Piv Piv Lagi Pyas #4

You are crippled! You can’t be made any more crippled than you already are. You are blind; there is no way to close the eyes any further.

Where does it hurt when you hear the master being praised? It is the ego that suffers greatly on hearing the master’s glory. The egoless one is filled with awe and gratitude. In him, the master’s praise becomes a shower of nectar, but the egoistic feels great pain—because the praise of the master means you will have to disappear.

A master means you must become a “no.” As long as you are, the master cannot be. The master is death. He will efface you, wipe you out completely. This creates panic. That is why somewhere the praise of the master hurts. If it hurts, look closely within: the ego is standing there. And that ego is very cunning; it looks for big arguments and fine rationalizations. It is that same ego which has found this argument.

True and deep thirst does, by itself, take one to the Divine. But where will you find true and deep thirst? If it were there, you would already have reached the Divine; there would have been no need to come to me.

Who will tell you which thirst is true and which is false? Who will explain which thirst is deep and which is shallow? Who will awaken you to what thirst is and what is not? If you could do this on your own, how many lifetimes have you already spent—why haven’t you managed it yet?

Stiff-necked! Lest you have to bow. Lest you have to learn from someone. Learning is so painful; being a disciple pricks like a thorn. For to be a disciple means: bow; it means: open; it means: let another come, let him sit upon the throne of your heart. The ego is squatting there, occupying the seat. That ego will explain many things to you; it will say, What need is there of this? You yourself are the Divine!

It is true that you are the Divine. But you have no experience of it. And until there is experience, the statement is worth two pennies. It is true that deep thirst brings you there—but only if deep thirst is there! The master does not take you; it is deep thirst that takes you. But the master awakens deep thirst. A master cannot give you God. The Divine is already given to you. The master can only wake you up, so that you see what lies hidden within you.

And the delightful thing is that the master is merely a pretext. By the pretext of the master you learn to bow. And one day, bowing at the master’s feet, you suddenly find: the master’s feet have disappeared; the feet of the Divine are in your hands. The master was only the pretext by which you learned to bow. Whoever has learned to bow reaches the Divine.

But without a master you will not learn to bow; without a master you will remain rigid.

That is exactly what has happened among Krishnamurti’s disciples. For years they have been hearing that there is no need of a master. Hearing this gives great satisfaction to the ego. Around Krishnamurti a crowd of egoists has gathered. You will not find a humble man there, because those whose ego refuses to bow find Krishnamurti’s words very appealing. And the statement is absolutely right—but the appeal is absolutely wrong.

Sometimes you latch onto a right statement for the wrong reason. The statement is perfectly right, but your reason is utterly wrong. Sometimes you use truth the way one uses a lie. You use truth itself to hurt someone; then truth becomes violence.

Therefore the knowers—Mahavira, Patanjali, Buddha—placed nonviolence even before truth. The sole reason is this: only if there is nonviolence in you will you be able to speak truth. Otherwise, seeing a one-eyed man you will call him “one-eyed.” The heart will be set on hurting, yet you will say, “I am only speaking the truth.” Hence all the wise have taken nonviolence as the first vow and put truth after it. Truth can be dangerous.

What Krishnamurti is saying is absolutely true, but the listener is listening for the wrong reason. He is grasping it for the wrong reason. The listener did not want to bow; in Krishnamurti he found support. The listener wants to be a guru, not a disciple; in Krishnamurti he found a pretext. But after years of listening, no one seems to be getting anywhere.

A large segment of Krishnamurti’s listeners have been associated with me. I do not see even one of them arriving. And they all come to me and say, “What to do? We understand everything, but nothing is changing.” Change will not happen; the statement is giving support in the wrong place; the medicine for the disease is being turned into food.

You ask, “By hearing the master’s praise again and again, won’t we become crippled?”
If you were not crippled, you would not have come here at all. You have come here precisely because you are crippled and you want to learn to walk. You are crippled—and on top of that you are egoistic—so you don’t even want to learn to walk by taking someone’s support. You want to learn to walk, but to have to thank someone—there is not even that much generosity in your heart, to be grateful to someone, to feel obliged that someone helped you walk. Your ego cannot offer even that small a thank-you. And the master has never asked for anything; not even thanks.

The sole meaning of praising the master is that I am condemning your ego. If you understand me rightly, what has it to do with the master? I glorify the master so that your ego is denounced. I talk of the master so that you may learn to bow. So that you become eager to be a disciple—this is the only secret in praising the master.

You will bow at the master’s feet, and when you rise you will discover that the master has dissolved, has vanished, and the feet of the Divine are in your hands. For the one who has bowed—the feet of the Divine come into his hands. Then you will thank the master: “By your grace you taught us how to bow.”
By bowing, that which we had lost is found. By bowing, that which we so longed to know is known.

