Prem Nadi Ke Teera #10

Therefore the mediocre—the ones in the middle—are always unfortunate. They have no strength. If they do not steal, it is not because they do not want to steal. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the reason is simply that they cannot muster the strength to steal. And they take that to be a virtue. It is no virtue. And since they cannot even gather the strength to steal, they will never be able to gather the strength to become a saint.

You will be surprised: saints are losing in the world because all the mediocre have become saints. And all the powerful people are bad people. Therefore saints cannot win against the bad—because the saint is not a bad man. And the “saint” is absolutely bogus; he is mediocre. He could not steal; he could not be dishonest in the shop; so he went and sat in the temple. Sitting in the temple is not a positive act on his part; it is merely self-protection. He escaped. And that is why the saint loses to the bad man. The bad man is very powerful. That is why Hitlers win, Napoleons win; their world keeps on winning. And the good man turns out to be utterly powerless. He goes on talking and talking; nobody listens. When people as powerful as Hitler and Napoleon become good men, then the world changes; otherwise it does not. That much strength is needed.

There certainly are happenings. Yes, absolutely—there are happenings. Yes, definitely, happenings. In fact, even if you keep becoming worse, the moment will come from which you will turn back—if only you really go. Everything has a limit; when it reaches it, it returns. But those who do not go to the limit never return.
That’s why I say: if a man drinks, I say, don’t keep drinking just a little, a little. Because you will never be able to return. If you must drink, then drink—and drink right up to the limit that seems the very last to you. And surely you will return. To return, the circle has to be completed. Yes, by going somewhere, by reaching some boundary, one can return.

And my definition of good and bad is this: I call bad that state with which you can never be content—the state you are compelled to keep moving away from, even if it means going into something worse; the state that keeps driving you on: somewhere else, somewhere else, somewhere else. And I call good that state in which you can be content, which does not drive you away, which says: here, here, here. So there is a dynamism to the bad. Therefore the bad is not something to be worried about.

The bad is worrisome only in one case: when it wears the garb of the good and self-deception begins—that is, when one himself believes, “I am good, and that is bad.” Then the danger begins. Otherwise there is no danger. There is no harm in a bad man, a plain, outright bad man. And such a man will return. He is an authentic man. He will not be able to be content with the bad; he will have to come back. Conversion will happen.

But if he is a man who is bad and yet thinks himself good, then conversion will take a long time—it may take lifetimes. Because he has erected such a deception that his situation has become difficult. He is bad—something that should have been changed—yet he believes he is good; and one does not want to change what is good. Now he has fallen into a ditch. What he is should be changed. And what he believes himself to be he will want to leave unchanged. Therefore many times what appears on the surface—that this person is in a bad state and that person is in a good state—is often the reverse.

Those who are in a state of self-deception are in the worst state. Those who know they are bad, recognize they are bad, and are under no kind of delusion—their situation is quite wondrous. Their return, their coming back, is near. They will return. And they will return with the same speed with which they went. As deep as their roots have gone down, that high will their peak rise. Now the interesting thing is that those who have never gone down are, in one sense, living an incomplete life. It lacks what one would call richness. Therefore...

The richness of experience does not happen in someone who has become “good” in a superficial way. It cannot. Only one who has passed through the very depths of the bad carries a richness of experience. And the same person who has gone through profound evil becomes capable of tasting the flavor of the good. In this sense, the arrangement of life is profoundly meaningful. We pass through darkness so that light can be seen; we pass through the bad so that one day the taste of the good becomes available. Even this long journey through matter exists so that the divine can be realized. What look like opposites are not opposites at all; they enrich a third dimension from both sides.

It is like writing with white ink on black paper. You could write with white ink on white paper—no harm—but it won’t be read. And what is the point of writing what cannot be read? We write white on black, and it stands out. So the bad has just as much meaning and purpose in life’s arrangement as the good. The inauspicious has just as much significance as the auspicious. Ravan is not useless, not purposeless—and without Ravan, Ram has no meaning. Therefore the wise will neither only sing Ram’s praises nor condemn Ravan.

They will say: Ram and Ravan are two halves of the same story—the story cannot exist without both. And the irony is, whatever polish Ram gains, he gains because of Ravan.

