Prem Panth Aiso Kathin #5
Available in:
Read in Original Hindi (मूल हिन्दी)
Questions in this Discourse
First question:
Osho, how can I steal samadhi from you?
Rajpal! If only it were possible—that would be auspicious and beautiful. If it could be done, I would give my full cooperation. But samadhi cannot be stolen. Samadhi has to be awakened. Samadhi does not come from the outside. Otherwise we would have found some way to steal it or buy it. Some path would have been made, some ritual devised. But samadhi simply does not arrive from without; it is not an external event. Samadhi is not a thing. It is not locked away in some vaults; otherwise the vaults could be broken. If it were in some cupboards, you could bore a hole. If it were a treasure buried in the earth, you could locate it. Samadhi is your inner state; it is you—it is the very name of your being. There is your being asleep, and there is your being awake. That fully awakened being is called samadhi.
Osho, how can I steal samadhi from you?
Rajpal! If only it were possible—that would be auspicious and beautiful. If it could be done, I would give my full cooperation. But samadhi cannot be stolen. Samadhi has to be awakened. Samadhi does not come from the outside. Otherwise we would have found some way to steal it or buy it. Some path would have been made, some ritual devised. But samadhi simply does not arrive from without; it is not an external event. Samadhi is not a thing. It is not locked away in some vaults; otherwise the vaults could be broken. If it were in some cupboards, you could bore a hole. If it were a treasure buried in the earth, you could locate it. Samadhi is your inner state; it is you—it is the very name of your being. There is your being asleep, and there is your being awake. That fully awakened being is called samadhi.
Imagine a man asleep. Can this sleeping man steal wakefulness from someone who is awake? Can he beg for wakefulness from a man who is awake? Can he pay a price for it? He is asleep—he will have to wake up. And that awakening will arise from within him. Awakening is an inner event. When a lamp is lit within, there is samadhi.
But your question is sweet! That this feeling arose in your heart is itself auspicious and beautiful. I have no objection to the feeling behind your question.
And in any case, the need to steal would arise only if samadhi were being hidden. Samadhi cannot be hidden! It is like the morning sun. How would you hide it?
Whenever samadhi happens in a person’s life, its rays begin to spread. The lamp is lit within, and light appears without—this happens together, simultaneously. And there is another wonder: the one in whom samadhi ripens wants to share it—yet cannot; this is his helplessness. He longs to give—but takers are not found; this too is his helplessness. Even if takers are found, they still cannot take it, because samadhi is non-transferable.
What is the suffering of the buddhas?
Precisely this: what you seek is with them—boundless, bottomless, measureless. Not that it would run out by giving—on the contrary, it would only grow by giving. They want to share; they want to pour with both hands. And yet it cannot be done. Buddhas shout a thousand shouts, contrive a thousand devices, and still samadhi cannot be given to anyone. Yes, if someone wants to receive samadhi, he can—yet the receiving does not happen from outside. The receiving happens within you.
Then what is the function of the buddha outside?
From the buddha outside you do not get samadhi—you get thirst. You receive a longing for samadhi, an aspiration. You catch a divine craze that will not let you stop until samadhi dawns. Sitting near one established in samadhi does not give you samadhi, cannot give you samadhi; but it gives you the assurance that samadhi can happen, it gives you trust, a stirring of faith. And that is the greatest revolution.
If, near a true master, faith is born—otherwise it is born no other way—a seed has sprouted. A seed lying nearby gains confidence: “Until yesterday that seed was just like me; today it has sprouted; leaves have appeared; there is a birth of greenness in it.” The seed lying near begins to stir within. Someone becomes eager to awaken. A wave runs through his life-breath. For the first time, breath starts moving in the long-dead recesses, the heart begins to throb. “It is possible! If it can happen to one seed, why not to me?” And when he sees that the nearby seed has not only grown green but has blossomed, and fragrance has begun to fly, how will he restrain himself?
That inability to restrain oneself is faith. One becomes helpless—bound by invisible magnetic threads, drawn along an unknown, unknowable path never before trodden, entering lands for which there is no map, no guidebook. But that seed lying nearby is now in flower, conversing with moon and stars, teasing the clouds—how can one bear it any longer? A faith will surge within you that what has happened to one can happen in me too.
The great Western psychologist Carl Gustav Jung coined a new word. It is important, especially to understand the true master and satsang.
The most important principle in science is the principle of cause and effect—causality. Heat water to one hundred degrees, and it will turn to steam—inevitably. It cannot be otherwise. Do it in Tibet, in Russia, in India—it makes no difference. The rule is universal. Do it five thousand years ago, now, or five thousand years hence—water will become steam at one hundred degrees. Water cannot say, “Today I do not feel like becoming steam.” Water has no freedom. It cannot say, “I’m ill today, a bit offended today; let’s see who makes me steam; I will break all your contrivances—keep burning your fuel, I’m not in the mood!” Nor can water say in a happy mood, “Why bother going to a hundred? I’ll become steam at ninety, at eighty. Today my heart is singing—at fifty I’ll turn to steam.” No, there is no such freedom for water. Water is bound.
Science is engaged in discovering where such bondage exists; wherever bondage is, science succeeds. Where freedom is, science fails—because how can rules be made for freedom? If sometimes water turns to steam at one hundred degrees, sometimes at one hundred ten, sometimes at one hundred fifty, sometimes not at all, sometimes it rises cold into the sky without heat—then how can rules be made? And without rules there is no science. Rules are made out of bondage. The greatest of these rules is the principle of cause and effect.
Therefore science is deprived of those dimensions whose very nature is freedom. Hence science cannot accept God, because God means supreme freedom—param swatantrata. That is why we call it moksha. Science cannot accept the soul, because soul means: the capacity to choose is within you. Today, if you wish, you love; tomorrow, if you wish, you do not. Just now you were filled with anger; now you can be filled with compassion. The very same event makes one person sad and another happy—how will a rule be made? The same event makes you happy today and unhappy tomorrow—how will a rule be made? Everything outside is the same, but you behave differently.
The full moon has risen in the sky, silver is showering. Seeing the moon, one man becomes sad because his beloved is far away; another dances, takes up his ektara, plays his flute, because his beloved is near. The moon is the same, the moonlight the same, everything the same; one sings, another’s eyes fill with tears.
And then there are confusions upon confusions: sometimes eyes fill with tears in sorrow, sometimes in joy. What to do!
Therefore science cannot accept the soul. Science cannot accept love. Suddenly, in some moment, love arises in you for someone—and as suddenly as it arose, one day it departs. It gives no certificate when it comes, none when it goes. No notice of cause on arrival or departure. It is unpredictable, not in our grasp. It comes from the unknown and dissolves into the unknown—a gust of wind comes and goes. So science cannot accept love.
But love, prayer, God, soul—these are the fragrances of life. If these are denied, what remains? Pebbles and stones. Filth remains. Stench remains. Pettiness remains. The mud remains; the lotus is lost.
Carl Gustav Jung posited, beside causality, a new principle. He named it synchronicity—the principle of resonance. Understand this principle, for it is the essence of satsang. Understand it, and you won’t think in terms of stealing samadhi.
The principle of resonance.
You have seen that when a drum, a mridang, begins to sound, people’s feet start to dance, and a tremor begins in your feet too. There is no law of cause and effect that the drum’s beat must cause your feet to move. It may happen, it may not. There are people whose feet will not move. There are those who, hearing the drumbeat, will think, “What a racket!”
Two men were walking a street. Evening time, a crowded bazaar, shops closing; people gathering up their wares; much clamor! And the church bells nearby began to ring—old bells with a sweet, pleasing sound. One of the men said, “Do you hear—what a lovely resonance! What a delightful tone! No bell can match this church’s bells.”
The first man said, “What are you saying? I can’t hear a thing.”
The other repeated himself more loudly.
But he replied, “Don’t you see the market’s din? Horses neighing, carts being hitched, oxen prodded, goods being loaded—what a racket! Haste everywhere—sunset, people wanting to go home, stalls being packed up. In this noise, I can’t understand what you are praising. And worst of all, that wretched priest is ringing the church bells—so now I can hear even less of what you’re saying.”
There was no need to say more. That sweet resonance—one heard it as sweetness; it stirred sleeping songs in his soul, soothed dormant memories, came like a balm, healed wounds; it was pleasant—as if a loving hand had been placed on your head, as if someone had embraced you with great welcome. That was the tone. Within him there was a hint, an echo, a resonance. And the other man: “This wretched priest is pointlessly ringing the bells! Already there’s enough noise; nothing can be heard; and this fool remembered to ring the bells now!” Nothing happened within the other man.
Just then a rupee coin clinked and fell on the road. A crowd gathered. The very man to whom the church bells were no sweet sound ran toward it. His companion asked, “Where are you going?”
He said, “Don’t you hear? Someone dropped a rupee—clink-clink—just now!”
The friend said, “And with so much racket—horses neighing, carts and oxen, people shouting, goods being tied up, everyone hurrying—and that wretched priest ringing the bells—and you heard a rupee drop!”
People differ. The one whose eye is on money will hear a coin fall even amid a thousand noises. For him music is heard only in money, nowhere else. It is a matter of one’s orientation.
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that the most beautiful sight he ever saw in life was not flowers, not moon and stars, not birds flying in the sky. The most beautiful image he ever saw was a troop of soldiers marching down a road. Their bayonets gleamed in the sun. He could never forget that shine. The synchronized sound of their boots became permanently imprinted in his mind.
People differ. Nietzsche saw no beauty in lakes, lotuses, or stars; he saw it in the naked bayonets of soldiers, in sunrays flashing off them, in the synchronized beat of their boots. People differ.
But one thing is certain: whatever door within you is already ajar, resonance will arise through that. Someone hears a flute and instantly fills with song within. The outer flute is not the cause of the inner song. If it were, it would happen to everyone.
That is why the principle of synchronicity is vital. Man is free, not bound by causality; yet one law still works—a law that does not obstruct his freedom—the law of resonance.
Hearing a song, a song can be born within you. Seeing a true master, the sleeping master within you can awaken. Sitting near one established in samadhi, sprouts of samadhi can appear within you. There is no need to steal.
Stealing would only be needed if you did not already have samadhi. Samadhi is your private wealth; it is your nature. You came with it. You have forgotten, but the treasure lies within. Yes, if you see someone outside who has found his treasure, you too will begin to feel around within. You do not go outward to steal samadhi; you dig within. You uncover samadhi.
But the feeling is good. The very rise of “stealing” stirred a throb in your feet. The very idea of stealing gave the first tap of resonance within you, the first jolt.
Then breezes began to blow as if laughing,
something in the air began to speak.
In the humming hush of morning’s gentle shadows,
countless birds, with outspread, liberated wings,
are flying; on the ground, among the trees, dark
distances like walls start to crumble.
Tremors fill the bathed earth with a shimmer;
who has touched the river that it quivers again?
Hollow voices make the horizons ring;
with fragrance, silence now begins to brim.
Come, let us live this sun-steeped, single-pointed hour;
who knows how long the night may be again?
This is the very season for the journey, the pathways
have begun to bear the pain of a new creation.
Something has begun within you, some sprout is about to break.
Tremors fill the bathed earth with a shimmer;
who has touched the river that it quivers again?
Yes, something within you has trembled. You have been touched, you have been stirred; something has begun to move within.
Hollow voices make the horizons ring;
with fragrance, silence now begins to brim.
A longing for silence has arisen. That is why the feeling to steal samadhi has arisen. The feeling is beautiful. But it cannot be done. The feeling is beautiful, and there is no need to steal—there is a need to awaken.
Come, let us live this sun-steeped, single-pointed hour;
who knows how long the night may be again?
Do not miss this moment. Often the opportunity comes close and then passes far away. Many times satsang begins to gather and then scatters. Many times your fingers touch the strings—music is about to rise—and it is missed.
Come, let us live this sun-steeped, single-pointed hour;
who knows how long the night may be again?
This is the season for the journey; the roads
have begun to bear the pain of a new creation.
The door is open, the path is before you, longing has arisen within. Come! But the search is within. The digging is within.
And it is good that samadhi cannot be obtained from outside. If it could, it could also be snatched away from outside. Someone could give—and someone could take away.
There is a famous incident from the lives of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. In Ramakrishna’s ashram lived a very simple, guileless man named Kalu—a straightforward devotee. Vivekananda often made fun of him. Vivekananda was the very opposite of Kalu—he had great trust in logic and thought. He had turned from atheism to theism, and whenever anyone becomes a theist from an atheist, the sharp edge of atheism remains in his theism; it does not vanish.
In life nothing you have been is ever truly lost. It gets transformed, assimilated into your new state. Life wastes nothing. Everything becomes useful. The past becomes compost for the future. You will not find compost in the flower, yet it is there.
