Sabai Sayane Ek Mat #6

On the surface it may seem so. But whoever looks at saints from the surface will miss seeing them. That is not the way to look at a saint. The vision and the manner of seeing a saint are of a fundamentally different kind. If you look closely into Bokoju, you will find neither a saint there nor any Bokoju. This is what it is to be a saint: he is a void.

He did not pre-plan death; he allowed what was to happen to happen. The incident was this: before dying, Bokoju stood up and said, “Let me walk to the cremation ground, because I would not like to be carried on anyone’s shoulders. Let me go by myself up to my death. My life was mine; let my death be mine too.” And he went to the cremation ground. With his own hands he dug his grave, lay down, and his life-breath dissolved. On the surface it will look like the act of a doer. Seen from within, there is no question of the doer. This is how it happened to Bokoju. In that moment such was the inner mood; such a flower blossomed.

Yes, if Bokoju had thought, “This would be pre-planning; I should not do it,” then the doer would have arisen; he would have missed tathata. If he had said, “People will think this or that later; it is not proper; no one has ever done such a thing,”—if, contrary to what was arising, he had begun to think and decide with the intellect, then it would have been against tathata. But what happened, he allowed to happen. As a flower blossoms on a tree, in that hour this feeling blossomed in Bokoju.

A seeker was with his master. For years he did exactly as the master said. He offered as many prayers as were prescribed—five times a day. He was a disciple of a Sufi fakir. His fame spread far and wide. Thousands began to regard that disciple too as a true master. But the master never praised him; not once did he utter a single word in his honor. And it was not that the master was miserly with words; whenever he saw something happening in someone, a couple of words of praise would certainly come from his mouth. People were astonished that even those who had come later were acknowledged and honored, but about the one who was most renowned the master did not say a single word.

One day it happened that the disciple missed the morning prayer. The first prayer, the first namaz—he did not come. And when he returned at noon, for the first time the master looked at him with appreciation and said, “What had to happen has happened today.”

People were astonished. They said, “What kind of arithmetic is this? Today we thought he would fall even further in your eyes. He had never risen in your eyes, and today he has fallen even more.”

But the master said, “No. He used to pray—but he prayed because one should pray. It was not natural. His prayer did not arise from within. It was a rule; he was following it. Today, for the first time, it was spontaneous. From now on, whatever prayer happens through him will be prayer.”

Has prayer ever happened through rules? Has worship ever happened through rituals and prescriptions? Duty may be fulfilled, but how will the heart’s petition arise? Does the heart move by following bound rules? The heart has its own ways. The master said, “Today it became simple. Today he did not come because of the rule. Today, when his simplicity itself brought him, then he came. Today he did not come on his own; today God himself brought him—then he came. From today the old man is dead; a new one is born.”

On the surface it will seem to us that Bokoju is not moving in tathata; he is arranging and planning.

If tathata makes one arrange, then he is arranging; if tathata does not make one arrange, then he will not. You cannot judge from the outside. The matter is inner. If there is no sense of the doer, then whatever happens is happening through tathata. If there is the sense of the doer, then whatever happens is happening through the ego. You are the doer. How will you judge from the outside? You know only one thing: if someone goes, he must be going because he wants to go; if he does, he must be doing because he wants to do; if he gets up, he must be getting up because he wants to. In your life you have never allowed anything to happen by itself. You have had no connection with the spontaneous. You have done everything.

You have even “done” such unique things of life as cannot be done. You have “done” love. Coming home, you display love toward your wife, you pat the child’s back. That too you are doing. That too is not happening through you. That too is not arising. It is not such that, even if you did not do it, it would still happen; if you did not do it, it would not happen at all. If you did not smile, the smile would not come. Someone has died; if you did not make an effort, tears would not flow; you made an effort, therefore tears flowed.

Even such unique events as tears, love, and a smile are occurring through your contrivance. Therefore you will not be able to recognize people like Bokoju from the outside. If you want to recognize them, you will have to enter a little into their world. Do this once: take a holiday from the sense of doership for just twenty-four hours. Only that holiday is meaningful; no other holiday is meaningful. You often take holidays from doing—“Today I will not go to the office; today I will not open the shop.” You take many holidays from action. But is that any holiday? Take a holiday from the doer for twenty-four hours: for twenty-four hours, let whatever happens happen; we will not do. Perhaps a few things will take place in those twenty-four hours that happen on their own.