First, the very outlook of “as quickly as possible” is wrong. It means you are not at all ready to wait. It means you are in a hurry—tense, impatient. Only those can come to the divine whose life-consciousness has not been infected by the disease of hurry, who are willing to wait.
Waiting is a benediction.
Waiting means you are so vast that even if you had to wait for endless births and then you met the divine, even that would be soon. Waiting means: whenever you meet—even in eternity—that too is soon; for what was my worthiness anyway? There was no such merit that demanded it must happen now. If you had not given, what complaint could there be?
And the more you hurry, the more it will be delayed. You know this from ordinary life too: the day you have to catch a train in a hurry, that’s the day everything takes longer. You button the coat wrong. The wrong shoe ends up on the foot. You meant to put one thing in the suitcase and you put in something else. You forget the keys at home. The ticket is left behind in the taxi. You were in a great rush. The more you hurry, the longer it takes—because hurry destroys time. Hurry burns time. And hurry means the mind is tense, disturbed; big waves are rising in the mind.
The more patiently you move, the sooner you arrive. And if you are ready to wait for eternity, the happening can occur this very moment.
These statements will sound paradoxical. I am saying: if you want it quickly, don’t hurry. And I am saying: if you don’t want it quickly, then rush as much as you like. The mind that is frantically eager and in a hurry will never reach—because the way to meet the divine is to become quiet. Hurry is restlessness.
Wait. This does not mean I am saying do not be thirsty. Let the thirst be intense; let the waiting be infinite. Let the thirst be as if you want it now—and let the waiting be as if even if it comes anytime in eternity, that is soon enough. When these two qualities join in the stream of your life…
The Sufi fakir Bayazid used to tell his disciples: do everything as if this is the last day. There is no cure for laziness like this. Do every act as if this is the last day of life, as if this sunset is the last sunset and there will be no sunrise. There is no tomorrow; all ends today. And do every act also as if life will go on forever. There is no hurry.
A great paradox. How will you manage both at once? They can be managed. They do get harmonized. And the day they harmonize, an incomparable music is born within you—where thirst is intense and waiting is equally intense.
The thirst is yours: you burn, you become a flame, the restlessness is deep—this is your state. But because of it you do not say to the divine, “Meet me now.” You say to the divine, “This thirst is mine; I will burn. But I am willing to meet when it is your wish, at your convenience. I will sit at the door. I will not even knock. I will remain thirsty. Let my thirst itself become the knock upon your door—that is enough. But I will not hurry.”
This is the alchemy of devotion. This is the whole scripture of bhakti: that you ask, yet you do not hurry. Let there be prayer, but let demand not even rise to the lips.
When Bayazid prayed, his lips never moved. His disciples asked: when we pray we say something and our lips move. Your lips do not move. You stand like a stone statue. What do you say within? Because even if you speak inwardly, the lips tremble a little; a trace of speaking comes to the face—but even that is not there.
Bayazid said: Once I was passing through a capital city. In front of the royal palace, at the emperor’s gate, I saw the emperor standing, and a beggar also standing there. The beggar just stood. His clothes were in rags. The body worn out, as if he had not eaten for days; the body had shriveled to a skeleton; only the eyes shone like lamps; all other life seemed withdrawn. How he was even standing was a wonder—it looked as if he would fall any moment. The emperor said to him, “Speak, what do you want?”
The fakir replied: “If my standing at your door does not reveal my need, what is the use of saying anything? What else is there to say? See me at your door. My very being is my prayer.”
Bayazid said: From that day I stopped verbal prayer. I stand at the door of the divine. He will see. What should I say? And if my condition cannot say it, what will my words say? And if he cannot understand my state, what will he understand of my words?
The devotee burns. The pain of devotion is deep—the deepest pain there is. And yet it is sweet, a sweet ache; and in it there is supreme waiting. The devotee can wait—can wait for eternity. And the day you are ready to wait for eternity, in that very instant the happening occurs. Before that it will not—because only in that much patience does peace descend; and in that peace the door opens.
Drop impatience.
All meditation methods exist to teach patience, not haste. So don’t even ask me about “the quickest possible transformation.” What is the hurry? Nature flows in great silence. The inner nature moves quietly. It does not acknowledge time; it is eternal. Flowers do not hurry. Trees do not ripen in haste—they pause, they wait. The moon and stars do not race; they keep to their steady pace.
I have heard that Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar wrote in his memoirs: the news of his erudition had spread far and wide, and the Governor General—when Calcutta was the capital—invited him to the royal durbar to honor him.
He was a poor man, in worn, old clothes. Friends said, “This won’t do. Your prestige is India’s prestige. If you go in these clothes, it will not look right. These are not fit for the durbar. We’ll have proper clothes made for you.”
At first he refused, then he saw their point: it would not be appropriate; it might even offend the Governor General. To go dressed properly was necessary. He agreed, but a slight unease remained in his mind.
He was to go the next morning. That evening, while returning from a stroll in a garden, a Muslim gentleman was walking ahead of him, ambling very peacefully. A servant came running and said to the Muslim, “Mir Sahib, your house is on fire!”
But Mir Sahib’s steps did not change. The gait remained the same; the cane swung the same way; the pace was unchanged—as if nothing had happened. The servant thought perhaps he hadn’t understood or heard. He said again, “Did you hear?”
The servant was frantic—drenched in sweat, panting, agitated. It was someone else’s property burning. He was merely a servant; nothing of his was being lost. The one whose property was burning walked tranquilly. The servant repeated, “The house is on fire. Do you understand? What are you lost in? Run! Everything is turning to ash!”
The Muslim said to his servant, “Fool! Should I abandon the gait of a lifetime because an ordinary house is burning? And the house is burning anyway. If I run, I will burn too. Let the house burn. By running nothing will be saved, but I too will catch fire. My only thought now is: the house is gone; let me save myself.”
Vidyasagar was behind him; he heard this and was struck. He thought, “This man—his house is on fire—and he is not ready to change his gait. And I—no house of mine is burning—and I am ready to change my clothes.” He decided, “No. Tomorrow I will go just as I am.”
When you are in a hurry, the fire starts within you. The world is burning anyway. Save yourself—this is enough. And the only way to save yourself is that your peace, your patience, your waiting, suffer no disturbance.
Make patience your meditation; make waiting your prayer. Then see how quickly the happening occurs. It can happen this very moment. Not even a moment’s delay is needed. If delay occurs, it is because you are in too much of a hurry. If you totally let go, the happening will occur now. There is no reason to lose even one more moment—because you have become quiet. It is only because of your running that you cannot see. That which is present cannot be seen in your haste. The eyes are blurred, engaged in running. Stop—and receive.
So remember my sutra: The one who runs will miss. The one who stops will attain. If you ask, you will never receive. Be silent; it is already given.
And sun-gazing and the like are all bodily matters. Do not get entangled in such things. There is no certainty that the inner eye will open—but the outer eyes may well be damaged.

