Rahiman Dhaga Prem Ka #8

Mahesh! I am neither against the past nor partial to it. This needs to be understood correctly.

My teaching is that the past should be transcended. What has gone is gone. Even opposing it is meaningless—it only ties you to it in another way. We get bound to what we oppose. You don’t relate only to a friend; you relate to an enemy too—and sometimes the enemy binds you more deeply. You might live without a friend; without an enemy, you may not know how to live. Your vested interest often lies in your enemies.

Just imagine: if all your enemies died, what would be left to do—no courts, no lawsuits, no fights, no frauds. If all your enemies died, what would remain except suicide?

I have heard that many friends of Mohammad Ali Jinnah died during his lifetime, but he was most distressed by the death of Mahatma Gandhi. When the news came, he was sitting in his garden; he became utterly dejected, his eyes moist, and went inside. His secretary asked, Why so much sorrow? You were enemies; your rejoicing would have been more logical.

But life isn’t logic, nor mathematics. Life is a great riddle. If only life were logic and mathematics, our problems would have been solved long ago! Life’s tangles go far deeper than logic and math. Logic and math are human inventions, not life. They are ripples on life’s surface. How can they touch life’s depths?

Logically, Jinnah should have danced in delight, distributed sweets. But he became sad. And after that day he was never happy and did not live long—as if a root had been cut. His very life-breath lay in the challenge, in the tension of that struggle.

Like positive and negative charges generating electricity, there is a tension between friend and foe necessary to both.

I am not the enemy of the past. I am not anti-past; I am free of the past. And note the other side: whoever is anti-past inevitably becomes partial to the future. Communists are anti-past. They say: Ram-rajya was not behind us; the Golden Age was not behind us—those were dark, bestial ages. The Golden Age lies ahead; satyuga is ahead. They oppose the past and fall in love with the future.

I am neither anti-past nor a lover of the future. My teaching is very simple and direct: only the present exists. The past is what has gone; the future is what has not yet come—both are nonexistences. So I see no essential difference between the lover of the past and the lover of the future; they are the two faces of the same coin. Both are entangled in what is not. And that is the mind’s fraud, its conspiracy: it keeps you busy with what is not, while what is slips by.

I say: neither get entangled with the past nor with the future. What has gone, has gone. What has not come, has not come. Live in what is.

God has neither past nor future; God is only present. You cannot say, “God was,” nor “God will be.” You can only say, “God is.” In truth, “is” is another name for God. What is, here-now, is the only God. This very moment is the pilgrimage. To dissolve wholly in this moment is meditation, samadhi. To live this moment totally is God-realization, self-knowing, Buddhahood, nirvana.

So, Mahesh, your notion that I am anti-past is wrong. I am not anti-past, nor partial to the future; not partial to the past, nor anti-future. I only ask: why waste time on what is gone? How long will you go on rewatching the Ramayana? How long?

And the danger is: the day you free yourself from the Ramayana, Marx’s Das Kapital will land in your hands.

China was past-bound—entangled with Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha. And now? Now entangled with Marx, Lenin, Engels. Earlier it thought the golden times had gone; now it thinks they are about to come.

Russia too was a past-facing, very religious country—like you. Where is that religiosity now? In a moment it flipped. Now Russia’s eyes are fixed on the future.

The mind easily swings from one extreme to another, like a clock’s pendulum. The mind’s nature is to live in extremes. Whoever lives in extremes remains entangled in mind. Extremity is mind. From the extreme of indulgence the mind runs to the extreme of renunciation. It says either: indulge to the hilt! Or: renounce completely! It never lets you be balanced, in the middle, in equanimity, in rightness. It says: either chase women or flee from women—but run! Don’t be still. It says: either cling to wealth, or hurl abuses at it; don’t touch it—touching is sin!

See the mind’s joke? Money is neither so important that you clutch it to your chest, nor so fearful that you dare not touch it. One fool feels a banknote is everything, touching it as a lover his beloved, as a poet a rose, as a connoisseur the full moon—he sees all that in a hundred-rupee note! And this very man will one day become an enemy of money—because he tires; he sees, sooner or later, What am I doing? Then he swings to the opposite madness: he fears to touch notes, scrubs his hands if he does, trembles at the sight of currency, keeps far away, hides in caves in the Himalayas.

There’s nothing in a banknote to be so afraid of. It has a utility. No need to be mad this way or that. There is a use—neither relish it as nectar nor shun it as poison. In this world there is little need to be entangled, and none to be an escapist. My teaching is always of the middle, because in the middle the mind dies; in extremes the mind lives. If you stop the pendulum in the middle, the clock stops—tick-tock ends. So too: as you drop extremes, the mind goes. And with the mind, time goes; the inner clock stops. You become timeless.

My teaching is to become timeless. Understand that the past is no more. Why keep flogging a dead track? The snake is gone; only the mark in the sand remains, and you are beating the mark! Why waste time? Or you are preparing defenses against snakes that have not yet come—who knows if they will come at all?