Vivekananda’s atheism became the compost for the flower of theism. With Ramakrishna he resonated, but old habits, old patterns of thinking did not disappear overnight. He mocked Kalu often—and there was something mockable too: Kalu had gathered so many deities in his little room that his whole day went in worship, and only by evening could he manage to eat—whatever he could get. If he found a Ganesha somewhere, he brought him; a Hanuman somewhere, he brought him; Kali Ma somewhere, he brought her; and Shankaras were never lacking in his room. He barely had space to live himself. Among those deities, somehow he would curl up and sleep in the corner. And he worshiped every single one—and with devotion! Not the perfunctory way—ringing a bell over all of them at once and finishing the job in five minutes. He wasn’t a hired priest rushing off to other jobs. He would rise at three in the morning, bathe, then bathe each image, dress them, offer food—by evening it would end.
Vivekananda often told him, “What are you up to! Worship one—it is enough.” He was an advaitin: one is sufficient. But Kalu would say, “Whom shall I drop? All are dear. Look at Ganesha—if I drop him, my heart will hurt. And these poor deities—if no one else were to worship them? They will feel sad. See how happy they are here!” “Here sits Shankar—if I drop him, where shall I drop him? To whom shall I give him? Who will take care of him as I do?” Like a mother for her child, he cared. Even if he was ill, he continued his worship.
The first time Vivekananda had a little taste of meditation—a glimpse of thoughtlessness—the first thing that occurred to him was: in this state of thoughtlessness, if I intensely project this thought toward Kalu—“Kalu, bundle up all your deities and throw them in the Ganges”—the thought will surely be transmitted. A part of him felt he should stop: this isn’t right. But then another thought came: it is right—after all there is only the One; why so much worship? This poor, simple man—let him be free. Out of compassion he transmitted the thought, with one-pointed mind: “Kalu, bundle them all up and throw them into the Ganges!”
Kalu was simple. Simple people are quickly reached. He bundled them up, gathered all the deities, tied the bundle, and was just going out when Ramakrishna came out of his room and said, “Stop! Where are you going?”
He said, “A thought arose—an intense thought—why am I stuck in all this worship? How long will it go on? There is only One! From now on I will worship only the One. I too have become an advaitin! So I’ll go and immerse all these in the Ganges. What’s the use of giving them to someone else? Why pass my trouble to another? He will suffer as I did. Let Mother Ganga take care of them!”
Ramakrishna said, “Stop! This thought is not yours. There is no imprint of this thought on your face. In your eyes there is no natural feeling of it. This thought has been thrust upon you. Wait—I will reveal the whole story.”
He went and knocked at Vivekananda’s door. Vivekananda came out—somewhat afraid, a bit nervous. Ramakrishna said, “This is not proper. You misused a beautiful moment of no-thought. I will now keep your key with me. You will attain thoughtlessness only when you cannot misuse it. Until then, the key remains in my hands.”
And you will be astonished to know that despite trying his whole life, Vivekananda could not regain that state. Only three days before his death did it return.
Now the question: was Vivekananda’s state samadhi? If it had been, he could not have done what he did to Kalu—that’s the first point. A person established in samadhi becomes vast; all are included within him—knowledge, action, devotion. All religions, all paths become his own—temple and mosque and gurdwara. No discrimination remains. Between dualism and non-dualism, no division remains. Such a non-dual blossoms in him that even dualism and non-dualism become one.
So what happened to Vivekananda was not samadhi. It was concentration. Not even meditation. In meditation there is thoughtlessness. In concentration, thoughts gather at a point, become focused. That was concentration. In concentration, such a possibility exists that you can project your thought onto another. And concentration is not such a great thing. Concentration can be given from outside. Samadhi cannot be given from outside. Therefore Ramakrishna could indeed keep the key of concentration in his hand. What can be given from outside can also be withheld from outside. This principle is eternal: what is given from outside can be snatched from outside.
Had true samadhi ripened in Vivekananda, the mischief he did with Kalu could not have happened. Second, even if Ramakrishna had wanted, he could not have kept the key. Whatever has happened within cannot have its key in anyone else’s hands.
Concentration belongs to mind. Mind is made from the outside. Samadhi is the experience of the soul. The soul is not made from the outside. Mind comes from without. The mind you have has come from outside—therefore a Hindu has one kind of mind, a Muslim another, because a Muslim receives one kind of conditioning and a Hindu another. A Jain has a third kind of mind. A communist a fourth. As many people in the world, so many minds—because different conditioning, different traditions, customs, civilizations, cultures—these give you different minds. They are not the same.
Stalin could butcher millions. Why? Because communism gave him a mind that says: there is no soul within man; man is a machine. Consciousness is only a by-product of the machine. Therefore there is no harm in killing. This is one kind of mind. They say nearly ten million people were killed by Stalin in Russia. Such a vast organization of murder—and the man felt no unease. His doctrine said there is no soul in man; so what harm in killing?
If someone asks you to smash a wristwatch, do you say there will be violence, a killing; the watch will die and I will incur sin? You say, “All right—if you want it dropped and broken, I’ll do it.” A watch has no soul. In communism’s view, man is like a watch. Therefore Stalin could kill ten million.
Mahavira places his feet with such care that no ant be crushed. He sleeps on one side so that in turning over he might not crush some small creature that has come behind his back. He does not walk in the dark lest some insect be crushed. Why? Another feeling: there is soul within the body—even if the body is an ant’s. Whether the body is an elephant’s or an ant’s, it makes no difference—both contain one stream of life. That stream must not be harmed. There is a reverence for life. This is another kind of mind.
Minds are created from the outside. You are taught, and what you are taught becomes your mind. Mind is schooling, training, conditioning. Concentration is a mind-event. From primary school to university, all the emphasis is on concentration. “Focus the mind.”
By focusing, power arises—just as when you focus the sun’s rays, fire is produced. And people are worshipers of power. Everyone wants power—because everyone wants to be powerful.
Meditation is a far greater matter. Meditation is not concentration. It is the very opposite of concentration. Concentration is the opposite of restlessness. In a restless mind, one thought comes, then another and another—a bustle, a rush. Concentration is the opposite of restlessness—you stick to one thought. And meditation? Meditation is no-thought. There are neither many thoughts nor one thought. There is no thought. There is neither restlessness nor concentration. And meditation is the door to samadhi.
If samadhi had ripened in Vivekananda, even if Ramakrishna had wished, he could not have kept the key. Nor would there be any need to keep it, for samadhi has never harmed anyone; harm cannot arise from it. Yes, a concentrated person can harm—much more than a restless person—because the restless has little power to harm. The concentrated has great power; he can influence others’ thoughts.
Adolf Hitler caused great harm to humanity in precisely this way. He was a man of tremendous concentration. When he rose to speak, his concentration was such that people became hypnotized. The most blatant lies—such that even a simpleton could see them—seemed true to people. It was the power of his concentration. All his life-energy gathered at a single point—whatever he said carried force. He told bigger lies than any man ever did—lies with no coherence.
As if someone asked you, “Why is India poor?” and you answered, “Because many people ride bicycles.” You would laugh. There is no logic, no math, no coherence. Yet such answers Hitler gave. “Why did Germany fall? Because of the Jews!”
There is no connection between Jews and Germany’s fall. The truth is that Jews greatly enriched Germany. Germany gave this century three great men—and all three were Jews: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein. The three who most enriched this century were Germans—and Jews. Jews were Germany’s pride.
But Hitler convinced people. At first they laughed—even his friends: “What madness, what nonsense!” But Hitler had a principle: if a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes truth. He wrote in his autobiography that the difference between lie and truth lies only in repetition: lies repeated very often become truth. Just go on repeating. And he repeated. Within four or five years he made people believe that Jews were the cause of all trouble.
Then he began another idea: if we completely eradicate Jews, then Germans will be free of this sin, this leprosy; Germans will be emperors of the world, and for a thousand years no one will touch German supremacy. People agreed to this too. And Germany is not a country of fools—it is among the most cultured nations, a nation of professors, researchers, thinkers, philosophers, intellectuals. How did such a country fall into Hitler’s snare? And this man had no great intelligence or profound ideas. But he had one thing: concentration. Whatever he said, he said with his whole being. That has an effect. Whenever anyone speaks with total one-pointedness, you will surely be influenced. Even without speaking, deep concentration can influence you.
Try a small experiment. You are walking along the road; someone is walking ahead of you. Focus your mind utterly on the nape of his neck. And when the mind begins to be fully one-pointed, say to him inwardly, “Turn—look back!” You will be surprised—he will suddenly turn and look back. You did not speak aloud; you only thought it. It is a very small experiment—anyone can do it. It is a crude experiment in hypnosis. He will have to look back. He will be startled; you will be startled. There was no outer cause—you gave no call—but you focused. Focus on the nape—because there is a center there through which concentrated impulses enter, from which keys can be turned.
The key Ramakrishna held was the key of concentration. His followers have written here and there that it was the key of samadhi. That is incorrect. They have no understanding of samadhi. No one can hold or give a key to samadhi. Samadhi is synchronicity. Samadhi is resonance. Ramakrishna sits in samadhi; whoever wishes may sit near, be stirred, drink that air, bathe in that fragrance, slide a little into that dimension, take trust from him, a little juice; seeing him, recognize one’s own possibility, catch a glimpse of one’s future—and revolution begins. Samadhi need not be stolen.
And the day you understand that samadhi is within you, you will see: it flowers in satsang. Satsang is not the cause of samadhi; satsang is merely going near a dancer so that the sleeping dance in your feet is shaken awake. And once you begin to sway in some satsang, to whirl, to be ecstatic—you will be amazed, wonderstruck, unbelieving—“Was so much lying within me?” And the day samadhi rises within you, God begins to shower upon you. Amrita falls. Samadhi opens the inner doors; a thousand suns arise—ambrosia drizzles, the lotus blossoms! And as nectar rains here, within you the thousand-petaled lotus blooms.
O merciless one, you have bestowed this gift of love—
today my restless heart exults!
At those tender, beloved feet
with eyes bathed in tears,
life is fulfilled.
Holding my heart’s sigh for a moment,
an instant became an age, an age an instant—
Beloved, today my heart exults!
Shaped in so graceful a mold,
O life-breath, how good you are!
To this long-destitute, trembling heart
you have given such a support—
this one who lay inert, almost dead, has shivered awake!
Beloved, today my heart exults!
My goal is far, the road rough, all mire;
your toenails’ light twinkles
as a support on the pathless path.
In youth’s night I have received a smile of light—
Beloved, today my heart exults!
You have come, hesitant,
into a life that faltered,
now remain thus forever:
the days past have all been sobbing.
What honor can the poor hut of the destitute offer?
Beloved, today my heart exults!
I am Shakta, you my Shakti;
I the devotee, you my devotion;
I the yogi of love, you the friend;
my loving attachment, you made it song—
I the lyricist, you the music—mind becomes a joyful chant!
Beloved, today my heart exults!
Within you the door of samadhi has opened—so that the Beloved may descend! The Beloved stands right at the threshold. But the door is shut—shut for centuries, for lifetimes. So long shut that you have forgotten you have a door within.
Sitting by me, if only you remember the door—enough. Samadhi, Rajpal, will not have to be stolen. Samadhi is already yours. Samadhi is your very nature.
But your question is sweet! That this feeling arose in your heart is itself auspicious and beautiful. I have no objection to the feeling behind your question.
And in any case, the need to steal would arise only if samadhi were being hidden. Samadhi cannot be hidden! It is like the morning sun. How would you hide it?
Whenever samadhi happens in a person’s life, its rays begin to spread. The lamp is lit within, and light appears without—this happens together, simultaneously. And there is another wonder: the one in whom samadhi ripens wants to share it—yet cannot; this is his helplessness. He longs to give—but takers are not found; this too is his helplessness. Even if takers are found, they still cannot take it, because samadhi is non-transferable.
What is the suffering of the buddhas?
Precisely this: what you seek is with them—boundless, bottomless, measureless. Not that it would run out by giving—on the contrary, it would only grow by giving. They want to share; they want to pour with both hands. And yet it cannot be done. Buddhas shout a thousand shouts, contrive a thousand devices, and still samadhi cannot be given to anyone. Yes, if someone wants to receive samadhi, he can—yet the receiving does not happen from outside. The receiving happens within you.
Then what is the function of the buddha outside?
From the buddha outside you do not get samadhi—you get thirst. You receive a longing for samadhi, an aspiration. You catch a divine craze that will not let you stop until samadhi dawns. Sitting near one established in samadhi does not give you samadhi, cannot give you samadhi; but it gives you the assurance that samadhi can happen, it gives you trust, a stirring of faith. And that is the greatest revolution.