There is only one way to come to trust: trust. There is no other way.
It is like someone asking, “How do I learn to swim? What should I do?” The only way is to swim. Get into the water and thrash your arms and legs. You won’t swim all at once. But that thrashing is the beginning of swimming. What is swimming? It is simply bringing that thrashing into a little order. There’s nothing more to it.
Throw a person suddenly into water—he too thrashes about. He too “swims,” but there is no art in it, no skill. Often he drowns precisely because of his crude swimming. He gets so frightened he flings his arms wildly, gulps water, panics even more, flails harder, and gets into trouble. He drowns in his own commotion.
You must have noticed something curious: a corpse never drowns, the living do! The dead must know some art the living do not. The living sink, the dead float. The dead know one art: they don’t do anything. When nothing is done, who will drown them? The river is defeated—how to drown someone who gives no resistance at all?
In the end, those who become adept at swimming float like a corpse. They don’t need to move their limbs. Throw a novice into water—he thrashes. Throw him in daily; gradually skill comes to his thrashing. Experience teaches him. His hands move rhythmically, his mouth stays closed; a relationship with water begins, a friendship happens; he understands water’s ways, he understands his own mistakes. One day he learns to swim. How else could you learn to swim except by swimming?
Trust is the same—trust. At first you will thrash. Doubt will grab you. You’ll feel like running back to the bank lest you drown. You will have to learn. You’ll need a little steadiness, a little courage, and you must not be in a hurry to run back to shore. Even if you flee, you’ll have to return. Doubt will seize you again and again; slowly a relationship with trust will form. A taste will arise. Things will fall into place. Bit by bit courage will grow.
First one tries in shallow water, then goes deeper, and then into the limitless depths.
The guru is the shore—where the water is not too deep, where even if you sink you won’t die. The guru is simply the shallow bank where you learn a little swimming. Then you can move toward the infinite depths, where God is. And for one who has learned to swim, depth makes no difference. Depth and shallows matter only to the non-swimmer. To the swimmer, what difference does it make whether below there are five miles of depth, or four, or three, or two—all the same. If you can swim, the question of depth disappears.
Once a little trust is born in the guru, you can stretch out your hands toward the infinite. The guru is a small experiment in trust. If you shrink from that, you won’t enter the great trust we call God.
And don’t even ask what method there is to produce trust—there is none. Trust is not something you can “learn” as a technique. The only way to learn it is experience. How does one learn love? Are there academies where love is taught? No.
Psychologists say that a child who does not receive the love of mother and father in childhood may never learn love in his whole life—because the shallow bank was missed. Then he makes a thousand efforts, reads books and scriptures, still nothing happens, because the first opportunity for the seed to be planted was missed.
How does a child learn love? First he begins to swim in the mother. The mother is his first love. That is why if a person’s relationship with his mother goes wrong, all his relationships are thrown into disorder. It becomes very difficult. One whose connection with his mother never formed rightly can never connect rightly with any woman, because she was the first woman. He will keep meeting that same woman again and again in all women. It is not about individual women; it is about the feminine quality.
And how does love with the mother happen? What can a child do? He can do nothing; he doesn’t even know. The mother gives him love. In the mother’s loving shadow, he learns to respond. The mother smiles; slowly he too begins to draw his lips into a smile. The mother pats him, touches him; he too learns to touch the mother. She holds him to her breast; he too practices clasping her. In this doing of love he learns the art of love. Then he can be filled with love in life, and the question never arises.
In the West a great question has arisen—love has become a problem—because the primary love of the mother has been destroyed. No mother is willing to breastfeed. The shape, form, and beauty of the breasts, they say, get spoiled by nursing. The mother looks aged; the freshness of the breasts is lost. So mothers refuse to nurse. Yet it was through the breast that the child first related to the mother’s body and experienced her warmth; through the breast she gave him life, food, and love.
