Prem Nadi Ke Teera #14

If you look very closely, such sameness is possible only if I am exactly as the other was. Otherwise it can never be. See the full implications: when I am knowing, my whole personality, my total being, is knowing. Only if your whole personality is exactly as mine, could the event of our knowing be one and the same.

And no two persons are ever the same. In fact, forget persons—that is a far-off matter. Pick up a stone from a Delhi street; search the whole earth and you will not find another exactly like it. Pluck a flower from a garden; comb all the forests and you will not find another just like it. Here, each and every thing has its own uniqueness. And that very uniqueness is its soul. In my view, this uniqueness is its soul.

A machine has no soul, because a machine is not unique. The day we can make a unique machine, on that day the soul has begun in the machine. But we cannot make a unique machine; it will be a copy. There can be thousands like it. A machine is cast in a mold; the soul is not a mold. Therefore a machine is dependence; the soul is freedom. It is free precisely because it is unmatched, singular, unique—of its own kind, not of another’s kind. And if it is true that each person has his own uniqueness, then the corollary is: his experience is his own too—and like no one else’s.

So we talk just to get along—otherwise getting along would become difficult. If we were to accept the fullness of this uniqueness, language itself would be hard to construct. Because when I use a word, it carries my personal meanings. When it reaches you, its meanings change. That is why there is so much misunderstanding in the world. When I speak, I am saying one thing; when you understand, you understand something else. Then when you speak, you say something else, and I understand yet something else.

This is why it is so difficult to understand one another in the whole world. Not to speak of two strangers—even those with whom we are very intimate, whom we deeply love, do not understand one another. What one says, on reaching the other, instantly takes on another color and form. For the other’s whole personality reacts to that one word coming from a different personality. There can be no real congruence between the two. Our agreements are makeshift. Whatever similarities there are are all provisional. If we drop them, living becomes hard; so we keep them up. But in truth, in this world no two experiences are the same, nor can they be—because the consciousness that experiences is different.

I insist on this: each person has his own personality, individuality. Thus all of us may pass near a flower, and one person may not even see it. He may not even notice that a rose was blooming in the nearby bush; he will pass by. The color of the rose falls on his eyes, its fragrance reaches his nose, the flower shines in the sunlight right beside him—and still he goes on, he does not see it. Perhaps in his personality there is no place for the flower, or in this moment his personality has no grip for the flower—so he passes.

Another man passes by the flower—he is a scientist. His personality has its own structure. A third man passes—he is a poet. A fourth passes—he is a painter. Each has his own structure. When a painter looks at the flower, a marvelous experience of colors passes through him, which never passes through the scientist. When the scientist sees the flower he may think: what species is it? What family does it belong to? How many chemicals are in it? How is it formed? In which countries does it grow? The entire history of the flower may pass through his mind, the entire chemistry of the flower may pass—yet he may have no connection with the flower’s poetry. For the chemistry of the flower is one thing, and the poetry of the flower is quite another. And when a poet passes, he will not at all notice the flower’s chemistry. Ask him whether there are chemicals in a flower and he will stand bewildered: I never knew. There is something else in a flower; as for chemicals, I have no idea.

These people passing by the flower—between their own personality and the flower, a meeting happens, and that meeting becomes experience. And that experience will always be different. The day we accept this truth, there is no need for sects in the world. Sects are utterly false, because they proceed on the assumption that experience can be collective, that a crowd can have a collective experience. The very idea is absurd.

Sects can disappear if we embrace the privacy, the individuality, of each person. Then the quarrels of sects also end, because there is no longer any need for my truth and your truth to be the same. My truth stands in its own right; your truth stands in its own right. And our claims end that my truth should be everyone’s truth. Once we begin to think that truth must be the same, then slowly we start thinking that whatever is not the same—either it is truth and then my truth is not, or it is my truth and then it is not truth.

Then this feeling begins to arise: If the Koran is true, how can the Gita be true? And if the Gita is true, how can the Bible be true? If Mahavira’s nonviolence is true, how can Mohammed’s sword be true? If Mahavira’s withdrawal from all struggles of life is true, how can Krishna’s call to enter the struggle be true? Then things are set up in opposition, and we are forced into a corner.

If you take Mahavira as true, it becomes unavoidable to take Krishna as untrue. And if you take Krishna as true, it becomes unavoidable to take Mahavira as untrue. In my understanding, this is not a necessity. It is a fallacy—a fallacy based on having first assumed that there is such a thing as truth existing apart from the person. Krishna’s truth is Krishna’s truth; Mahavira’s truth is Mahavira’s truth; and your truth is your truth.

So I am not saying that you should accept someone else’s truth. I am saying: drop your untruth, and become available to your own truth. I am not saying: abandon yourself. Because if you accept Mahavira’s truth, you will have to abandon yourself—then you can accept Mahavira’s truth. And the day you abandon yourself, self-murder has begun. Therefore I call following self-killing. To become someone’s follower is suicidal.

To become someone’s follower means: I drop myself and accept you. In my view, the seeker’s renunciation is not the renunciation of the self—it is the dropping of one’s own untruth, one’s own suffering, one’s own darkness, one’s own ignorance—but one’s own, so that one’s own truth can become available, one’s own knowing can be attained.

And the day the full realization of one’s own truth dawns, that day everyone’s truths, though different, are seen as true. On that day Mahavira is not false within your realization of truth; nor is Mohammed false. A miracle happens: Mohammed’s sword and Mahavira’s nonviolence become true together.

It is like a man climbing a mountain: when he reaches the summit, he sees that there are thousands of paths, which from far-flung corners, from different... (recording gap...) ...have all brought one to the same place. The whole process of going is different. The whole process of experiencing is different... it doesn’t matter either. But a moment comes when even the paths are lost... That silence is not individual; the silence is not of the person... As long as we experience, our experiences will be different... Do nothing at all, and let everything be silent—no thought, no experience—then how can we be different? In silence we cannot be separate. As long as I speak, I am separate from you. As long as I think, I am separate from you. But if I become utterly quiet—neither thinking, nor speaking, nor experiencing—and you are also in the same state, then what difference can there be between us?