If, near a true master, faith is born—otherwise it is born no other way—a seed has sprouted. A seed lying nearby gains confidence: “Until yesterday that seed was just like me; today it has sprouted; leaves have appeared; there is a birth of greenness in it.” The seed lying near begins to stir within. Someone becomes eager to awaken. A wave runs through his life-breath. For the first time, breath starts moving in the long-dead recesses, the heart begins to throb. “It is possible! If it can happen to one seed, why not to me?” And when he sees that the nearby seed has not only grown green but has blossomed, and fragrance has begun to fly, how will he restrain himself?
That inability to restrain oneself is faith. One becomes helpless—bound by invisible magnetic threads, drawn along an unknown, unknowable path never before trodden, entering lands for which there is no map, no guidebook. But that seed lying nearby is now in flower, conversing with moon and stars, teasing the clouds—how can one bear it any longer? A faith will surge within you that what has happened to one can happen in me too.
The great Western psychologist Carl Gustav Jung coined a new word. It is important, especially to understand the true master and satsang.
The most important principle in science is the principle of cause and effect—causality. Heat water to one hundred degrees, and it will turn to steam—inevitably. It cannot be otherwise. Do it in Tibet, in Russia, in India—it makes no difference. The rule is universal. Do it five thousand years ago, now, or five thousand years hence—water will become steam at one hundred degrees. Water cannot say, “Today I do not feel like becoming steam.” Water has no freedom. It cannot say, “I’m ill today, a bit offended today; let’s see who makes me steam; I will break all your contrivances—keep burning your fuel, I’m not in the mood!” Nor can water say in a happy mood, “Why bother going to a hundred? I’ll become steam at ninety, at eighty. Today my heart is singing—at fifty I’ll turn to steam.” No, there is no such freedom for water. Water is bound.
Science is engaged in discovering where such bondage exists; wherever bondage is, science succeeds. Where freedom is, science fails—because how can rules be made for freedom? If sometimes water turns to steam at one hundred degrees, sometimes at one hundred ten, sometimes at one hundred fifty, sometimes not at all, sometimes it rises cold into the sky without heat—then how can rules be made? And without rules there is no science. Rules are made out of bondage. The greatest of these rules is the principle of cause and effect.
Therefore science is deprived of those dimensions whose very nature is freedom. Hence science cannot accept God, because God means supreme freedom—param swatantrata. That is why we call it moksha. Science cannot accept the soul, because soul means: the capacity to choose is within you. Today, if you wish, you love; tomorrow, if you wish, you do not. Just now you were filled with anger; now you can be filled with compassion. The very same event makes one person sad and another happy—how will a rule be made? The same event makes you happy today and unhappy tomorrow—how will a rule be made? Everything outside is the same, but you behave differently.
The full moon has risen in the sky, silver is showering. Seeing the moon, one man becomes sad because his beloved is far away; another dances, takes up his ektara, plays his flute, because his beloved is near. The moon is the same, the moonlight the same, everything the same; one sings, another’s eyes fill with tears.
And then there are confusions upon confusions: sometimes eyes fill with tears in sorrow, sometimes in joy. What to do!
Therefore science cannot accept the soul. Science cannot accept love. Suddenly, in some moment, love arises in you for someone—and as suddenly as it arose, one day it departs. It gives no certificate when it comes, none when it goes. No notice of cause on arrival or departure. It is unpredictable, not in our grasp. It comes from the unknown and dissolves into the unknown—a gust of wind comes and goes. So science cannot accept love.
But love, prayer, God, soul—these are the fragrances of life. If these are denied, what remains? Pebbles and stones. Filth remains. Stench remains. Pettiness remains. The mud remains; the lotus is lost.
Carl Gustav Jung posited, beside causality, a new principle. He named it synchronicity—the principle of resonance. Understand this principle, for it is the essence of satsang. Understand it, and you won’t think in terms of stealing samadhi.
The principle of resonance.
You have seen that when a drum, a mridang, begins to sound, people’s feet start to dance, and a tremor begins in your feet too. There is no law of cause and effect that the drum’s beat must cause your feet to move. It may happen, it may not. There are people whose feet will not move. There are those who, hearing the drumbeat, will think, “What a racket!”
Two men were walking a street. Evening time, a crowded bazaar, shops closing; people gathering up their wares; much clamor! And the church bells nearby began to ring—old bells with a sweet, pleasing sound. One of the men said, “Do you hear—what a lovely resonance! What a delightful tone! No bell can match this church’s bells.”
The first man said, “What are you saying? I can’t hear a thing.”
The other repeated himself more loudly.
But he replied, “Don’t you see the market’s din? Horses neighing, carts being hitched, oxen prodded, goods being loaded—what a racket! Haste everywhere—sunset, people wanting to go home, stalls being packed up. In this noise, I can’t understand what you are praising. And worst of all, that wretched priest is ringing the church bells—so now I can hear even less of what you’re saying.”
There was no need to say more. That sweet resonance—one heard it as sweetness; it stirred sleeping songs in his soul, soothed dormant memories, came like a balm, healed wounds; it was pleasant—as if a loving hand had been placed on your head, as if someone had embraced you with great welcome. That was the tone. Within him there was a hint, an echo, a resonance. And the other man: “This wretched priest is pointlessly ringing the bells! Already there’s enough noise; nothing can be heard; and this fool remembered to ring the bells now!” Nothing happened within the other man.
Just then a rupee coin clinked and fell on the road. A crowd gathered. The very man to whom the church bells were no sweet sound ran toward it. His companion asked, “Where are you going?”
He said, “Don’t you hear? Someone dropped a rupee—clink-clink—just now!”
The friend said, “And with so much racket—horses neighing, carts and oxen, people shouting, goods being tied up, everyone hurrying—and that wretched priest ringing the bells—and you heard a rupee drop!”
People differ. The one whose eye is on money will hear a coin fall even amid a thousand noises. For him music is heard only in money, nowhere else. It is a matter of one’s orientation.
Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that the most beautiful sight he ever saw in life was not flowers, not moon and stars, not birds flying in the sky. The most beautiful image he ever saw was a troop of soldiers marching down a road. Their bayonets gleamed in the sun. He could never forget that shine. The synchronized sound of their boots became permanently imprinted in his mind.
People differ. Nietzsche saw no beauty in lakes, lotuses, or stars; he saw it in the naked bayonets of soldiers, in sunrays flashing off them, in the synchronized beat of their boots. People differ.
But one thing is certain: whatever door within you is already ajar, resonance will arise through that. Someone hears a flute and instantly fills with song within. The outer flute is not the cause of the inner song. If it were, it would happen to everyone.
That is why the principle of synchronicity is vital. Man is free, not bound by causality; yet one law still works—a law that does not obstruct his freedom—the law of resonance.
Hearing a song, a song can be born within you. Seeing a true master, the sleeping master within you can awaken. Sitting near one established in samadhi, sprouts of samadhi can appear within you. There is no need to steal.
Stealing would only be needed if you did not already have samadhi. Samadhi is your private wealth; it is your nature. You came with it. You have forgotten, but the treasure lies within. Yes, if you see someone outside who has found his treasure, you too will begin to feel around within. You do not go outward to steal samadhi; you dig within. You uncover samadhi.
But the feeling is good. The very rise of “stealing” stirred a throb in your feet. The very idea of stealing gave the first tap of resonance within you, the first jolt.
Then breezes began to blow as if laughing,
something in the air began to speak.
In the humming hush of morning’s gentle shadows,
countless birds, with outspread, liberated wings,
are flying; on the ground, among the trees, dark
distances like walls start to crumble.
Tremors fill the bathed earth with a shimmer;
who has touched the river that it quivers again?
Hollow voices make the horizons ring;
with fragrance, silence now begins to brim.
Come, let us live this sun-steeped, single-pointed hour;
who knows how long the night may be again?
This is the very season for the journey, the pathways
have begun to bear the pain of a new creation.
Something has begun within you, some sprout is about to break.
Tremors fill the bathed earth with a shimmer;
who has touched the river that it quivers again?
Yes, something within you has trembled. You have been touched, you have been stirred; something has begun to move within.
Hollow voices make the horizons ring;
with fragrance, silence now begins to brim.
A longing for silence has arisen. That is why the feeling to steal samadhi has arisen. The feeling is beautiful. But it cannot be done. The feeling is beautiful, and there is no need to steal—there is a need to awaken.
Come, let us live this sun-steeped, single-pointed hour;
who knows how long the night may be again?
Do not miss this moment. Often the opportunity comes close and then passes far away. Many times satsang begins to gather and then scatters. Many times your fingers touch the strings—music is about to rise—and it is missed.
Come, let us live this sun-steeped, single-pointed hour;
who knows how long the night may be again?
This is the season for the journey; the roads
have begun to bear the pain of a new creation.
The door is open, the path is before you, longing has arisen within. Come! But the search is within. The digging is within.
And it is good that samadhi cannot be obtained from outside. If it could, it could also be snatched away from outside. Someone could give—and someone could take away.
There is a famous incident from the lives of Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. In Ramakrishna’s ashram lived a very simple, guileless man named Kalu—a straightforward devotee. Vivekananda often made fun of him. Vivekananda was the very opposite of Kalu—he had great trust in logic and thought. He had turned from atheism to theism, and whenever anyone becomes a theist from an atheist, the sharp edge of atheism remains in his theism; it does not vanish.
In life nothing you have been is ever truly lost. It gets transformed, assimilated into your new state. Life wastes nothing. Everything becomes useful. The past becomes compost for the future. You will not find compost in the flower, yet it is there.
Vivekananda’s atheism became the compost for the flower of theism. With Ramakrishna he resonated, but old habits, old patterns of thinking did not disappear overnight. He mocked Kalu often—and there was something mockable too: Kalu had gathered so many deities in his little room that his whole day went in worship, and only by evening could he manage to eat—whatever he could get. If he found a Ganesha somewhere, he brought him; a Hanuman somewhere, he brought him; Kali Ma somewhere, he brought her; and Shankaras were never lacking in his room. He barely had space to live himself. Among those deities, somehow he would curl up and sleep in the corner. And he worshiped every single one—and with devotion! Not the perfunctory way—ringing a bell over all of them at once and finishing the job in five minutes. He wasn’t a hired priest rushing off to other jobs. He would rise at three in the morning, bathe, then bathe each image, dress them, offer food—by evening it would end.
Vivekananda often told him, “What are you up to! Worship one—it is enough.” He was an advaitin: one is sufficient. But Kalu would say, “Whom shall I drop? All are dear. Look at Ganesha—if I drop him, my heart will hurt. And these poor deities—if no one else were to worship them? They will feel sad. See how happy they are here!” “Here sits Shankar—if I drop him, where shall I drop him? To whom shall I give him? Who will take care of him as I do?” Like a mother for her child, he cared. Even if he was ill, he continued his worship.
The first time Vivekananda had a little taste of meditation—a glimpse of thoughtlessness—the first thing that occurred to him was: in this state of thoughtlessness, if I intensely project this thought toward Kalu—“Kalu, bundle up all your deities and throw them in the Ganges”—the thought will surely be transmitted. A part of him felt he should stop: this isn’t right. But then another thought came: it is right—after all there is only the One; why so much worship? This poor, simple man—let him be free. Out of compassion he transmitted the thought, with one-pointed mind: “Kalu, bundle them all up and throw them into the Ganges!”
Kalu was simple. Simple people are quickly reached. He bundled them up, gathered all the deities, tied the bundle, and was just going out when Ramakrishna came out of his room and said, “Stop! Where are you going?”
He said, “A thought arose—an intense thought—why am I stuck in all this worship? How long will it go on? There is only One! From now on I will worship only the One. I too have become an advaitin! So I’ll go and immerse all these in the Ganges. What’s the use of giving them to someone else? Why pass my trouble to another? He will suffer as I did. Let Mother Ganga take care of them!”
Ramakrishna said, “Stop! This thought is not yours. There is no imprint of this thought on your face. In your eyes there is no natural feeling of it. This thought has been thrust upon you. Wait—I will reveal the whole story.”
He went and knocked at Vivekananda’s door. Vivekananda came out—somewhat afraid, a bit nervous. Ramakrishna said, “This is not proper. You misused a beautiful moment of no-thought. I will now keep your key with me. You will attain thoughtlessness only when you cannot misuse it. Until then, the key remains in my hands.”
And you will be astonished to know that despite trying his whole life, Vivekananda could not regain that state. Only three days before his death did it return.
Now the question: was Vivekananda’s state samadhi? If it had been, he could not have done what he did to Kalu—that’s the first point. A person established in samadhi becomes vast; all are included within him—knowledge, action, devotion. All religions, all paths become his own—temple and mosque and gurdwara. No discrimination remains. Between dualism and non-dualism, no division remains. Such a non-dual blossoms in him that even dualism and non-dualism become one.