In Jain stories Ravan is called a future Tirthankara—this is significant, deeply meaningful. Why? Because he has reached the furthest limit of the bad; now the circle of the good will begin. Future—because the bad has been touched to its utmost; now the return starts. The black page is prepared; now the white line will be written. If you look closely: sometimes Ram comes first; sometimes Ravan comes first and then later Ram. The gap is only of time, not of condition. And in this endless stream of time…

…Dipankara begins to laugh deeply; monks gather around and ask, “Why are you laughing?” Then Dipankara bows and touches Buddha’s feet. The Buddha becomes flustered: “What are you doing? It’s fine if I touch your feet—but you mine?” Dipankara says, “You do not understand time. Today I am a Buddha; tomorrow you will be. For one who knows the entire current of time, ‘before’ and ‘after’ have no meaning, because the stream is infinite. If the stream had ends, there could be a before and after. But when there is no shore here and none there, who is ahead, who behind? Today you are ignorant; tomorrow you will be enlightened. You must—how can ignorance ever stop without becoming wisdom?”

The journey of ignorance is simply the primary stage of the journey of knowing. The journey through the bad is the primary stage of the good. Therefore the real danger is not for the one who goes into the journey of the bad. The danger is for the mediocres: they set out toward the bad but never quite go—because they cannot muster the courage. They head toward the bad while desiring the good; then they get stuck. They go into the bad, become bad, and meanwhile believe themselves to be good—then trouble begins. A double role. Keep it single.

Let Ravan know he is to be Ravan. Fine—he is Ravan. And let him not worry a bit about Ram and all that. Why worry about Ram? If Ram is to arise, it will be out of being Ravan. And if not, what’s the point? If someone else becomes Ram, so be it—what has that to do with me? What I can be now, that I must be. If we can give every person this much strength and courage—that they must be what they are to be—no imitation, no copying, no following.

If you are to be bad, be bad—authentically. There is authenticity even in being bad. Not only the good can be authentic; the bad, too, can be authentic. Yes, that is another matter: the authenticity of being bad. If I lie, then I will not tell the truth. An authentic liar means: I am deciding that truth will not happen through me. And if I do tell the truth, I will consider that dishonesty—because I am a liar.

There was a fakir, Mulla Nasruddin. The emperor of his land conceived the idea to abolish lying in the kingdom. He summoned the Mulla, because the Mulla was wise. People said to the emperor, “Ask the Mulla first. We’ve never heard of lying being abolished. No law has ever stopped lying. And never in the world has there been even a moment when lying vanished. Still, ask the Mulla.” The Mulla came.

The emperor said, “I have decided to uproot lying. Not in a casual way. If anyone is caught lying, I will hang him at once. A few innocents may die—I don’t care. But every day liars will be found hanging at the gate. Tomorrow a new year begins; from tomorrow morning the checking at the gate starts. If someone is caught lying, hang him right there. What do you say, Mulla—shall we put a stop to lying?”

The Mulla said, “We’ll meet at the gate tomorrow.” The king asked, “We are asking you…” He said, “We’ll meet at the gate tomorrow. I’ll be the first there; you be there too. The gate will open and I’ll enter.” The emperor asked, “What do you mean?” The Mulla said, “We’ll talk at the gate.”

Morning came; the emperor stood at the gate. The gate opened. The Mulla rode in on his donkey. The emperor asked, “Mulla, where are you coming from and where are you going?” The Mulla said, “I am going to the gallows.” The emperor said, “What do you mean?” The Mulla said, “I am going to be hanged.” The emperor said, “You are lying outright—we will hang you.” The Mulla said, “Then hang me. That is exactly what I said: I am going to be hanged. If you hang me, what I said becomes true. And if you don’t hang me, the lie walks away free. What will you do?” The king said, “You have put me in a great dilemma.” The Mulla said, “Drop this nonsense. It is itself difficult to decide what is truth and what is lie. Who will decide? Another cannot decide—it is for each person to decide for himself.”

And if a person decides and is authentic—even if in lying—there is no problem. I say even his soul is born if he becomes authentic, even in the bad. Authenticity brings strength; it brings momentum. And when a person moves wholly in one direction, being is born.