Did the hundred things you imagined in life happen? How much happened? You think a hundred; not even one happens. Something else happens. Life is vast—so vast that nothing is really in your grasp. Yet people try to seize the future; they show palms to astrologers to know what will be.

Once someone brought a famous astrologer to me. His fee was a thousand rupees. He said, I don’t look at a hand for less than a thousand. I said, A thousand and one—I don’t give less. He looked startled, then reassured by those around that he’d get it. He read my palm—astrologers have some stock lines that fit everyone; that’s their craft. He finished and waited for his fee. I said, Now you may go. He said, And my fee? I said, You should have read your own hand before leaving home: today you won’t be paid. And looking at my hand didn’t you see that I am not a payer? At least read your own palm! Consult your own horoscope! If you can’t read your own, what will you read in mine? When you were reading my hand, I looked at yours and saw clearly: No fee will be paid. This was so obvious that I cannot go against the lines of your hand—bang your head if you like, I won’t pay.

He pleaded and came down to five hundred, two hundred, a hundred. I said, I won’t give a single rupee. That’s why I so cheerfully said “a thousand and one”—because I had seen your hand. If I intended to pay, we would have bargained at the start. With no intent to pay, why bargain?

He said, What do you mean? I told him a story: Mulla Nasruddin went to a tailor to have a coat made and haggled. The tailor said fifty; Nasruddin said twenty-five. They wrangled—thirty, thirty-five—almost settled at thirty-five. A friend whispered to Nasruddin: I know you—when do you ever pay? You won’t pay this tailor a penny. Nasruddin said, I know. Then why haggle? the friend asked. He said, He’s a friend; I don’t want to hurt him too much. If I agreed at fifty, he’d be very sad; at thirty-five he can feel he saved fifteen. One should do at least this much for a friend! And the fool is trying to increase his own pain; I started at twenty.

I told the astrologer: I have no acquaintance with you to lessen your pain. You said a thousand; I said a thousand and one. Had you said two thousand, I’d have said two thousand and one. Whatever you said, I would have agreed—because I saw your hand: today you get nothing. Go home and rest.

Why are people going to astrologers? Because they want a hold on the future—some plan, some security. These are the people who wasted the past and are wasting the present. And do you know—future never comes. When it comes, it is present. Astrology never speaks of today. It speaks of yesterday or tomorrow—both nonexistences. Religion is concerned with today. Hence astrology is not religion; it is a device to avoid religion, to avoid God; it is a search to fortify the ego. You missed yesterday; now make arrangements for tomorrow—you’ll miss that too.

Have you not seen the signboard in shops: Cash today, credit tomorrow. Understand? Tomorrow never comes. Whenever you arrive, the sign says the same. It’s a profound Vedic sentence! Cash today, credit tomorrow. Don’t waste today thinking of tomorrow.

Mulla Nasruddin told Chandulal, I’ve been thinking for fifty years of buying an atlas of the world. Chandulal asked, Then why the delay? Will you buy it after dying? You’re seventy—buy it now at least. Nasruddin said, The world keeps changing. Burma was in India—if I had bought then, it would be wrong. Then Pakistan was in India—if I had bought then, wasted. Bangladesh has just been born. Once everything settles, I’ll buy.

This man will never buy an atlas—he will be finished instead. He is clever—just like you.

You ask: “You are anti-past. Won’t that create chaos among the youth?”

First: do you think what exists today is not chaos? What else is chaos? Everything is broken, distorted, ugly, stinking, rotten. Your politics is putrid, and everything revolves around it. Only the dishonest and the thieves prosper there. Your guides are highwaymen; the predators are your protectors. What chaos are you afraid of? Your capitals are madhouses. What happens in your parliaments? Shoes are hurled, abuses shouted, brawls break out. Parliament—the foundation of your culture, the summit of your civilization. Civilization means the capacity to sit together in a sabha. But what happens there is un-parliamentary, uncultured—pure chaos. Everyone is pulling everyone else’s leg; it’s a perpetual wrestling match. Who is up, who down—who knows? Who holds whose leg—who knows? Morning it is one thing, evening another. What else is chaos?

And your universities, where you think education is given—what grows there except disturbance? Arson and hooliganism. You fear my words will cause chaos! This chaos has arisen because we did not teach man to live in the present. We made him past-bound or future-bound. He does not know how to live in the only time there is. The art of living he has not learned.

Education teaches ambition—the future: Become this! Become that! Education breeds a feverish race—at any cost, with no concern for right or wrong. Life is short; if you keep weighing morality, you will lag. Shove, shout, agitate—lead processions, strikes, gheraos; become a leader, prime minister, president! Education feeds the ego. Where there is ego there will be chaos; ego is chaos’s very soul. And I am teaching egolessness—and you say my words will cause chaos!