So what happened to Vivekananda was not samadhi. It was concentration. Not even meditation. In meditation there is thoughtlessness. In concentration, thoughts gather at a point, become focused. That was concentration. In concentration, such a possibility exists that you can project your thought onto another. And concentration is not such a great thing. Concentration can be given from outside. Samadhi cannot be given from outside. Therefore Ramakrishna could indeed keep the key of concentration in his hand. What can be given from outside can also be withheld from outside. This principle is eternal: what is given from outside can be snatched from outside.
Had true samadhi ripened in Vivekananda, the mischief he did with Kalu could not have happened. Second, even if Ramakrishna had wanted, he could not have kept the key. Whatever has happened within cannot have its key in anyone else’s hands.
Concentration belongs to mind. Mind is made from the outside. Samadhi is the experience of the soul. The soul is not made from the outside. Mind comes from without. The mind you have has come from outside—therefore a Hindu has one kind of mind, a Muslim another, because a Muslim receives one kind of conditioning and a Hindu another. A Jain has a third kind of mind. A communist a fourth. As many people in the world, so many minds—because different conditioning, different traditions, customs, civilizations, cultures—these give you different minds. They are not the same.
Stalin could butcher millions. Why? Because communism gave him a mind that says: there is no soul within man; man is a machine. Consciousness is only a by-product of the machine. Therefore there is no harm in killing. This is one kind of mind. They say nearly ten million people were killed by Stalin in Russia. Such a vast organization of murder—and the man felt no unease. His doctrine said there is no soul in man; so what harm in killing?
If someone asks you to smash a wristwatch, do you say there will be violence, a killing; the watch will die and I will incur sin? You say, “All right—if you want it dropped and broken, I’ll do it.” A watch has no soul. In communism’s view, man is like a watch. Therefore Stalin could kill ten million.
Mahavira places his feet with such care that no ant be crushed. He sleeps on one side so that in turning over he might not crush some small creature that has come behind his back. He does not walk in the dark lest some insect be crushed. Why? Another feeling: there is soul within the body—even if the body is an ant’s. Whether the body is an elephant’s or an ant’s, it makes no difference—both contain one stream of life. That stream must not be harmed. There is a reverence for life. This is another kind of mind.
Minds are created from the outside. You are taught, and what you are taught becomes your mind. Mind is schooling, training, conditioning. Concentration is a mind-event. From primary school to university, all the emphasis is on concentration. “Focus the mind.”
By focusing, power arises—just as when you focus the sun’s rays, fire is produced. And people are worshipers of power. Everyone wants power—because everyone wants to be powerful.
Meditation is a far greater matter. Meditation is not concentration. It is the very opposite of concentration. Concentration is the opposite of restlessness. In a restless mind, one thought comes, then another and another—a bustle, a rush. Concentration is the opposite of restlessness—you stick to one thought. And meditation? Meditation is no-thought. There are neither many thoughts nor one thought. There is no thought. There is neither restlessness nor concentration. And meditation is the door to samadhi.
If samadhi had ripened in Vivekananda, even if Ramakrishna had wished, he could not have kept the key. Nor would there be any need to keep it, for samadhi has never harmed anyone; harm cannot arise from it. Yes, a concentrated person can harm—much more than a restless person—because the restless has little power to harm. The concentrated has great power; he can influence others’ thoughts.
Adolf Hitler caused great harm to humanity in precisely this way. He was a man of tremendous concentration. When he rose to speak, his concentration was such that people became hypnotized. The most blatant lies—such that even a simpleton could see them—seemed true to people. It was the power of his concentration. All his life-energy gathered at a single point—whatever he said carried force. He told bigger lies than any man ever did—lies with no coherence.
As if someone asked you, “Why is India poor?” and you answered, “Because many people ride bicycles.” You would laugh. There is no logic, no math, no coherence. Yet such answers Hitler gave. “Why did Germany fall? Because of the Jews!”
There is no connection between Jews and Germany’s fall. The truth is that Jews greatly enriched Germany. Germany gave this century three great men—and all three were Jews: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein. The three who most enriched this century were Germans—and Jews. Jews were Germany’s pride.
But Hitler convinced people. At first they laughed—even his friends: “What madness, what nonsense!” But Hitler had a principle: if a lie is repeated often enough, it becomes truth. He wrote in his autobiography that the difference between lie and truth lies only in repetition: lies repeated very often become truth. Just go on repeating. And he repeated. Within four or five years he made people believe that Jews were the cause of all trouble.
Then he began another idea: if we completely eradicate Jews, then Germans will be free of this sin, this leprosy; Germans will be emperors of the world, and for a thousand years no one will touch German supremacy. People agreed to this too. And Germany is not a country of fools—it is among the most cultured nations, a nation of professors, researchers, thinkers, philosophers, intellectuals. How did such a country fall into Hitler’s snare? And this man had no great intelligence or profound ideas. But he had one thing: concentration. Whatever he said, he said with his whole being. That has an effect. Whenever anyone speaks with total one-pointedness, you will surely be influenced. Even without speaking, deep concentration can influence you.
Try a small experiment. You are walking along the road; someone is walking ahead of you. Focus your mind utterly on the nape of his neck. And when the mind begins to be fully one-pointed, say to him inwardly, “Turn—look back!” You will be surprised—he will suddenly turn and look back. You did not speak aloud; you only thought it. It is a very small experiment—anyone can do it. It is a crude experiment in hypnosis. He will have to look back. He will be startled; you will be startled. There was no outer cause—you gave no call—but you focused. Focus on the nape—because there is a center there through which concentrated impulses enter, from which keys can be turned.
The key Ramakrishna held was the key of concentration. His followers have written here and there that it was the key of samadhi. That is incorrect. They have no understanding of samadhi. No one can hold or give a key to samadhi. Samadhi is synchronicity. Samadhi is resonance. Ramakrishna sits in samadhi; whoever wishes may sit near, be stirred, drink that air, bathe in that fragrance, slide a little into that dimension, take trust from him, a little juice; seeing him, recognize one’s own possibility, catch a glimpse of one’s future—and revolution begins. Samadhi need not be stolen.
And the day you understand that samadhi is within you, you will see: it flowers in satsang. Satsang is not the cause of samadhi; satsang is merely going near a dancer so that the sleeping dance in your feet is shaken awake. And once you begin to sway in some satsang, to whirl, to be ecstatic—you will be amazed, wonderstruck, unbelieving—“Was so much lying within me?” And the day samadhi rises within you, God begins to shower upon you. Amrita falls. Samadhi opens the inner doors; a thousand suns arise—ambrosia drizzles, the lotus blossoms! And as nectar rains here, within you the thousand-petaled lotus blooms.
O merciless one, you have bestowed this gift of love—
today my restless heart exults!
At those tender, beloved feet
with eyes bathed in tears,
life is fulfilled.
Holding my heart’s sigh for a moment,
an instant became an age, an age an instant—
Beloved, today my heart exults!
Shaped in so graceful a mold,
O life-breath, how good you are!
To this long-destitute, trembling heart
you have given such a support—
this one who lay inert, almost dead, has shivered awake!
Beloved, today my heart exults!
My goal is far, the road rough, all mire;
your toenails’ light twinkles
as a support on the pathless path.
In youth’s night I have received a smile of light—
Beloved, today my heart exults!
You have come, hesitant,
into a life that faltered,
now remain thus forever:
the days past have all been sobbing.
What honor can the poor hut of the destitute offer?
Beloved, today my heart exults!
I am Shakta, you my Shakti;
I the devotee, you my devotion;
I the yogi of love, you the friend;
my loving attachment, you made it song—
I the lyricist, you the music—mind becomes a joyful chant!
Beloved, today my heart exults!
Within you the door of samadhi has opened—so that the Beloved may descend! The Beloved stands right at the threshold. But the door is shut—shut for centuries, for lifetimes. So long shut that you have forgotten you have a door within.
Sitting by me, if only you remember the door—enough. Samadhi, Rajpal, will not have to be stolen. Samadhi is already yours. Samadhi is your very nature.
Second question:
Osho, I remember God so much, but a question arises in my mind: does God ever remember me, or not?
Osho, I remember God so much, but a question arises in my mind: does God ever remember me, or not?
Navneet! The question is natural, human. Still, it is good if it does not arise. It is good to rise a little above the merely human. To remember the Divine is auspicious; but to want the Divine to remember you becomes a demand, an expectation of return. That demand will make your prayer heavy, clip its wings, tie a rock around its neck. This turns your prayer into a bargain.
In ordinary human love it is natural: you love someone and the mind wonders, “Do they love me too?” That is precisely the difference between human love and devotion. The devotee says: Let my love be accepted—that is more than enough. What qualification do I have to be loved in return? If love comes, I will be amazed; I will receive it with all my heart. If it doesn’t, there will be no complaint in me. If it doesn’t, I will know I was not yet worthy. That my love is accepted is itself a benediction; that my prayer could reach those feet is plenty.
Your human longing, though, is understandable. We are human, and as humans we must slowly transcend our humanness. So such wishes arise. Good that you bring them into the light. When asked, they become understood; in understanding, perhaps they fall away.
Moonlight climbs the rooftops, repentant;
the kans-grass thickets
smile, dear.
Smearing clay upon a golden body,
a full home
smells of bread on the griddle;
little lamps set adrift upon the river,
my own fate
an empty covenant—
moonlight sinks into the deep water,
and the thorn in the heart
smiles, dear.
A palmful of cow-dung’s hue,
an eyeful
of a rainbow’s thread;
the omen-thirst kept burning
all night,
the radiance kept laughing—
moonlight, fit to scorch, now stings;
the breath’s serpent-hood
smiles, dear.
In the realm of ordinary love there are always conditions; jealousies flare up. Your beloved goes to someone else and not to you—jealousy arises. Another receives a letter from their lover and yours does not arrive—envy burns.
Smearing clay upon a golden body,
a full home
smells of baking bread;
little lamps set adrift upon the river,
my own lot—
a blank accord…
Will my luck be empty, and remain empty?…
Moonlight sinks into the deep water,
and the thorn in the heart
smiles, dear.
And the moon has risen, the moonlight has spread, and a barb is lodged in the heart.
A palmful of cow-dung’s hue,
an eyeful
of a rainbow’s thread;
the bird of omens kept thirsting,
all night
the bright kept laughing—
let moonlight bite like an ascetic-fire,
the breath’s snake-hood
smiles, dear.
So much burning, so much jealousy—this is natural in human life. But in the world of devotion, love must be refined a little, its dust blown off, bathed clean. Don’t ask this question.
You ask: “I remember the Divine so much, but a question arises in my mind—does the Divine ever remember me or not?”
You have to remember the Divine because you have forgotten; He does not have to remember you because He has never forgotten! If the Divine forgot you, could you live even a moment? If He forgot, the cord of breath would snap; if He forgot, the heart would stop. If He forgot, you could not be at all. You are only so long as He is remembering you. Your very life is held in His remembrance. And you have been, from the beginningless; and you will be, without end. You are eternal.
Bodies come and go; minds form and dissolve. You neither come nor go. You simply are—always. You exist in His memory. There is no way by which He forgets.
Yes, you can forget Him. A child goes out to play, gets tangled in toys, sits by the river building castles of sand, and forgets his mother; but the mother does not forget. Clouds may thunder in the night sky, lightning may flash—she may not hear that, but if her small child so much as stirs, she hears! The mother does not forget.
What do I mean by “the Divine”? The Divine is the heart of this existence, the throb of it, the very life, the center, the soul. We are its rays. How can the sun forget its rays? If it did, we would be no more. Our end lies in His forgetting. We can turn our backs; children lost in play forget and, when the mother calls, even get angry, because the call disturbs the game.
The Divine has not forgotten you; you have forgotten Him. Remember Him, and at once you will see that He has always remembered you. The forgetfulness is one-sided.
Such questions do arise in the mind; that is natural. I am not saying that by letting this question arise you have sinned. Navneet, it is natural.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
The lines of the path to You are etched—who can cross over and tell my ache?
All are bound in intricate laws,
the companions of my mind, every one;
messengers of imagination roam far and wide,
then return exhausted;
no one has managed to cross the boundary
to bring You my message.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
Busy in countless searches,
yet all are fettered;
my quick mind, eager to ponder,
takes wing only to get caught in tangles;
it could not become that clever pigeon
that finds Your loft and lands there.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
Gathering boundless offerings of feeling,
the mind grew absorbed in worship;
breath by breath it is surrendering,
heart-beat upon beat in adoration;
the life-guard within is so intent
it fears to step outside.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
Tongue spilling sound, rhythm, and beat,
self melting away in love’s way;
the tale of pain gets told
in simple, unhewn, half-spoken song;
perhaps the music will fall silent,
and strike against Your veena.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
The mind is human; the feeling arises: I call out to You—will You ever call me? I remember You—will You ever remember me? Will I be so blessed that You remember me?