Then for the first time you will taste how it is when something happens by itself. Its gravity is different! Its beauty is different! Its depth is different! It does not belong to this world. It comes from some other realm and descends upon you. God lifts you, makes you walk, makes you sit. You do not rise, you do not walk, you do not sit.

But unless you have the taste of it, it will not be. Try it sometime. In twenty-four hours nothing will go wrong; the world will not be ruined. In twenty-four hours there will be no loss of anything. If in those twenty-four hours even for a single moment it happens that the doer is not there—you rose, you were raised; you sat, you were sat; within you there was no thinking, no planning; hunger came—you asked for food. Thirst came—you drank water. Sleep came—you slept—then perhaps you will understand Bokoju a little; only then, perhaps, will you understand Dadu.

Saint Maluk is right. But he is very hard to understand. The lazy have turned it into a slogan, because man even seeks support for his untruth from the truth itself. Man tries to dig wealth out of religion. On the foundation of love, man goes on creating sects of hatred. Hearing of the infinite, man constructs limits. None of this is Maluk’s fault. Maluk is speaking the purest truth; he is giving the essence of all the saints. And in the way Maluk has said it, no one else has.

“The python does no service; the birds do no work. Says slave Maluka: Ram is the giver to all.”

He is saying that the python does no job, yet food comes to it. Birds do no work, yet they live—and they live better than man. So one thing is certain—says Maluk—the giver is Ram. Even if you are not the doer, the giving continues. The python does no service, yet it receives. The birds are not employed, yet they are provided for. You think you receive because you do—that is your delusion. All around you, without doing, there is receiving. If you do not do, still it will be given.

But “not doing” does not mean laziness. There is a subtle difference. When you read Maluk you think he is telling you to drop karma, action. Maluk is telling you to drop the karta, the doer. That same “leave” I spoke of to you. Just this much difference—between action and the doer. Maluk says, drop the sense of doership. It does not mean you will do nothing; much will happen, only you will not be the doer.

Do birds not work? In one sense, they do not. They do not stand in line at an employment office; they submit no applications; they do not don uniforms to join the police or stand in the military; they do not go each month to draw a salary, nor do they receive one; there are no promotions, no flattery; no seniority, no juniority—nothing of the sort.

But do not take it to mean that birds don’t work. From morning till dusk they are absorbed in activity. Watch the birds! Building nests, bringing straw and grass, gathering food—the work goes on, but there is no doer. The python too does no one’s service, yet it looks for its food; it moves, it searches. But there is no sense of doership.

Maluk is saying only this: the whole of nature runs without the sense of the doer. The Divine moves it. You are carrying a burden for nothing. Move as the birds move.

It does not mean, “Do not work”; it only means, let the work be done by the Divine through you—do not you do it. Let God begin to work through your medium. He is the one doing; if this is understood, that is the only difference. Then your burden will fall, anxiety will disappear. Work will continue; only the worry and the load and the heaviness—your fatigue, your sense of being worn and broken—will dissolve. Then in your life, work will be play. Without the ego of the doer there will be no weight; you will be weightless; you will be able to fly like the birds, to blossom like flowers.

This message is not of laziness; it is of non-doership. And Maluk is right—he is speaking the essence of all the saints.

Its constructive use is precisely this: make it a ladder and go beyond it. Anything else will turn into a negative use. If the mind becomes the destination and you stop on the ladder, you have committed suicide; you will never come to know life.

The only use of the mind is to transcend it. Pass through it—because you must pass by this ladder. Do not stop. Go through it totally, with full awareness, so that you have the complete experience of this ladder and feel no desire to turn back and look at it again. Walk in such a way that there is no urge to look back. For the urge to look back says: where you passed through, the experience was not total; something remained incomplete, immature; something was about to happen but did not—then you will turn back to look.

This whole notion of reincarnation is just this—repeatedly looking back. You have passed through life many times, but you could not fully taste it; a hitch remained in the mind; it kept feeling as though something more was still to be gained. If only a little more money came, there would be happiness; a little more position, there would be joy; if only we could live a bit longer, remain young a bit longer, perhaps there would be some glimpse of bliss—this very urge to look back remains. The scene you passed by—you didn’t really pass; the eyes remained stuck; you kept looking back while walking ahead—that is the doctrine of rebirth. You will return. With your own hands you are arranging your return. You will keep falling into the same pit again and again until you are completely free of it. And there is only one way to be free: experience it through and through. There is no liberation other than through experience.

I do not call renunciation liberation; I call enjoyment—experience—liberation. The Upanishads say: tena tyaktena bhunjithah—by renouncing, enjoy. Only those have renounced who have enjoyed.