The current talk has already produced chaos, and it grows daily. In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought. How much more chaos do you want? Seventy percent of the world’s energy goes to preparing for war. As if man had nothing else to do but kill and be killed. We say, Live and let live! But we prepare to kill and be killed. The poorest countries are eager to make atomic and hydrogen bombs. People are hungry, unclothed, famine stalks, children are beggars from birth—yet we must build bombs. India prepares because Pakistan prepares; Pakistan because India does; China because India does; India because China does. A comic chain.

You see your neighbor doing pushups, so you start too. He started because he saw you buy a loincloth; you bought the loincloth because you saw him being oiled and massaged; he was being massaged because you were twirling your moustache in the morning. Where did it begin? No one knows. One imitates the other: You twisted your moustache—what does that mean? Prepare!

No food at home, the mice are doing pushups—so you do pushups too! But you must fight!

For centuries they have taught you that the art lies in dying: die for the country, for the caste, for the religion.

Yesterday someone asked why I say nothing about patriotism. Brother, what is left to say? It is precisely such foolish notions that have brought you to this pass. Patriotism!

Where is the land divided? What is a “country”? Before 1947, if a bomb fell on Lahore you would have been ready to die—for the country! Now if it falls, you burst fireworks: Good! What of the “country”? Lahore is where it always was; the people there are as they were: children, wives, husbands, old mothers and fathers. A line was drawn on a map—lines cannot be drawn on the earth; earth is indivisible. On the map a line—now it is Pakistan. Now if it were wiped out, you’d agree. No patriotism for Lahore now.

Earlier Lahore, Karachi, Dhaka were holy Indian soil; now they are not. The “holy land” changes quickly! In those days even gods longed to be born there. Now? Do gods no longer long to be born in Lahore? They must have learned it is Pakistan. “Pakistan” means holy land—pak. If you call India a holy land, they won’t be left behind; they are Indians too—they put it in the very name: Pakistan. You have to separately say “holy land”; they included it. Whenever you say “Pakistan,” you repeat “holy land.”

And even gods have become scarce. When India’s population was two crores in Buddha’s time, there were thirty-three crores of gods, all longing to be born here. Now the math is difficult: there are only thirty-three crores of gods, but seventy crores of people already born! Where are the gods coming from? Perhaps limbs: a leg of a god here, a hand there, a head there! Still they long! But no longer to be born in Pakistan?

Patriotism has been drummed into you: die for the country. Then religion: die for the faith. If Islam is in danger, Muslims are ready to die; if Hinduism is in danger, Hindus are ready to die.

Let it be! If religions are in danger, what do you lose? Let’s see how long they manage. In truth, neither Islam nor Hinduism is in danger—you are put in danger. These are political slogans, tools of disorder. You are taught to die for anything and everything. No one teaches you to live.

People come to me: We are ready for sannyas. If you ask us to die, we are ready. I say: I never ask anyone to die. I say: live! And their faces fall—because living is arduous; dying is easy. Jump into a river or a well, hang yourself, swallow poison, lie under a train—thousand ways; in a moment it’s done. Living is a long pilgrimage, full of challenges. Take sannyas to live in a new way. Death will come by itself; why hurry?

People’s lives are so miserable that they are willing to die for any excuse—patriotism, religion—then inside there is the fantasy that “Fairs will gather at the pyres of martyrs every year!” From the grave they will enjoy the fairs. In life, no fair gathers; they imagine it will after death. How many martyrs’ pyres have fairs? If they did, there would be no time for anything else—so many have died that from morning to evening we would do nothing but attend fairs.

Fairs gather on the pyres of tricksters, hypocrites, the cunning—those who harass you while alive and won’t leave you alone after death. For martyrs there is one shared flame: “In memory of the unknown soldier.” Why build separate ones? And a single “Martyrs’ Day”—everyone is done in one day. And suppose flowers gather on your grave—so what? In life you had no fragrance, no song.

I do not want to feed such suicidal tendencies. Your past has been full of them. Muslims were told: if you die in holy war, heaven is assured; jihad is supreme merit. No matter your sins, if you die in jihad you go straight to heaven. Innocently, people agreed. But tell me: when Hindus and Muslims fight a “holy” war, who is religious and who irreligious? Both claim heaven for their martyrs. Who decides? Usually the winner decides. You say, Satyameva Jayate—truth alone triumphs. The reality is reversed: whosoever triumphs is called truth. The defeated becomes untruth.

If the Kauravas had won, do you think history would be what it is? Then the Kauravas’ flatterers would have written it. Now the Pandavas’ flatterers have. The victors’ sycophants write history; who writes for the defeated?

Yudhishthira gambles—and is “Dharma-raj”! Not only gambles—stakes his own wife—and is “Dharma-raj”! Try staking your wife; will anyone call you righteous? You will be jailed. Is a wife an object? But in those days even Dharma-raj thought a woman was property. Even now we have filthy words: “stri-sampada”—woman as property. A father “donates” his daughter—kanya-dan! Do you donate living beings? From donating cows you came to donating girls. You call the cow “mother,” and donate her? No shame? Donation is for things.

Draupadi was shared among five brothers—only to avert quarrel because she was so beautiful. The compromise was to divide the days. A woman was an object to be allotted—like a bicycle or a car. And they are called righteous!