The Divine is, in fact, remembering you. And your blessed day will come—when you can hear that He calls you. He calls you far more than you have ever called Him. All your worship will look pale the day you know the honor and welcome He has given you. Then, for all your thought that you had done great practices and austerities and devotion and worship—your eyes will drop in shame. For your calling was not calling at all. He has called you with a thousand throats—through the throats of birds, through the flowers of trees, through the light of moon and stars, through the music of rivers, through the waves of the ocean, through the rumble of clouds. He has called you in so many voices, in so many forms—only calling, and calling—that the day you understand, you will not be able to lift your eyes.
What had you done? Perhaps you sat before a stone statue and lit a lamp. Or you placed two flowers on a stone image. Not that the flowers were yours; they had bloomed on the trees—already placed at His feet. You plucked them, killed them, and thought you had worshiped. And you lit a lamp. But all lamps are His, all light is His. What of yours was there? The day you know, you will see: “We kept offering Your own things back to You—how foolish we were!” Even if you offer yourself, still you do nothing—because you, too, are His.
So rise, slowly, above this expectation. Let it be enough that we call. Let us become worthy to call. Let some tremor begin in our life-breath, let some strings within begin to resonate—that is enough. And I am not asking for hollow worship. Nor am I asking you to get lost in ritual. What is needed is heartfelt feeling. Wherever you bow with love, that is a temple. Bow under any tree with love, and it is a pilgrimage. Touch your head to any stone with the feeling of worship, and it becomes an icon.
Icons are not made by sculptors. And those icons that sculptors make should not be installed in temples; they belong in museums—as specimens of painting and sculpture, of human skill.
But the devotee does bring a deity into being. Wherever the devotee bows with feeling, an icon is born.
I was once a guest in a home. They were Muslims—master sculptors. Jains have them carve Mahavira, Buddhists have them carve the Buddha, Hindus have them carve Krishna and Rama—and they are Muslims. I asked: “Being Muslim, you make idols; how can there be any devotional feeling in you? You are idol-breakers by creed.” He said, “You’re right. This is business! Feeling has nothing to do with it.”
Just think: a man who sculpts for business, however technically skilled, can make you a Krishna or a Hitler or a Genghis Khan with equal ease; it makes no difference to him—he has technique, he has art; he is a sculptor. But he does not have the feeling of a devotee. What meaning can there be in such an icon? Yet those icons end up enshrined in grand temples, and people worship them. This is mere empty arrangement.
Village folk are wiser: they fall in love with some ordinary stone, smear it with vermilion, offer flowers, and bow their heads. No technique, no formal icon, no sculptor—but if there is a devotee, there is God.
I do not tell you to get entangled in ritual. Nor do I tell you to recite set prayers—they have no value. Memorized prayers are parrot-like. Teach a parrot an abuse, it will abuse; teach it “Ram-Ram,” it will repeat “Ram-Ram.” The parrot is perfectly impartial; keep its impartiality in mind. It is not biased toward “Ram-Ram,” nor toward profanity.
A certain woman went to buy a parrot. She saw many, but one she liked very much. The shopkeeper said, “Please don’t buy this one.” The lady was very religious—went to church, invited the priest over, had remained unmarried, devoted her life to religion. The shopkeeper knew and said, “Don’t buy this parrot. It kept bad company—it came from a prostitute’s house. It uses foul language. You won’t like it.” But the parrot was so charming she brought it home anyway. The shopkeeper was right: it began every sentence with a curse. On the very first Sunday, when the priest arrived, the woman got anxious and quickly threw a cover over the parrot so it wouldn’t say something in front of the priest. This became routine: whenever the priest came, she covered the parrot.
One day the priest came on Sunday, and then again on Monday for some errand. He always came only on Sundays; this was the first Monday. In a fluster, she again covered the parrot. The parrot said, “To hell with this priest! This week ended in a single day?” It couldn’t help itself. The priest heard it. “What kind of parrot is this? ‘To hell with the priest!’ I have a parrot too; it’s a very devout parrot. Give me yours; we’ll keep them together for a few days—yours will become devout too.”
He took them and put them in the same cage. When the woman returned a week later to ask how it was going, the priest was distraught. “I’m very upset,” he said. “Your parrot has stopped swearing, but my parrot, which used to pray, has stopped praying too. Both are silent. I don’t understand!” The two parrots smiled. When they were asked what was going on, the secret came out: the priest’s parrot was male, and the woman’s parrot was female. The priest’s parrot said, “We prayed only so a female would come. Now why pray?” And the female parrot said, “I cursed only because life was passing by without a male. Now why curse? We’re both happy—both of you can go to hell!”
Teach a parrot “Ram-Ram” or teach it abuses—nothing goes deep; a parrot is a parrot. And most of your prayers are parrot-like—learnt by rote, taught by others. I am not asking for such prayers. At the very least, let your prayer be yours, your own. Don’t repeat borrowed words before the Divine. Don’t just chant the Gayatri. Sing your own song. Gayatri was someone’s own song once—then it was beautiful. When it arose from a living heart, it was filled with divinity. For the first singer, Gayatri’s glory is beyond telling. But Gayatri is not yours. You sit and mutter it—parrot-fashion.
Your own Gayatri is waiting within you. Sing your own song. Even if it is halting, lisping, out of meter, without polished poetry—don’t worry. The Divine does not care for meter, or grammar, or language. The Divine cares for one thing only—your love, your loving call, exactly as it rises from your heart.
And don’t make a habit of repeating yesterday’s prayer today and tomorrow. What sense is that? Can you not speak two fresh words to the Divine, in that living moment? If there is a feeling, speak it. If there is none, be silent—silence too becomes prayer. If there is nothing to say, simply submit: “I have nothing to say; if You have something to say, please say it. I will bow my head and listen.”
Remember, the first step of prayer is: you speak to the Divine. The second step is: you listen, and the Divine speaks. As long as you keep speaking, real prayer has not yet begun. True prayer is less saying, more listening. It is less a matter of tongue, more a capacity of the ear—receptivity.
So sometimes be silent. Sometimes sing. Sometimes say a few simple words. Let your words be simple, straight, un-scholarly, un-theoretical—guileless. The more guileless, the farther they will go. The more they surge from the heart, the more they will be accepted at His feet.
As for whether He remembers—you have been remembered by Him always.
In ordinary human love it is natural: you love someone and the mind wonders, “Do they love me too?” That is precisely the difference between human love and devotion. The devotee says: Let my love be accepted—that is more than enough. What qualification do I have to be loved in return? If love comes, I will be amazed; I will receive it with all my heart. If it doesn’t, there will be no complaint in me. If it doesn’t, I will know I was not yet worthy. That my love is accepted is itself a benediction; that my prayer could reach those feet is plenty.
Your human longing, though, is understandable. We are human, and as humans we must slowly transcend our humanness. So such wishes arise. Good that you bring them into the light. When asked, they become understood; in understanding, perhaps they fall away.
Moonlight climbs the rooftops, repentant;
the kans-grass thickets
smile, dear.
Smearing clay upon a golden body,
a full home
smells of bread on the griddle;
little lamps set adrift upon the river,
my own fate
an empty covenant—
moonlight sinks into the deep water,
and the thorn in the heart
smiles, dear.
A palmful of cow-dung’s hue,
an eyeful
of a rainbow’s thread;
the omen-thirst kept burning
all night,
the radiance kept laughing—
moonlight, fit to scorch, now stings;
the breath’s serpent-hood
smiles, dear.
In the realm of ordinary love there are always conditions; jealousies flare up. Your beloved goes to someone else and not to you—jealousy arises. Another receives a letter from their lover and yours does not arrive—envy burns.
Smearing clay upon a golden body,
a full home
smells of baking bread;
little lamps set adrift upon the river,
my own lot—
a blank accord…
Will my luck be empty, and remain empty?…
Moonlight sinks into the deep water,
and the thorn in the heart
smiles, dear.
And the moon has risen, the moonlight has spread, and a barb is lodged in the heart.
A palmful of cow-dung’s hue,
an eyeful
of a rainbow’s thread;
the bird of omens kept thirsting,
all night
the bright kept laughing—
let moonlight bite like an ascetic-fire,
the breath’s snake-hood
smiles, dear.
So much burning, so much jealousy—this is natural in human life. But in the world of devotion, love must be refined a little, its dust blown off, bathed clean. Don’t ask this question.
You ask: “I remember the Divine so much, but a question arises in my mind—does the Divine ever remember me or not?”
You have to remember the Divine because you have forgotten; He does not have to remember you because He has never forgotten! If the Divine forgot you, could you live even a moment? If He forgot, the cord of breath would snap; if He forgot, the heart would stop. If He forgot, you could not be at all. You are only so long as He is remembering you. Your very life is held in His remembrance. And you have been, from the beginningless; and you will be, without end. You are eternal.
Bodies come and go; minds form and dissolve. You neither come nor go. You simply are—always. You exist in His memory. There is no way by which He forgets.
Yes, you can forget Him. A child goes out to play, gets tangled in toys, sits by the river building castles of sand, and forgets his mother; but the mother does not forget. Clouds may thunder in the night sky, lightning may flash—she may not hear that, but if her small child so much as stirs, she hears! The mother does not forget.
What do I mean by “the Divine”? The Divine is the heart of this existence, the throb of it, the very life, the center, the soul. We are its rays. How can the sun forget its rays? If it did, we would be no more. Our end lies in His forgetting. We can turn our backs; children lost in play forget and, when the mother calls, even get angry, because the call disturbs the game.
The Divine has not forgotten you; you have forgotten Him. Remember Him, and at once you will see that He has always remembered you. The forgetfulness is one-sided.
Such questions do arise in the mind; that is natural. I am not saying that by letting this question arise you have sinned. Navneet, it is natural.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
The lines of the path to You are etched—who can cross over and tell my ache?
All are bound in intricate laws,
the companions of my mind, every one;
messengers of imagination roam far and wide,
then return exhausted;
no one has managed to cross the boundary
to bring You my message.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
Busy in countless searches,
yet all are fettered;
my quick mind, eager to ponder,
takes wing only to get caught in tangles;
it could not become that clever pigeon
that finds Your loft and lands there.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
Gathering boundless offerings of feeling,
the mind grew absorbed in worship;
breath by breath it is surrendering,
heart-beat upon beat in adoration;
the life-guard within is so intent
it fears to step outside.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
Tongue spilling sound, rhythm, and beat,
self melting away in love’s way;
the tale of pain gets told
in simple, unhewn, half-spoken song;
perhaps the music will fall silent,
and strike against Your veena.
Your remembrance is ever new each moment; may remembrance of me arise in You!
The mind is human; the feeling arises: I call out to You—will You ever call me? I remember You—will You ever remember me? Will I be so blessed that You remember me?
The Divine is, in fact, remembering you. And your blessed day will come—when you can hear that He calls you. He calls you far more than you have ever called Him. All your worship will look pale the day you know the honor and welcome He has given you. Then, for all your thought that you had done great practices and austerities and devotion and worship—your eyes will drop in shame. For your calling was not calling at all. He has called you with a thousand throats—through the throats of birds, through the flowers of trees, through the light of moon and stars, through the music of rivers, through the waves of the ocean, through the rumble of clouds. He has called you in so many voices, in so many forms—only calling, and calling—that the day you understand, you will not be able to lift your eyes.
What had you done? Perhaps you sat before a stone statue and lit a lamp. Or you placed two flowers on a stone image. Not that the flowers were yours; they had bloomed on the trees—already placed at His feet. You plucked them, killed them, and thought you had worshiped. And you lit a lamp. But all lamps are His, all light is His. What of yours was there? The day you know, you will see: “We kept offering Your own things back to You—how foolish we were!” Even if you offer yourself, still you do nothing—because you, too, are His.
So rise, slowly, above this expectation. Let it be enough that we call. Let us become worthy to call. Let some tremor begin in our life-breath, let some strings within begin to resonate—that is enough. And I am not asking for hollow worship. Nor am I asking you to get lost in ritual. What is needed is heartfelt feeling. Wherever you bow with love, that is a temple. Bow under any tree with love, and it is a pilgrimage. Touch your head to any stone with the feeling of worship, and it becomes an icon.
Icons are not made by sculptors. And those icons that sculptors make should not be installed in temples; they belong in museums—as specimens of painting and sculpture, of human skill.
But the devotee does bring a deity into being. Wherever the devotee bows with feeling, an icon is born.