Silence alone is non-difference. Mere silence is non-division. Wordlessness alone is non-separation. But there, there is no experience either. So as long as there is experience—whether of the world, of beauty, or of truth—there is the difference of the person. Where there is no experience at all, where the realm of no-experience begins, there is no difference. But there is no sameness either, because for sameness the other must exist. Even sameness requires difference. There, then, there is neither sameness nor difference.

There is a final hush there. In that hush everything has become one. In that hush it is revealed that all things are one. In that hush it is seen that the differences were superficial. It is seen that personality too was a surface event. Within sits the non-person, the no-individual. Call it Brahman, call it moksha—whatever name you give is secondary. But so long as there is experience, so long as one attempts to give words to experience, all is personal.

And I want to emphasize that the dignity of the person must be cultivated. Because to reach that happening, the non-person, the person has to be present; otherwise you will never reach—only then can you reach. To become empty of experience, experience must first be. Otherwise you will never get there. That is why I am opposed to sects, opposed to comparisons.

There is a negative use. A negative use. Not a positive one.

Here, when you come to me, there can be two kinds of use. One is constructive: you take some knowledge from me, you add to what you already know. I put in a few additions, and you go back a little more knowledgeable. That would be a positive use. The negative use is that even the knowledge you arrived with gets shaken up; you return empty-handed. You feel, “I didn’t even know what I thought I knew.” That is the negative use—and it is of great value. The positive use is very dangerous. All satsang is valuable if, there, our ignorance is exposed. All scripture is valuable if, by reading it, you realize: “I know nothing.”

Yet we read so that we may feel we have begun to know—and reading does make us feel we now know. That use becomes dangerous. The only value in coming close to the wise is that you gain an awareness of ignorance. If awareness of ignorance dawns, an extraordinary process begins within you. But if you conclude “I have come to know,” inertia begins within—no process begins.

The knowledgeable person slowly becomes dull. Because the idea takes hold: “I have known.” The moment anyone believes “I have known,” the doors of knowing close. Now he will not know. Learning ends, seeking ends. And the person whose search has stopped, who has ceased knocking on the doors of further knowing, who has sat down, content, that “I have known”—scriptures can create this delusion. They do create it; not that they must, but we make it so. Satsang can produce this delusion.

What will you get in satsang? Some words perhaps. What will you get in scripture? Some words, some principles, some formulations. You learn them, sit back, and think, “I have known.” That knowing is like a man who reads ten books on love and then starts talking about love—he can even write and speak and compose scriptures. But what kind of knowing is that?

It is like a man who reads every book ever written on swimming, and if needed, can give discourses on swimming, can write a book. But push him into water and you will see: his scripture is of no use; his knowledge of swimming is of no use. He starts to drown, shouting, “Save me!” Because learning words about swimming has nothing to do with learning to swim.

The reverse is also true: a man may know how to swim and yet not be able to speak even two words about it. He will simply say, “I know how to swim—what more can I say? If you insist, I can show you how to swim. What else can I say?” So knowing and learning words are two different things. If from satsang and scripture you merely learn words—and learning words is so easy! All our grand words—atma, Ishwar, Brahman—what are they for us? On hearing them, what did we learn? Did we come to know anything? The word got fixed. Hearing it day after day, it settled into the mind—so deeply that it seems, “I know.” If I ask you, “Do you know Brahman?” one part of memory says, “Yes—I have read the Upanishads, the Gita, Shankara; I know what Brahman is.” But if you look a little deeper you will find: aside from the word, there is nothing in your hands. Behind the word there is no content. This is the danger.

So my view is the opposite. My view is: a guru is one who does not become your guru. Knowledge is where you return having become ignorant. A scripture is that which snatches away your words. Now this appears upside down, because our common notion is that a guru is one who teaches you. I say: a guru is one who makes you forget what you have learned—who brings about not learning, but unlearning.

A German, Osborne, once came to live with Ramana Maharshi and said to him, “I have come to learn Brahma-knowledge.” Ramana said, “Then go elsewhere, for here we make people forget; we do not teach. This is a School of Unlearning, not a School of Learning. If you want to learn, the world is full of schools—go there and learn. Here we help you forget. Here we will show you that what you have learned is all futile, and we will want you to drop it. The day you become like a blank sheet, and can say, ‘I know nothing,’ that day you have passed our first class.”

That threshold—the very doorstep of knowing—has one first condition: the knower cannot enter there. Only one so simple that he can say, “I do not know,” can enter. So there is a use to satsang—but not the use we imagine. There is a use to everything—but not the one we assume. The use is that there…

In the Upanishads there is the story: Shvetaketu returned home after studying with his teacher. He had studied for years, received knowledge, passed his examinations, and been praised by his guru. He was on his way to the village. His father watched from the doorway and saw in him the stiffness of the learned—coming home with that inner feeling, “I know.” Uddalaka said to his wife, “It seems his education has been in vain; he walks with the conceit that he knows.”

When Shvetaketu arrived, his father asked, “What have you learned?” He began to list the names of all the scriptures: “I studied history, grammar, philosophy, this and that…” There were eighteen branches of learning; he named them all.

His father asked, “Did you come to know that, by knowing which, everything is known?”

He said, “No, there was no such thing ever discussed there—something by knowing which everything is known. We tried to know everything separately, but not that one thing by knowing which all is known.”

His father asked, “Did you come to know that, by knowing which, everything is attained—so that nothing remains to be attained?”

“No, nothing like that.”

His father said, “You have wasted your time. Go back. But this time, know that by knowing which all is known, that by knowing which all is attained.” That is not the ordinary knowing that we call knowing in schools, colleges, and universities.