This utterance is very revolutionary. How can one who has not enjoyed renounce? You can also renounce without experiencing—but then you will return. That unexperienced juice will pursue you, calling you back to the same spot again and again. Try as you may, you won’t be able to avoid it; you will have to come. The body may move on, but the mind will keep returning. But if you have fully experienced something, known it, recognized it from every angle, left nothing out, squeezed out its very essence, seen it in its entirety so that nothing remains to be seen—then where is the question of returning? Why would you look back? From there, you are free. What has been known is what you are freed from.

Knowledge is liberation. Experience is liberation. And the one who hurries in experience, who wants to run away unripe, will come back again. That only delays things. That is how the delay of countless lives has happened.

So the mind has one use, and that is to go beyond it. Don’t drop it in haste—otherwise it won’t drop. There is no hurry. Recognize it rightly, know it well. Look at the mind rightly. The more you know and see, the more you will find—it is sand. We are trying to squeeze oil from this sand. The day this fact is fully assimilated—that oil does not come from sand, that peace does not come from the mind—on that very day you are free, beyond the mind. This is the mind’s constructive use. Make it a ladder. Step on it and move ahead.

The mind is not useless. No ladder is useless. But you are like that madman who clutched the ladder. Even if the ladder is of gold, studded with diamonds and jewels, still a ladder is a ladder. Sit on it and you will keep weeping; you cannot dance sitting on a ladder. There is a journey to make; one has to go on.

The mind is a wayside halt—pass through it. It is a bridge—you have to go across. Do not sit down in the middle of the bridge; otherwise you will be jostled a lot, because thousands are crossing it. You will never find peace, never any rest.

The very moment the mind is rightly recognized, meditation is born. The mind is the step before meditation. And do not stop at meditation either. For the one who stops at meditation will not reach samadhi. One has to reach samadhi. Samadhi means: the solution has happened; now no questions remain, no curiosity remains, no urge to experience remains, no lust for life remains—everything is quieted. Samadhi means: all the waves in the lake have become still; no ripple arises; the lake is perfect silence. Only in this state of samadhi is there union with Truth, with the Divine, with the Beloved.

From the mind one has to move to meditation; from meditation, to samadhi.

These are the three states. You are, for now, standing at the mind. If you clutch the mind and think this is all—you will weep, be miserable, suffer hell. That is why all the wise want to pull you from the mind toward meditation.

Meditation is not some activity of the mind; it is the quieting of the mind. Meditation is the absence of mind. As we remove a thorn with another thorn, so the thorn of the mind is removed with the thorn of meditation. But then there is no need to carefully keep the second thorn either; it too has become useless. Then both thorns are thrown away.

Many foolish—utterly foolish—are fettered by the mind. Then there are your monks and renunciates—they are fettered by meditation. They dropped the first thorn—the marketplace thorn—and grabbed the ashram thorn. Dropped the shop’s thorn and grabbed the temple’s thorn. Let go the ledger’s thorn and grabbed the Gita–Quran–Bible thorn. Somehow, with great difficulty, they got rid of the mind’s thorn; now the very thorn with which they removed it is being worshiped; they have kept it pressed in the wound. It is just as much a thorn. Thank it—and throw it away as well. The day both mind and meditation are thrown away, that day is samadhi.

One established in samadhi does not do meditation. When the mind itself is no more, what question of meditation remains? If there is no illness, what will you do with the medicine? The day your illness is cured, you throw the vial of medicine into the trash. What will you do with the medicine?

Meditation is a medicine. And when both the illness and the medicine are gone... for there are some crazies who, even when the illness is gone, roam around clutching the bottle to their breast. This becomes a new illness. Now they say, “We cannot drop this bottle, because it gave so much support.”

Granted, it did support you—thank it and be free. Otherwise you have grabbed something else in place of the illness. In a few days this very bottle will become the illness. In a few days meditation itself will become your mind again—for it too is a thorn; it too will create a wound.

Therefore the wise have said: when the work of meditation is complete, do not stay even a moment—throw meditation away. Do not be attached to it. The worldly are attached to the mind; the seeker becomes attached to meditation. Religious is the one who drops both. Then there is samadhi.

They do not see them at all. That is precisely the crux. Whoever sees them still belongs to your world. So those saints who see your hell, sorrow, and suffering—know they are not yet saints. They will try to remove your suffering. Just as you try to remove your own suffering, they will try to remove yours. They will become great servants, mahatmas. But they are not saints—because the mistake is the same.