I was once a guest in a home. They were Muslims—master sculptors. Jains have them carve Mahavira, Buddhists have them carve the Buddha, Hindus have them carve Krishna and Rama—and they are Muslims. I asked: “Being Muslim, you make idols; how can there be any devotional feeling in you? You are idol-breakers by creed.” He said, “You’re right. This is business! Feeling has nothing to do with it.”
Just think: a man who sculpts for business, however technically skilled, can make you a Krishna or a Hitler or a Genghis Khan with equal ease; it makes no difference to him—he has technique, he has art; he is a sculptor. But he does not have the feeling of a devotee. What meaning can there be in such an icon? Yet those icons end up enshrined in grand temples, and people worship them. This is mere empty arrangement.
Village folk are wiser: they fall in love with some ordinary stone, smear it with vermilion, offer flowers, and bow their heads. No technique, no formal icon, no sculptor—but if there is a devotee, there is God.
I do not tell you to get entangled in ritual. Nor do I tell you to recite set prayers—they have no value. Memorized prayers are parrot-like. Teach a parrot an abuse, it will abuse; teach it “Ram-Ram,” it will repeat “Ram-Ram.” The parrot is perfectly impartial; keep its impartiality in mind. It is not biased toward “Ram-Ram,” nor toward profanity.
A certain woman went to buy a parrot. She saw many, but one she liked very much. The shopkeeper said, “Please don’t buy this one.” The lady was very religious—went to church, invited the priest over, had remained unmarried, devoted her life to religion. The shopkeeper knew and said, “Don’t buy this parrot. It kept bad company—it came from a prostitute’s house. It uses foul language. You won’t like it.” But the parrot was so charming she brought it home anyway. The shopkeeper was right: it began every sentence with a curse. On the very first Sunday, when the priest arrived, the woman got anxious and quickly threw a cover over the parrot so it wouldn’t say something in front of the priest. This became routine: whenever the priest came, she covered the parrot.
One day the priest came on Sunday, and then again on Monday for some errand. He always came only on Sundays; this was the first Monday. In a fluster, she again covered the parrot. The parrot said, “To hell with this priest! This week ended in a single day?” It couldn’t help itself. The priest heard it. “What kind of parrot is this? ‘To hell with the priest!’ I have a parrot too; it’s a very devout parrot. Give me yours; we’ll keep them together for a few days—yours will become devout too.”
He took them and put them in the same cage. When the woman returned a week later to ask how it was going, the priest was distraught. “I’m very upset,” he said. “Your parrot has stopped swearing, but my parrot, which used to pray, has stopped praying too. Both are silent. I don’t understand!” The two parrots smiled. When they were asked what was going on, the secret came out: the priest’s parrot was male, and the woman’s parrot was female. The priest’s parrot said, “We prayed only so a female would come. Now why pray?” And the female parrot said, “I cursed only because life was passing by without a male. Now why curse? We’re both happy—both of you can go to hell!”
Teach a parrot “Ram-Ram” or teach it abuses—nothing goes deep; a parrot is a parrot. And most of your prayers are parrot-like—learnt by rote, taught by others. I am not asking for such prayers. At the very least, let your prayer be yours, your own. Don’t repeat borrowed words before the Divine. Don’t just chant the Gayatri. Sing your own song. Gayatri was someone’s own song once—then it was beautiful. When it arose from a living heart, it was filled with divinity. For the first singer, Gayatri’s glory is beyond telling. But Gayatri is not yours. You sit and mutter it—parrot-fashion.
Your own Gayatri is waiting within you. Sing your own song. Even if it is halting, lisping, out of meter, without polished poetry—don’t worry. The Divine does not care for meter, or grammar, or language. The Divine cares for one thing only—your love, your loving call, exactly as it rises from your heart.
And don’t make a habit of repeating yesterday’s prayer today and tomorrow. What sense is that? Can you not speak two fresh words to the Divine, in that living moment? If there is a feeling, speak it. If there is none, be silent—silence too becomes prayer. If there is nothing to say, simply submit: “I have nothing to say; if You have something to say, please say it. I will bow my head and listen.”
Remember, the first step of prayer is: you speak to the Divine. The second step is: you listen, and the Divine speaks. As long as you keep speaking, real prayer has not yet begun. True prayer is less saying, more listening. It is less a matter of tongue, more a capacity of the ear—receptivity.
So sometimes be silent. Sometimes sing. Sometimes say a few simple words. Let your words be simple, straight, un-scholarly, un-theoretical—guileless. The more guileless, the farther they will go. The more they surge from the heart, the more they will be accepted at His feet.
As for whether He remembers—you have been remembered by Him always.
Third question:
Osho, I have experienced all the joys and sorrows of the world. I have tasted the sweet and the bitter of marriage. I have passed through all the tricks of the world. After doing the “groups” you suggested, my heart has opened completely toward you. I feel like drowning utterly in you, flying with you in the sky, and showering blossoms and bliss in the spring. Please take me as your own! Your compassion is immense! Many thanks!
Osho, I have experienced all the joys and sorrows of the world. I have tasted the sweet and the bitter of marriage. I have passed through all the tricks of the world. After doing the “groups” you suggested, my heart has opened completely toward you. I feel like drowning utterly in you, flying with you in the sky, and showering blossoms and bliss in the spring. Please take me as your own! Your compassion is immense! Many thanks!
Yoganand! Whether I should take you as my own—there is no question about it. The day I gave you sannyas, I had already taken you in. What is sannyas but this? It is acceptance from my side—that as you are, you are lovable; as you are, you are beautiful; as you are, you are embraced. I accept you in the very first moment; it is you who take time—years—to accept me.
What is the obstacle in accepting me? My principle is simple: when the Divine has already accepted you, how could I demand any greater qualification from you? When the Divine has given you life and deemed you worthy of it, I cannot set further examinations for you to pass before I accept you. That the Divine keeps you alive is enough. That itself is your qualification, your worthiness.
Then who am I to refuse you? I can only accept. Because out of that acceptance the door opens to the one possibility—that someday you might be able to accept me. The obstacle lies there. When I accept you, I lose nothing. But when you accept me, you will have to lose something: the ego. That is where the hindrance arises—that is the knot.
A blessed feeling has arisen in you today. It has been quite a while, too, Yoganand; it’s been many days since you took sannyas! But I also wait—for the right hour, the auspicious hour. I have been watching you passing through all kinds of experiences of joy and sorrow. Your marriage happened before my eyes and your marriage broke before my eyes. You are skilled in all kinds of tricks—an intelligent man. And in this world, an intelligent man sees little else except trickery! The more “clever” a man is here, the more of a trickster he becomes. To be clever and yet simple and straightforward is a rare phenomenon. An educated person almost inevitably turns dishonest. That the uneducated are not dishonest carries no virtue in itself. The virtue is when an educated man is not dishonest. When a well-educated person remains simple and straightforward, that has worth. The uneducated are simple and straightforward only because they are uneducated—that is not any special merit.
I am not praising villagers. I am not a partisan of rural life either. Unlike many saints in your country who sing, “Ah, how innocent the villagers are!”—they are not innocent; they simply haven’t had the opportunity to be cunning. Lack of opportunity is not a virtue.
A man once put an ad in the newspapers: “I want to give a big prize—ten thousand dollars—to the person who can provide precise proof of his character.” Many letters came, complete with proofs of character; but one letter he chose seemed to be from the most virtuous man of all. Reading it, his heart was moved. The writer said: “I do not smoke, nor drink alcohol, tea, coffee, or cocoa; let alone other women, I keep even my own wife at a distance; I am attached to no one; solitude is my life; I live in a small cell twenty-four hours a day; I eat on time, simple fare; I am content with whatever comes, no complaints; I rise at five in the brahma-muhurt before dawn; at sunset I go to sleep—so natural is my life.” Reading the letter, he felt, “This man will take the ten thousand dollars.” But in the postscript he had added, “Just three more months—let me get out of jail!”
Now, if you are in jail and you keep distance from other women—and even from your own wife; and if in jail you are content with whatever comes—what does it prove? It has no meaning, no value.
Many people have built their character just like that. Their character too is inside a subtle, invisible prison. Even if you cannot see their chains, they bear them—chains of prestige, respectability, honor. Even if you cannot see the dungeon surrounding them, it is there—dungeons of “character,” of society, of fear of society. Fear of hell, greed for heaven—these have imprisoned them. In my view their character has no value. I call only that person truly virtuous who has the opportunity—the full opportunity, all the facilities—and yet does not use them; not because of some external reason, but out of an inner awareness.
I wanted you to see joys and sorrows. I wanted you to pass through trickery as well. You are educated and capable, a thoughtful person. I do not give any value to the rustic innocence of a villager. His innocence is only a lack of opportunity. And when the villager comes to the city, you will be surprised—he begins to fleece even city folk.
When I was a student at the university, a man from a far-off village used to bring milk to the university hostel. He was so simple and good that people called him Sant-ji—the Saint. Nobody even knew his real name; “Sant-ji” became his fame. Gradually his name spread. Then he moved near the university, opened a cowshed, brought his buffaloes. Slowly his milk became more water and less milk. People asked him, “Sant-ji, have you started the same business as the others—are you mixing water into the milk?” He would say, “I swear by God! I swear by my son!” His boy would come with him carrying the milk; he would place his hand on the boy’s head and swear: “I swear by my son, if I have ever mixed water in milk!” And the milk was practically water! One day I asked him in private, “Sant-ji, I won’t tell anyone, but really—how do you swear like that?”
He said, “Now, what is there to hide from you?” We had become friendly by then. “Don’t tell anyone. I swear because I never mix water into milk—I always mix milk into water.”
So? The villager—give him the chance and he will start cutting the ears even of city dwellers. Village innocence has no value. Innocence is valuable only when you have every facility to be cunning, and you don’t. That is another kind of beauty.
As education increases in the world, cunning increases with it. There must be some mistake somewhere in education—some fundamental flaw. The world suffers in a double way: the simple ones are simple because they are stupid; their stupidity causes pain—what will the stupid do except produce more stupidity? And the intelligent ones are cunning; they have become pickpockets; they are ready to cut anyone’s throat. By any means whatsoever they want position, prestige, success, wealth, ambition. On one side the stupid and “innocent,” and on the other the intelligent and cunning—between these two millstones the world is being ground.
We need people who are intelligent and yet innocent. But for that, one has to ripen.
So, Yoganand, I waited. Your trickery would get exhausted. Because you are certainly a thoughtful person. However many tricks a thoughtful person tries in the beginning, he soon comes to understand that nothing is really gained by trickery. The more intelligent one is, the sooner this understanding dawns—that nothing will come of cunning. And whatever comes is just rubbish. You will gather trash and die. You will waste your life, and what you gathered will lie here. All show will lie here.
So I watched, as a witness, to see what you did. Whatever you were doing—I knew. Your tricks I knew, your dishonesties I knew, your deceptions I knew. But my trust never broke: if you are even a little bit intelligent—and who is there who does not have at least that much intelligence?—one day you will see the truth. The Divine places at least that much light in everyone. The Divine does not send anyone into the world without that light. Through meditation that very light begins to shine. Here you entered the therapy groups; there too that same light begins to shine. The light is yours; the trash has to be cleared away. The mirror is yours; dust has gathered on it; it needs to be wiped clean.
So it is good that now you say: “My heart has opened toward you. I feel like drowning totally in you, flying with you in the sky, and showering blossoms and bliss.”
All this is possible. This is our inner capacity. This should happen. If you did not fly into the sky and died, you lived in vain. If you did not become a flower and died, you lived in vain. If you did not become a lamp and died, you never lived at all. You were a corpse, moving along, carrying a burden; from birth to death it was a long series of dying—no series of living.
This feeling is beautiful. But take care. Because such feelings arise and slip away. Old habits are strong—mountain-strong. They have a long history. Noble feelings arise in everyone. It is difficult to find a man in whom noble feelings have not arisen at some time. Now and then everyone becomes a saint. But that saintliness does not last long. Old habits pull one back. Old invested interests drag one back.
When a mood of saintliness arises, a little firmness is needed. Storms will come, tempests will come—guard the lamp.
Let not your lamp be snuffed out—
see, a gust of wind has risen!
How many days on that desolate path
you wandered, lost in darkness,
Sometimes tangled in the creepers,
sometimes caught among the stones!
How many days in trembling supplication
you spent with unblinking eyes,
What a fruit of so much austerity—
this peerless lamp the traveler has found!
Give light to yourself and to others—
therefore make it worthy:
Take the oil of the mind’s own love,
ignite it with the life’s eternal flame!
Let not your lamp be snuffed out—
see, a gust of wind has risen!
Gusts of wind will come. And the truth is: when lamps burn, the gusts are felt even more. They came before too, but previously you did not notice. When the lamp burns, you notice—the flame trembles. If there is no lamp burning, then let the storms come—what is there to worry about? You have nothing that can be extinguished.