There is one kind of satsang—that of the school, the college, the university. There are scriptures that teach us things, that give information, that fill our minds with data. And there is another kind of knowing that takes all information away, wipes away what is known, empties the mind, leaves it empty and says, “Now, know.” One is the knowing of a filled mind; the other is the knowing of an empty mind. Religion is the knowing of an empty mind; science is the knowing of a filled mind. Science is information; religion is knowing. Science has no “knowing,” and religion has no “information.” Science is tradition; religion is individual.

Science proceeds by tradition. Without Newton there could be no Einstein. But without Mahavira there can still be a Buddha. No one is bound to Mahavira. Without Muhammad there can still be a Ramana. There is no binding here. Even if there had never been a single religious person in the world, a religious person could arise this very moment. But science is bound to the past; it is traditional. If the man who made the first wheel had not been, the man who built the airplane could not have built it. It is tied to that man; without him there is no way forward.

So science is a collective enterprise, religion an individual one. Hence science must provide information: what Newton discovered, what so-and-so discovered—you must learn all that, and then you can go further. But religion is very different. Here we must say: those who came to know were precisely those who dropped knowing everything.

What is Mahavira doing on the hills? No one ever saw him carrying scriptures. Muhammad went to Mount Sinai—no one saw him take any book. He couldn’t even read; he could not have read. Jesus, too, was unlettered; he had no relationship with scriptures. And in the three years he remained hidden, there was no book with him.

What were they doing in those moments? They were forgetting what had been taught, throwing out what had been stuffed inside. What society, culture, civilization had put into the mind—they were freeing themselves from all that, cutting all those roots. For only by becoming free of all that can there be any possibility that what is hidden within may be revealed.

That which comes from the outside is no longer knowledge; it is only information. For if knowledge is a quality of the soul, it can arise only from within. There remains no possibility of its coming from the outside. That which is a quality of the soul can only come from within. And what comes from the outside is no longer a quality of the soul. So by the very fact of coming from the outside, it has become information, not knowledge.

If you remain the witness-knower, then nothing is harmful. That is exactly what I am saying. If you remain the witness-knower, it cannot catch hold of you. It catches you where you become the experiencer of it. It catches you where identification with it begins. You start saying, “I know.” You connect the I with it. If you remain the witness-knower, you can never say, “I know Brahman.” You will only say, “I have heard about Brahman.” I do not know. I have heard, I have read. I do not know. This distance will continuously remain: I do not know. I do not know. And this pain will keep deepening—“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

The deeper this pain, the greater the possibility of spiritual practice becomes. Because it is very difficult to endure this pain. “I do not know”—this is the greatest pain in the world. But we have invented a trick to forget this pain. We learn words and feel content. We start saying, “I know.” The pain is gone. It is for this very reason that spiritual practice in the world is disappearing: we have wiped out its very source—the sense of not-knowing. We fancy that we know. It is hard to find a person who will say, “I do not know.” He will say, “Yes, I know.” Not only will he say, “I know,” he will say, “What I know is the truth; what the other knows is all false.” He will be ready to fight, to kill, to draw his sword if you call his “knowing” wrong.

So, in the fall of man, in my view, neither immorality nor misconduct nor atheism has been the cause; in the fall of man, “knowledge” has done the damage. That is why it is fatal. Because whoever gets the notion “I know” becomes an enemy—now true knowing can never arise in him. The matter is finished.

Vaizner, a German musician, had hung a sign outside his house: “In this house of music, entry is only for those who do not know music.” He was a wonderful master of music. People came from hundreds of miles to learn from him. Whoever came and said, “I don’t know anything at all,” he would agree to teach him for a very small fee. Whoever said, “I have learned for ten years,” he would charge double or triple. The man would say, “What amazing thing are you doing? The one who knows nothing—you agree to teach him for almost nothing; and I am trained, I know quite a bit, I have read all the treatises on music, I have practiced for ten years, I have lived with such-and-such masters.” Vaizner would say, “That is precisely why I ask for double or triple—because first I will have to labor to make you forget. I will first have to bring you to the place where you can say, ‘I do not know.’ Only then will the real work begin.”

This—what mistake have we made? We have lumped things together. A person studies geography, studies history; in the same manner we try to “study” religion. They are poles apart; the polarity is different. As one learns mathematics, one does not learn love in the same way. As one learns grammar, poetry is not learned like that. These things are different; their directions are different. What looks like learning in one direction is fatal in the other. For everything else the path is the same—learn words, learn doctrines, learn logic, accumulate. Religion’s path is the reverse—forget logic, forget words, renounce accumulation. Drop whatever knowledge you have piled up. There is a reason for this.

The reason is that what is hidden within us—if we keep bringing things from outside into the inside, that inner treasure will be buried all the more. Suppose there is a diamond lying in this room. And we keep bringing in from outside all the world’s pebbles, stones, and furniture, piling them up; and we say we are trying to find that diamond, that in the effort to find it we are bringing these things in. Anyone would tell us we are mad. The diamond will get lost even more. The more things in the room, the more difficult it becomes to search for the diamond. Kindly take the furniture out of the room. Bring out even what is already lying inside—so that in the end only the diamond remains within, and you can see where it is and what it is.

When we say that knowledge is a quality of the soul, it means that knowledge is within the soul. It is not to be brought from anywhere. And amidst the crowd of whatever we keep bringing in, it will become difficult to find it. Memory comes from outside, while the soul’s knowing is within. So all memory acts as a hindrance. It piles up things. Gradually it becomes hard to search for that inner knowing we had spoken of.

So the process is the reverse: take the house’s furniture out. Slowly, slowly, separate everything. Then that alone will remain which cannot be separated. That alone will remain which is essential. That alone will remain which is the very essence, which is mine. That alone will remain which is the quality of the soul. Then only what belongs to the house will remain in the house; all outside things will have been taken out. Only then will there be recognition. Only then will it be seen: “Ah, this is it.” An elimination is needed—things must be removed, slowly, slowly; then it can reveal itself.

