Peevat Ramras Lagi Khumari #8

There is no need to call out. One has to fall silent, become quiet, thought-free. Meditation is an inner journey; prayer is an outer journey. A religion based on prayer remains worldly. Only a religion based on meditation transcends the world.

That is why I said Rabindranath’s prayers are outward-turned. Prayers can only be outward. They are petitions to someone whose address is unknown. The poetry may be lovely, but poetry and truth need not be one.

I emphasize this so that you turn inward; don’t call out; don’t shout. Don’t ring the bells in temples. Don’t read namaz in mosques. The Japuji you recite in the gurdwaras is lost in empty sky. All this fretting is futile. Be still. Practice silence—such a silence that not a single ripple of thought remains, where not the slightest gesture of feeling is left, where no cloud gathers in the sky of consciousness, where only light remains.

The name of that unclouded, thought-free, choiceless state of consciousness is meditation. In that meditation, without asking, everything is given.

And in prayer there is only asking—and nothing is obtained. Yes, sometimes it may happen that you keep shooting arrows in the dark and one arrow hits. If it hits, it hits; if it doesn’t, it was just a fluke.

So it may sometimes happen, accidentally, that your prayer seems to be fulfilled; do not fall into delusion because of that. In this world many things happen by coincidence. But do not take coincidence to be the truth of life.

It is written in Mulla Nasruddin’s life that he was lying in his garden. He had built a bamboo trellis and trained a pumpkin vine over it; big pumpkins were hanging from it. Nearby a grapevine was also climbing. And Nasruddin must have been in some philosophical mood. He began thinking, “What sort of God is this! If you were going to make them, you should have made grapes like pumpkins—what fun that would be. One grape would be enough. But you made grapes so small and pumpkins so huge! No rhyme or reason in it.”

Just then, as coincidence would have it, a gust of wind came and a pumpkin fell on his head. His skull barely escaped being cracked. He said, “Forgive me. Pardon me. Who am I to give you suggestions! The wise have rightly said that one receives the fruit not only of action but of thought as well. I was only thinking—and immediately I received the fruit. Thus the law of karma stands proved.”

One day he was passing by a road. He went past a mosque. The muezzin had climbed the minaret to give the call to prayer. His foot slipped and he fell—on top of Nasruddin. Nasruddin’s bones broke. Lying in the hospital, Nasruddin thought, “The law of karma is right; that man must have committed some sin, therefore he fell from the dome. But he wasn’t hurt at all, and my bones and ribs broke! What kind of law of karma is this—one does and another pays? One sows—someone else reaps!”

But the first event was coincidence, and the second event too is coincidence. Man finds many contrivances to convince himself.

For centuries we have been persuading the poor: “You are poor because you committed sins in your past lives.” It gave the poor a consolation. Revolt could not arise. In India, where the doctrine of karma has been very influential, rebellion died. The embers of revolution were lost; only ash remained.

Does any nation remain enslaved for twenty-two hundred years? For a year or two, someone may forcibly enslave someone. But twenty-two hundred years! Can anyone keep someone enslaved by force! And tiny nations came, without any great power—and India kept losing, kept losing? Behind it worked that very doctrine of karma.

India agreed to everything. When it agreed to poverty, it thought, “Enslavement too is the fruit of destiny. What is to happen will happen. What can be done by us? God is doing it.” The poor gained consolation from this, but poverty did not end; it increased. This consolation proved to be poison. The rich also benefited. The rich obtained security. That is why the rich arrange sermons; they get the pundits to recite the Satyanarayan Katha. They build temples.

Where these very doctrines are hammered into people’s minds as conditioning, the rich gain protection. All his sins get covered over. The logic is reversed: because of the merits of past lives he has acquired wealth. The poor accepted their poverty; the rich gained strength for their richness. But all this was a matter of coincidence.

Yet we have one insistence: we do not want to admit coincidence. We cast every coincidence into a doctrine. Until we cast it into a doctrine we remain uneasy. Then, by hook or crook, we keep convincing ourselves.