So my point is: the bad is that on which you cannot stand still. You cannot remain on it. It is like standing on a hot pan—you cannot stay there. The bad must be dropped; it will be dropped. One grasps more of the bad and keeps dropping it. In the end it has to be let go. And the day he turns toward the good after passing through the bad, the richness he will have—the depth of experience—the white writing that comes upon the black line will have a different brilliance.

Hence that brilliance is never found in insipid, dull sadhus. Those who have not known the bad, who have become “good” by reading books—they never have any sparkle. They cannot. That shine comes from the experience of the bad; the script is of the good, but the shine comes from having known the bad. And this is the difficulty: in a dishonest world, the bad man often looks more dazzling, and the sadhu looks utterly dull and bogus—because the sadhu is mediocre. The one who could not gather the courage to do evil appears to be a saint. And one who lacks the courage to do evil cannot do much good either—he just stands there, not doing bad. His is a negative stance: he does not do evil, he does not steal, he does not lie.

There was a fakir, Gurdjieff. People came to him—sadhus, fakirs. He would ask, “What do you do?” A prominent sadhu came to meet him. He asked, “What do you do?” The man said, “I do not lie.” Gurdjieff said, “I understand you do not lie—but that is a not-doing. I’m asking: what do you do?” He said, “I don’t eat meat; I don’t commit violence.” Gurdjieff said, “That is not-doing. What do you do?” He said, “I don’t steal. I don’t hurt anyone.” Gurdjieff said, “Show this man out. He only says, ‘I don’t do this, I don’t do that.’”

The question is not what you don’t do. Has a soul ever been born out of not-doing? What do you do? Better you steal—at least that is doing.

Gurdjieff said, “Go steal. Do something. Let there be action—out of action, being is born.”

There is no other way. And it is not so difficult to judge. Yes—first see this: when you cannot come to rest anywhere, the mind goes on doing childish things. An old man hoarding money—consider him a child, because he is doing a child’s work. What is he doing? Death stands right before him, and he is filling his safe, putting more locks on it. That is sheer childishness. He has no spiritual age at all. He is still playing with dolls—only of another kind.

Little children play with dolls. And a grown man parades a mock wedding procession of Lord Ram, carrying dolls through the streets, making a racket—he is still a child. His intelligence has not gone beyond dolls; he has only made different dolls, given them fancy names, big names. He has no mental age either. So remember: many ages live within us at once. And my search, my appeal, is to that age which is within—the mature one.

Now, you ask: How to recognize the bad? There are two pointers.

First, wherever you cannot stop—where, on arriving, the mind instantly says, “Move on”—consider that bad. The good, the blissful, creates a taste to stay. There arises a sense of rest, of arrival—“Here. Let me remain here.” The bad is where you get there and immediately the mind says, “Go further.” A man collects a million, and the mind says, “More, more, more,” and he keeps on.

There was a Sufi fakir in Egypt, Junoon. The emperor of Egypt would sometimes visit him. One day the fakir had not come to the capital for long, so the emperor went unannounced to his hut. The fakir’s wife was working in the garden; the fakir had gone to the fields. She saw the emperor and said, “Please sit, I’ll call him.” She pointed to the raised embankment under a tree and said, “Sit here.” The emperor said, “I’ll stroll; you go call him.” She said, “How long will you keep strolling? It may take time; he is far. Please sit inside the hut.” Perhaps sitting on the embankment didn’t seem proper to the emperor. She spread a mat and said, “Sit here.” Again the emperor kept pacing: “You go call him; I’ll walk here.”

She felt annoyed and on the path back told her husband, “What sort of man is this emperor? I asked him several times to sit—under the tree, he wouldn’t sit; inside, on the mat, he wouldn’t sit. What is this?” The fakir said, “You don’t understand: an emperor won’t sit below a throne. Show him a throne and he will sit at once. The places you offered are not his kind of seat. And remember this too: the human mind is just like an emperor. Until it finds a throne, it will not sit. Tell it, ‘Sit here,’ and it will go there—and still not sit. It will want something more, something more, something more.”