If there is anything more you want to ask, we can talk.

Please ask your own question; leave them aside.

My own... call it my own, yes.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely. Yes, that’s why.

Yes, that's why.

Leave them aside; I’m saying this for a reason.

Please leave that aside.

That’s good.

So what did I say? Didn’t that give you the idea?

It is always new; therefore that question simply does not arise. It simply does not arise.

In this context no vada will come in. In this context no vada will come in. Because the assumption of vada is to free truth from the person; to turn it into an ism—you understand what I mean, don’t you? Syat can come, not vada. Because the assumption of vada is that truth is neither mine nor yours; truth is a doctrine, a theory, a principle. Syat can come. So I am saying: there is syat in it, but Jainism and the rest cannot come in. They are all vadas. They are all vadas. You understand what I mean, don’t you?

What is our difficulty? We have made sects of truth—vadas. And our insistence is that whenever we understand anything, we should understand it within some vada, within the framework of a doctrine. It seems simpler to understand that way. It seems simpler because we already understand the doctrine; this new thing goes and sits inside that framework. It isn’t a foreign element; it doesn’t trouble us. All right, call it syadvada, and the matter is closed. But I say: this is not a way of understanding; it is a way of not understanding. If something is to be understood, it should be understood straight, immediate, and direct. One should not bring a doctrine in between. Because the moment you bring in a doctrine, misunderstanding begins. Instead of understanding one thing, now a reconciliation between two things has begun. And I say there is no inner consonance between two things—nor can there be.

So Mahavira’s feeling of syat—the sense of probability, that anything may be true—Mahavira’s experience: that cannot be mine, nor yours. When that experience is mine, it will be mine; when it is yours, it will be yours. Even for this, three people cannot come together and erect a vada. And therefore you will be surprised to know that those whom we call the knowers of truth—among them, to this day, no group has ever been formed. Groups are all the groups of untruth. Mahavira and Buddha were alive at the same time, in the same region, yet no group could be formed between them. This is something to ponder—what?

Once it even happened that Mahavira and Buddha lodged in the same inn: Mahavira in one corner, Buddha in another. And many times it happened that Mahavira passed through a village two days earlier and Buddha two days later. But no link could be formed between the two. So either we think they were very egotistical—which is absolutely false. None of them were egotistical. Or we think they were very stubborn, great doctrinaires insisting, “Only what I say is right.” No such reason appears. Then what is the basic reason? In my view the basic reason is: it cannot be; it is an impossibility.

So crowds gather around those who do not know; vadas are formed by those who do not know; religions are built by those who do not know. Those who know—their religion is always a personal fragrance; it merges with them, nothing remains behind. Only a remembrance of perfume remains: once a fragrance came—and went. Mahavira vanishes like air, Buddha vanishes like air; Jainism remains, Buddhism remains. These are the paths of the unknowing. The knower dissolves, and his knowing recedes with him—like when the flower is gone, its fragrance goes with it.

I say: experience—Mahavira’s experience—comes with Mahavira and departs with Mahavira. Not even a line remains behind. As birds fly in the sky, no footprints are left. So in the sky of truth, whoever flies leaves behind no trace. But we, utterly unfamiliar with the sky of truth, build vadas, we raise sects, we compile scriptures, we erect communities.

And then, in the language of these sects, we try to look at each new thing—which tangles it even more. The result is that whenever, in anyone’s life, there is some experience of truth, there will be no acceptance for it in the present world. Because everywhere people are clinging to their sects.

So when Christ is born there is no acceptance of Christ. His society hangs him on a cross. Today, two thousand years later, thousands accept him. But if Christ were to return now, he would be rejected at once. Because the dead structures we have built—of doctrines—within them it is very hard to find a hold.

Life cannot be caught in frameworks; truth cannot be caught in frameworks either. Only in experience—and experience is not a framework. Therefore, neither vada, nor Jain, nor Hindu, nor Muslim. You and life—that much is enough. I and life. And in the relationship between me and life there can be two relationships: either my relationship with life is of ignorance; or my relationship with life is of knowing. Either I not only live life, I also know it and have entered into it; or I stand outside life and do not know. Between life and yourself do not bring any theory—even by mistake. Because it will only become a barrier between life and you.

We invent so many contrivances—and then we keep circling around them, settling accounts with them, and waste time. For instance, the thought of syadvada occurred to you. If a Muslim were sitting here, that thought would not occur to him—do you think it would? It wouldn’t occur to him. Something else would occur—perhaps some verse of the Quran: does what I say match that? If a Christian were sitting here, the Quran would not come to mind. If a communist were sitting here, neither the Quran, nor syadvada, nor the Gita would come to mind—perhaps something written in Marx’s Capital: “Is this what you mean?”

And this remembering is coming from the memory you have accumulated. It has no real relation to Mahavira or to syadvada. You understand what I mean. From childhood till now you have accumulated a memory—a store within—of knowing, words, theories, conditionings. That collection is always trying that whatever comes into life should match the collection: then the collection accepts; otherwise it does not. Because the collection is always under threat. If something comes that is entirely opposite or different, there are only two ways: either that thing will survive, or the collection will have to break.

So the mind’s memory—always in self-defense—keeps trying to protect itself: I must not break, I must not be disturbed, what I have known must not get shaken. So whenever any new experience, any new word, any new idea, any new form of life appears, that memory will quickly try to reconcile it. It will either reconcile it or reject it. But it will not leave it alone as it is—leave it.