But the victors’ flatterers wrote the history; that’s what is praised.

Think: if Hitler had won, Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin would be demons on trial; and Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo would be celebrated. Japan, Italy, Germany would be declared dharma-rajya. Sycophants are never lacking for the winner. Who decides?

Priests have decided, and you have lived by their decisions. When will you become your own deciders? My plea: be your own judge. Reconsider your life. Do not live by fixed notions of the past. You have done that enough—what have you gained? Much has been lost. Challenges will come when you leave the ruts and routines. Challenges are auspicious: facing them, growth happens; inner strength is born; resolve awakens. I don’t call that chaos; I call it challenge.

Do not try
to hold back the setting sun
on the western horizon.
It will not stop.
Your force, your stubbornness, your struggle
will all be in vain.

I understand
your attachment to the light that has been,
your fear of the spreading dark
in which the directions will drown,
eyes will be of no use,
and the hand stretched out
will not find the depth
of this ocean of night.

And most of all,
I know your concern
for the young,
who need light,
who should laugh and play,
grow and blossom.

Lift your eyes
and understand a little
the signals of the stars:
the wheel of time is turning—
what has gone is coming again.
Face the east,
listen carefully:
you can hear the anklets
of the new rays of dawn,
you can hear the hoofbeats
of the steeds that pull
the new chariot of the new sun,
ever approaching.
Look there:
the tents of night are being uprooted.

Do you want only light?
A sphere of fire is rising.
I understand:
the new carries within it
the disappointments of the old suns’ old tales—
but do not stay lost
in what is gone.
What is to be done with fire
will not be done with smoke.

Do not stop the young.
Let them, fearless,
play with the new flame,
wrestle with it.
The riddles that the fire extinguished you,
let them be solved
by those very ones!

Why so much fear? Why such impotence—“what if chaos spreads among the youth?” Let the young wrestle; let them solve life’s problems. Don’t force hand-me-down solutions. Your solutions’ time is gone. Perhaps they were right once; who knows? Even if right then, they are not right now. Yesterday’s arithmetic becomes useless today. Yet you go on beating it in—and boast: this is our forefathers’ tradition! They did thus; we will do the same. How can we leave their track? Lest chaos ensue! Will you go on hauling corpses?

When your father or mother dies—even if you loved them and your eyes are wet—you still carry them to the cremation ground. No one keeps a corpse at home. If people began to, life would be impossible. In every house how many have died! With so many rotting corpses, what of the living? The children would rot from the stench, be overrun by maggots that first eat corpses then the living.

That is what has happened in the realm of ideas. You are carrying dead notions and fear that without them you will be lost. It is because you clutch them that you are lost. Drop them, and your eyes will be freed of smoke; you will see clearly. God has given you life, consciousness, intelligence. Wrestle with problems. Sharpen the sword of your intelligence on the stone of life’s challenges. Polish your awareness by struggling with storms. Only thus will the hidden seeds within you sprout; only thus will your potential become real.

Do not be afraid. Do not live frightened. We are a frightened people, become cowardly. We want to somehow remain as we are, never step beyond the lines—Lakshman-rekhas all around: Don’t cross this line, don’t cross that one. That has ruined us.

For centuries this country was told: do not cross the seas; it is sin. So we did not, though we first built boats. Who will go to foreign lands and be corrupted by mlecchas, eat their food, learn their language? Who will leave the holy land! So we rotted here. The rest of the world traveled, faced storms, became masters; we became slaves. We discovered boats, ships, arithmetic; we are the oldest people of this land—and the most wretched. What a shop we run—always losses, always bankruptcy, never Diwali.

Some fundamental errors are being made. We have become line-followers. Those who live like that lose connection with existence. To remain connected with existence you must die to the past every day. If you want to be alive, die to the past so you can live in the present. Daily brush off the dust of yesterday. As you bathe to remove dirt from your body, bathe your intelligence so dust does not settle—stay fresh like a mirror, reflecting what is before you, ready to respond.

This country discovered much, but due to our traditional, rigid mind we kept losing. We gave birth to Buddha but lost him. Because what Buddha said didn’t suit our orthodoxy. All of Asia was stirred by Buddha—except India. We, who birthed him, remained thirsty. Buddha said: be free of the Vedas—our past. We could not. He said: do not live by tradition, and warned: don’t make me a tradition either. Appo deepo bhava—be a light unto yourself. Don’t live just because I say so. Search for yourself. Life is yours to live or lose; how can another be your judge?

But we became parrots. Buddha said: stop being parrots. We got angry and uprooted him. Buddhism vanished from India. The fragrance spread across Asia; countless lamps were lit—while we stayed in darkness. We did to others what we did to Buddha.

I am not telling you to become the past’s enemy. I am only stating a fact: what is gone is gone—forget it. Don’t be stuck. Live today, now. Therefore, there should be no dust on the mind—remove even golden dust, however precious. Only then will you be fit to live on this earth.

