Sabai Sayane Ek Mat #8

Meditation is a method, love too is a method; samadhi is the goal.

There are two kinds of people: heart-centered and head-centered. For those who are mind-centered, love is not the way. However hard they try, love will feel imposed, a contrivance—an effort, not a spontaneous flow. And whatever does not become spontaneous cannot lead to the divine. This is not a small journey that you can complete by pushing and pulling; it can be completed only when it becomes as effortless as breathing.

So if an intellect-centered person mistakenly enters the path of love, he will go astray and will not arrive. For him, meditation is the path. Meditation is the mind gradually becoming formless and thought-free. At the perfection of meditation, samadhi appears; the person dissolves. And then, in such a seeker’s life, love arises. The seeker who proceeds by meditation will not begin with love; he will end in love. He will begin with meditation and reach samadhi. Meditation will be the path, samadhi the destination, love the result. Ultimately, suddenly he will find love spreading all around his life—but this happens at the end.

The heart-centered person, the feeling-centered person, for whom thoughts in any case do not hold great value; whose intellect is secondary; who lives through feelings and sensitivities; whose heart is directly touched; who thinks less and feels more—such a person can begin only with love. If he tries to begin with meditation, his path will wander. He may try a thousand ways to meditate, but he will not succeed; it will remain merely an effort. He may try a thousand ways to quiet the mind, but his mind is not so disturbed that he can quiet it. He must awaken the surge of the heart. Instead of meditation, forms like prayer, worship, adoration, and love will feel more natural to him. When tears flow from his eyes, then silence will arise within. When his feet dance, then silence will arise within. When he is intoxicated with love for someone, only then will meditation happen within him. His meditation cannot be direct—that he simply sits quietly and meditation happens. His meditation will happen through the medium of the divine; he needs a beloved. Without a beloved, there will be no peace in his heart.

So if someone walking the path of love gets attracted toward meditation, an obstacle arises. He will feel ill at ease. It will not click. That path is not his. He must proceed through love.

One who walks through love will attain samadhi effortlessly—but that samadhi will be a samadhi of feeling. And for such a person, meditation will be attained as a consequence. For such a person, thoughtlessness—no-mind—will come as a result. When he becomes utterly absorbed in samadhi, he will suddenly find that the meditation he could not accomplish by practicing has happened on its own.

One who walks through love finds meditation as a result. One who walks through meditation finds love as a result. And whichever of the two one walks by, samadhi is assured.

Therefore the question is not which path is right—love or meditation. Both are right and both can be wrong. The question is you. Which of the two feels right to you? And only one will feel right; both cannot. What feels right to you is right; what does not feel right is not right. Do not, even by mistake, get caught in someone else’s tangle. Do not be disturbed because something feels right to someone else. Do not wear another’s clothes. Do not borrow your vision of life from others. Try to know yourself precisely. Therefore swadhyaya—whether you are to become a devotee or a meditator—is essential for everyone: the study of oneself. So that you come to know exactly what kind of personality you are. Once that is known, everything becomes easy, everything becomes simple.

The greatest thing in life is to take the very first step rightly. The last step follows from the first. But if a mistake is made at the first step, the last step never comes. The first step itself is the last step. If it is taken exactly right, in tune with you, if it fits, if the strings of your inner veena begin to resonate, if the blow falls at the right point, if the inner springs burst forth—then the goal is not far. The goal will come of itself. Now you can flow. Flow in that very first step. Drown in it.

The most care is needed at the first step—and it is there that people are careless. For all sorts of unknown reasons they choose a path. You were born in a particular home; perhaps the household traditionally follows the path of devotion, so you too began devotion. If that is not suitable for you, you will wander all your life. You can wander for lifetimes and never reach.

The notion of religion-by-birth has played a big role in leading humanity astray.

If you are a feeling-type person but are born into a family that trusts the tradition of meditation, you will be in trouble. Because you will choose according to your father’s religion. But the son’s religion has nothing to do with the father’s religion; nor with the mother’s. The son must find his own dharma—his swadharma. That comes through swadhyaya. It is not found by going to the registry of births. Where you were born tells you nothing about which dharma will bring your flowering, your upliftment, your revolution.

Across the whole earth, one of the greatest causes of irreligion is that people accept a religion by birth. Then the fixation sets in.

If you were born in a Jain home, there will be no understanding of devotion in your life, because that path is of meditators. Now you’ll be in a bind. If you walk that path your inner harmony will not come together; if you do not, you will feel you are falling from the path. If you go to Krishna’s temple and dance, you’ll feel guilty that you are leaving Mahavira and going with Krishna. You’ll suffer inwardly. Because from childhood a fixed idea has been implanted in your mind, and it has occupied a lot of space. That idea says this alone is right and everything else is wrong. If you follow that idea you never find fulfillment; where fulfillment is found, it feels as if a crime has been committed—that it is improper.

So do not, even by mistake, allow your religion to be determined by birth. You must find your own dharma—your swadharma. Swadharma is not given by anyone. It does not come from birth, caste, or nation. Each person must find his own swadharma—groping in the dark. The day you find your swadharma, that’s it; then the matter is no longer difficult—everything becomes easy.

And two things are very important: meditation or devotion; meditation or love. Half of humanity will go by meditation, half by love. The proportion will be equal. Especially women will go by feeling, men by meditation. I am speaking generally, because there will be many men who are feeling-types, and many women who are meditation-types. But broadly, women will go by feeling, men by meditation. For man is fundamentally inclined toward activity, toward doing. Love is non-doing. It is passive. It is waiting. It comes easier to woman.