That bridge is broken. Now this child will try all his life, but wherever he tries he will fail. Then psychologists arise, and madhouses fill.
Today in America nearly seventy percent of hospital space is occupied by patients of the mind. And the mind has essentially one disease: if love is not available, the mind becomes sick; if love is available, it becomes healthy. That first event, that first beginning, that ease of learning to swim in the shallows was missed. How can one now go into the deep? Now fear arises.
People come to me every day who say they are afraid of women, afraid of love. Of course they will be—because we are calling them to the ocean and they missed the shore. They never had their chance to learn to swim at the bank.
Just as the child learns the way of love with the mother—a thing no one can teach as a technique—so with the guru one learns trust. The guru fills you with his love; there is no other art. Without your asking, he goes on giving. In his look, his words, his silence, his very presence, he creates an atmosphere in which you can learn to swim a little.
Yet you ask, “How to trust? What should I do?”
There is nothing to do—just loosen your grip a little. When the guru calls, loosen a little. Have just enough trust to step into that shallow water.
I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin went to learn swimming. He slipped on the steps, fell; he hadn’t even entered the water, and he ran away from the ghat. The instructor shouted, “Mulla, where are you going? You’ll never learn to swim like this.” Mulla said, “Until I learn to swim I won’t come near the river. This is a danger to life. I escaped today; if I had fallen into the river when I slipped, I’d have been finished! I will come only after I learn to swim, master.” The instructor said, “Then you just stay where you are...”
He still hasn’t arrived—and he never will. If you make it a rule to come to the river only after learning to swim, where will you learn it? You cannot learn swimming on mattresses and pillows at home, lying on your bed and moving your limbs. Move them as much as you like—swimming won’t come. You will have to get in.
If you want to learn trust, courage is needed. When the guru calls, don’t hold back. When he invites, go. As taste grows, as flavor comes, courage will grow, and you will dare to go deeper. When you find such bliss in the shallows, such great joy surrounding you as you have never known, you yourself will say, “Now I must go deeper.”
The guru is an indication—toward the deeper. When you are ready, he will say, “Now go into the depths.” He himself will give you a push—“Go deeper now. Don’t cling to me.”
The guru is a ladder to cross over—something to set your foot upon and go beyond. He is a support, in order to become free. No true guru can make you dependent, because the very essence of guruship is to make you free. No guru can cripple you—you are the cripple. The guru gives you his hand; as soon as your feet are steady, he withdraws his hand so that you walk on your own.
Thus a disciple offers two thank-yous to the guru. The first when, in his helplessness, the guru gives him a supporting hand. The second, greater thank-you when his feet begin to walk and the guru withdraws his hand. The second moment is even greater—because in the first the disciple did not really want to hold on in the first place.
It is a delightful thing: at first the disciple does not want to hold, and the guru makes him hold. Later the disciple does not want to let go, and the guru makes him let go. When these two steps are complete, the door opens. That day you have reached the temple.
“And is self-realization the fruit of meditation?”
Self-realization is not the fruit of meditation; it is meditation’s depth. There is a slight difference between fruit and depth. Fruit belongs to the future: you sow the seed today and the fruit will not come today. But meditation is such a seed that the “fruit” can come today. Hence it is better not to call it a fruit, but depth. Self-realization is the very depth of meditation. The day meditation reaches its full depth, self-realization happens. If you take the plunge today, it can happen today. If you plunge tomorrow, then tomorrow. Sit for years just thinking and speculating—it will never happen.
Meditation itself is self-realization. The day meditation is complete, self-realization has happened. There is no self-realization outside of meditation. The perfection of meditation is self-realization.
And trust is the beginning; self-realization is the end.