And the world is changing so rapidly—revolutions so swift, new visions arising so fast—that if you cannot accept them, you will simply fall behind. No one else loses—only you.

Very few in India are contemporary; that’s why stale talk appeals to us. Mahatma Gandhi opposed railways, telegraph, electricity, radio. We loved it—“A true saint!” It matched our old way. Did rishis ride trains? Mahavira walked—even a bicycle he avoided; what to say of trains! Should the descendants of rishis ride trains? Keep your forefathers’ prestige! Gandhi’s words pleased us.

But this is fatal; you will be left behind, dragged backward—as you are.

Gather the strength to welcome the new. Bow to the rising sun—from it life will rain; flowers will blossom, birds will sing, trees will be green. You are stuck worshipping pictures—images of past suns—while the real sun stands at your door, eyes closed to it. What a joke!

And you ask, Mahesh, whether my words will spread chaos?

If chaos spreads, let it. It may be good once. Let everything break once. Let these ruins collapse so completely that you cannot live in them. Because until they are leveled, you will keep propping yourself against them.

People leave the old with great difficulty; the chest tears.

I have heard of a village church—very old, dilapidated. So unsafe that no one dared pray inside; a strong wind made it tremble. Even the priest bowed from outside. Finally a meeting was called—outside. Something had to be done. They said: it is ancient, bequeathed by our forefathers; it should be preserved. But how? No one enters it. Reluctantly they made decisions:

1) With heavy hearts, though our chests split with sorrow, we decide to demolish the old church.
2) But the new church will be built exactly like the old, on the very same spot.
3) No new material will be used; only the old stones, doors, windows, stairs, roof—cleaned and reset.
4) And the old will not be demolished until the new is ready.

That’s how you are. So I say: let there be a spell of chaos. You won’t bring the old down; let it fall by itself. But I am not an anarchist. Truly, I want to give life a deep discipline—but not imposed from above. It should arise from inner awareness; not governed by Kanad, Kapila, Patanjali; it should be each person’s own expression of consciousness. When discipline arises from within, it has beauty, truth, authenticity. It does not make you a hypocrite.

Your current “discipline” is hypocrisy. You are one thing in the temple, another outside; one at the shop, another at home. How many faces you have—even you don’t know which is real. You have become chameleons. In the temple, people look so devout—tilak on the forehead, mala in the hand, Ram-Ram on the lips. See them and you feel: how pure! Meet the same man at his shop and you will not find the same person. The sandal may still be dry on his forehead, the mala in his hand merely formal—the face has another expression.

Mulla Nasruddin once went to a “religious” man to ask for a donation for a dying widow’s medicine—impressed by seeing him every morning at the river, tilak and mala, chanting. At his office he found a different man: the flowers of devotion gone, the face a desert. Nasruddin trembled to speak, but said, Are you the same person I see each morning after your bath in the Ganga? Yes, he snapped. What do you want? Such harshness that whatever courage Nasruddin had vanished. He said, I came in the fragrance of your mornings; forgive me. The man said, Many come in that morning fragrance—and I saw you were here to beg. It’s good we didn’t throw you out; otherwise we have beggars thrown out. You came the first time; my peon didn’t know. Speak! Nasruddin said, A widow is dying; she needs medicine. The man said, All right, solve a riddle; if you do, I will pay. One of my eyes is glass; which is it? Nasruddin looked a moment and said, Your left eye is fake. Surprised, the man asked, How did you tell? Nasruddin said, It shows a trace of compassion; your real eye—just looking at it dries my life. I made a mistake coming; I won’t again. I have no desire to make my wife a widow. Forgive me!

You have one face in the market, another in the temple; faces upon faces. George Gurdjieff often demonstrated this to his disciples. He would look at two disciples—glowering murderously at one, pouring nectar from his eyes at the other. Later they would quarrel: one saying, He is a terrible man; the other, He is the sweetest I’ve seen. They’d come to Gurdjieff, and he would say, You are both right. I was showing different faces, consciously. I am telling you: this is how you are—unconsciously.

You have one face for your wife, another for your mistress. With the mistress you are all melted honey; with the wife you are dull, lifeless, fleeing.

Two men sat late in a bar drinking. The first asked, Why do you sit here so late? The other said, Where should I go? There’s no one at home—I’m unmarried. The first sobered instantly: What! Unmarried—and you sit here? I sit here because—where should I go? My wife is at home. Only when I am fully drunk, courageous enough to enter even a lioness’s den, do I go home!

Your “discipline” breeds hypocrisy. I am certainly opposed to that. It does not mean I want people to be anarchic or licentious. I want them to be free.

We have even spoiled the beautiful word swachhand—taking it to mean unbridled. It really means: moving in one’s own rhythm—bound by one’s own inner meter. It is more beautiful than “independent,” which still has a mechanical ring. Swachhand is musical—lyrical.