Now this creates a great difficulty. If we divided humanity correctly, two religions would suffice in the world: one for men and one for women. Some men would belong with the women’s religion, some women with the men’s; but broadly there would be two: the religion of devotion and the religion of meditation. Yet a husband wishes his wife to follow the same religion he follows; a mother wishes her son to follow hers. Thus distortion has spread in the world.

A woman’s dharma will be different. Her whole vision of life—her thinking, feeling, being—is different from a man’s. Therefore, if a woman attains to gnosis, she will attain in the way of Meera—dancing. Sometimes a Chaitanya too attains while dancing, but that should be counted an exception. A man will attain like Buddha or Mahavira—that will fit.

And Krishna has said: svadharme nidhanam shreyah—better to die in one’s own dharma. But by your “own dharma,” do not understand Hindu, Muslim, Christian. I am speaking of swadharma: first, to find the dharma of the self; and even if death occurs in it, it is better. Paradharmo bhayavahah—another’s dharma is dangerous; beware of it.

By “another,” I include your father, mother, brother, sister, wife, husband—everyone. “Another” does not mean Pakistanis or Chinese. Everyone other than you is another. Be cautious of their dharma, for there is danger in it.

If one understands this deeply, one sees how profound a psychological truth Krishna has uttered: to know the self, to know swadharma. Walking in it, even if you meet death, it will be like nectar; and walking in another’s dharma, even if you find nectar, it will prove to be poison. Because that which does not fit you cannot liberate you. That which fits you so intimately that not a hair’s breadth remains between you and it—that alone can be your liberation.

I have heard a Sufi story: Near a mountain there is a lake. Whenever a seeker reaches the lake and truly implores, answers come. After years of search, a fakir finally reached that lake. He shouted, “I have only one question: What is life?” The lake was silent. But he kept asking—three days and nights he made one of them. In the end, even the deity of the lake had to yield. “Your devotion is complete,” came the reply. “You have not come out of curiosity; you are no ordinary questioner—you are a seeker of liberation. So here is your answer: Life is a veena.”

The man said, “No more riddles! Give me a straight answer. I am no musician. I have never even seen a veena. I have only heard the word. I do not know what life is, nor what a veena is. Now you’ve added one more puzzle! I was trying to solve life, now must I also find out about the veena? Tell me plainly.”

The lake said, “The answer has been given.”

The man said, “Give me a few hints so I can find the way.”

The lake replied, “Go to the village and look carefully at the first three shops. Whatever you find, come back and report.”

He went. The first was a hardware shop—heaps of metals in different shapes and shades. He could make no sense of it—what had this to do with life? He went to the second shop—it sold strings. Again he understood nothing. The third shop was a carpenter’s.

He returned unhappy. “I was better off before,” he thought. “Before I asked this lake, at least such foolishness wasn’t in my head. What have these to do with life? I have gained no knowledge and have become more ignorant.” He came back angry and told the lake what he had seen. “But what is the connection with life?”

Again the lake said, “Life is a veena. Now take hold of this key and search.”

Years passed. He nearly forgot the search—the veena of life. One day, passing by a garden, he heard someone playing a veena. The flow of melody drew him in as if by magic. He drifted into the garden. An artist was playing. For the first time it became clear to the seeker: the very strings he had seen in the shop were there; the very metals he had seen were there in the veena; and the carpenter had done his work too—there was wood.

That day the key became clear. Life is a veena. The wood is there, the strings are there, the metals are there; lying separately, no music arises. When the three come together, fit in the right way, when there is harmony, music can arise—such wondrous, formless music! Music that can enchant the very breath! A magical, mysterious event can happen!

I say to you as well: Life is a veena. But you must tune your own veena. Do not imitate others. They must tune theirs. There are many kinds of veenas. Every person has a veena of his own and a hidden music of his own.

Svadharme nidhanam shreyah. If you die while playing your own veena, you will attain the great life. If you die carrying others’ veenas—no matter how beautiful a music they produce—you will come empty and go empty. There will be no treasure in your hands. You will have wasted your life.

And the greatest danger in this world is that you may fall under someone else’s influence. You are all too ready to be influenced because tuning your own veena is a hard task. Borrowing another’s veena is easy. Seeking for yourself, practicing swadhyaya, is full of risk—mistakes can happen. Borrowing knowledge from another is riskless, safe. And if confusion occurs, the other will be responsible—you will feel no pain that you made a mistake.

You catch hold of a guru and think, “I have surrendered.” One disciple in a hundred truly surrenders; ninety-nine are deceiving. They are not surrendering; they are handing responsibility to the guru: “If I go astray, you are responsible. We are not saying we surrender; we are saying, now look after it. If we wander, it’s your fault; if we drown, the disgrace will be yours. Now you must save us—or you will be caught.”

Can life’s responsibility be shifted like this? You can learn from a guru, but you cannot offload responsibility onto the guru. You can understand the way from a guru, but you cannot borrow the guru’s way. You can take hints and pointers from a guru so that your swadhyaya becomes easier.

A true guru does not give you a code of life; a true guru gives you only a lamp, so that you can discover your own way in your own life. Remember this difference. A true guru does not give you discipline or conduct; he awakens your inner being. He gives you awareness so that, recognizing yourself, you can make your own path. A false guru does not give you awareness; he gives you conduct. He says, “Do not steal, do not be dishonest, speak the truth; don’t do this, do that”—he gives you fixed lines. Walking those fixed lines, you will go astray. Another’s dharma is very dangerous. He hands you his path. The guru who handed you a path is your enemy. No satguru gives a path. A satguru gives only the recognition of the path. He says, “Here is the way to recognize.”

