like that.
I have heard: when Genghis attacked a village, he had all the children’s heads cut and impaled on spears. He rode his horse with ten thousand children’s heads on spears before him. Someone asked: Why impale the heads of children? What harm are they? Genghis said: How else will it be remembered that Genghis passed this village? For generations it will be remembered—Genghis passed here!
Genghis plundered a village and camped in the forest outside. He summoned the village courtesans to dance. Till three in the morning he watched. A dark night. The courtesans said, Shall we stay here? The night is too dark—the forest desolate. Genghis said, Do not fear. He ordered his soldiers to march ahead and set fire to every village on the route. Ten villages were burned. The courtesans returned by that light. Someone asked: For such a small matter! Four soldiers could have escorted them. Genghis said, How would it be remembered that the courtesans were returning from Genghis’s camp!
There is a tamasic power whose pleasure is in grinding you into dust, flinging you to the ground, and proclaiming, I am. Stainless power never tells you, I am. Even if you search, you hardly find it—hardly. You must go seeking—and still, with difficulty. Stainless power is as absent as God is absent. Such stainless power does not arise from rules, from programs, from organization. It arises from living in supreme aniyamakapan.
The sannyasin takes supreme aniyamakapan as his very sutra, his code, his rule.
Self‑luminous, fused with Shiva‑Shakti in Brahman, they pierce the web of prapanch.
The energy available through such non‑rule—this vast appearance is pierced and the entry is into Param Brahman. If something is to be built in the world, tamasic, dark, black power is needed—discipline. If one is to go beyond the world, then auspicious, white, stainless, silent, footfall‑less power is needed. If one is to do something in the world, without discipline it will not be done; but if one is to journey beyond the world’s prapanch, one must drop all discipline and enter supreme non‑discipline, supreme freedom from rules.
And only he can do this who is not frightened, is not moha‑ridden, is not angry, is not grief‑stricken. Only he. Otherwise, the frightened will make rules.
Nietzsche said something strange: all rules in the world have been made by the weak—by weaklings. There is some truth in it. Why should the powerful walk by rules? The powerful never have. But the weak are many. Without rules, where will the weak stand? So the weak gather and make rules. The crowd of the weak, when it gathers, becomes stronger than the strong.
Nietzsche said: democracy is an effort to dethrone the powerful—a conspiracy of weaklings. The crowd makes rules, pulls down the strong. And even the so‑called powerful, if he is to remain in office, must follow the crowd.
Therefore leaders are followers of their followers. They always watch which way people are going—then they go that way.
Mulla Nasruddin once stood for election. A tax issue was raging. The whole populace was divided—half for the tax, half against. He rose to speak. After much talk, people asked, All that is fine, but what about the tax? Should it be levied or not? Mulla was in a fix. If he said yes, half the town would be against him; if no, the other half. Which side to take? The crowd shouted. Mulla said, I am always with my friends—and you all are my friends. Everyone clapped—each thinking Mulla was with him.
The politician answers like that. His answers are crafted to avoid answering—because any answer can trap him. He sidesteps questions, for he needs everyone with him. He watches where you go—and goes there. If you go both ways, he goes both ways. If you go three ways, he goes all three. You are his deity.
This world—the rishi calls it prapanch—this spread—if one is to move within it, one must move with great cunning, violence, dishonesty, planning. But the one who is to pierce it, to go across, needs none of that. He needs no cunning, no violence, no deception, no discipline. His being is enough—his stainlessness is enough—his silence and stillness are enough. Then, piercing this prapanch, the arrow of his consciousness sets out on the journey to Param Brahman.
As a disc is covered with leaves, so the senses and their forms cover it; likewise, the coverings of positive and negative thoughts—bhava and abhava—veil consciousness. The mind’s one part says: God is; another says: He is not. One part says: Love—another says: Danger—keep hatred and caution. One part says: Give charity. The other says: Give, yes—but first arrange to pick a pocket. Opposites crowd the mind and veil awareness. The lake of consciousness is overlain with leaves—leaves everywhere.
How be free? Shall we select one thought and go on refuting its opposite—will we be free?
No. Whatever you choose in mind will bind you—because the opposite cannot be destroyed; it is its own other half. Like a coin with two faces. If you think you will throw away one face and keep the other, you are in trouble. What you retain will drag along what you wanted to discard. And if you throw, the part you wished to keep will be thrown with it. The two sides are conjoined.
So are bhava and abhava—affirmation and negation—conjoined. Hate and love are joined; anger and forgiveness joined; raga and viraga joined. If someone says: I will cut attachment and become dispassionate—he will spread viraga above; attachment will hide behind. Therefore we coined a third word: vitaraga. Vitaraga means—beyond raga and viraga. It does not mean viraga. Viraga is still within the duality. Vitaraga means beyond both.
The rishi says: to be beyond both, one must assume the sky‑like state—akash‑bhava.
What is akash‑bhava? A black cloud roams in the sky; a white cloud floats by. Both float in the sky—but the sky is identified with neither. The sky does not say, I am the white cloud. It does not say, I am the black cloud. The sun rises—light floods the sky. Night falls—darkness spreads. The sky sees both together. Knows both together. Remains witness to both. The sky says neither I am light nor I am darkness. Light comes and goes, darkness comes and goes—the sky remains as it is. Neither light can erase it, nor darkness.
Akash‑bhava means—beyond both, enveloping both, different from both—witness to both. Bind yourself neither to bhava nor to abhava; neither to raga nor to viraga; neither to enjoyment nor to renunciation—assume the sky‑like state toward both. Just be a space. Let attachment come—let it go. Let dispassion come—let it go. Stand encompassing both—empty, mere witness. The name of this witnessing state is Samadhi.
Enough for today.
Now let us assume the sky‑like state.
Only two days of meditation remain; tomorrow will be the last day. Let no friend be left behind. Ninety percent perhaps are working rightly; ten percent may be lagging. Let them not lag. Gather a little courage, take the leap. Do not be scared of the body’s fatigue. The body will tire; in two days it will be fine. Do not fear if the legs ache or the throat fails—two days later all will be well. Do not let small things become obstacles.
Spread out far so that you can dance and jump with your whole being. Tie the blindfolds over your eyes. Even if you are not blindfolded—do not open your eyes for forty minutes. Forget everyone—know you are alone here, in this place. Become utterly mad. Less than madness will not do.
Bind your eyes. Spread out. If you wish to remove clothing, remove it. If in the middle you feel like it, throw away your clothes. No embarrassment—no concern for the other.
Good. Now begin!