What is wrong with sadness? Can there not be a sad dance? And the real joy is this: if you dance while you are sad, very soon you will find the sadness has changed. The dance will transform it. So do not stop. If today is a moment of sadness, then dance in sadness. Do not stop the dance, because by stopping you will only deepen the sadness; it will become a burden. By dancing, the sadness will scatter. As when the sun rises and the clouds move away—if you truly dance, the clouds will part.

Understand this. A sad person can dance, but a dancing person cannot remain sad. There is no obstacle in sadness—fine, your steps will be slower; the ankle-bells may not ring with full resonance—so be it! Let it be so today. Your hands and feet may not rise with full exuberance; a lethargy surrounds you—let it be so. But raise your hands and feet and dance; sing—sing even a sad song, but sing.

If you sing and dance, very soon you will find—you won’t even know when—the song that began in sadness dissolved the sadness, when the feet that rose from sadness turned into dance… You won’t know when the sadness disappeared. Suddenly you will find: there is no sadness; now you are simply dancing.

From every experience of life, a dance can arise. Every experience of life can be made into a celebration. And this is the art of religion—that from every experience of life…

If you are angry, no problem—dance today. A tandava—fine! If today you feel like breaking things, dance! Let the breaking happen in your dance. But you will soon find that the dance has discharged the energy of anger; a catharsis has happened. Anger has dissolved; the storm has passed; now you are dancing, very light, as if wings have grown.

Whether sadness or anger, celebration is still possible. Nothing obstructs celebration. It is your mistaken view that says, “I am sad today, how can I dance? I will dance when I am happy.” Then you will never dance. Because you are sad today—and you will carry this sadness along; how will happiness arise out of that? Even your happiness will bear the weight of sadness; your happiness will be pressed down by sadness. Even if you are happy, you will not be able to be so totally. Even if you laugh, your laughter will not be complete; the stones of burden will be stuck behind it.

You see people laughing—have you ever observed? Very few people laugh from the heart. If you ever meet such a person, touch his feet. Most laughter comes only to the lips; at most it reaches the throat, but it does not reach the heart—because the heart is surrounded by the sadness of many lives.

From there laughter cannot arise. There the doors are closed. There no lamp has ever been lit; no worship has been offered, no incense burned. Everything has become dirty there. In that darkness only snakes and scorpions dwell—and that is why people are afraid to go within. People are told, “Go within, go within,” and they panic at the very idea, because inside they see nothing but darkness.

Kabir says, “The sun of suns burns within,” yet when you go there you see the darkness of darkness. Kabir is not wrong, nor Dadu. But you must cross the boundary of that darkness. In that cremation ground of darkness, the sun is hidden.

And the darkness—you have been accumulating it. You go on adding to it every day; its quantity keeps increasing. Do not accumulate sadness. Do not accumulate anger. Dance, and you will find you have become light. Not only the mind becomes light; the body becomes light too.

The day a society forgets how to dance, that day the society becomes sick. The indigenous people in the forests dance—and their health is of another order! They dance late into the night, under the stars, beneath the open sky. They dance like the stars themselves. They fall asleep tired—but in that tiredness there is no heaviness; there is a lightness in it. Then in the morning, when such a person wakes, his awakening is different from yours. You hardly sleep at all. Even in sleep you go on dreaming; even in sleep you keep the whole business of waking life going. You continue the same nightmares you saw while awake—same market, same friends, same enemies, the same hocus-pocus. You keep tossing and turning; even your sleep is not a peaceful event. Ask the forest-dwellers, “Did you dream?” You will rarely find one who says, “Yes, once in my life I saw a dream.”

When psychologists first studied indigenous peoples, they were astonished—these people simply did not report dreams. There is no need for dreams; nothing gets accumulated. In the morning they rise fresh like animals and birds, and like plants. Then the day’s work—their occupations—small, simple, for food and shelter. Their needs are few, and they are fulfilled. In the evening again there is dance. Dance is their prayer. Dance is their religion.

Civilization is the first to break dance. The “civilized” person begins to fear dancing. No civilized race dances. And if it does, its dance is only sexual. The sexual dance is a very low form of dance.

I am telling you: celebration. Let your dance be celebration. I am telling you: let your whole life-energy bloom, flower like a blossom. Become like a lotus; let every petal open. You will find that through the dance your life begins to change. You become less sad, less angry—because you do not accumulate. You throw that rubbish into the dance. A kind of alchemy comes into your hands, a device by which you turn iron into gold, the futile into the meaningful. After every dance you will find you return so fresh—as if an inner bath has happened. Do not ever stop just because you feel sadness.

The truth is, from observing many people I have seen that you have become so unfamiliar with silence that when silence comes you think it is sadness. You have forgotten silence. You no longer remember its quality. The closest experience you have to silence is sadness—so when silence descends for the first time you think you have become limp, dull, sad. There is no excitement, no stimulation—so you call it sadness.

In the name of pleasure you have known only excitement. And in the name of peace you have known only sadness. Your life is utterly false; you live by counterfeit coins. So I understand your interpretation—it is mistaken, but what else can you do? You will recognize the new only by the known, by your past experience. From the known you will infer the qualities of the unknown.

You know sadness; so whenever you become silent, sadness grabs you. But it is not sadness; a new phenomenon is taking birth. Peace is thickening within you. And if you understand the art, you can transform every sadness into peace; if you do not, you will mistake every peace for sadness and try to escape it.

Whatever meditation gives you—no matter what—do not set conditions such as, “We will dance only then.” Whatever meditation brings, know it as the divine gift of that day. Dance!

Just last evening I told a story: A Sufi fakir would constantly say, “God, thank you. What good fortune that whenever I need something, you fulfill it at once.” His disciples gradually became troubled hearing this, for they saw nothing being fulfilled. The fakir was poor. The disciples were starving. There was no means at hand. And every day, morning and evening, five times—being a Muslim fakir—he prayed and five times thanked God, and with such heartfelt delight! The disciples wondered, “What is this?”