Understand this subtle difference. The false guru places gold in your hand and says, “Here is gold; keep it safe, do not lose it—it is precious.” The satguru gives you a touchstone, not gold. He says, “Here is the touchstone; wherever you find gold, test it. If it proves true, know it is true; if it fails, know it is false.” If a false guru and a true guru stood before you, you would likely be charmed by the false one—his hands hold gold. The satguru holds only a black stone; you will wonder, “What will I do with this?”

But the satguru gives only the touchstone, so that wherever needed in life you can test—and you will know gold. Remember, a small touchstone is more valuable than tons of gold.

The satguru gives you prajna—the capacity to recognize. He does not give you a fixed conduct; he gives you free awareness. Swadharma is the path. The satguru gives you only this much information: “This is how swadharma is sought. This is how I found mine; this is how you can find yours.”

The methods of seeking swadharma are similar, but when you find yours, your veena will be unique. Your veena will not be like your guru’s. If it is exactly like the guru’s, know it is counterfeit. Existence does not create two veenas alike. If you stand exactly like the guru, wear the same clothes—or go naked—shave your head, or do whatever the guru did, then you are an actor, not a sannyasin. You are not a disciple—you are an imitator. You would be better suited to a circus. In the vastness of life, in the vast arena, there is no need for you. You are fit only for a small play. You are fake.

And you are not deceiving anyone else—you are deceiving yourself. By deceiving yourself, you will erase yourself.

Certainly. Because love means the capacity to give. And the capacity to give can exist only in one who has. You can give only what you have. Love is the gift of life.

Whenever you look at someone with love, you add a thousand moons to their life. Whenever you take someone’s hand in yours with love, you give new flame to their fading lamp. Whenever you embrace someone with love, you have lengthened their life.

Scientists study whether an infant survives only on mother’s milk, or whether, besides milk, some other invisible current also flows from the mother to the child. Many experiments have been done. All show that milk nourishes the body, but milk is not life. Children have been fed milk and they shrank, they closed in on themselves and died. Along with the milk, a stream of love flows from the mother’s breast. Not only milk is given—the warmth of the mother’s heart also reaches the child. That warmth, a heart full of love, is even more nourishing than milk. Without milk a child may survive a few days; without love he cannot. And if he does survive without love, he is as good as dead.

Love is invisible life. That’s why, whenever you feel no one loves you and you love no one, thoughts of self-destruction arise. The thought of suicide arises precisely when you see there is no love in your life. Where there is no love, the idea of dying appears: “Disappear! What is the point? What meaning is there in being? What purpose remains? What is there to live for?”

Whenever the feeling of suicide arises in your mind—and it is hard to find a person in whom it has not—ask yourself: when does this feeling come? You will always find it comes only when there is no love in your life. Then the matter becomes clear: love is life. The absence of love brings death close.

Notice: when you fall ill, if the physician is deeply loving toward you, medicines work faster. If the physician is indifferent, comes like a professional, looks you over and goes away—neutral, with no real attention toward you; his concern is with the disease and the drug, not with you; whether you are there or not makes no difference; he behaves mechanically—your illness will be prolonged. Of the greatest physicians the world has known, it is always said: more than their medicine, there is healing in their hands. What does that mean? It means the medicine is secondary; the manner of giving it is what counts. In that giving they give something more.

You may have noticed: you’re ill, the doctor arrives—if he is loving, he has not even given you medicine yet; he has only examined you—and in the very examination your illness becomes half as heavy. Observe it and it will be clear. Since no drug has yet been given, the doctor has not “done” anything: he only took your pulse, listened to your heartbeat. But the way he did it—his loving manner, his assuring trust that you will be fine, his eager attention that you are valuable and must be saved—something within you changes. You are not as sick as before. Even before treatment begins, healing has started.

Experiments have been done in which loving doctors gave only water, and patients improved. Indifferent doctors gave the most costly medicines and nothing happened. Water becomes a carrier of healing if it carries love; it turns into medicine. Even gold preparations, if the loving hand is absent, become only a burden on the body—they do not heal.

Scientists now say: if you look at trees and plants with love, their growth accelerates. Look at a plant each day with a feeling of blessing, pray for it, and you will find other plants lag behind while the one you blessed doubles itself. Flowers will come sooner; fruits may even come out of season. Do the reverse with another plant: curse it every day, abuse it—“You’re wasting your time; you’ll never grow; you’ll rot.” Give it water and manure but keep cursing it—you will find it withers.

These are now scientific findings; not poetry or stories. Many laboratories in the world have reached decisive conclusions: love increases life. The rose you love will produce larger flowers—of course it will, because you have given it dignity. The life of the plant is thrilled; it wants to delight you because you delighted it. You gave to it; it wants to return. What more can it do but blossom into a larger flower?

Under the love of true Masters, disciples have attained the Divine—sometimes without any doing at all. And at other times, after doing much, if the Master’s loving shade is not there, nothing happens. That is why surrender has such value. Surrender simply means: do not be a wall to the stream of love flowing from the Master’s life—be a door. Let it come, so it can transform you.

Love is life. A life without love has no meaning. And a death filled with love becomes meaningful. Even in a love-filled death, an otherworldly poetry appears. A life without love stinks; it is putrid. A man lives, yet does not live. There is nothing inside—everything is empty.

A loveless person is like the scarecrows you’ve seen in fields: a pot for a head, a stick down the middle, a kurta on top—useful only to scare birds. A loveless man is a scarecrow—hollow! There is no soul within.

You know this well, from your own experience: whenever you loved, a thrill arose within you, a flame leapt up. You knew life at its peak. The torch inside you began to burn from both ends at once. Everything became radiant. Perhaps it happened for a moment, but still—the lightning flashed.