Buddha is swachhand. Such a person is truly disciplined—but from within. I am against imposed conduct; I am for the inner. If action flowers from within, it is blessed. If you force it from outside—because people say so, family says so, tradition says so—you split in two. Inside you are one thing, outside another. Your life gets two doors: the front drawing room, where you meet in one manner; and the back door, where your real faces are seen. Outside you smile—a diplomatic, political smile.

Politicians smile endlessly. There is no smile in their hearts. When elections come, a whole season of smiles arrives. Even faces where a smile seems anatomically impossible—like Morarji Desai—suddenly bloom! Once in office, the smile disappears—no need; it was flattery. Look at Carter when he campaigned—you could count all thirty-two teeth. How many now? Fewer and fewer. Now he is Vedic; the grin forgotten. Let elections return and the spring of smiles will return.

You too do the same on a smaller scale. When you need something, you smile; when you don’t, you pass by as if you don’t recognize. Your own become strangers when you don’t need them; strangers become your own when you do. I don’t call this conduct or order; it is hollow hypocrisy.

Mahesh, liberation from this hypocrisy is essential. Only then can one be truly religious. To be religious is a revolution. And to be religious, one must certainly pass through a kind of chaos—because all the old junk has to be cleared out, the old ruins brought down. Only then can new structures rise.

Chaitanya Kirti! People like Rahim always speak to the point, from experience. Rahim is not an enlightened man, but he is very experienced. He has lived life and tasted its sweet and bitter flavors. He’s stating the essence. He’s right: “Rahiman, marriage is a malady”—it’s a disease.

What is the meaning of marriage? As long as you need the other, you are ill. As long as you are not capable of being yourself, you are ill. As long as you cannot be joyous in your aloneness, you are ill. Remember these two words—vyadhi and samadhi. Vyadhi means: we are sick within, so we forget ourselves in the other, get distracted, deluded. We swallow illusions—knowing they are illusions—because what else to do? Whenever we look within, we see only darkness. We see nothing that nourishes. We see futility upon futility, barrenness upon barrenness—a desert stretching far and wide, where no flowers bloom, no fruit appears, and not even a distant oasis comes into view. Frightened, we rush out. But what to do outside? One needs some entanglement, some delusion, something to latch onto. And the greatest delusion is marriage.

Marriage means: a woman for a man, and a man for a woman. It is nature’s arrangement—for wandering and being deluded. Hopes get tied, dreams get decked out. It seems the hour of happiness has arrived. It never actually arrives; it only seems to be arriving, arriving, arriving.

Understand this word “aa gayi” properly. You read it as one—“it has come.” Read it split, with a hyphen—“aa, gayi”: “came—gone!” It never really comes; it’s already gone. It’s a lovely word; it hides a secret. Always read it with a hyphen; if you read it as one, then “shackles on the feet.” Nothing really comes; it only seems to come. How will it come? The woman who has fallen in love with you has run away from herself; and you, who have fallen in love with her, have run away from yourself. Two beggars are hoping from each other, bowls stretched out: “O goddess! O god!” She too, in her hoping, says you are an emperor. And you, in your hoping and expectation, say, “No one like you! You are the queen of my heart! The empress of my heart!” These are all hopes. She nods; you nod; both know their reality, yet both think, “Perhaps the other will fill this emptiness inside me.”

How long can this delusion last? As long as you keep meeting on Chowpatty—until you are chowpat, ruined. What a name they gave—Chowpatty! It’s the place you meet before you go chowpat—wrecked. Whoever named it must have been a sage, warning, “Brother, beware—this is Chowpatty!” Still, no one takes the hint: “We’re going to Chowpatty!” By the time awareness dawns, it’s too late. Only after marriage does it become clear we were both in illusion. Then quarrel starts.

That’s why every marriage leads to quarrel. What is the quarrel about? Each thinks, “I’ve been cheated.” Though no one cheated anyone. Each has certainly been deceived—but by themselves; no one actually deceived the other. So men keep condemning women: “Woman is the gate to hell!” Saints and sages go on shouting, “Woman is the gate to hell!” Understand this: they are still remembering Chowpatty—and still blaming the woman. Earlier they believed woman was the empress; “Once she enters my heart, extinguished lamps will light, withered flowers will bloom, nectar will rain!” Earlier the trust was in woman; now the trust is that she’ll send you to hell. Even now the trust hasn’t gone; only the sign has flipped. “Woman is powerful! Earlier she gave heaven; now she dispatches to hell.”

I see no revolution in your saints—the illusion is unchanged. Earlier they held woman responsible—as a stairway to heaven; now as a stairway to hell. But stairs are stairs. You can use them either way: go up if you wish, go down if you wish. Stairs are neutral. No stair says “Up only; down forbidden.” There’s no notice board on a staircase. It goes both ways. Yet men abuse women their whole lives. And if it were sensualists abusing, that would be one thing; the so-called renunciates abuse even more.