One day it went too far. They were on pilgrimage. For three days they had been hungry and thirsty. At dusk they arrived, exhausted, at a village. The villagers refused them lodging. So under the trees, hungry and weary, they lay down. The time for the last prayer came—no one rose. “What prayer now? To whom should we pray? Enough of prayer! This is no moment for prayer.” But the master rose, folded his hands, and with the same deep feeling said, “Thank you, God—whenever I need something, you fulfill it at once.”

One disciple could not bear it. He said, “Stop this nonsense. We’ve heard enough. Today it is utterly absurd. Three days we are hungry and thirsty; there is no roof over our heads. In the cold desert night we lie outside. What are you thanking for?”

The fakir said, “Today poverty was my need. Today hunger was my need—he fulfilled it. Today lying outside the town was my need. Today it was my need that the village should not accept me. And if in this moment I cannot offer thanks, then all my other thanksgivings are worthless. When he gives you something that suits your mind, what meaning has gratitude? Only when he gives you what does not suit your mind does gratitude have meaning. And if he has given it, then surely it must have been my need; otherwise why would he give it? Today this must be necessary for my life’s undertaking, for my sadhana, for my journey: that I remain hungry, that the village refuse me, that I lie under the open, cold desert sky. This was today’s need. And if he has fulfilled this need and I do not thank him, it would not be right.”

Only such a person attains the divine. So when you are sad, understand: this was your need today. Today the divine has willed that you dance in sadness. But let the dance not stop, let the thanksgiving not cease—let the celebration continue.

First thing: a master who gets angry is no master. Second: a disciple who, when sent away, thinks it must have been out of displeasure is not of the right mettle for discipleship.

The master does not get angry; the very possibility of anger has ended. If ever a master seems angry, know that he is acting—for sometimes there is no other way.

Gurdjieff would often appear angry—so angry it seemed there would be bloodshed. Those who ran away were deprived. Those who still remained came to know how rare it is to find a heart as tender as his.

But why would he behave so angrily? Perhaps that was exactly what was needed for the disciple. Such things happened—and only Gurdjieff could do them—that two people would come to see him, one seated on the left, one on the right. When he looked to the left, it was with anger; when he looked to the right, it was with great love. And when both went out, they would fall into an argument: “What kind of man is this?” One would say, “He seems absolutely of a wicked nature,” and the other would say, “I have never seen such a loving man.”

And both were right, because neither knew what he was doing. He was refusing one: You go. He was calling the other: You come. He was refusing the one for whom there was as yet no need, for whom coming would be useless, who was not ripe—perhaps he had come along with the other, perhaps out of curiosity—but there was no thirst.

So the master will not expend effort on one who has no thirst. That would be like throwing seeds onto rocks—the seeds themselves would be lost. He will work only where there is soil, where the heart is ready—to receive, to welcome the seed.

Thus the master may many times seem angry, but the master is never angry. And a disciple is one who can see compassion even in the master’s anger. If in the master’s anger you see anger, you know nothing of discipleship; you have not learned how to bow.

To bow means: the day you become a disciple, you drop all your definitions and interpretations. You say, “I am willing to go with this man. If he takes me to hell, then to hell; if to heaven, then to heaven. If he makes me wander, I will wander with him; if he leads me to the goal, I will arrive with him.”

Therefore I am not with him because he will make me arrive; I am with him... Being a disciple means: I am with him. Now, whether arrival happens, I am with him; whether wandering happens, I am with him. In truth, to be with him is itself the arrival. Only when you leave no alternative does one become a disciple.

To become a disciple is a great revolution; a tremendous leap.

In that realm, no one is small and no one is great. Krishna is not greater, nor is Rama lesser. Krishna is not greater, nor is Christ lesser. Krishna is not greater, nor is Mahavira lesser. The calculus of greater and smaller belongs to ignorance; those are measurements of darkness. In the light, all yardsticks disappear.

But a devotee sees through the eyes of love. Naturally, for one who loves Krishna, Krishna is the greatest. There is no mistake in that either—only it is a statement from the devotee’s side. The devotee stands in darkness; he has had the vision of only one lamp, the lamp of Krishna. He knows nothing of Mahavira’s lamp. His recognition has come through a single lamp, Krishna’s lamp. So he says, “This lamp is the greatest. No lamp can be greater; all others are smaller.” In truth he is not saying others are smaller; he is saying, “This lamp has filled my heart so totally that no greater lamp is possible. There is no space left in my heart—what more could there be?”

Majnu was mad after Laila. The local ruler summoned him, because people had begun to feel pity. Day and night, like a madman, he chanted “Laila, Laila.” The ruler lined up twelve of the most beautiful young women from his palace and said, “You are crazy. Laila is an ordinary girl. I’ve seen her myself. Trust me—my discernment is better than yours. I’ve lived among women all my life. She is completely ordinary, dark and plain. Your madness is pointless. If she were as beautiful as you imagine, she would be in my palace; she couldn’t possibly be in the street. Trust me—these twelve standing before you are the most beautiful in the realm. Choose any one.”

Majnu laughed. “You have not seen Laila,” he said.