And when there is no love in your life, and all that remains is a habitual routine—getting up, sitting down, going to the office, earning—duties remain, love does not; then you find something within has died. You keep moving, but there is no dance in your steps. You speak, but there is no song in your words. You look, but nothing showers from your eyes; they are dry and vacant. You touch, but there is no warmth in your touch; it is as if someone touched a corpse—cold, without feeling, without ripple, without pulse. You have become like a stump: no leaves, no fruits, no flowers; no birds build nests on you, no traveler rests in your shade. You stand like a stump, waiting for a woodcutter to come and chop you down—then the bother will be over. You are waiting for death. You lack even the courage—you would end yourself otherwise. So you wait: death will come in its own time; why hurry? Or you have become so dead that you don’t even have the courage to die. Even dying asks for a little life; even deciding to die needs a spark. You would still have to walk to the cliff’s edge. Now you don’t even have that much will to move. You lie where you are, waiting.

Most people do not live; they only wait to die. It must be so—because without love there is no life. Very few become acquainted with love.

Love is giving. And the wonder is: the more you give, the more it grows in you. The more you hoard, the more it rots. Like a well: don’t draw water, don’t pour it out—it will stagnate, and the feeder springs will gradually silt up and close. Draw—pour out—and fresh springs bring new water daily. The well will not run dry. The more you draw, the more new sources open.

So it is with you—the well of life. If you give, share, pour yourself out, are not miserly—wherever there is an opportunity, pour yourself out—you will find new springs opening within you. One day you will find you are not a well, but the ocean.

What is a well, after all? Merely a window through which the ocean peeks. The well is connected below to the ocean, to endless springs. It is just a little aperture where the ocean has looked out. Do not be afraid. You too are an aperture through which the Divine looks. Do not fear. You are connected. Pour yourself out and you will find you expand. Hold back and you will shrink and rot. And then a vicious circle begins: if you hold back, do not share, do not give love, fear arises—“Everything is already drying up; if I give, I will have even less.” You clamp down even more. The more you hold, the less you have; you keep drying up.

Be brave. Give—and see. The moment you give, some hidden spring opens, a stream becomes active, water begins to flow. Then you discover that as you keep giving, it keeps increasing. Then you drop the very idea of holding. You become engaged in giving.

Kabir has said: Pour with both hands. Not with just one—both!

In pouring is love. Love is sharing your joy.

But let there be joy within! Right now what you have is sorrow. Even when you set out to give, you give the other only your sorrow. Even in the name of love you pass on your misery. You have nothing else. You do not have a soul to give. You have a dense darkness—that is what you give. The other already had many obstacles on the path—you add a few more. The other was already in trouble—you increase the burden of your trouble on him. In the name of love you do not free—you bind. In the name of love you put a noose around the other’s neck. You don’t give wings so he too can fly in the open sky. How can you give what you don’t have?

Therefore I say: first search yourself; first know yourself; first expand yourself; first grow and mature; first let new fruits ripen in the treasury of your being; let something happen within—then you will be able to share.

One of humanity’s greatest mistakes is that each person believes the capacity to love is inborn. No other mistake has been as harmful. Everyone thinks love is innate. “We were born knowing the art of love. Therefore, if love is not happening, it must be the other’s fault. I am certainly capable of loving.”

If you fall into this wrong logic, you will be lost. Love has to be learned. Love is a marvelous art—no art more subtle. No craft more invisible. Extremely delicate. Only by learning slowly will you come to understand. It is a very tender song; to sing it, your voice must be trained. You cannot sing it with a hoarse throat—otherwise the song will die.

So what will you do? How will you learn love?

Increase your sensitivity, and your art of love will grow. Even if you sit on a rock, touch the rock, feel it, befriend it. It is easier than with a person, because with a person the ego stands up. Go to a tree, embrace it. Rest your head for a while on the tree’s shoulder. To rest your head on a person’s shoulder will be difficult. Who knows—he may refuse, reject you. There is the fear of rejection. You go with a petition of love, and the other says, “Move aside! What nonsense! What do you think—my shoulder is a resting place?” You go to embrace someone and he pushes you away.

This is love’s fear. Even small children become afraid early. The child does not understand. He comes with such love, tugging at his mother’s sari, and the mother scolds, “Move away!” The child has no idea the mother is upset—she fought with the father, or a vessel broke, or the radio is out of order today, or the milkman didn’t come—a thousand hassles. The child knows nothing of the mother’s predicament. And the mother knows nothing of the child’s ignorance of her predicament. He came with love, clutching the sari to make a plea of love—and was shaken off.

The child shrinks. Next time, when he reaches for the sari, his hand trembles. He will think twice, ten times—should I hold it or not? First read the mother’s face. Who knows—there may be refusal. Because the wound of rejection hurts terribly. There is no pain greater than when your love is refused.

He came with great love to sit in his father’s lap. But the father is wearing expensive clothes today—he is going to a wedding. This child will spoil the creases. The child knows nothing of creases, nothing that one doesn’t go to a wedding with creases spoiled. The father snaps, “Go play; don’t come near now.” The child cannot make sense of it. When to come close, when not? When will a petition of love be accepted, when rejected? Nothing is certain. The child can frame no rule. Confusion sets in. He becomes afraid. And if one cannot trust even one’s own, what to say of strangers? If one cannot trust one’s own to be loving in every moment, what trust can there be in others?

Then the child grows, goes to school. There no one is “his own.” The teacher is not his own, classmates are not his own—he shrinks. As he enters the larger world, he contracts. Now he is afraid: if he offers love to someone and the other says, “Get lost! Look at your face in a mirror!”