Women are not so foul-mouthed; that’s why there have been no “great saints” among women. To become a “great saint” you first need to be foul-mouthed; first uncultured and uncivil; first blame the other. Women don’t do that so easily. Truth is, women don’t get duped so quickly either. You can woo a woman endlessly, but she thinks a lot. No woman ever, on her own, says, “I love you.” She gets you to say it a thousand times. No woman ever wags her tail around you; she gets your tail to wag.

Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were quarrelling early one morning—as is the custom in every house. A house in which the quarrel doesn’t start in the morning—there, marriage never happened! That’s why I say: “So-and-so is getting married” means “so-and-so is now beginning a quarrel.” Marriage and quarrel are synonyms.

The nonsense started at the tea table. Mulla’s wife said, “Listen, I wasn’t running after you; you were wagging your tail. You were the one writing letters: ‘I’ll die, alas I’m dying! If you don’t come to me, I’ll die. I can’t live without you.’ I wasn’t behind you.”

Mulla said, “True. I’ll admit that. It’s a bad habit of mine. I’ve written that to every woman. It’s an old habit; I still haven’t kicked it. You are here—you know it—but still, if I get a chance, I write such things. I’m a fool! And it’s true I was behind you; you weren’t behind me. And why would you be? No mousetrap runs after a mouse. The foolish mouse walks into the trap by himself!”

That’s why mousetraps never become mahatmas; the mice become mahatmas. Naturally, when mice become mahatmas, whom will they curse but the mousetrap: “Beware—this is the gate to hell!”

But be as cautious as you like—people don’t learn from their own experience; what will they learn from another’s! Even a mahatma, if offered another chance—a mousetrap with a little style, not iron but gold or silver, studded with diamonds and jewels—will think, “One more experiment might be right. Who knows—one woman was wrong; not all women could be wrong! It doesn’t seem fair or rational to condemn all for one.”

Rahim speaks to the point, but Chaitanya Kirti, don’t stop at Rahim. Your own experience, brother! You need some experience of the mousetrap. Get caught! If you just obey Rahim and hold back, you’ll repent a lot.

Often it happens: in youth, a person holds himself back. Youth has the strength to do so. If a young mouse insists, “I won’t enter the trap,” he won’t. But as youth slips away and old age approaches, the mind’s strength wanes, resolve breaks, the mind wobbles—and you’ll start circling the trap.

A gentleman met me. He was forty. A celibate. He said, “I’ve spent forty years. What’s there to fear now?”

I said, “Wait—the real danger is arriving.”

He said, “Meaning?”

I said, “Meet me again after forty-five.”

He said, “I don’t understand.”

I said, “You won’t—time will explain. See me after forty-five.”

He got a little scared and came back that very evening. “No, I was restless all day. What did you mean?”

I said, “When you’re young, you have the energy to do anything. As you approach forty-five and youth begins to slip, doubts arise: ‘Perhaps the world is truly enjoying! After all, how many are saints? A handful who say woman is the gate to hell. And though they say it, who listens? And even if they get a chance, do they listen to themselves?’ So there must be some secret. And when life starts slipping away, you’ll panic.”

He didn’t listen. At forty-five he met me with tears in his eyes: “You were right. I’ve started to wobble. Now the panic has begun. Life is going out of hand. This is the last window. If I spend two, four, five more years like this, I’m done for; who knows what the experience of woman was like! I didn’t taste it. Now only one refrain runs in my mind—no Ram, no Krishna—just gopis, gopis everywhere. Even in the temple of Ram, I see only Sita; Ramchandra doesn’t appear. My eyes stick to Sita.”

It’s natural.

Chaitanya Kirti, Rahim is right that marriage is a disease. But he speaks from experience. He isn’t a saint; he is a great poet. He lived life, and distilled the essence into this verse. He says: “If you can, save yourself.”

Save yourself if you can. But how will you? Without experience, no one can save themselves. If you try without experience, you’ll land in bigger trouble. That’s why I won’t say, “If you can, save yourself.” I’ll say: even if you can save yourself, don’t! Pass through this experience—only then can you be free of it.

“Shackles fall upon the feet...”
That’s true—the shackles go on. And that’s exactly why they beat the drums.

“...to the beating of drums.”
They put you on a horse. They make you a groom-king. Because for the rest of life you’ll be a slave to the wife; at least for one day, be the groom-king. They hang a sword on you. Look at the joke! People who don’t even know how to hold a sword; sword is far—those who have never held even a kitchen knife; who cut their fingers chopping vegetables—they hang a sword on them. Borrowed, of course! Every village has such swords whose only job is to appear when someone becomes a groom and be hung on him. And every village has horses and mares whose job is to carry the groom. He has never even ridden a donkey; a donkey would toss him so hard he’d remember the milk of his sixth day! Yet there he sits, stiff, on a horse. The wedding party marches all around, the band blares. An illusion is being manufactured—that something tremendous is happening! Some great work is going on!

It’s a one-day kingdom. A one-day welcome and honor. Then suffer the fruits for life.

Rahim is right: “Shackles fall upon the feet, even as drums are beaten.”