Mulla Nasruddin was passing by an orchard. The mangoes were ripe. The fragrance of the mango grove was floating in the air. He could not restrain himself. He tried hard; practiced much restraint. He remembered well that he had sworn not to steal. But then—clever man that he was—he reasoned, “Oh, the mangoes were planted by God; do they belong to anyone? All land belongs to Gopal! He filled them with juice. He planted the fruit. And some unfortunate fellow thinks—these are his!”

He slipped in and plucked mangoes. The branches were weighed down, the mangoes were so ripe, so full of juice! He filled his whole bag. Just then the owner arrived and said, “Nasruddin, aren’t you ashamed? And people think you are religious! You are a mulla and you are stealing!”

Nasruddin said, “Who says I am stealing? A gust of wind came with such force—I was passing by on the road when the squall picked me up and hurled me into the orchard!”

Mangoes were in both his hands. The owner said, “All right, let that be. Let me accept, though it doesn’t sound quite right—we’ve never seen such winds in this area—but fine: if you say so, I accept that the squall threw you into the garden. But how did the mangoes come into your hands? Did the squall put them there too?”

He said, “No, that has a different cause. Somehow I grabbed hold of a mango tree to stop myself. The squall was carrying me away. So the mangoes broke off. That is why you see mangoes in my hands.”

“Fine,” said the owner, “let that be too. But how did so many mangoes get into this bag?”

Nasruddin said, “Am I some philosopher! That is exactly what I too am wondering—how did so many mangoes get into this bag? And that is what you are asking me! If you were to ask me how the pit came to be inside the mango—since there is no answer for how the pit came inside the mango—then why is an answer necessary for how the mangoes came inside the bag?”

Man finds tricks to convince himself.

You ask, Nikhilanand, “You said, ‘No prayer is heard, but this one prayer was heard!’”

No—this too is coincidence. It is pleasing. I agree with these words. I too would say:

“I will not become an ascetic, I will not, I will not—no matter what anyone says.
I will not become an ascetic, certainly not, if I do not find the Tapasvini.
I have taken a hard vow: if I do not find the bakul grove,
if I do not find the one whose heart matches mine,
then I will not become an ascetic, I will not, if I do not find that Tapasvini.”

Rabindranath was against tapascharya—ascetic self-mortification. And I agree with him in this, wholly agree. Tapascharya is a kind of self-violence. The ascetic is not something venerable. The ascetic is sick of mind. One who torments himself is not natural, because nature does not wish to torment itself. Nature seeks joy by its own spontaneity—not suffering. In the deepest core of our being is a longing, an urge for bliss. And how could the urge for bliss torture itself!

But why do people torture themselves? People know only two ways: either they will torture others or they will torture themselves. Religious people cannot torture others—that would be sin. Then what are they to do? They must torture; if they cannot find another, they torture themselves. They cannot kill someone else.

There is a Christian sect that flogs itself with whips. This is asceticism. The first thing the monks of that sect do each morning is strip naked and whip themselves. With their own hands they lacerate themselves. And crowds gather to watch. The crowd too is violent. Because one who gets up in the morning and, leaving a thousand tasks, comes to watch someone beat himself—his mind is sick as well.

And these people who beat themselves, who lacerate themselves, are taken to be mahatmas! Naturally, one thinks: “I could never do this. What I cannot do, someone else is doing—certainly he is far ahead of me.” The other is only committing stupidity. The other is committing a heinous crime. Because if you torture someone else, the other can defend himself. But when you begin to torment your own poor body, there is no way even to defend it.

And the body is the gift of God, the gift of nature, the gift of the Whole. To insult it is to insult existence. And what will happen by whipping? Even if you make the body bleed, lie on thorns, stand in the sun, walk on embers—what will happen? Do you think the light of life will arise from that? That some radiance of Buddhahood will dawn?

Buddha tormented himself for six years and found nothing. When he was exhausted from tormenting himself, one day he gave it up. And the day he gave it up… He had already given up tormenting others on the day he left the palace and kingdom; then he took to tormenting himself. One evening he gave that up too. He saw: this is futile, that was futile. And that very night the great revolution happened. When his eyes opened in the morning, he was not the same person who had gone to sleep. There was a new birth. A pure, pristine awareness had come into being. A smokeless flame was burning within. All was silence. All was bliss. All around, nectar was showering.