Better than such humiliation, he thinks, is never to try at all. Stay silent. If someone wants to love, perhaps they will come on their own.

But the other has the same problem. He too is afraid.

People are born to love, and they are afraid of love. Without love people will never know the depth of life—and they are afraid of love. They want to grow, they want to love, but they fear rejection. It will hurt. Better to live alone, at least then no one can wound you; there will be no insult.

So I say to you: go to rocks and trees—they will not refuse you. And they are as eager for love as anyone. They will never hurt you.

You have no idea of the human predicament. I was reading the life of an English woman. She writes: she is so alone and so afraid of love—because every time it brought failure—that sometimes, in the middle of the night, alone in a big house—wealthy but alone—she feels such fear and such burning loneliness that, seeing no other way, she calls the telephone time service just to ask the time. She has many clocks. And there is no real person answering there; it is a recorded voice. The tape says—but sweetly—“It is now eleven o’clock at night.”

She writes: I know there is no one speaking there; it is all on tape. The voice is sweet, but even that is not alive. Still, hearing a voice brings relief—“I am not utterly alone.”

She writes: I have kept a dog, and a parrot. I have taught the parrot that whenever I come near, it must always say, “I love you.” With the parrot there is no mistake, because for the parrot it is rote. One can always rely on it. People cannot be relied upon—they may say it, they may not. The parrot is reliable.

In the West people have taken to keeping dogs, cats, parrots, because fear of people has grown deep. The same is the case here too. Here also one person is afraid of another. He extends his hand with great calculation, in such a way that he can pull it back in time if needed—lest the other’s expression change before he can withdraw. “I’ll make it look as if I never offered my hand, so there can be no rejection.” You may have noticed: you are walking on the road, someone approaches, you fold your hands in greeting, but if he does not see you, you begin to scratch your head—to show that you had not folded your hands at all, you were only scratching. The mind is so sensitive to not being rejected: “What if I greeted and you did not return the greeting? Humiliation, a wound!” “I was not greeting at all.”

Such is the fear. Therefore I say: for the first lessons in love, go to rocks, mountains, rivers, trees. Then slowly advance. And when you learn that love has no concern with whether the other returns it or not—that love is simply giving—when you delight in giving to trees and a tree-like greenness fills you; when you delight in giving to the river, the moon and stars, and the same purity descends within you; then you stop worrying whether the other returns or refuses. You will give with a free heart. If the other does not return it, compassion will arise: “Poor fellow! He has become so incapable in love that I greeted him and he could not even return a greeting. How shrunken he must be!” You will feel compassion, not anger, nor hurt.

And once you know the secret—that the joy of love lies in giving—you will be amazed: love begins to return from a thousand directions, a thousandfold. For everyone is ready—let someone give love, they will return it; but they too are frightened, just like you. Once you start giving, returns begin.

But the return is not the purpose; even if it does not come back, giving is so significant and so joyous—who cares whether it returns? You sang a song—this was so delightful that whether anyone clapped or not is meaningless.

The cuckoo sings; she does not care for anyone’s applause. In just this way a true lover shares—like the cuckoo’s song. Whether someone claps is his whim. If he claps, he himself will be a bit more delighted. If he doesn’t, he is to be pitied. If a song brings no applause, it only shows he doesn’t even know how to listen—singing is far away. He does not even have the knack of listening. He could not even clap—such miserliness! If he cannot express appreciative wonder, how will he ever sing?

One who claps on hearing a song is taking a step toward singing. If not today, tomorrow he will sing. If not today, tomorrow he will think: “If another’s song gives so much joy, how much joy will my own song bring when it bursts from my soul!” “If seeing another’s spring flow fills me with such thrill, what dance will happen when my own spring flows!”

When you accept another’s love with appreciative wonder, a path opens for your own love to expand.

Love must be learned.

And the way humanity has raised you is exactly the opposite. It is the way of hate, not of love. You have been prepared to hate, and thus made afraid.

But there is no point repeating this lament now. You have already been born; childhood has gone; what was to happen has happened. There is no use crying that wrong conditioning was given in childhood. That is done. If you understand, if you awaken, those conditionings can be erased. They live with your cooperation. Withdraw your cooperation and they will dissolve. You have been holding them up. Remove your hands and they will fall.

Love must be learned. Love must be given. By giving, it grows. And as you find that the more you give, the more it grows, your life becomes denser. Its urgency increases. It becomes condensed. In a small house you become the master of vast life. The infinite fits into a tiny body—like the ocean condensed into a drop; like the whole sun contained in a single ray. In your small body and small courtyard, the Vast dances.

And until one reaches such a state, how will gratitude arise toward God? From a life in which there is nothing to be grateful for, how can prayer arise?

Therefore I say: only when there is love does prayer happen. Without love, what you call prayer will only be complaint; it cannot be prayer.

Your prayers reveal your complaints. Your prayers do not resound with appreciative wonder. You do not say with open heart: “I am blessed that you created me. I am blessed that I am. I am blessed that breath flows. I am blessed that I have been deemed worthy to participate in your vast celebration. I am blessed that I have seen your moon and stars, seen your flowers bloom, seen the fragrance of your flowers float in the sky. I am blessed that I have seen your streams, your mountains. Your ocean, your infinite play I have seen.”

The day your prayer is gratitude, that day it is prayer.

But before that, you must learn the process of love. Do not delay. The time already gone has gone in vain. Hurry—invite love, make it your housemate. Do all that helps love grow; and what reduces love, do not do, not even by mistake. Because if love does not become dense within you, hatred will. You cannot escape—either love or hate; either love or fear; either love or death. You cannot escape. You must choose.