Drums are beaten precisely so the shackles can be put on. Because you are absorbed in the drums, you don’t notice what’s happening to your feet. You’re lost in the shehnai; meanwhile, fetters are going on your ankles. Mantras are being recited. The priest has you circling the fire—seven rounds being tied.

A politician was invited to a wedding. A politician—and not drink? Hard to imagine. Yes, if he drank the water of life, that would be different; compared to that, wine is better—at least it’s the water of grapes. He arrived a bit too drunk. He couldn’t quite make out what was happening. He was in his old groove. The bride and groom were circling the sacred fire. He saw no delay—rushed up, pulled a pair of scissors from his pocket, and snipped the knot. He thought he was inaugurating!

But what others cut doesn’t cut the bond. People cried, “What are you doing!” They quickly tied another knot. Now, in place of one knot, there were two! They sat the leader down: “Brother, what’s come over you?” He had come to inaugurate—wherever a ribbon was strung, his job was to cut it. He saw a ribbon strung between man and woman—“What’s this about!”

This shackle won’t be cut by someone else’s scissors. If another cuts it, it will become double.

Uncle, uncle, uncle,
there’s nothing left in uncle;
only bowed salaams remain—
he’s auntie’s slave.

So poor Rahim says: if you can, salvage what you can. Uncle! I agree—he speaks truly, to the point. But he learned from experience, and you will too. Therefore I don’t say accept him and stop—else you’ll regret it lifelong. Go through the experience. It’s the only way to be free of it.

There is difficulty in going through, yes.

“Doctor, my wife’s mouth won’t utter a sound,” Chandulal told his personal doctor. “Give some medicine!”

The doctor asked, “When do you reach home from the office?”

“Exactly five.”

“Then tomorrow reach home at ten-thirty at night. Your wife’s mouth will open! No medicine needed. Even a dead wife would speak! However hoarse the throat, such a sound will come that you’ll remember it. You’ll never come asking for medicine again. Then you’ll pray, ‘O Lord, give me back that same illness!’”

One day Mulla Nasruddin sat very sad. I asked, “What happened, big man? Why so gloomy?”

He said, “My wife hasn’t spoken for thirty days.”

I said, “That’s something to celebrate.”

He said, “Celebrate? Today the thirty days are up—what’s there to celebrate! Today she’ll start again. Let’s see what happens when I reach home!”

Go through the experience.

One day Guljaan came to the doctor: “Doctor, I don’t know what’s happened to my husband Nasruddin—he mutters all night! Please give some pills.”

The doctor handed her some tablets: “These will stop his muttering completely.”

Guljaan snapped, “But, doctor, who wants to stop the muttering! Give me pills so I can hear clearly what he’s saying. Names like Kamla, Vimla, etc., I can catch—but not clearly what’s going on. With whom is the affair? Who are these ‘whores’—Kamla, Vimla! I sit all night listening, but it all gets garbled in the babble.”

So, Chaitanya Kirti, taste a little of all this. One wife is enough. If there are two—no words! And that’s why Mohammed said four wives. If a man has four wives, his liberation is certain. If he still isn’t liberated, he’s a great fool. Then there is no remedy. If four wives can’t deliver him, his moksha is impossible.

At the neighbor’s, Mulla’s wife Guljaan said, “Sister, you are very charitable. Will you do me one small favor?”

“Why not! Say—what’s needed? Think of my home as yours.”

“Let me quarrel with your husband for an hour. Mine has been away for four days.”

On a marble tombstone was engraved: “Within this grave, an honest, truthful, chaste, ever-neighborly social worker, Mrs. Gulabo Rani, sleeps in eternal rest. All her life she strove to make her husband, Shri Dhabbuji, happy, and finally, by becoming late, succeeded.”

So either you will die and go to heaven, or your wife will. In every case—sweetmeats all around.

Bachchan has a poem: The Labyrinth of Czechoslovakia—

In Prague there is a hill
on which stands an iron tower—
the little brother of Paris’s Eiffel Tower—
beneath which
a labyrinth has been made;
on all its doors and walls
mirrors and mirrors are set;
once you go inside
for a long time
people can’t find their way out,
they keep bumping into mirrors.
Yunova, my interpreter, said to me,
“Go in,
and come back out,
then I’ll believe.
I’ll wait
by the door outside!”
I went in,
kept my eyes lowered;
noting every turn in the path,
in only three minutes I came out!
Yunova was amazed, “How?”
Eyes downcast, I said,
“Like this!”
Yunova said,
“I acknowledge your Indian wit,
but you missed the fun of getting stuck and wandering!”
I said,
“That I’ve already had plenty of in life.”

Take a little taste of getting stuck and wandering! There is no bigger labyrinth than marriage. Get a little lost.

Chaitanya Kirti, don’t hurry. Write Rahim’s couplet and keep it in your pocket; sometimes take it out and read it—you’ll feel relieved that truth has been spoken—then put it back, until it becomes your own experience. And one day, certainly, it will become your experience.

In life there is only one way to learn: self-experience. And that alone is the door to liberation.

Enough for today.