Buddha said: What I could not obtain by doing, I obtained by non-doing. What I could not obtain by effort, I obtained by rest. The miracle of miracles!

No one gains anything by self-torture. That is why I am not a partisan of austerity. Tapascharya is excess in another form. There are people who, by overeating, have made themselves miserable. Then there are people—indeed the same people—who once made themselves miserable by overeating; now they make themselves miserable by fasting. From one misery they move to another.

The mind moves in extremes. From one extreme it goes to the opposite. If only it would stop in the middle—there would be liberation!

So I say neither indulgence nor austerity. Stop in the middle. Buddha even called his path the Majjhima Nikaya—the Middle. That is the golden line: to stop exactly in the middle. If you stop in the middle, like someone who holds the pendulum of a clock still at the center, the clock stops. If you stop in the middle, the mind stops. The mind too is a clock—indeed it is, because the mind is time. Where the mind stops—you become beyond time, beyond the temporal.

A prince named Shrona took initiation with Buddha. He had been greatly indulgent. And what had to happen happened. As soon as he took initiation, he began to torment himself. Buddhist monks eat once a day. He would eat once in two days. When Buddha and his monks walked on the road, he would walk along the edge among thorns and stones. His feet became lacerated. His body was beautiful—a prince’s—tender, like a flower. In six months he had withered to a thorn, turned black. His family would come and could not even recognize him—so distorted, so ugly had he become. Wounds covered his feet. His belly clung to his back.

One evening Buddha went to his hut and said, “Shrona, I want to ask you something. I have heard that when you were a prince, you were very skilled in playing the vina.”

Shrona said, “That is true. I had great relish for the vina. I spent the greater part of my life practicing it. I was mad for it. Hours I practiced the vina. And certainly I attained deep mastery. My name became known far and wide. But why do you need to ask this?”

Buddha said, “I came to ask because I myself have never played the vina. You can explain it to me. If the strings of the vina are very loose, does music arise or not?”

Shrona said, “What a question! One need not play or even know the vina to say that if the strings are too loose, no music will arise.”

Then Buddha asked, “If the strings are very tight, does music arise or not?”

Shrona said, “If they are very tight, they will snap. If they are very loose, they will not ring. If they are too tight, at the touch they will break.”

Buddha said, “Then how should the strings of the vina be, Shrona?”

Shrona said, “They should be in the middle—exactly balanced. Neither too tight nor too loose; neither tight nor loose. Only on that exact middle line does music arise from them.”

Buddha said, “I came to tell you just this: the rule of the vina is the rule of life. Only by being exactly in the middle does the music of life arise. Leave the extremes. First you were in the excesses of indulgence—drinking wine, having courtesans dance late into the night, sleeping in the day. Now you have begun to do exactly the opposite.”

I am not on the side of indulgence, nor of austerity. The West is indulgent; the East is ascetic. And both are suffering. The West is afflicted by indulgence; the East is afflicted by austerity.

A new religion is needed. A new religiosity is needed, which is neither of the East nor of the West. These are extremes. Neither of indulgence nor of austerity. One of intelligence. One of stopping in the middle. One that can draw music from the life-vina.

Therefore Rabindranath’s words are lovely. But they are the words of poetry. He himself never practiced meditation in life. He kept to prayers. This too is a prayer.

And my neo-sannyas did not come into being because of his prayer. What has my neo-sannyas to do with his prayer? Even if he had not prayed, it would have happened. Even if he had not been, it would have happened.

The conception of my sannyas was born of the entire past history of humankind. I saw that people suffered in both ways: the materialists suffered; the spiritualists suffered. Now we need a vision of life that is whole. One that is material—and spiritual. Or say, neither materialist nor spiritualist; not an “-ist,” not a disputant.

Just as there is a harmony between body and soul, a cadence, so there should be a cadence between materiality and spirituality. Only in that cadence is the truth of life experienced.