In this world, the person without meditation has one advantage: he has nothing to lose. And the person with meditation has one danger: he has something to lose. And the more the wealth of meditation grows, the more the danger increases. And the mind puts forth all its strength, because the growth of meditation is the death of mind. Who wishes to die? The mind will make every arrangement to protect itself. It will persuade you in a thousand ways: “What trouble are you getting into? If you sit silently, the mind will say, ‘What will come of sitting like this? Are you being a fool? Hey, do something! Get up! In this time you could have earned something! You could have had some fun! If nothing else, you could have gone to the cinema, to the club. The world is enjoying music and color, and you sit here with eyes closed—being a fool?’”
Remember: people even say in Hindi, buddhu—fool. They say it because Buddha closed his eyes and left his kingdom. So they began to say, “He became a buddhu.” From that came the word. It’s a precious word—derived from Buddha. Even now people will say, if you sit to meditate, your own family will say, “What foolishness is this? Where is the time? Do some work!”
These are the same people who coined those sayings: “An empty mind is the devil’s workshop.” The truth is exactly the opposite. When the mind is empty, you are the temple of God, not the devil’s factory. The running mind is the devil’s factory. A factory has to be running—that’s what makes it a factory! The clanking must go on, the noise must go on—only then can it be a factory. How can there be a factory in emptiness? In emptiness there is a temple. When you sit in emptiness, the mind will say, “Do something!” It will raise a thousand issues, a thousand desires, bring up old memories, inflate old sweet dreams. The mind is very cunning; it exaggerates. “Look, when you were with that woman, how much bliss you had!”—even though when you were with her you had no such bliss. But now the mind will create false memories.
Psychologists say that not one truly truthful autobiography has ever been written.
I too have pondered, and I find that perhaps a true autobiography cannot be written. The reason is: when will you write your autobiography? Afterward, of course. Later, things keep changing in your vision; their meanings keep changing. New experiences keep changing your capacity to derive meaning. If you are fifty today and you write, “When I was five, this happened,” you are writing after forty-five years of experience. Those forty-five years have given you a way of seeing, thinking, reflecting; they have given you a color, a mode, a style; all that will affect that event. Now the event is not what you think it is. You will have transformed it—you will have added much, subtracted much. “Spit out the bitter, keep the sweet”—you will have spat out all the bitter without even noticing it. You will give the event a very beautiful shape.
That is why old people often remember childhood as very beautiful. Ask the children! Children want to grow up as quickly as possible. Ask any child, “Do you want to remain a child forever?” He will be annoyed at once. He will say, “I’m already suffering—just somehow passing the time!”
A child has no happiness; a child has mostly troubles. You no longer remember the child’s pains. You have “spat out” the bitter. What were the joys? Now you imagine: running after butterflies, sunlight, playing in the garden, swimming in the river—those lovely days, freedom, no responsibilities, no worry about earning a livelihood, no anxiety about wife and children, no fear of the future—how blissful! Ask the child! He is losing his life over homework. Homework is more painful to him than any work will ever be to you. He is losing his life over the fact that tomorrow he must go to school again. The same school. Those long-faced teachers. Those prison-like walls. The blackboard. Sitting on hard benches for five or six hours. Listening to, learning, memorizing nonsense that has no essence for him—“Two and two make four.” So they do—but what does it mean to him that two and two make four? What is he to do with it? And outside, the cuckoo is calling, and he cannot go. Outside, the peacock is dancing, and he can’t even look out the window. The boy beside him has a pack of cards tucked in his pocket—he could start a game, but no! A girl is sitting in front; her braid is dangling—he could give it a tug, but no! Look at his troubles!
The teacher stands with a stick, ready to hit at every moment; ready to strike for any reason. And they teach nonsense: “Where is Timbuktu?” What does that mean to a child? “When did Henry the Fifth reign?” None of it makes sense to him. But he is helpless because he is small, weak. Parents push him—“Go to school!”—to get rid of him. For them, school is a relief from a nuisance. For the teacher, it’s a job. He has to make a living. He has no real purpose with them. His sole task is to keep them seated for five or seven hours by the force of a stick. He has no personal investment in what is taught. He has to pass on what comes from above. He finds little meaning in it—but what does he care?
Out of a hundred things taught, ninety-nine are useless—if they were not taught, nothing would be lost. The moment you leave school and college, you forget almost everything that was taught. Not even that—you forget it as soon as you step out of the exam hall! You pick up your stick and peg and off you go to play! And you think: “Joy.”
There are little children here in school; their experiences come to me. A slightly bigger child throttles a smaller one, steals his fountain pen, takes his bicycle, threatens him, “Bring money tomorrow and give it to me.” There are gangs of children. All the hooliganism that happens outside will happen on a smaller scale in school—because those children are yours after all. Trees are known by their fruits. The very acts you do on a big scale—what you do in Delhi—they do in their school. There too are thugs and bosses; there too are their gangs. Little children are terrorized.
A woman came to me and said, “What should I do? My child is the smallest in school. He gets beaten, his things are taken away. I give him pocket money, but the others take it. It’s like a fixed salary—he goes and distributes it. If he doesn’t, he’s in trouble! And recently he’s started telling the other children fanciful stories: ‘My father will come—don’t worry. He will bring a bicycle, an airplane, a car. I will give you a car, an airplane.’” The woman asked me, “What to do? He’ll go mad. His father isn’t coming; and even if he did, he wouldn’t bring cars and airplanes. But he is trying to appease the bigger boys so they don’t beat him—he gives them assurances.”
Ask children about their troubles; then you could never say that childhood was paradise. But in old age you forget all that. You conjure up an imaginary childhood and sing its praises, write its songs.
We keep transforming the past. That is why no autobiography is true. One cannot write a true autobiography—by the time you write, too much time has passed and everything has changed.
The mind will remind you, Yoganand, “What a joy it was when you deceived that man—what a kick!” There is pleasure in deceiving others. The ego gets confirmed: “See, I made another man a fool. I am superior.” “When you were with that woman, what heavenly fantasies and dreams blossomed!” The experience may have been quite different in reality; but man is astonishing in his capacity to deceive himself. Again you feel like repeating the same mistakes.
How many times you have sworn not to be angry—and then anger comes! When you get fed up with one woman, you swear, “That’s it! It’s over. No more relationships with any woman. It’s finished!” Great renunciation arises! When there is a relationship with a woman, and no renunciation arises—such a thing never happens. Women too feel great renunciation. But in two or four days it is forgotten.
Send the wife to her parents’ place and after two or four days you will begin to miss her—in a thousand ways. You forget all the troubles she gave you, and all the pleasures—most of which she never gave—begin flapping their wings in your imagination. Little things start coming back. Loneliness pinches. Sleeping alone—no matter how old you are, you still feel afraid!
The arithmetic of this world is amusing! The wife cannot sleep alone because she is afraid. The husband cannot sleep alone because he too is afraid. Two cowards sleep together and sleep in peace!
One night Mulla Nasruddin’s wife woke him up and said, “Mulla, listen! I think thieves have entered downstairs. Mulla, are you awake?”
Mulla said, “No—neither am I awake, nor do I hear anything.”
People cannot live alone. Loneliness begins to bite; the other is missed. Then those small conveniences—when you went to the bathroom the towel was hanging there; now you have to hang it yourself. When the wife was at home, going into the bathroom gave no pleasure because the wife was there—sari here, toothpaste there, something else there, children’s dirty clothes piled up there—and you felt, “When can I get out!” But now that the wife is not at home, none of that is remembered.
There is a scientific process of the mind. It preserves the pleasant, exaggerates it; it diminishes the unpleasant, shrinks it, forgets it. It is by this device alone that man keeps living; otherwise life would become impossible. Because of this trick you go on enduring pain and hoping for pleasure.
So the mind, Yoganand, will remind you of many things. Gusts of wind will come; they will try to snuff out the lamp—remain alert! An auspicious feeling has arisen. I have accepted you—now a call has arisen in your very life-breath to be accepted. Now the real sannyas is near.
There are two sannyases. One is formal—the one you take. It is only a gesture, a beginning—A B C. Then the second sannyas happens when your heart opens toward me. Often the first sannyas happens because your intellect agrees with me. My words seem logical, meaningful; you take sannyas. Then the second sannyas happens when my words are no longer the point at all—when I myself seem meaningful to you; when my presence tastes of nectar to you; when my samadhi begins to touch you.
That moment has come.
The second sannyas is the real entry. The second initiation is the real initiation. The first is formal, outer. The second is inner; for it no outer arrangement is needed.
Do not forget! Do not let the kindled light get caught in any storm! You are very close to the source of life!
O tumultuous source of life,
do you know anything of the path?
Your way is strewn with flowers and thorns—
are you mindful of suffering and joy?
Spread your soft tresses as a carpet,
quench the thirst of all travelers.
Go on—the gate of bliss is not far—
hold this trust firm in your steadfast heart!
Go on upon the path, unceasingly;
go on—singing a song at every moment.
One day you will meet the ocean,
the timeless friend of your yearning heart!
Enough for today.
What is the obstacle in accepting me? My principle is simple: when the Divine has already accepted you, how could I demand any greater qualification from you? When the Divine has given you life and deemed you worthy of it, I cannot set further examinations for you to pass before I accept you. That the Divine keeps you alive is enough. That itself is your qualification, your worthiness.
Then who am I to refuse you? I can only accept. Because out of that acceptance the door opens to the one possibility—that someday you might be able to accept me. The obstacle lies there. When I accept you, I lose nothing. But when you accept me, you will have to lose something: the ego. That is where the hindrance arises—that is the knot.
A blessed feeling has arisen in you today. It has been quite a while, too, Yoganand; it’s been many days since you took sannyas! But I also wait—for the right hour, the auspicious hour. I have been watching you passing through all kinds of experiences of joy and sorrow. Your marriage happened before my eyes and your marriage broke before my eyes. You are skilled in all kinds of tricks—an intelligent man. And in this world, an intelligent man sees little else except trickery! The more “clever” a man is here, the more of a trickster he becomes. To be clever and yet simple and straightforward is a rare phenomenon. An educated person almost inevitably turns dishonest. That the uneducated are not dishonest carries no virtue in itself. The virtue is when an educated man is not dishonest. When a well-educated person remains simple and straightforward, that has worth. The uneducated are simple and straightforward only because they are uneducated—that is not any special merit.
I am not praising villagers. I am not a partisan of rural life either. Unlike many saints in your country who sing, “Ah, how innocent the villagers are!”—they are not innocent; they simply haven’t had the opportunity to be cunning. Lack of opportunity is not a virtue.
A man once put an ad in the newspapers: “I want to give a big prize—ten thousand dollars—to the person who can provide precise proof of his character.” Many letters came, complete with proofs of character; but one letter he chose seemed to be from the most virtuous man of all. Reading it, his heart was moved. The writer said: “I do not smoke, nor drink alcohol, tea, coffee, or cocoa; let alone other women, I keep even my own wife at a distance; I am attached to no one; solitude is my life; I live in a small cell twenty-four hours a day; I eat on time, simple fare; I am content with whatever comes, no complaints; I rise at five in the brahma-muhurt before dawn; at sunset I go to sleep—so natural is my life.” Reading the letter, he felt, “This man will take the ten thousand dollars.” But in the postscript he had added, “Just three more months—let me get out of jail!”
Now, if you are in jail and you keep distance from other women—and even from your own wife; and if in jail you are content with whatever comes—what does it prove? It has no meaning, no value.
Many people have built their character just like that. Their character too is inside a subtle, invisible prison. Even if you cannot see their chains, they bear them—chains of prestige, respectability, honor. Even if you cannot see the dungeon surrounding them, it is there—dungeons of “character,” of society, of fear of society. Fear of hell, greed for heaven—these have imprisoned them. In my view their character has no value. I call only that person truly virtuous who has the opportunity—the full opportunity, all the facilities—and yet does not use them; not because of some external reason, but out of an inner awareness.
I wanted you to see joys and sorrows. I wanted you to pass through trickery as well. You are educated and capable, a thoughtful person. I do not give any value to the rustic innocence of a villager. His innocence is only a lack of opportunity. And when the villager comes to the city, you will be surprised—he begins to fleece even city folk.
When I was a student at the university, a man from a far-off village used to bring milk to the university hostel. He was so simple and good that people called him Sant-ji—the Saint. Nobody even knew his real name; “Sant-ji” became his fame. Gradually his name spread. Then he moved near the university, opened a cowshed, brought his buffaloes. Slowly his milk became more water and less milk. People asked him, “Sant-ji, have you started the same business as the others—are you mixing water into the milk?” He would say, “I swear by God! I swear by my son!” His boy would come with him carrying the milk; he would place his hand on the boy’s head and swear: “I swear by my son, if I have ever mixed water in milk!” And the milk was practically water! One day I asked him in private, “Sant-ji, I won’t tell anyone, but really—how do you swear like that?”