I call bad that which makes the mind say, “Further.” I call good that where the mind says, “Enough—here.” In whatever we are doing, when the mind says, “The destination is here. Stop here,” that is good. There are moments in which you would even be willing to die, saying, “Enough. What more now?” And there are moments in which you would run for eternity and never wish to stop.

So the first recognition: wherever the mind does not want to halt, where on arriving it immediately says, “Move on,” that is the bad.

Second, it is commonly said: bad is that which causes another pain. I don’t say that. You can’t really know the other’s pain. Bad is that which causes you pain—and not in the next life. Accounting it to a next life is dishonesty. How could it be in the next life? Put your hand in the fire now and you will burn now, not next life. Bad is that which gives pain right now. And bad does give a lot of pain. Good is that which gives joy right now—cash in hand, not on credit. Even a tiny good: a child has fallen on the road; you pick him up and set him on the side—suddenly you are walking on the road and you are higher. What a leap within!

Someone is ill; you pluck a flower and place it in his hand and walk away—you are a different person. The one who went to give the flower is not the one returning; a different emperor is returning. A tiny act, with no personal motive. Sometimes just smile at someone, and you are someone else. Or glare at someone, abuse him, strike him—and you will find you have fallen as if pushed off a mountain. The other is not the point. It could even happen that you do a “bad” act and it benefits the other. But you cannot do a bad act that benefits you. The other is far away from you; you are at a great distance from him.

So I hold two points in the definition of the bad:
1) Wherever you cannot come to rest and the mind keeps saying, “Go on.”
2) Wherever the mind suffers.

Keep a little inquiry going on these two and it won’t be hard to tell what is bad. And the good is just the reverse: where the mind begins to feel, “Stop here. Why search further?”

(The recording of the question is not clear.)
Yes, the mind will say—of course it will say—“There is happiness there,” but only until you get it. That is exactly my definition of suffering, my definition of the bad. The mind will say, “Happiness is with that woman—if only I had her.” The moment she is had, the mind says, “The other woman next door—if only I had her.”

Byron got married. He had loved about seven women and never married. At last one woman compelled him, and he had to marry. But he was, in my language, an authentically bad man—whose very badness has a certain pride, a relish, a splendor. Yes, a splendor. Many “good” people are such bogus leeches—“cow-dung Ganeshas”—there is nothing truly good in them. Sometimes a bad man is so magnificent that his very radiance delights. Byron was among those splendidly bad.

He was descending the church steps holding his bride’s hand. The bells were still ringing; the wedding had just happened. Guests were being seen off. On the street a woman walked by holding a man’s hand. Byron said to his wife, “Enough.” She asked, “What happened?” “It’s over.” “You mean—us?” He seated her in the carriage and said, “Listen, for a moment you disappeared—you were nothing—and that woman became all. Until yesterday I thought, ‘If only I could get you—how happy I would be!’ And here I am, leaving the church right after marrying you—I haven’t even finished the steps, haven’t reached home—and you are already in my fist and you have become useless. Your hand is in my hand and it has gone empty. Now that you are mine, the whole thing has gone flat.”

You understand me? Once got, the matter is finished.

So the mind will keep saying, until you get the thing, “There is great joy in that.” The moment you get it, it will say, “Joy is over there.” The mind always says: happiness is where you are not. That is its race. Wherever you arrive, it says, “What is here? You came for nothing. Hard work for nothing. Move on. There was nothing here. A mistake.” But the mind is not deceiving you—this is no trick. It is a straightforward mechanism. It says, “There is no joy here. There might be there, because we are not there. Go there and we will see.”

And experience means this: after passing through a thousand places, you see it has happened every time—before arriving it felt as if joy were there; upon arriving it is not; in fact there is pain. And the moment you arrive, the mind says, “Move on; there is nothing here.” When compulsions prevent you from moving, then there is a lot of suffering. There are many compulsions that keep you stuck and make you suffer. Otherwise the mind would push you every day. Today you say, “Eight divorces.” Eight will not suffice in one life. Life is long. If you regulated divorce fully to the mind’s demand, one a day would be possible—and even that might feel too slow.