If we keep leaving things as they are, then experience will daily renew memory; daily the junk of memory will be cleared away; and memory too will keep becoming new. A moment should come when between me and life no memory obstructs. Only then can there be an experience; otherwise, there cannot be. So I am not concerned with whether it matches or not. I am concerned with why in your mind there arises the thought to match it, to compare, to look for similarity—why? Within you… you understand what I mean, don’t you? Why is this within us? Yes—that is the conditioning.

Yes, yes.

No, what I mean is...

Whatever experiences...

There is a difference in the way we look at whatever experience comes before us. Do you look through the medium of memory, or do you look directly? Understand this. I have memory; you have memory. We should, we will—it is an essential part of life. But when you come before me, do I look at you through the curtain of my memory up to yesterday, or do I set it aside and see you directly? And whatever is experienced will, on its own, be added to memory; there is no need to add it. The question is: do I see the new directly, or do I see it through memory? Between these two lies the fundamental difference. If you look through memory, you cannot see the new at all. You have put on a pair of glasses, and you see the color of those glasses, not the colors that are in the new.

Buddha... One morning a man came. No—wait, understand this a little. A man came to Buddha one morning. He was in great anger; he spat on Buddha. Buddha wiped the spit off with his shawl and said to the man, “If you have anything more to say, say it.” The man was astonished, because he had not said anything—he had simply spat. And Buddha’s disciple, Anand, became very restless and filled with anger. He said, “What are you saying? The man is spitting, and you ask him if he has anything more to say!”

Buddha said, “As far as I can see, he is so overwhelmed by anger that he cannot express what he wants to say in words, so he is expressing it by spitting. I understand. I am looking at him: he is so angry that words are inadequate; he speaks by spitting. I understand. That is why I ask, if there is anything more to say, say it.” And to Anand he said, “Anand, you are not seeing this man. Someone may have spat on you once, or you may have seen someone spit on someone; through that memory you are seeing this man—as someone insulting. Whereas I am seeing him directly. If I were to look through memory, perhaps I too would feel as you do. I am looking at this man directly.”

The man himself became uneasy, hearing the words of the two. He could not think of what to say or not say, and he went back. But he could not sleep all night; he repented. He thought, “How did I spit on such a man? I made a mistake. This was wrong—on a man who, when I spat, asked, ‘Is there anything more to say?’ Who tried to understand me even in the very moment of spitting. Who did not become personal even then, but tried to look with impersonal neutrality at what was happening.”

The next morning he came to ask forgiveness. He placed his head at Buddha’s feet and said, “Forgive me. I made a mistake yesterday.” Buddha said, “What happened yesterday ended yesterday. Whom should I forgive? You are not the man who came yesterday. The man who came yesterday spat; the one who has come today asks for forgiveness. You are not the one who came yesterday. Whom should I forgive? And I too am not the one I was yesterday. A great deal of water has flowed down the Ganges in twenty-four hours. Should I have stayed stuck for twenty-four hours right where you spat? Then who would suffer for those twenty-four hours? Do you understand my meaning?” Then he said to the man, “You are not the man who spat. The one who came then was someone else. His eyes were burning; your eyes are filled with tears—of forgiveness and repentance. You are not that man. Whom am I to forgive?”

He said to Anand, “Anand! But if I look from yesterday’s memory—‘this is the same man who spat on me’—then this man here would vanish, and my memory would stand before me: that man with red eyes, full of rage, spitting on me. Through that memory, would I be able to see the one who has come today? Would I see these tears? Would I see this feeling of repentance and forgiveness? Would I be able to recognize this man? I would not, because then I would not be looking directly. Memory would be standing in between.”

We look at even the small daily experiences of life through the veil of memory. Therefore the direct impact, the direct contact of life does not happen to us—nor with experiences, nor with words, nor with persons. What I am saying is only this much: there will be modifications in memory; they will happen by themselves. You do not have to do them. Your experience will come and get joined in memory and will go on modifying it. You do not have to do anything to it; if you try, you will create trouble. If you do not, it will happen quietly.

You eat food; you do not then digest it. It digests. If you try to digest, you will fall ill. You take the food; it goes down to the throat—after that you have no role. It digests and becomes blood; you are not to make that happen. In exactly the same way, let experience enter inside your brain; then it will go into memory, be digested, modify—everything will happen. You are not to do it; you have no business with it. It is all an automatic process. Your job is only this much: let it enter the doorway; bring the food to the mouth, that is all. If you do not do even that, the stomach cannot do its work of digestion. Just do so much as to lift the food and bring it to the mouth—send it lovingly to the mouth. After that, whatever has to happen will happen.

The same is true with memory. At the doorway of memory stands the witnessing consciousness—that is the door through which experiences enter. If memory itself comes to stand at that witnessing doorway, the trouble begins: the door is blocked; it is no longer open. Any memory that comes in between becomes a partiality, an obstacle, a closing, a blockage. So what I said comes to this: your conditioning is there, but it should not keep stepping in between.

Let life come directly, moment to moment. Let neither Mahavira stand in between, nor Buddha; let neither you stand there, nor I. Let no one stand there. Let the doorway of the mind be completely open, full of the feeling of welcome for life, letting life come in. Such experiencing will, slowly, slowly, one day make the mind so clear, like a mirror, that no obstacle remains on it. Then the total direct seeing of life becomes possible. That direct seeing is truth. And that directness is always new—when it happens, it happens utterly new.

If we look closely, there is nothing old in life—except human memory. If man were not on the earth, would anything on the earth be old? The stone that was there at night is not the same in the morning. The river that was at this bank yesterday is no longer here. Everything is flowing, changing, transforming. Human memory is a strange invention—it does not flow; it stops, it stands still. Whatever stands still, whatever dies, whatever becomes dead is what gets stored in memory.

So memory is a dead collection—of the past, of what has gone by. One who looks at the living through the dead of the past falls into error. I call this dhyan: to look at life directly, without the support of memory. I call this meditation. And the more auspicious, the more pure and bright it becomes, the more the experience of truth arises—the more transparent it becomes, the more innocent it becomes.