You are so afraid of death only because you have not known love. A lover does not fear death. The lover has no death, because love is eternal. It has never encountered death—just as the sun has never met darkness.

If there is a concept, there is no surrender. The concept is yours. Then whatever surrender you do is also only to yourself. You bowed down and touched your own feet. You stood before a mirror and performed your own arti. If surrender happens because of your concept, then surrender has not happened. Your concept is your concept. Understand!

Suppose you have made a formula out of your concept: “If I find a person like this, I will surrender.” You say: he will stand naked, sky-clad, he will not eat at night, he will drink only filtered water, he will be a non-meat-eater—you have made a concept. Or you have made another concept: he will stand wearing a peacock-feather crown, playing a flute, herding cows—then I will surrender. Or you have conceived: he will be seated beneath the Bodhi tree, unmoving, eyes closed, tranquil of mind, utterly dispassionate—then I will surrender.

Before surrender you have made a concept. The concept is yours. Now you carry your concept around to test people. If by chance someone matches your concept, you will surrender. Did you surrender to him? Or did you surrender to your own concept? You bowed and touched your own feet. That person was only a pretext, a peg; you hung yourself upon him.

And such surrender will always be incomplete; it can never be total. Because you can never be fully satisfied: who knows, tomorrow this man may change—tomorrow he may start drinking unfiltered water. Then what will you do? What certainty is there about tomorrow! Today he plays the flute; tomorrow he may throw it away. He is a living man. If he were dead, he would keep the flute. The Krishna in the temple keeps the flute—there’s no way out; until you yourself remove it, he will have to keep “playing.” But what assurance is there with this living man! Today he stands naked; tomorrow he may wrap himself in a blanket. So doubt will remain.

And then, you don’t know this man’s whole life. You know nothing of his past—what kind of man he was. Maybe he became naked only today, started filtering his water only today; until yesterday he was a sinner and today he has turned virtuous. How deep is this virtue—how will you know? And what you are seeing is only a small fragment; it is not the totality of his life. It is like looking at the sky through a pinhole in a wall. Or like finding a torn page of the Ramayana and, from that, thinking you’ve read the whole epic. What is visible is very little; what is hidden is far more. So where is the guarantee that your concept won’t shatter tomorrow, won’t collapse as you get to know more? Therefore your surrender will be conditional. You will say, “If you remain like this always, my surrender stands. The day I see a change, that day I withdraw.”

You will worship the dead, not the living. The living is a ceaseless flow. That is why worship of statues goes on in temples—it is a way to avoid the living master. The statue is entirely yours. It does exactly as you make it do. When you say, “Now go to sleep,” it sleeps. When you say, “The curtain has opened, now get up,” it gets up. You place a toothstick and it cleans its mouth.

I was a guest at a house in Punjab. Passing by a room I saw, in front of the Guru Granth Sahib, a toothstick and a lota filled with water. I asked, “If this falls it will spoil the scripture—who has put it here?” They said, “No, no, please don’t say that. You don’t know—this is the Guru Granth Sahib’s toothstick.”

Now, the Guru Granth Sahib has become a person! The book has turned into a human being. For a toothstick! Next they will serve it food.

You want puppets, not God. If you were to meet a living God, he would shatter all your concepts—because he is not sitting there to fulfill your notions! And the moment your concept is broken, you gather up your so-called surrender and run. You tie up your little bundle of surrender and say, “Let it be; we’ll offer it somewhere else—here our concept is not being fulfilled.”

Surrender does not arise from your concept. Where all your concepts fall away, there is surrender. Before the one in whose presence you lay down all your notions. You say, “I have looked through many concepts and found nothing but blindness. Through the lenses of my beliefs I have looked and looked, and nowhere did I see the divine. Now I place all concepts at your feet. Now let me be without concepts. Now, empty, I look at you.”

This is the meaning of surrender. To sit by someone in emptiness is surrender. Become empty, and you have surrendered. Surrender is not a declaration to be made with band and drum. Surrender is the tone of zero—shunya. It happens in silence. There is no need to make noise, to stake a claim, to summon witnesses. Wherever you go and sit down empty, there surrender happens. And then what to say of a person! If you sit empty by a tree, surrender happens there. If you sit empty under the sky, surrender happens there. Surrender is the name of your not-being. Surrender is not some act you do. If the doer remains, surrender cannot be. The doer will remain behind. Surrender is a state in which you come to know: I am not.

The one in whose presence you come to know your own non-being—that one is the master. From where you come to feel your being more strongly, run from there—that is an epidemic. Because your ancient sickness is precisely this sense that “I am.” Where the walls of your “I” begin to fall, stay there. Say, “Now I will remain here. Here is the place to be dissolved.”

But this is the difficulty. Wherever you see that there is a danger of dissolving, you run. “This man will ruin everything. He will erase all my concepts. He will snatch away my scriptures, my knowledge, destroy my practices. This man is dangerous—run, save yourself.”

The very one you run from was the one where you needed to stay. Because it is there that your refinement would happen; there your rubbish would burn and your gold be purified. There the useless would be cut away and the meaningful would arise. There shunya would bear fruit.

Surrender means a state of emptiness. Wherever you sit down empty, there is surrender. And where surrender is, there is God. Wherever you look through the eye of surrender, there is God. If with an empty eye you look at a tree, the tree will vanish; you will find the divine shimmering in those leaves. If with an empty eye you look at a lake, the waves will disappear; you will find the divine playing there. If, sitting by a human being, you look in a state of emptiness, the person will vanish and the vision of divinity will begin.