You are mistaken in believing you are miserable; and they share the same mistake, believing you are miserable. Your mistake is: “How can this misery be removed?” Theirs is: “How can your misery be removed?” You will worship such saints because they are great servants. They will massage the limbs of the lame and the crippled, serve the blind, treat the sick, worry about the poor and destitute. They will be engaged in service twenty‑four hours a day. They are good people, but not saints. Goodness is not enough for saintliness. Saintliness is a very great event; it is far beyond good and bad. It is the abode of neti‑neti, beyond both shores.

You will find it very difficult to understand a saint. Because a saint sees that you are not in misery; you only believe you are. Your misery does not appear to him at all. Before a saint, your condition is like that of a man in delirium, burning with fever. He shouts, “My cot is flying in the sky!” What will you do? Will you try to grab his cot and nail it to the ground? Tie it to stakes? You know the man is delirious; the cot is not flying anywhere, it is resting on the ground. You will try to bring the man to his senses; you will not try to hold the cot.

The servants—the ones you call mahatmas—are holding on to the cot. The very delusion of the delirious man, “I am in pain,” is their delusion too. They also believe he is right. But the one who has true awakening sees that no cot is flying anywhere. You need to be brought to awareness; your fever needs to come down. When you come to your senses, then you too will see that the cot is not flying and there is no suffering.

So real saints have not done service; they have offered satsang. Real saints have not removed your suffering; they have awakened your consciousness. That is a very different thing.

Whom did Buddha, Mahavira, or Krishna serve? You cannot call them sarvodayis. Whose service did they render? Did you ever see Buddha in a hospital? Did you see him doing or organizing “Bhoodan”? No. In fact, people who think in sarvodaya terms now say: that means there is some lack in Buddha’s saintliness—because a saint must be a servant, must risk his all, must sacrifice himself to remove your suffering.

But Buddha did nothing of the sort. The reason? Clear. Buddha tried to awaken you. Because to Buddha no suffering appears anywhere. It is you who see suffering. Buddha cannot participate in your vision.

Understand it like this: I am sitting here and I see there is a rope lying on the ground. You are standing there at a distance and crying, “Snake! Snake!” Now there are only two options. Either I also pick up a stick and go with you to kill the snake; and yet I can see there is no snake there, only a rope. If I set about removing your suffering, it would mean I picked up the stick and ran with you to kill the snake. I understand that you are seeing a snake; I understand your fear too. But I will not pick up the stick and go with you. At most I will take a lantern and say, “Come, let us go a little closer and see whether there is a snake at all. If there is, we will pick up sticks. But first, with this lantern, let a right seeing happen.”

Saints have given you meditation, awareness, wakefulness. So that you may look rightly and see: Is there sorrow, or is sorrow your belief? Is there hell, or is “hell” the name of the fear that encircles you within? Is someone persecuting you, or have you merely assumed that you are being persecuted? It is your derangement. In the real depth you have never suffered, nor can suffering be given to you.

That is why Krishna says in the Gita: na hanyate hanyamane sharire. Even if the body is cut to pieces, you cannot be cut. If you are burned in fire, you cannot be burned. If pierced by weapons, you cannot be pierced. Then how can suffering be inflicted on you? How can you be miserable? To be miserable is impossible. And yet I see that you are miserable.

A saint does not see your suffering; he sees that you are suffering. Understand this distinction well. He sees that you are making a great racket, beating your hands and feet, drowning—yet no river can be seen in which you are drowning. You are seen shouting, jumping, crying, “I’m finished! I’m drowning! Save me!”—but no river is visible. You are drowning in some dream‑river. Your cries and your call, that he hears.

Now there are two possibilities: either the saint also jumps into the river that is not there—then he has become a sarvodayi; or the saint tries to awaken you: “It’s a dream; you are seeing a dream of sorrow.”

But you too will prefer that the saint jump into your river. Because then you will feel, “He has compassion, he has pity.” If the saint just sits on the riverbank—of your river, because for him there is no river—and smiles and says, “All right, splash about a little more; in a little while you will understand,” you will say, “This man is wicked.”

Buddha‑like beings seem harsh to you because they do not descend into your world of sorrow. They seem cold, unmoved. You are so full of pain, and they keep speaking of sat‑chit‑ananda! The world is in so much misery...

People come to me and say, “The world is in such misery and you are talking of meditation? First the misery should be removed.”