Consider this: a child is innocent—why? Because the child has no memory. An old person is not innocent; the old have memory. Is there any other difference between the old and the child? Is there? Between a little child and an old man there is one difference: the old have memory, the child does not. So we call the child simple, innocent. The old become complex, difficult, entangled. But if the old become free of memory, or push memory aside into a corner, they are as simple as a child. There was no other difficulty, no other complexity.

So to regain childhood in old age, or to keep one’s childhood alive every day and not let it be erased—this is the state of the seeker: that he preserves his innocence. No word, no doctrine, no experience becomes a barrier. He remains just as simple as the child was on the first day—and then the experience of truth becomes possible.

Hmm... Who is asking this? Whose writing is this?

This isn’t just some... Who asked it—won’t anyone say? Who asked it? Yours? ...Good!

No, no, it's behind; it hasn't gone down. All right. No, I ask because for me, questions also carry a personal meaning. And unless I have in mind—who?—I cannot form a direct connection. This has been asked... no, no, the questioner is present... you.

Nothing needs to be sacrificed. Whatever demands sacrifice will only bring suffering; it can never bring happiness or peace. Understand a few things. First, whatever you have to sacrifice for will give sorrow, not joy, not peace. But when some things are gained, other things fall away. You don’t have to do renunciation; renunciation happens. That whose arrival causes something else to drop away of itself—that can bring bliss. Understand the difference between “doing renunciation” and “renunciation happening.”

You are walking with pebbles and colored stones in your hand. Someone explains, These are just pebbles—drop them. You say, But they shine; they are diamonds and pearls. I can’t leave them. He says, No, if you drop these, you can have real diamonds and pearls. But you have no idea where those diamonds are, what they are. Your very breath trembles, because at least what is in your hand is—there. If you let go, who knows whether you will get what is being spoken of? Does it even exist? You have no experience of it. If, swayed by someone’s words or by greed, you drop these pebbles, your empty hands will hurt so long as they are empty. And the instant you drop them you won’t be filled with images of jewels you’ve never known; you will keep remembering what you lost, because that was familiar.

A monk does not suddenly begin to see God. What comes to mind is the home he left behind. What is left behind returns as memory because it is known. The unfamiliar leaves no memory; how will you remember it?

There was a great sadhu. He had left his family and wife for fifteen years, and lived in Kashi. After fifteen years his wife died. Friends gathered and sent him a telegram: Your wife has passed away. He said, Good—one nuisance is over. Someone came and told me, He said that—what a great renunciate! I said, To me it’s a real muddle. The wife he left fifteen years ago was still a nuisance? That at her death, fifteen years later, this monk says, Now my nuisance is over—that’s astonishing. He had left her fifteen years back, never returned to the village, no contact with the family. And at her death he says, Good, the nuisance is over. Then the nuisance was still alive within him. For fifteen years, something inside kept churning—this nuisance.

And if leaving the wife for fifteen years didn’t end it, how will her dying end it? For all practical purposes, she was already dead to him for fifteen years. And when a wife dies and there is no compassion, no sorrow, no love, no pain, no sympathy—only the thought, Thank God, the nuisance is over—then surely many times in those fifteen years this man must have wished that she would die. It’s impossible he never thought it. He must have thought, If only she would die, it would be good. Astonishing: having left the wife, he is still entangled with her. The thought remained frozen fifteen years back. He left the wife; the wife did not leave him. Had she dropped from within, it would have been different.

Whatever we forcefully leave is like a wound. If you tear a green leaf from a tree, a wound remains. The leaf suffers, the tree suffers, and the one who plucked it has committed violence. But a dry leaf—when the wind comes, it flies away. A dry leaf cannot even know it has fallen; what has dried cannot feel falling. Nor does the tree notice that a leaf has dropped. What had dried was already gone; it was only stuck there. The wind carried it off; no one noticed. No one was injured; no wound remained; no pain arose. A breeze, and a dry leaf fell. Nowhere in the world does any news report say a dry leaf fell. In life, true renunciation is like the falling of a dry leaf; false renunciation is like tearing off a green one.

So if you have to leave something—if you say, I must make a sacrifice—the trouble has begun. Don’t do sacrifice. Never leave anything by force. Rather, make efforts to attain the highest in life. And whenever something higher comes to you, the substitute—the inferior—will drop. It will drop by itself.

You cannot drop restlessness, but you can find peace. And when peace is found, restlessness drops. One cannot abandon wealth, but one can discover dharma. And when dharma is found, the hold of wealth drops. But what do we do? We get into the reverse cycle. A man thinks: If I give up money, I will gain dharma. If I leave home, I will find God. If I drop this, that will happen. The very language of leaving is wrong. The true language of life is the language of attaining. The language of leaving is the language of death, not of life. Therefore the renouncer, bit by bit, withers away, diminishes, fades, grows sad and miserable, and reaches nowhere. So in life, strive to attain whatever is essential. And as you move in the direction of attainment, you will see for yourself.

Take this room. Suppose tomorrow we bring in better flooring. What will you do? Then this floor will have to be removed. But you won’t miss it, because a better floor has been laid. It quietly goes off to a corner, to a dark storeroom. No one even notices. If you could truly see, you would drop the stones in your hand and take the diamonds. It wouldn’t even occur to you that you were holding colored stones and that you made a sacrifice.

On this point I am emphatic: always think in the language of attaining, of the constructive, the positive. Let what is highest become available in life. The inferior will fall away without your even noticing when it dropped. Just as, when you bring home a new sari, the old sari ends up outside the suitcase. You never noticed when you put it out. No pain remains, no afterthought. Not even the notion that I renounced. Even that notion does not remain.

There is no need to get rid of it. What is needed is to use whatever is in your life. Understand this well. Everyone carries inner wealth. One person is very intellectual, another very sentimental, emotional; someone very loving, someone very courageous, someone very angry, someone very greedy—these are facts within us. People usually say: drop this, drop that—do this, don’t do that. I say: whatever you have, use it rightly.