God is the world seen with an empty eye. Seen with a crowded eye, God appears as the world. Seen with a vacant eye, the world becomes God. The real point is the empty eye. And the eye is emptied by dropping concepts.

From concepts, resolve and intention can arise; from concepts, surrender cannot. Surrender is to be erased, to be lost, to be dissolved. If you cling to your concepts, how will you dissolve? If you come to me and remain a Hindu, a Muslim, a Jain, you will miss me. If you come to me and are nothing at all—you yourself no longer have any fixed address as to who you are; all your identifications have snapped; all your adjectives have fallen away; you know nothing of your name-and-form; you begin to be a clean slate, and whatever was written there starts being wiped—only then will you be benefited.

You have only one real benefit: that you are not. You have only one real harm: that you are. You have only one enemy—your being. And only one auspicious event will ever happen in your life: that you are effaced. Surrender means to be effaced.

Everything else is just a pretext. Let the master be the pretext under which you vanish—the master is only a pretext. Let the statue be the pretext under which you vanish—the statue too is a pretext. Take any pretext you like. If you are capable of vanishing without any pretext, then vanish without any pretext; just vanish; without falling at anyone’s feet, simply fall—then too the result will be the same.

“Till the end” the relationship does remain dual, but “at the end” the relationship is no longer dual.
Right up to the very last, two remain. They come close, they begin to touch; the devotee begins to feel the touch of God. Yet even when there is touch, there are still two—till the end. But at the end—that is beyond even the very last—at the end both are lost. There is no devotee, no God. Only one remains. Only devotion remains. Neither devotee remains, nor God remains. Only the feeling remains. Into that feeling, both are absorbed.
Only then is there liberation. When only one remains, there is liberation. That is why we have named liberation moksha: kaivalya—the Alone; one. When only one remains, there is liberation. As long as there are two, there is bondage. Because the other will surround you. The other will define you. The other will make your boundary; you cannot be boundless. The very presence of the other is a boundary. Let yourself disappear, let the other disappear, and let mere being remain. In that instant there is moksha.
“Till the end” is fine, but “at the end” two do not remain—only one remains. Therefore, in the end, whether you move by meditation or by love, it makes no difference. The difference is only at the start of the journey. As the journey advances, the travelers draw near.
Just as someone climbs to a mountain peak: one climbs from the east, another from the west; they climb by different ways. Perhaps in the first stages they could not even see each other—so great was the distance. But as the summit draws near, they begin to glimpse one another—coming closer. A moment comes when they reach the final crest. Then suddenly they find the other has arrived there too. East, west, south, north—all dissolve. Only one remains.
From where you started is not the question. How you started is not the question. Whether you traveled by some vehicle or on foot is not the question. The final destination is one. The destiny of man is one. To attain the One is that destiny.
At the beginning, understand your own measure and then move. Look to your own way, your taste, your bent. Take the path that suits you. If you can walk, walk. If you can ride a horse, ride a horse. If you must sit in a bullock cart, sit in a bullock cart. Move by looking within. Take the way in which you find ease and peace, in which at each step your peace begins to deepen—test this as you go.
But you have often been taught the opposite. You have been told: this path is very painful. So it often happens that you walk another’s path, you suffer, and you console yourself that the path is supposed to be painful; the joy will come at the end, for now you must endure suffering. You have been told that through many births you must reap the fruits of your past actions. So you think, perhaps you are reaping those fruits. Then you are told: this is no small event to happen today; it will take many lifetimes. So, suffer the hardship.
But I tell you something else. I say: if the path fits you, peace will begin from the very first step. Not complete peace, but the signs of peace! Not the whole peace today, but the felt possibility of peace will begin to arise.
As someone nears a river, the air begins to cool. The river has not yet arrived, it may not even be visible, but coolness has come into the air. As someone nears a garden, the garden may not yet be seen, but the fragrance of flowers begins to float on the breeze.
Even before reaching the goal, a little fragrance of the goal will start to come. And I tell you, it will begin from the first step. Otherwise, it cannot be. Once you stand on the right path, you are linked to the destination. Even if the goal is a thousand miles away, no matter; once you stand on the right path, you are connected to the goal. You have already come a little nearer. A relationship with the destination has been established.
If the attunement is right, peace will begin from the very first day. A mood of joy will begin to surround you. At times you will be startled and wonder: what is the reason, why am I so happy? Because no obvious reason will be seen. The goal is very far. Moksha is still far away. But suddenly you will find that a little liberation has begun to bear fruit. Some bonds have begun to fall. Your feet are not as chained as they were yesterday. The noose around your neck has loosened a little. The tightness is less. Your throat is a bit free. You can sing. You can even run a little. This will begin to be felt from the very first moment.
If this is not felt, I do not tell you to worry about past births or about karma. I only say this much: worry that you are standing on the wrong path, one that does not suit you.
If the medicine is right, relief begins with the first dose. If the medicine does not suit, that is another matter.

Who told you that the body is a bondage? Whoever told you, told you wrongly. The body is not a bondage; attachment to the body is the bondage. Infatuation with the body is bondage. The belief “I am the body” is bondage. The body is not bondage. Why would the body be bondage?

Are your clothes a bondage? They could be—if you became so obsessed that you said, “I cannot take off my clothes. If I take them off, I’ll die. I cannot change them, because then I’ll die. I am the clothes.” If such a delusion arises that “I am the cloth. If someone snatches my clothes, I’m finished; if they are stolen, I’m finished. Even if they become worn-out, rotten and decayed, I still cannot change them, because this cloth is me,” then the cloth will become a bondage. As of now the cloth is not a bondage, because you know the cloth is separate and you are separate.