The king retorted, “Are you mad? I have seen her. Because of you I had to. You roam around my palace shouting ‘Laila, Laila.’ I wanted to see who this Laila is for whom a man has gone mad, so I had her brought.”

Majnu said, “No, you cannot see. To see Laila, you need Majnu’s eyes. You do not have my eyes. Only with my eyes can Laila be seen. No woman ever was or ever will be as beautiful as she. And I speak not only of today—I speak of the future as well.”

The devotee’s eyes are Majnu’s eyes. The disciple’s eyes are Majnu’s eyes. He has fallen in love with one. And that is perfectly right. There is no need for Majnu to admit that somewhere there may be a woman more beautiful than Laila. There is no reason. Faith is complete. When faith becomes complete, everything else is lost—only one remains. Faith is single-pointed; no second remains.

So for one who has loved Krishna, Krishna is the complete incarnation. For one who has loved Mahavira, Mahavira is the Tirthankara—and Krishna is nothing at all.

The Jains have consigned Krishna to hell. Their scriptures say Krishna went straight to the seventh hell—because he was the one who caused the Mahabharata war. Arjuna, it seems, was Jain in spirit; intelligence had arisen in him. Krishna misled and deluded him. The poor fellow tried every way to slip out of those clutches. He raised a thousand doubts. But this man surrounded him from every side and trapped him, and the war was fought—terrible havoc, violence. Perhaps no war as vast as the Mahabharata ever happened again. India’s very backbone broke in that war. India could never stand upright again. Krishna bears all that responsibility.

So the Jains were bold—they put him in the seventh hell. And one must grant he was powerful; otherwise how could he have misled Arjuna? And he was powerful—thousands loved him; one must grant that too. So the Jains were generous enough to add: in the next creation, when this creation is utterly dissolved, Krishna will be the first Tirthankara. But until then he must burn in the great fires of hell.

Now think: for some, Krishna is the complete incarnation, before whom all are pale, all incomplete. For others, Krishna deserves to be thrown into hell. And I am not calling either side right or wrong. I am only saying: the lover’s vision is one thing; the friend’s vision, the enemy’s vision—each speaks from his own sight. They are not saying anything about Krishna; they are speaking about their own eyes.

If love arises in you for me, what you say will not be about me; it will be about your love. If hatred arises in you for me, what you say will not be about me; it will be about your hatred.

Man always speaks only about himself; there is no way to speak about someone else. If my expression seems very appealing to you, you are saying something about yourself—that this expression fits you, touches your heart, plucks a string within you. That is all. In that realm, no one is ahead, no one behind; no one small, no one great—Mohammed, Mahavira, Krishna, Christ.

As soon as the world of darkness ends, all become alike. All colors, all distinctions, all differences are in the dark. Among the awakened, there is no difference.

But you will not be able to love all the awakened ones. Nor would it even be helpful to love them all, because the more love-objects you have, the more your heart will be divided. And if the heart is divided, faith will be divided—and divided faith will never take you to truth.

Therefore I do not tell you, as Gandhi’s bhajan says—“Ishwar Allah Tero Naam”—to do that. You must choose your own name: either Allah or Ishwar. If you keep taking both names, your heart will ever remain divided; it will never become whole.

And Gandhi himself could not live his own statement to the end. At the moment of death, when the bullets struck, “Ram” came to his lips, not “Allah.” That was not politics; that was perfectly non-political. At the moment of death, can anyone remain a politician? In that instant, what was truly in the heart emerged; in life there had been whitewashing.

I tell you: choose. I do not say worship Mahavira also, Buddha also, Krishna also—no. Worship must be exclusive. You choose. It makes no difference to me whom you choose. What matters is whether you worship—only that!

Let your worship be complete. Choose even a stone, place it under a tree. The world will say it is only a stone; do not be concerned. If your heart gets attuned there, if a rapport forms between you and that stone, and you begin to dance before it—then, for you, God is there. Through that very stone you will arrive. Then listen to no one. Become blind in your mad love for that stone—dance, worship. Let the stone become your object of adoration and your deity. From there you will reach—because one does not arrive through the object, but through love; not through the worthy-of-reverence, but through reverence itself.

You do not arrive through Krishna, Rama, or Buddha; you arrive through your own devotional feeling. Once that feeling has arisen anywhere for you, do not worry at all. Then you may even say, “Krishna is the complete incarnation; none is above him.” Do not worry. That is the language of darkness—yet you are in darkness. If you speak the language of light now, it will be wrong, it will be untrue. Cross the darkness with Krishna’s support. The day you reach the light, you will laugh: “How mad I was—to call someone small, someone great; to call someone ahead, someone behind. Here, in the realm of light, all have become equal.”

It is natural. Those whom we love—we want to give them what we have received, that in which we have known joy, in which we have caught a hint of truth. The taste we have savored, we want our loved ones to taste. We want to make them partners in it. Completely natural.

Share! Whatever seems right to you, say it. Who knows—someone else may also find it right.