Rabindranath is a poet—not a meditator. If only he had been a meditator, then what he has said would not be merely a sweet song; there would be the life-breath of experience behind the song. Poets often say things like the rishis. But only like. Sometimes they even say better things than the rishis. They are skilled in saying—but there is no experience. Therefore, after reading someone’s poetry, do not go running to meet the poet. Because in the poetry it may seem he touched the sky; and when you see the poet you may be astonished—he may be sitting in a tavern drinking; or sitting somewhere gambling; or standing on the road quarreling with someone and hurling one hefty abuse after another. And you will not be able to think that there is any connection between his poetry and his abuses, any rhyme at all.

In certain moments the poet finds the window of life open. For the rishi the windows have opened forever. For the poet, poetry is a happening, an accident. Even for Rabindranath it was accidental. When poetry descended on him, he would bolt the doors. Sometimes for a day or two—once for three days—he would not come out. He had told his family that no one should disturb him. He would forget hunger, forget thirst—until the poem had completely descended. Until what was hovering over him had taken full form, had become embodied—till then he forgot hunger, thirst, sleep. But this happened only sometimes. And when it happened, it happened by accident.

For the rishi it is not accidental. He holds the key of meditation. It is not that now and then a window opens by itself in a gust of wind and he sees the sun. Rather, the key is in his own hand—whenever he wishes, he opens and sees.

The rishi is master of himself. The poet is not his own master. Therefore the poet often feels that something is descending from above. The rishi feels—it is arising from within me, from my innermost core.

Rabindranath’s words are sweet. If only behind these words there were the experience of meditation, then the power of these words would be immense. As they are, the words are beautiful—but they are paper flowers. Then they would be real flowers; they would have roots. Now they have no roots.

Nirmal Ghosh, when I praised his aesthetic sensitivity to the skies and compared his poetry with the Upanishads, you did not think then that all those things might also be poetic symbols! Then, Nirmal Ghosh—you are Bengali—your ego must have felt gratified. It must have pleased you to think, “Ah, blessed Bengal! Golden Bengal! The land of gold!” You must have been elated. Your ego must have tasted its nectar.

And it is not only with you. This has been my steady experience over the last twenty-five years. I spoke on Krishna—gave hundreds of talks on Krishna. I spoke on the Gita; perhaps no one in the history of humankind has spoken as much on it. Lokmanya Tilak’s “Gita Rahasya” is the largest commentary on the Gita, but what I have spoken is twelve times that. Yet no Hindu ever said to me, “You are not a Hindu; what right do you have to praise Krishna?” No one said I had no right to praise him.

But the moment I offered the slightest criticism of Krishna, hundreds of letters began to pour in: “You are not a Hindu. What right do you have to criticize Krishna!”

Do you see the double standard? If I praise, I have the right; if I criticize, I do not? If I have the right to praise, I have the right to criticize.

I spoke on Mahavira—spoke more than anyone in the Jain tradition has spoken on him. I spoke on his life, on his words—and the Jains were overjoyed, showered praise by the cartload. But the moment I offered the slightest criticism of Mahavira, a firestorm erupted: “What right do you have? You are hurting our religious sentiments.” And if for so many days I have been laying flowers on your religious sentiments, then I also have the right to prick in a thorn or two.

If I speak of the roses, all is well. The moment I speak of the thorns on those roses—wrong! If I speak of the roses, that is truth; if I speak of the thorns, suddenly that is only a poetic symbol!

I have seen this again and again. A woman from America—sixty-five years old—read my books on Jesus. When I spoke on Jesus, his followers from many countries poured out praise. That elderly woman wrote to me: “Only after reading you did I understand Jesus for the first time. I used to believe, but I did not understand. You have given me understanding of Jesus; therefore I want to become a sannyasin.” She took sannyas. For three years she kept sending me books, magazines, and always some gift—without a break. And then in one discourse I simply joked—and even the joke was not untrue.

In a very ancient book about Jesus there is a mention that Jesus was very ugly. Not only ugly, he was hunchbacked. Not only hunchbacked, his height was only four feet five inches. Ugly; four feet five inches; and hunchbacked! I merely referred to this, and I did so to point out that it is possible—because there are other similar references in ancient Jewish texts saying Jesus was extremely ugly. But his devotees, his lovers, have not described this ugliness anywhere.