The world has always been in misery. And if it could have been removed first, it would have been removed by now. Only if there is meditation first can misery go; there is no other way. Because if misery were real, it could be removed. It isn’t; it is a belief, a very deep belief. Not only the poor are miserable, the rich are miserable too. Not only those who have nothing are miserable; those who have everything are also miserable. So misery seems to have nothing to do with having or not having; nothing to do with hut or palace; it has to do with vision, it has to do with unconsciousness. And if there is unconsciousness, then there are two options: either we go on removing your misery, which is arising out of that unconsciousness—then we will keep removing, and misery will keep being produced; we will cut one leaf and two new leaves will sprout. The tree will think it is being pruned and will happily put out more leaves.

Thus, in the world there have always been people trying to remove misery. They keep on trying; misery does not go.

There is another group, a small one—the awakened ones—who look to where the root is. The root is in your swoon, your unconsciousness. He does not bother about your misery. There is no misery to bother about. He concerns himself with your stupor; he cuts the unconsciousness.

But even to you, his work does not look like work. It seems to you as if this man is doing nothing.

Buddha is sitting under a tree; what is he doing? Nothing at all—just sitting empty. Get up, at least serve some patients. There are so many poor and miserable. Go teach people not to take dowry. Get widows married.

As if those who are married are very happy! As if married women are utterly happy! Married women are miserable, widows are miserable. Those who take dowry are miserable, those who do not are miserable. The poor are miserable, the rich are miserable. The sick are miserable, the healthy are miserable. Different miseries. The sick man’s misery is that he is not healthy. The healthy man’s misery is: Now what to do? Health is there—now what to do with it? Where to squander it? Where to go? To the tavern? To the brothel? Where to go? Now this health—what to do with it?

The sick man has no idea what trouble the healthy man has. The poor man has no idea what trouble the rich man has. And the irony is that the rich man thinks the poor are happier, and the poor think the rich are happier. City‑dwellers think villagers are happy. Villagers writhe to reach the city by any means.

The other always appears happy because we have no idea of the other’s situation. We know nothing of his inner turmoils. The poor man cannot even conceive why a rich man should lose his sleep at night; there is no reason. “You have everything, now go to sleep.” But the rich cannot sleep. In truth, losing sleep is part of the qualification for being rich. If you still sleep well, it means you are a little poor yet; you are not quite rich.

The unsuccessful man thinks, “Now that you are successful, what are you doing!” But the successful man, between forty and forty‑five, is surrounded by heart attacks, ulcers, all kinds of upheavals. In America there is even a saying: if you don’t have a heart attack before forty‑five, life has gone to waste—because it means you are dying unsuccessful. A successful man does have a heart attack by that time. So much running around, such turmoil, such worry, such restlessness—that if a heart attack does not occur between forty and forty‑five, life has just been frittered away cheaply.

To remove all this sorrow—straightaway? The one who is busy removing sorrow is also not yet awake; he too has not awakened. The one who has removed the sorrow within himself has also seen that only when the stupor is cut can it go. So in your suffering he sees only your ignorance. He sees your racket, your flailing; he also sees the rope lying there in front, but he does not see any snake. And what you are poised to strike with your sword—he does not see that either. Seeing your commotion, he will try to calm you, to awaken you. It is not the snake that has to be killed; it is your unconsciousness. It is not sorrow that has to be removed; it is your stupor. Cut the root and the tree dries up on its own.

No, saints do not see your pain. They see that you are being tormented; and they also see that you are being tormented needlessly. Saints can laugh at you; there is no cause for pity. What you say is foolish; your condition is foolish. They do not laugh, because you would be further upset. They keep their faces grave so that you do not get needlessly angry; otherwise, leaving the snake, you will start attacking them. They go on consoling you: “All right, you are in great suffering, granted; slowly, slowly there will be a way.” But your suffering is purely born of folly.

That is precisely the meaning. All the scriptures say the same: suffering is born of ignorance—of stupor, of unconsciousness. So it is the stupor that has to be broken. The lamp has to be lit.

There are many desires. There are thousands of things to get. Naturally it seems that if the desire for the Divine arises, it will arise as just one more among these desires. If all desires must fall away before the desire for God can be meaningful, then how will it arise?

Understand: there are a thousand desires; God cannot be the thousand-and-first. Then where does the beginning happen? It begins when the futility of these thousand desires starts becoming visible to you. If the thousand remain meaningful and the thousand-and-first also becomes meaningful, your world just gets bigger; religion is not born. Let it become clear to you that these thousand are futile—that you are running after mirages. As one desire after another drops, nine hundred and ninety-nine remain; the space that opens is consecrated to God. When nine hundred and ninety-eight remain, a little more space opens—consecrate that too to God. The desire for God may not arise yet, but the space where it can be contained is being created.