Just keep one thing in mind. The eagerness to share is fine; insistence is not. Don’t sit on anyone’s chest saying, “I have accepted it, you must accept it too—because you are my wife; if you don’t agree with me, that’s not okay; or you are my husband.” Do not be insistent—non-insistence! Give full freedom to accept or not.

But if a feeling rises in your heart, don’t suppress it either. If you feel joy, if you taste the essence, share it, pour it out! The more you can pour, the better. The more you pour and share, the more your savor will begin to glimmer in others’ eyes, and the more it will grow in you as well. Just keep one thing in mind: don’t impose it on anyone. Do not insist.

And the amusing thing is, if you insist, the other moves away; if you speak in a spirit of non-insistence, the other comes nearer. If the other sees that you have no desire to convert anyone, to bring someone onto your path, then it becomes easy for them to come onto your path. But the moment you become busy trying to bring the other to your path, a resistance arises in them; their ego starts defending itself.

Do share, but if someone does not want to receive, do not force it down anyone’s throat. Even nectar given by force turns into poison. With love, with naturalness—as much as possible! Don’t take it badly, wondering why such a desire arises in you. This is not desire; this is compassion. Desire means: as long as you want to obtain for yourself, it is desire. When you want to share with the other, it is compassion.

In the life of a seeker, the moment of compassion will also come. When you first start coming to me, you come out of desire—you want to get for yourself. Your search is self-centered. But as realization happens, as your experience grows, as you awaken a little, as awareness steadies, you will feel that what you have received is to be shared. This is the birth of compassion.

The energy of desire becomes compassion. So share! Share freely, share with an easy heart! Just keep one thought while sharing: let it not become a burden on anyone.

If I had to speak that too, it would also become a pretext. To know being, you have to know it without words. If you have eyes, look at me. If you have a heart, experience me.

As for being, there is only one way: keep satsang with my being. Then drop worrying about what I say. In that silent moment—between two words, between two thoughts, in the gap between two lines—go down there.

If you ask me even about my being, then I will speak again. In that speaking there will be speech, and that will become a pretext.

I call speaking a pretext because if I were to sit here in silence, only a few of you would remain sitting with me; the rest would leave. A few would remain, those who have become capable of silent satsang. They would be delighted. They would say: Even this obstruction of talking in between has fallen away. These words made a layer between us; they too are gone. Now there is a direct, pure meeting—heart to heart. Now there is a simple, direct encounter.

They would be very joyous, very elated—but they would be only a few; the rest would have gone. It is for the rest that I speak. Because those few can hear my silence even while I am speaking. Even while I speak they will know that on the surface are the waves of the ocean, yet the peace of the ocean within continues to be heard. For them there is no loss. But the others, who cannot hear or understand my silence—for them the pretext is that I go on speaking. And slowly, slowly, slowly they too will be persuaded. By speaking and speaking I will persuade them until they become capable of understanding my being, the void, the silence.

The day you all become capable of understanding Being, I will stop speaking. There will be no need. Because then whatever I have to say will be said directly. There will be no need for the medium of words. But then many, who right now cannot drown in that being, would be left deprived.

This is what happened when Buddha died. As long as he lived, nobody even bothered to collect his utterances. While Buddha was alive, it never occurred to anyone. Then suddenly they woke up, as if a dream had broken: Such precious words will be lost just like that—collect them!

So they approached Buddha’s many disciples who had awakened in his time, who had attained Buddhahood, and they were requested. They said: We never heard what Buddha said. Stop this nonsense. Buddha never spoke. Their connection had joined to his silence. They said: We heard nothing—what are you talking about? Buddha, and speaking? Never! After enlightenment, for forty years he remained silent; we heard the silence.

A great difficulty arose. Those one could rely upon—the awakened, whose words would carry weight, whose report would have the best chance of being true—they said: We heard nothing. What are you talking about? Are you dreaming?

Among them the supremely wise one, Mahakashyapa, even said that Buddha never happened at all. Whom are you talking about? You must have seen a dream!

That closed the door. The most precious one—Mahakashyapa—whom Buddha had told: What I can give through words, I have given to others, Mahakashyapa; and what cannot be given through words, that I give to you—he went so far as to say, Buddha never was. Who spoke? Who heard? What are you talking about?

Then they had to fall back on Ananda. Ananda did not attain enlightenment in Buddha’s lifetime. He remained ignorant; he remained in the dark. He did not hear the void; he heard the words. But he had the whole collection. His memory had kept everything intact. He spoke it all, and everything was compiled.

Now the question is: If Ananda too had attained enlightenment while Buddha lived, you would have known nothing about Buddha. Not even a trace would have remained—because Mahakashyapa was not even willing to concede that this man ever was!

It is only thanks to the ignorant Ananda that Buddha’s words are preserved.

So those who can understand my silence will one day say: Did this man ever happen? What are you talking about? This chair has always been empty. You have seen a dream.

But those who cannot understand my silence and can only understand my words are also of use. Perhaps they will be the ones to carry the boat of words to others. The purpose of the boat of words is to land at the shore of the void. The goal is the void. But the goal will be found when it will be found. For today, even to find the boat is enough.

That’s all for today.