There is a right use of sentimentality too. And of anger. Even of restlessness. There is nothing in life that does not have a right use. And the marvel is: the moment you begin to use something rightly, slowly, slowly it begins to transform into the right. If someone uses anger rightly, one day it flowers into forgiveness. Forgiveness is the ultimate right use of anger. This may not be obvious to you at once, because it seems that forgiveness belongs to the one who has dropped anger. No—forgiveness belongs to the one who transforms anger.

It is the same energy that appears as anger that appears as forgiveness. You will be surprised to know: the most forgiving people could only be those who were capable of great anger; otherwise, they could not be forgiving. The mediocre can be nothing. A man like Gandhi could attain such great celibacy precisely because he was very sexual. Whenever someone has become a great celibate, know well: unless he carried an equal force of sexuality, he could not have become a celibate. Keep this in mind a little. It is the same intensity: the one who can commit the greatest sin can also perform the greatest virtue.

Nietzsche wrote a very wonderful sentence as the motto of one of his books: If a tree is to touch the sky, its roots must touch the netherworld. There is no other way. The deeper the roots go, the higher the tree rises.

Life is a very wondrous thing. You say, for example, “My mind is over-emotional.” Over-emotionality can be used well, or badly. Mirabai is over-emotional—but all her feeling was transformed into an extraordinary prayer. Mira is no ordinary woman—she is over-emotional. Because unless you are extremely emotional there is no possibility of so much love for an absent Krishna. It is such an excess of feeling that the absent begins to seem present. This is no ordinary sentimentality. Ordinary sentiment checks and measures—if she buys a cheap pot she taps it to test it. But for that which is not even present to become the very center of one’s life—you need a heart so emotional, so emotional—at the very peak.

But her emotionality became love. It became joy; it became bliss. The same emotionality could have become tears, sorrow, pain—and ordinarily it does. All poets are emotional. Poetry is born of feeling; it cannot be born of mathematics. A mathematician cannot be a poet; imagination does not arise in him. For him, two and two are four. In the world of feeling, sometimes two and two are five, even six; sometimes two and two are nothing at all—zero. The arithmetic of feeling is utterly unique; its mathematics is different.

So do not ask, “How can I get rid of sentimentality?” Ask, “How do I give it the right direction?” You are a homemaker; you feed people. In a hotel, food is served like a mathematician serves; at home, it is served like a poet serves. In a hotel, a meal is being served—it is the mathematician serving: everything is in the language of mathematics—spend the least, serve the least, get the eater up as quickly as possible. A homemaker is serving food—not in the language of mathematics but of poetry: eat more, linger longer, give the best she can, keep you at the plate a little while—this is her effort. If a homemaker is emotional and her feeling expresses itself toward a guest, while feeding her husband, while putting the children to sleep, while praying in the morning—her emotionality will make the home a temple. But if her emotionality appears when the husband will not take her to the cinema—she beats her chest and weeps, breaks her head—this is mere sentimentality. She says, “I am sentimental.” It appears when she is not bought a good sari; she cries, is miserable, suffers pain.

So it is vital to watch how all our capacities become rightly directed. And if you watch, you will see you need not drop anything. Little by little you will find everything can be turned into a use. And each time something becomes useful it lifts your life one step higher; when it is useless, it pulls life one step down.

Keep this in mind. Please sit, please sit. Does this make sense to you? Keep it in mind: whatever wealth I have—how do I use it to the maximum? How do I use it rightly? Let it become a path in my life, not a wall; a staircase, not a stone blocking the way. Then there is not a single thing that cannot be put to a right use—not one. Not even in the worst person can you fail to find something from which the greatest person could be born right now. But the outlook must be one of transformation. The very attitude “I will drop it” is wrong. Because you can never drop it. Who will drop it? You are emotional—who will drop emotionality? You are not going to; how? There is no question of dropping.

Yes—use it so that it becomes creative for life, not destructive; so that it enriches life, makes it happier, more beautiful, more full of love. Move in that direction. If this is remembered, it is like this: someone dumps manure outside your house; the stench spreads. We start asking: how do we get rid of it, where do we throw it? Another person spreads the manure in the garden and sows seeds. Tomorrow flowers bloom and the house fills with fragrance. We ask: from where did such beautiful, fragrant flowers come? He says: from that very manure that stank; I laid it in the garden and sowed the seeds—the same manure. Its stench has become fragrance. Transformation has happened. Otherwise the manure gave stench, but the flowers give perfume. And the more foul the manure, the more fragrant the flowers. Remember this. But if we get scared of the manure and start thinking only of how to throw it away, then no flowers will bloom in the garden.

Up to now, every element of life has been denied. All our teachings so far have been negative: drop this, drop that; do this, do that. Drop anger, drop emotionality, drop hate, drop jealousy—drop everything. Man listens, and it even seems right: the manure stinks—drop it. But dropping is neither possible nor meaningful. You cannot be freed by dropping; you will remain bound at the back.

So I have no idea of dropping; my idea is transforming. Whatever you have, take it as capital. Invest it further. First, make a complete survey of what you have—what capital you were born with. I have so much anger—what can I do with it? If Gandhi did not have anger, he could have done nothing. If Mahavira did not have anger, he could have done nothing. Because all the power to do in life is born of anger. If a child is born without anger, you can neither teach him nor train him to do anything. Without anger, the boy becomes a useless lump of clay; nothing will arise in him.

Anger is energy. The question is where to apply it, how to apply it. Teachers tell us: drop anger, adopt peace. I do not say that. I say: transform anger—and ultimately it will become peace. Transform it, raise it to higher and higher planes. All the great ones in the world were people of great anger. Great energy, the capacity to fight, to risk oneself, to stake everything—these are the shares of the angry. These are the shares of the angry.