Because that is not the real question. The question is not “how many?” It is that many compulsions force you to stay and suffer. I am saying: wherever the mind says, “Run, run—further, further,” and wherever you reach it gives you pain—that is bad. And wherever the mind says, “Here, not there; even if it takes time, here—here is bliss—where I am,” that is good. Where you are not, deception is possible; where you are, there is no deception. There, when you arrive, you will know.

If this begins to get clear—even though the distinction is subtle—if you keep experimenting a little, keeping a small inner checking going twenty-four hours a day: “This act I just did—did it give me joy or pain? In the place I arrived at—did I want to stay or to leave?”—keep such a small test running. In two to four months it will become so clear that as an event begins you will know whether it is bad or good. When this awareness arises, life changes. I do not say: abandon the bad. I do not say: do the good. I say only this: just recognize what is good and what is bad—and the bad will begin to drop; the good will begin to happen. There is no question of forcing anything.

To keep the soul of a thing alive is very difficult. To preserve the outer form is very easy—celibates can sit with long topknots, wrap themselves in shawls, live in the old style. All that can be done. But to keep the soul alive is very difficult. Because, in truth, the time-spirit has changed. The time-scale has changed. And remember this too, Chimanbhai: if you want to preserve that old soul, then you cannot preserve the old form at all—only then can you save the soul.

It cannot be otherwise. Absolutely not. If that soul is to be saved, it can survive only in an entirely new form. And the difficulty is that the traditionalist mind is fixated on the old form—its insistence on the form is total. Total—without any sense of real value.

Often it is very easy to recognize the old form—because even a blind person can recognize it. And so we keep saving the form. In saving the form, the soul dies. Yes—completely—because form is utterly inert. There is no difficulty in preserving it; it is dead. But the soul is very liquid, very fluid. Try to nail and hammer it into place and it is gone. In every age it must take a new form. In every age it must take a new form.

No—nothing was done. Nothing at all. Nothing was done. Whatever “nature” you shape, that’s what it becomes. There is no such thing as a human nature. Absolutely not.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
No, no, no. Everything else may come, but there is nothing like a fixed human nature. This is precisely man’s freedom: he can make himself into whatever he chooses. And what we take to be “human nature” is not nature at all; it is simply the result of long conditioning. That’s why you see twenty-five kinds of human beings in the world. There is no such thing as a single human nature.

Do you understand what I mean? I mean: just as a dog has a nature, a cat has a nature—in that sense, man has no nature. And this is the great turn in evolution: for the first time a creature has appeared who has no solid, fixed nature. He can be whatsoever he wants to be. For example, you cannot say to a dog, “You are half a dog.” But to a man you can say, “You are an incomplete man.”

Why can’t you say to a dog that he is half a dog? All dogs are equally dogs. Every dog is a complete dog. You cannot make the slightest distinction that this dog is a little less a dog and that dog a little more a dog—why? Because a dog’s nature is fixed. There is nothing to manufacture there; he is born ready-made. You, on the other hand, are born completely unmade—and everything has to be created. This is freedom—and this is what is frightening. Therefore you can become anything, take on any form. And even that form is not such that you cannot break it in a single instant—you can break it in a moment.

If you look closely, this human freedom is the astonishing thing. And you work with astrology—how delightful! In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases astrology will work; in one it will not. And where it does not work, that is where you are. In all the rest, you are a machine. In all the rest, you are a machine. Wherever astrology works, you are not present; you are not a man. It means you are predictable. And predictable means you are bound; one can say in advance what you will do tomorrow.

There is a beautiful episode in Buddha’s life. On his feet were those marks which astrologers say belong to a chakravartin, a universal emperor. And yet he became a beggar. Astrology got upset. He was walking along the riverbank; the wet sand took the imprint of his feet. An astrologer was returning from Kashi after twelve years of study, certain that he now knew everything. He saw the footprints in the sand and said, “What is this? On the wet sand, barefoot, by the edge of this small village—has a universal emperor walked here? Everything is upside down. I’ve studied twelve years; I’ve brought all these books—useless! If a chakravartin walks here by a village, barefoot, at high noon, I should throw these books into this river and go home. Twelve years wasted. But at least let me find this man—where is he?”