What I said was this: The way a devotee looks—with the heart he looks—the body disappears. He sees the inner soul, the light within. His eyes do not rest on the lamp, they rest on the flame. And one who is not a devotee, who does not look with reverence, does not see the flame, he sees only the lamp—whether the lamp is clay or gold, that is where his eyes stop.

So the opponents saw only Jesus’ body, while the lovers saw his soul. That was my point. But the old lady was instantly angry. She immediately sent her mala back, with a very angry letter: “You said something that deeply hurt my religious sentiment. You have shattered my heart to pieces.”

People—if their notions are supported—whether their notions are right or wrong is not the point; they are theirs, and must be supported—then they are delighted.

Now when I had said that Rabindranath’s aesthetic sensitivity is unparalleled, Nirmal Ghosh, you did not once ask, “How can you say that?” You accepted it. And when I compared his words with the Upanishads, you did not object: “Where are the Upanishads, and where is Rabindranath! What sort of comparison is that?”

But when yesterday I said that he is a lakir-ka-fakir—there, it hurt. Now you are trying to explain to me that his notion of God could be a poetic symbol! In truth you are consoling yourself: “It must be a poetic symbol.”

Rabindranath’s notion is not a poetic symbol. Rabindranath believed that God exists—and a personal God. He was a theist, not an atheist; not like Buddha, not like Mahavira. And yet I say to you: often his utterances come very close to the Upanishads; they attain the same height. But that height is unconscious.

And his sense of beauty is certainly profound, very deep—but that too is unconscious, a kind of swoon. It has not arisen from meditation and witnessing. Therefore the charge of being a lakir-ka-fakir—one who clings to the old groove—is also applicable.

In an unconscious person everything happens—false as well as true. But in relation to both, he remains unconscious. In a conscious person only the true remains, because wrong has no affinity with consciousness. In a dark room, sometimes by groping you do find the door and go out; sometimes you bump into the walls; sometimes you fall over the furniture; sometimes in your groping you knock a picture off the wall; and sometimes you manage to get out just right.

A drunkard, however drunk he may be, staggering, still finds his way home. Even a drunk recognizes his own house. He even takes the key from his pocket and tries to open the lock—he recognizes the lock. Opening it is difficult.

I have heard that one day Mulla Nasruddin was trying to open a lock with his key. It wouldn’t open. How could it open! His hand was shaking. A policeman standing on the road watched. He felt amused, and also a little pity. He came over and said, “Nasruddin, give me the key, I’ll open it for you.”

Nasruddin said, “No need to give you the key. I’m not so far gone that I would hand my key to someone else. If you really want to help, do me a favor—just hold the lock steady so it won’t shake.”

All this was going on when his wife woke up. From the second-floor window she called down, “Have you lost your key? Shall I throw down the other one?”

Nasruddin said, “I haven’t lost the key, but if you throw down another lock, the job will get done. This lock is shaking so much. To tell the truth, the whole house is shaking. How can this poor policeman hold it still! If you throw down another lock, I’ll open it right away.”

Man is in a swoon—and yet he still reaches his home. He is unconscious, and still he knows not to hand over his key to someone else. He is unconscious, and still opens a lock with a key, not with a cigarette. He is so far gone that the lock is shaking, the house is shaking—yet some awareness remains.

Such is our stupefied state. Rabindranath sang beautiful songs—even those, in a swoon. And the God he talks about is not a matter of realization—that too is swoon. But if someone, even in a swoon, finds the door and steps out, I will at least say he stepped out through the door! That is a miracle. If a man in full awareness goes out, that’s no miracle.

That the rishis of the Upanishads sang beautiful songs is no miracle. The miracle is that people like Rabindranath and Kahlil Gibran, who have no experience of samadhi, touched the heights of the Upanishads. That is the miracle. That is poetic genius.

What heights poets have reached! But in their lives there is no foundation for those heights. All their heights are flights of thought—flights of imagination. In fantasy, in seeing dreams, in adorning dreams, in giving them finish and luster—their genius has no rival.

Nirmal Ghosh, I will speak of the roses—and the thorns as well.