When Subhas passed the examinations and returned, the governor of Calcutta called him for an interview. As a Bengali does, he tucked his umbrella under his arm and went to meet the governor. The governor sat in his office. Subhas went in and sat on the chair—cap on his head, umbrella under his arm. The governor said, “Do you not have even this much courtesy? You are coming after passing the I.C.S. examination—you should remove your cap.” No sooner had he said this than Subhas took his umbrella, hooked the governor’s neck with the crook from across the table—there were only the two of them in the room—and said, “Sir, I refuse this job. I am not your servant yet; I only came to give an interview. I was your guest. You should have stood first; you should have removed your cap first. And since you behaved so rudely, I responded naturally. Now I will not take this job—why should I work under such small people?” He pulled back the umbrella. The governor could not fathom what had happened in a split second.

This is not ordinary anger. It is flaming. But that anger slowly transformed, became strength—became this man’s inner power. His whole life became a great gamble, and in that gamble he knew, he gained, he experienced something. Without that anger, Subhas would have been spineless—he would have taken off his cap, bowed, sat down, got the job, become an I.C.S. officer—and the birth of a precious man in the world would have been missed.

Do you see my point? Our effort should be to use what we have in the most right direction, so it becomes beneficial to life and, for my own life, a staircase that lifts me up. So use your sentimentality too. It has great uses. And in a woman, if there is no emotionality, what else should there be? But everyone is teaching that emotionality should not be there. Then, slowly, the woman will become like a man—the day she has no emotionality. In the West this has happened. The Western woman is no longer emotional. For the last hundred and fifty years she has been taught that emotionality is wrong, a weakness. The result is: in the West there are no women—there are just two kinds of men. There is no woman there. Behind it there is no feeling, no imagination, no poetry—no question of dedicating life. Everything is plain mathematics.

A woman can divorce her husband because he snores at night and disturbs her sleep. We cannot even imagine this; but mathematically it is perfectly correct—what is wrong in it? A woman has to live a lifetime with a man; if he snores, how can this go on? Divorce is right—totally scientific. It’s an everyday matter. Mathematics says: a husband should be such that he lets you sleep at night. If he makes noise, how will it do? But emotionality says something else.

Emotionality can hold the hand of a blind husband and guide him for a lifetime. She can sit by a sick husband and feed him all her life; she can labor, wash dishes, break stones by the roadside—her emotionality will tell her: he is my husband. Was he my husband only when he was healthy? Only if he had eyes would he be my husband? Then what kind of love is that—measuring eyes and health? Now this is the test: was there love or not? She will serve him all her life. This is the transformation of emotionality. If you cut emotionality off, then only mathematics remains—the plain ledger. A mother will ask: if I raise this son, how much will he earn for me? If not, why raise him? What is the purpose, what is the meaning? None at all. But a mother’s emotionality tells her—regardless of whether he will give anything…

The other day I missed a train and was sitting on a platform. They had brought an old woman from a village in an ox-cart; bandages were on her head; they were taking her to a hospital in a big town. Four or six women were with her. The old woman was almost unconscious. I asked, “What happened to her?” One woman said, “Her son hit her with a stick. She has only one son, and he hit her.” And that woman added, “Better such sons die.” The half-conscious old woman immediately said, “No, no, do not say that! If there were no son, who would beat me? He beats because he exists. Don’t say such bad words.” Now we will call this the ultimate state of emotionality. But this is the state of a mother’s heart. If you cut off emotionality, you cut off the mother—then only a woman remains; there is no mother there.

My understanding is: whatever we have—take it as basic capital. Do not talk of dropping it. Take it as capital and ask: in what direction shall I invest it so that my life attains the maximum joy and peace? What we usually do is invest in a way that brings sorrow and restlessness. And remember: the very thing that brings sorrow and restlessness can bring joy and peace—the difference is only in the directing, the arranging. A tiny difference—and earth and sky are set apart.

Recently in Poona I told an incident. There was a Jewish mystic, Liebmann. He went with a friend to a master’s ashram to learn. Both were admitted. But both had a terrible craving for cigarettes—could not live without them. In the ashram smoking was strictly forbidden. Only one hour was allowed to go out and walk by the river—and that hour was for God-remembrance, not for anything else. They thought: that hour is the chance; we can smoke then. But Liebmann said, “If we have come to be disciples, let us be honest enough to ask the master’s permission to smoke by the river.” They went to the master. Liebmann asked first; the master refused outright: “No, you cannot. Smoking is forbidden.” He came back. But his friend had gone earlier to ask—and was now sitting and smoking. Liebmann was astonished: “Did the master permit you? He refused me!” The friend said, “He told me, yes.” Liebmann said, “This is strange! The same master, the same issue—what injustice! I will go again.” The friend said, “Wait a minute—what exactly did you ask?” Liebmann said, “What is there to it? I asked: may we smoke while remembering God? He said absolutely not. What did you ask?” The friend said, “I asked: I smoke—while smoking, may I remember God? He said: certainly.”

How much difference is there? Perhaps none in essence. But the arranging is different. One asks, “May I smoke while remembering God?” Who will say yes to that? Another asks, “I smoke; while smoking, may I remember God?” Anyone will say: what harm? You can. It is virtually the same thing, but the direction—the arrangement—is different. A tiny shift, and earth and sky are apart. So arrange your sentimentality; direct your emotionality toward that which brings increasing joy. Keep watch twenty-four hours: how did I use my emotionality? Did it bring sorrow to me, my husband, my children, my family—or joy? Observe for fifteen days. Decide from which uses sorrow arises and from which uses joy is felt. Then keep using it in the direction of joy.

Within three months you will find your emotionality has become your greatest wealth. You will thank God that you were given it—otherwise, what would you have done? Do not even talk of dropping it; no one can drop it. You cannot.