He followed the prints and came to a thicket where Buddha was sitting. Seeing him, he was in a dilemma. The man looks like a beggar, but he is an emperor. His face is that of a sovereign, yet he is a beggar—wearing torn clothes, a begging bowl in his hand. He sat by Buddha and said, “You have thrown me into confusion. I have returned after twelve years of hard work—should I fling all these scriptures into the river? Your feet bear the signs of a universal emperor, and you are a beggar, sitting with a begging bowl!”

Buddha said, “Your astrology is right. But I have gone beyond astrology. I have become a man. Now your craft won’t work. If I had done nothing, I would certainly have become a chakravartin. That was a current—blind—whatever was going to happen would have happened. I created a disturbance. Now your astrology will not work on me. No constellation can say anything about me. I am outside. I have become a man.”

Do you understand my meaning? Freedom. Now Buddha is unpredictable. You cannot predict what this man will say, what he will do, what will be tomorrow. Even what will be in the next moment—nothing can be said. Yes—he has gone beyond calculation.

Our effort, ultimately, should be to dissolve into no-nature—to where there is no nature at all: perfect freedom. Nature is bondage—the compulsion to be the same tomorrow as you were yesterday. If I say, “It is my nature to be angry,” it means I am compelled: today you abused me and I was angry; tomorrow you will abuse me and I will be angry in the same way. Press the button and the fan runs today; it will run tomorrow too. Then where am I a man? There is the possibility that today you abused me and I got angry, and tomorrow you come to abuse me and I embrace you.

This possibility itself is the indication that man has no machine-like nature. This is his freedom. And we should cultivate such a state that we live each moment so the previous moment and the coming moment are not bound together. This is the meaning of liberation while living: that this moment is not bound by what has passed. What I am talking about is discontinuous; it is outside continuity. The continuity that existed till yesterday is not me. And what I will be tomorrow will be something else, not what I am today. In such a state of consciousness there is supreme bliss—because there is supreme freedom.

Otherwise there is dependence. A man says, “I am compelled to smoke because it is my habit.” Habit means you are not a man. Habit means you are a machine. You call out on schedule: “It’s twelve o’clock—now I need a cigarette,” and you have to put a cigarette in. This putting in and taking out at twelve every day is a purely mechanical act.

Look closely—very closely—and you will see: we who eat, hardly any of us eat when we are actually hungry. We eat out of habit, not out of hunger. And these are two entirely different things. Eleven o’clock—every day you eat at eleven. So right at eleven the stomach says, “It’s time—eat.” It could even happen that someone put the clock an hour ahead or behind and you didn’t know—it’s only ten o’clock—but because you always eat at eleven, you feel hungry: “It’s time,” and you go eat. Do you understand my meaning? This is purely a mental association with eleven o’clock, not hunger.

If we were to eat only on hunger—if we were to wait for hunger—the taste of eating we do not even know. Eating at eleven is merely stuffing food in. The body’s real need has not yet arisen. The body has not asked. Under compulsion it will secrete saliva; under compulsion it will make space in the stomach. You are pushing it in. You are behaving like a box. Do you understand what I mean?

That is why, in the world, food has increased, but the meaning of food has been lost. Hardly anyone is truly eating. Hardly anyone is tasting the essence of food. Then we have to make other arrangements: because there is no relish in the eating itself, we contrive other means—prepare food that seems tasty. All this arrangement grows only in a society where eating has become a habit. Otherwise there is no need. And everything has become like this.

You go to sleep on schedule every day—because it is twelve o’clock or ten o’clock. Out of mechanical routine you go to sleep—whether sleep comes or not. And you get up on schedule—whether sleep has broken or not. We are fixing habits from the outside, imposing them—and then great trouble arises.

A young man slept ten hours; he became old, now he sleeps four. But he wants to sleep eight. Then he says, “Great difficulty—my sleep is disturbed—sleep doesn’t come.” It isn’t necessary. But he has the habit of eight hours. In trying for eight he is losing even the joy of four. The idea of eight hours keeps coming, and the intensity of the four hours—he is in trouble. Now he lives in anxiety. And this—this—this will go on happening every day. This will happen every day.