He said, “Now, what is there to hide from you?” We had become friendly by then. “Don’t tell anyone. I swear because I never mix water into milk—I always mix milk into water.”
So? The villager—give him the chance and he will start cutting the ears even of city dwellers. Village innocence has no value. Innocence is valuable only when you have every facility to be cunning, and you don’t. That is another kind of beauty.
As education increases in the world, cunning increases with it. There must be some mistake somewhere in education—some fundamental flaw. The world suffers in a double way: the simple ones are simple because they are stupid; their stupidity causes pain—what will the stupid do except produce more stupidity? And the intelligent ones are cunning; they have become pickpockets; they are ready to cut anyone’s throat. By any means whatsoever they want position, prestige, success, wealth, ambition. On one side the stupid and “innocent,” and on the other the intelligent and cunning—between these two millstones the world is being ground.
We need people who are intelligent and yet innocent. But for that, one has to ripen.
So, Yoganand, I waited. Your trickery would get exhausted. Because you are certainly a thoughtful person. However many tricks a thoughtful person tries in the beginning, he soon comes to understand that nothing is really gained by trickery. The more intelligent one is, the sooner this understanding dawns—that nothing will come of cunning. And whatever comes is just rubbish. You will gather trash and die. You will waste your life, and what you gathered will lie here. All show will lie here.
So I watched, as a witness, to see what you did. Whatever you were doing—I knew. Your tricks I knew, your dishonesties I knew, your deceptions I knew. But my trust never broke: if you are even a little bit intelligent—and who is there who does not have at least that much intelligence?—one day you will see the truth. The Divine places at least that much light in everyone. The Divine does not send anyone into the world without that light. Through meditation that very light begins to shine. Here you entered the therapy groups; there too that same light begins to shine. The light is yours; the trash has to be cleared away. The mirror is yours; dust has gathered on it; it needs to be wiped clean.
So it is good that now you say: “My heart has opened toward you. I feel like drowning totally in you, flying with you in the sky, and showering blossoms and bliss.”
All this is possible. This is our inner capacity. This should happen. If you did not fly into the sky and died, you lived in vain. If you did not become a flower and died, you lived in vain. If you did not become a lamp and died, you never lived at all. You were a corpse, moving along, carrying a burden; from birth to death it was a long series of dying—no series of living.
This feeling is beautiful. But take care. Because such feelings arise and slip away. Old habits are strong—mountain-strong. They have a long history. Noble feelings arise in everyone. It is difficult to find a man in whom noble feelings have not arisen at some time. Now and then everyone becomes a saint. But that saintliness does not last long. Old habits pull one back. Old invested interests drag one back.
When a mood of saintliness arises, a little firmness is needed. Storms will come, tempests will come—guard the lamp.
Let not your lamp be snuffed out—
see, a gust of wind has risen!
How many days on that desolate path
you wandered, lost in darkness,
Sometimes tangled in the creepers,
sometimes caught among the stones!
How many days in trembling supplication
you spent with unblinking eyes,
What a fruit of so much austerity—
this peerless lamp the traveler has found!
Give light to yourself and to others—
therefore make it worthy:
Take the oil of the mind’s own love,
ignite it with the life’s eternal flame!
Let not your lamp be snuffed out—
see, a gust of wind has risen!
Gusts of wind will come. And the truth is: when lamps burn, the gusts are felt even more. They came before too, but previously you did not notice. When the lamp burns, you notice—the flame trembles. If there is no lamp burning, then let the storms come—what is there to worry about? You have nothing that can be extinguished.
In this world, the person without meditation has one advantage: he has nothing to lose. And the person with meditation has one danger: he has something to lose. And the more the wealth of meditation grows, the more the danger increases. And the mind puts forth all its strength, because the growth of meditation is the death of mind. Who wishes to die? The mind will make every arrangement to protect itself. It will persuade you in a thousand ways: “What trouble are you getting into? If you sit silently, the mind will say, ‘What will come of sitting like this? Are you being a fool? Hey, do something! Get up! In this time you could have earned something! You could have had some fun! If nothing else, you could have gone to the cinema, to the club. The world is enjoying music and color, and you sit here with eyes closed—being a fool?’”
Remember: people even say in Hindi, buddhu—fool. They say it because Buddha closed his eyes and left his kingdom. So they began to say, “He became a buddhu.” From that came the word. It’s a precious word—derived from Buddha. Even now people will say, if you sit to meditate, your own family will say, “What foolishness is this? Where is the time? Do some work!”
These are the same people who coined those sayings: “An empty mind is the devil’s workshop.” The truth is exactly the opposite. When the mind is empty, you are the temple of God, not the devil’s factory. The running mind is the devil’s factory. A factory has to be running—that’s what makes it a factory! The clanking must go on, the noise must go on—only then can it be a factory. How can there be a factory in emptiness? In emptiness there is a temple. When you sit in emptiness, the mind will say, “Do something!” It will raise a thousand issues, a thousand desires, bring up old memories, inflate old sweet dreams. The mind is very cunning; it exaggerates. “Look, when you were with that woman, how much bliss you had!”—even though when you were with her you had no such bliss. But now the mind will create false memories.
Psychologists say that not one truly truthful autobiography has ever been written.
I too have pondered, and I find that perhaps a true autobiography cannot be written. The reason is: when will you write your autobiography? Afterward, of course. Later, things keep changing in your vision; their meanings keep changing. New experiences keep changing your capacity to derive meaning. If you are fifty today and you write, “When I was five, this happened,” you are writing after forty-five years of experience. Those forty-five years have given you a way of seeing, thinking, reflecting; they have given you a color, a mode, a style; all that will affect that event. Now the event is not what you think it is. You will have transformed it—you will have added much, subtracted much. “Spit out the bitter, keep the sweet”—you will have spat out all the bitter without even noticing it. You will give the event a very beautiful shape.
That is why old people often remember childhood as very beautiful. Ask the children! Children want to grow up as quickly as possible. Ask any child, “Do you want to remain a child forever?” He will be annoyed at once. He will say, “I’m already suffering—just somehow passing the time!”
A child has no happiness; a child has mostly troubles. You no longer remember the child’s pains. You have “spat out” the bitter. What were the joys? Now you imagine: running after butterflies, sunlight, playing in the garden, swimming in the river—those lovely days, freedom, no responsibilities, no worry about earning a livelihood, no anxiety about wife and children, no fear of the future—how blissful! Ask the child! He is losing his life over homework. Homework is more painful to him than any work will ever be to you. He is losing his life over the fact that tomorrow he must go to school again. The same school. Those long-faced teachers. Those prison-like walls. The blackboard. Sitting on hard benches for five or six hours. Listening to, learning, memorizing nonsense that has no essence for him—“Two and two make four.” So they do—but what does it mean to him that two and two make four? What is he to do with it? And outside, the cuckoo is calling, and he cannot go. Outside, the peacock is dancing, and he can’t even look out the window. The boy beside him has a pack of cards tucked in his pocket—he could start a game, but no! A girl is sitting in front; her braid is dangling—he could give it a tug, but no! Look at his troubles!
The teacher stands with a stick, ready to hit at every moment; ready to strike for any reason. And they teach nonsense: “Where is Timbuktu?” What does that mean to a child? “When did Henry the Fifth reign?” None of it makes sense to him. But he is helpless because he is small, weak. Parents push him—“Go to school!”—to get rid of him. For them, school is a relief from a nuisance. For the teacher, it’s a job. He has to make a living. He has no real purpose with them. His sole task is to keep them seated for five or seven hours by the force of a stick. He has no personal investment in what is taught. He has to pass on what comes from above. He finds little meaning in it—but what does he care?
Out of a hundred things taught, ninety-nine are useless—if they were not taught, nothing would be lost. The moment you leave school and college, you forget almost everything that was taught. Not even that—you forget it as soon as you step out of the exam hall! You pick up your stick and peg and off you go to play! And you think: “Joy.”
There are little children here in school; their experiences come to me. A slightly bigger child throttles a smaller one, steals his fountain pen, takes his bicycle, threatens him, “Bring money tomorrow and give it to me.” There are gangs of children. All the hooliganism that happens outside will happen on a smaller scale in school—because those children are yours after all. Trees are known by their fruits. The very acts you do on a big scale—what you do in Delhi—they do in their school. There too are thugs and bosses; there too are their gangs. Little children are terrorized.
A woman came to me and said, “What should I do? My child is the smallest in school. He gets beaten, his things are taken away. I give him pocket money, but the others take it. It’s like a fixed salary—he goes and distributes it. If he doesn’t, he’s in trouble! And recently he’s started telling the other children fanciful stories: ‘My father will come—don’t worry. He will bring a bicycle, an airplane, a car. I will give you a car, an airplane.’” The woman asked me, “What to do? He’ll go mad. His father isn’t coming; and even if he did, he wouldn’t bring cars and airplanes. But he is trying to appease the bigger boys so they don’t beat him—he gives them assurances.”
Ask children about their troubles; then you could never say that childhood was paradise. But in old age you forget all that. You conjure up an imaginary childhood and sing its praises, write its songs.
We keep transforming the past. That is why no autobiography is true. One cannot write a true autobiography—by the time you write, too much time has passed and everything has changed.
The mind will remind you, Yoganand, “What a joy it was when you deceived that man—what a kick!” There is pleasure in deceiving others. The ego gets confirmed: “See, I made another man a fool. I am superior.” “When you were with that woman, what heavenly fantasies and dreams blossomed!” The experience may have been quite different in reality; but man is astonishing in his capacity to deceive himself. Again you feel like repeating the same mistakes.
How many times you have sworn not to be angry—and then anger comes! When you get fed up with one woman, you swear, “That’s it! It’s over. No more relationships with any woman. It’s finished!” Great renunciation arises! When there is a relationship with a woman, and no renunciation arises—such a thing never happens. Women too feel great renunciation. But in two or four days it is forgotten.
Send the wife to her parents’ place and after two or four days you will begin to miss her—in a thousand ways. You forget all the troubles she gave you, and all the pleasures—most of which she never gave—begin flapping their wings in your imagination. Little things start coming back. Loneliness pinches. Sleeping alone—no matter how old you are, you still feel afraid!
The arithmetic of this world is amusing! The wife cannot sleep alone because she is afraid. The husband cannot sleep alone because he too is afraid. Two cowards sleep together and sleep in peace!
One night Mulla Nasruddin’s wife woke him up and said, “Mulla, listen! I think thieves have entered downstairs. Mulla, are you awake?”
Mulla said, “No—neither am I awake, nor do I hear anything.”
People cannot live alone. Loneliness begins to bite; the other is missed. Then those small conveniences—when you went to the bathroom the towel was hanging there; now you have to hang it yourself. When the wife was at home, going into the bathroom gave no pleasure because the wife was there—sari here, toothpaste there, something else there, children’s dirty clothes piled up there—and you felt, “When can I get out!” But now that the wife is not at home, none of that is remembered.
There is a scientific process of the mind. It preserves the pleasant, exaggerates it; it diminishes the unpleasant, shrinks it, forgets it. It is by this device alone that man keeps living; otherwise life would become impossible. Because of this trick you go on enduring pain and hoping for pleasure.
So the mind, Yoganand, will remind you of many things. Gusts of wind will come; they will try to snuff out the lamp—remain alert! An auspicious feeling has arisen. I have accepted you—now a call has arisen in your very life-breath to be accepted. Now the real sannyas is near.
There are two sannyases. One is formal—the one you take. It is only a gesture, a beginning—A B C. Then the second sannyas happens when your heart opens toward me. Often the first sannyas happens because your intellect agrees with me. My words seem logical, meaningful; you take sannyas. Then the second sannyas happens when my words are no longer the point at all—when I myself seem meaningful to you; when my presence tastes of nectar to you; when my samadhi begins to touch you.
That moment has come.
The second sannyas is the real entry. The second initiation is the real initiation. The first is formal, outer. The second is inner; for it no outer arrangement is needed.
Do not forget! Do not let the kindled light get caught in any storm! You are very close to the source of life!
O tumultuous source of life,
do you know anything of the path?
Your way is strewn with flowers and thorns—
are you mindful of suffering and joy?
Spread your soft tresses as a carpet,
quench the thirst of all travelers.
Go on—the gate of bliss is not far—
hold this trust firm in your steadfast heart!
Go on upon the path, unceasingly;
go on—singing a song at every moment.
One day you will meet the ocean,
the timeless friend of your yearning heart!
Enough for today.