Recently a Zoroastrian high priest from Bombay came here with fifty disciples. He requested me, both personally and in writing, to speak someday on Zarathustra. Certainly I have a fondness for Zarathustra—great fondness. I have never spoken on him—deliberately so. Zarathustra’s vision of life resonates with me. He is an affirmer of life. He stands for living life—not for renunciation, not for escape, not for fleeing.

But the sayings collected under the name of Zarathustra are very ordinary. That is why I have never taken up the subject—because if I do, there will be trouble. Those sayings are ordinary. Whoever is responsible for them—perhaps Zarathustra himself was not very skillful in expression. There is no necessity that one established in samadhi should be adept at statements.

If a non-samadhi person can utter profound statements, then remember also: a person in samadhi may not be able to utter beautiful statements. Very often truth becomes like the jaggery in a mute man’s mouth—he has the taste, but cannot speak it. The realization is there, but the tongue is not.

So the sayings of Zarathustra have little value; thus I have avoided it. If one surveys Zarathustra’s vision from above, broadly, I support it. But if I start analyzing the sayings one by one, I am compelled; thorns will appear—what can I do! Hence I have deferred it.

But they themselves had requested me, and in some other context I mentioned this: the master says one thing, the disciples understand another. For example, Zarathustra spoke of the inner fire, and the disciples understood—worship the outer fire. And to this day the worship goes on! Fire-temples have arisen; the Parsis worship fire.

That is all I said, and letters began to arrive: “Who are you? You are not a Parsi. What right do you have to interfere with our religion?”

I have the right to praise! If I praise, I have the right! And I have not even interfered. And it was Parsis who requested me to speak on Zarathustra. And all I said was: “Instead of the inner fire, do not worship the outer fire. Seek the fire within.” There is no condemnation in that, no criticism either. Certainly no criticism of Zarathustra.

I said, the master said one thing, the disciples understood another. The master always speaks of the within; the disciple always understands the without. And it is bound to happen, because the disciple’s gaze is outward, and the master’s gaze is inward. Transformation will occur—inevitably so.

But angry letters came, filled with rage. Letters even appeared in newspapers: I have no right. One gentleman even wrote, “Even if we attain the inner fire, we will not give up worship of the outer fire.”

I say, who is asking you to give it up? I have not told anyone to give up anything. Here we have one kind of madman after another—someone worships Mother Cow, someone worships Lord Hanuman! No harm—worship fire. Some worship the Peepal tree as a goddess! Flowers are being offered to stones—then fire is not bad; it is a beautiful symbol.

But this gentleman says, “Even if we attain the inner fire, we will not stop the outer worship. And who are you? You are not a Parsi.”

As if my being a Parsi is necessary! Must I be a Parsi to say something about Zarathustra? Must I be a Buddhist to say something about Buddha? What are these monopolies you have created? I love Zarathustra—I will speak. I will say what I have to say.

I love Rabindranath too. But love does not mean what you and most people think, Nirmal Ghosh—that love is blind. My love has eyes. When there is a flower, I will say “flower”; when there is a thorn, I will say “thorn.”

Poets, monks, Sufis have said: “O worms of the lowlands, God is far away. For a man to reach God is out of the question—human imagination itself is helpless.”

I asked the flowers, the dewdrops, the stars; they all blushed and smiled. I had thought the concealment of Truth was only the habit of creative sages and wise men.

I plucked countless strings of feeling, yet no melody arose—meaning that even man’s conscience is stupefied by the intensity of this sublime haze.

At last when I asked Humanity itself, I stood astonished to see: A man reaching God—that is not the issue! Man is still far from man.

The day man begins to understand man, God himself will descend to earth. As for man’s reaching God—why, man will overflow into godliness.

To talk of God is pointless. Understand man—understand humanity. Read the secret concealed within man. If this Quran, this Veda, this Bible written in the human heart becomes even a little legible, if this script becomes a little recognizable, then there is no need to seek any God—man himself is God.

As for man’s reaching God—why, man will overflow into godliness.

I trust in the godliness of man, not in any God. Therefore I said that the God to whom Rabindranath is praying—such a God exists nowhere.

Those prayers are lost in an empty sky.