The body too is a garment. The body is not a bondage. Those who said so were wrong—or you understood them wrongly. The body is a bondage only if you take yourself to be the body. Then the mind too is a bondage if you take yourself to be the mind. So attachment is bondage; identification is bondage. Neither body nor mind is bondage. If you know “I am in the body but I am not the body,” you are free. If you recognize “I am within the mind but I am not the mind,” you are free. No one will stop you. No one can stop you, anywhere. Only your attachment can stop you.

Understand this well, because your mind is filled with many such misconceptions. There is a deep little trick at work: you don’t call attachment a bondage; you call the body a bondage. Because if you call it attachment, you become responsible; if you blame the body, you are not responsible—the body is. We have a great tendency to shift responsibility onto the other. It relieves us of trouble. You say, “The body is a bondage,” and feel completely at ease. “Now what can be done? As long as the body remains there can be no liberation. Until the mind is annihilated, how can there be liberation? The mind is a bondage.” You relax; your obligation ends. You begin to feel that someone else is the cause of your bondage—not you! And this is the greatest mistake.

A religious person always looks for the responsibility in himself. Why? Because you can be freed only from that for which you are responsible. If you are not responsible, how will you be freed from it? Attachment is bondage.

But the moment you call it attachment, you feel, “Now this is a hassle; this proves me to be the culprit.” For remember, the body is not attached to you. If your hand is cut off, the hand does not scream, “I will die! Don’t cut me off! Don’t separate me! I am deeply attached!” You scream.

There was a Sufi fakir, Bayazid. He was walking with his disciples along a road. A man was dragging along a cow tied with a rope. The cow was unwilling to go, and the man was hauling her by force. Bayazid said to his disciples, “Stop. Surround this man. A situation has presented itself; we must learn from it.”

They encircled him. The man was a bit startled, but Bayazid was a renowned fakir; the man thought, “Something is afoot—he is about to instruct his disciples.” Bayazid asked his disciples, “Tell me, is this man tied to the cow, or is the cow tied to the man?”

It seemed obvious. They said, “The cow is tied to the man. Why would the man be tied to the cow? The rope is in the man’s hand; it is around the cow’s neck. Obviously the cow is bound, the man is free.”

Bayazid said, “Now a second question: if we cut the rope, will the cow follow the man, or will the man run after the cow?” They said, “The man will run after the cow.” He said, “Then your first answer was wrong. The cow is not bound. The cow is trying to get free, O simple ones! She is pulling back. The man is pulling her. The moment the rope is cut, the cow will bolt; the man will chase after her. So who is bound?”

The body has not sought you out—remember this. Driven by your desires, you sought the body. You sought a womb; the womb did not seek you. If the body begins to leave you, you will call the doctor; the body will not call the doctor. The body wants to be rid of the hassle—you have tormented it enough. For the body there will be rest. Earth will fall back into earth and be glad. Water will merge into water—trouble over. Space will dissolve into space; air will dissolve into air. It has suffered enough in your lungs.

No, not for a single moment will the body say, “Something bad is happening to me.” The body will be freed. You will cry and scream. When you die, does the body cry—or do you? The body is ready to die peacefully, ready to enter rest. You cling on. You say to the doctor, “Put on the oxygen cylinder. Whatever happens, I will remain in the body. Even if I have to lie unconscious, I will remain.”

In Western hospitals many people lie unconscious, hanging on only by oxygen cylinders. But they have money. They say, “We won’t die; we’ll remain, even if unconscious. Someday we’ll be fine.” It has even gone so far that some people in America have had their corpses preserved, hoping that within twenty years there will be a way to revive the dead. So those who have died—the millionaires—at least a thousand such corpses are preserved in America. One corpse costs ten thousand rupees a day to maintain. Because it is not the case of a living person; preserving a corpse is a very difficult matter. If there is the slightest mistake, it rots. A small lapse here or there, it decays. Because life is no longer there—the inner protector is gone. The inner safeguard is lost. Now it is only being maintained through chemicals. Ten thousand rupees a day for one corpse, for twenty years! But those who arranged it left millions of dollars for themselves. They say, “Until a method is found to revive the dead, keep our corpses safe. The day the method is found, revive us.”

Who is clinging to whom? Even twenty years after death you are still pursuing the poor body! Let it go; let it rest. No, but you won’t allow it. Your intention is even to come back again into the same body.

No, the body is not a bondage; attachment is the bondage. And if attachment is the bondage, there is a way to liberation. If the body is the bondage, then there is no way at all. Then Buddha too had a body, Mahavira too had a body. Both were around forty when they attained enlightenment, when they were liberated. Then they lived another forty years. If the body were bondage, this whole story would be false—no one could be free.

But we know that people became free while still in the body, because freedom is not about the body; it is about the dropping of attachment. The bridge of attachment was removed. The body continued; it did its functions. But inwardly there remained no desire to clutch at those functions. As long as it went on, it went on by itself. When it fell, it fell by itself. Inwardly there was no attachment that “this is me.” One’s separateness became evident, was experienced. There was a transcendence of the body. While living within the body it was known, “I am beyond the body”—liberation happened.

Liberation is self-knowing. It has nothing to do with the body. Precise recognition of the Self, right knowing, is liberation. Whether the body is there or not is irrelevant.

If the body is gone but attachment remains, you will take up a new body, you will seek a new womb. If, while the body is present, attachment drops, the search for wombs ends. Then you will have no further birth. You were not born because of the body; the body was taken up because of you. You are the basis. Your attachment is the bondage. In essence: attachment is bondage; non-attachment is liberation.

Enough for today.