In this way, daily awareness of your desires will keep weakening and dropping them. One day a moment comes when all your thousand desires have fallen, their crutches have broken, their meaning is lost. In that zero-state, where the rest have dropped, there arises like a violent storm a single desire—the desire for God, for the Vast. It cannot coexist with other desires; it can only be alone.

Step one: when the other desires drop, the desire for God arises. Step two: when even the desire for God drops, union with God happens. Because even that one desire remains a barrier.

Therefore the sages first say: drop all desires, awaken the desire for God. Then, when that blessed hour comes in which only one longing remains in you—for God—then the sages say: now drop this too. Drop desire as such. Having dropped all the others, let this one go as well; now be filled with desirelessness, stand in non-craving. In that very instant you have become God. No obstacle remains.

This unfolds on its own. For when the world’s desires become futile, half the happening is already done. When you move with the desire for God, prayer is born in your life, devotion is born, feeling flowers, great elation comes, a new surge arises, a new dance is born. But you also find that this small remaining desire to attain God is like a thin veil. God is now face-to-face, yet a gossamer curtain is there. You extend your hand but it touches only the curtain. The eyes see the curtain. A hidden glimmer shows from behind, but God does not appear directly. Then you understand that this little remaining desire—to attain God, the desire to get—is precisely what does not let you be fulfilled. Drop this too.

That, too, falls. As that veil drops, the devotee is God. It is not that the devotee stands here, God stands opposite, and an arati is being waved. No—the devotee himself is God. All distances have fallen; nonduality is born.

So do not add the desire for God to your thousand desires. Those thousand are wrong as it is; if you add the desire for God to them, that too will be tainted, its purity destroyed.

I have heard that a Sufi fakir went on the Hajj with a disciple. After walking thousands of miles, they lost their way in the desert. They were parched. Somehow they found a small spring and were overjoyed. Not only a spring—they found a vessel lying beside it, for they had none. Their bliss knew no bounds. They filled the vessel, but when they went to drink, it was so bitter and acrid—poisonous—that they panicked: this spring must be poison. They left that spring in search of another, but took the vessel along. At the next spring they drank, and it too was poisonous. Now they were sure death was imminent—water before them, yet undrinkable; their throats on fire. They found a third spring, drank—and that too was bitter. At this third spring sat another fakir. They said, “We don’t understand—how are all the springs bitter?” The fakir looked closely and said, “The springs are not bitter; surely your vessel is at fault. I live on these very springs. Drink straight from the spring; don’t pour it into your vessel.” They drank directly, and never had they tasted sweeter water. The vessel was dirty—poisonous.

The vessel of desire with which you have drunk all the poisons of the world—if you pour God into that same vessel, that too will become bitter. That is why even your desire for God brings sorrow, not joy!

Often I see that the so-called religious person is more miserable than the worldly. The worldly wants money, position—fine; the religious one wants money too, position too, and God as well. His disease is even more dreadful. The worldly man’s arithmetic is at least simple and clean: wants position, wealth, fame—fine; eat, drink, make merry. You will sometimes even catch him smiling, laughing. The religious man’s condition is much worse. He wants wealth, position, fame, God, meditation, peace. His state is like a bullock cart with oxen yoked on both sides pulling against each other. The rickety cart will wobble; the journey cannot happen.

That vessel has to be dropped—the very one with which you drank the waters of the world, the poisons, by which you knew only suffering. Do not place the desire for God in that vessel. If there is no vessel, then with your own cupped hands drink the water of God—but do not let it fall into that filthy container.

And one day you will find that desire itself is the dirty vessel. The moment you desire anything, it becomes defiled. The moment you ask, you are poisoned. What comes unasked, uninvited—that is God. And it comes unasked, uninvited.

The real issue is neither asking nor wanting; the real issue is offering yourself. To the one who is ready to give himself, it is given.

No schedule. There is nothing left to do. There is no desire to do anything. There isn’t even the possibility that something might need to be done. Only when the doer breaks, the experience of godliness begins.

So if someone asks, “What is your God’s schedule for the whole day?” say: there is no schedule. Whether they are satisfied or not is not the question. Is it our responsibility that they must be satisfied? The answer should be true; don’t worry about their satisfaction. Whoever worries about satisfying others weakens the truth of his answer, because then the focus becomes: “He must be satisfied.” And to satisfy the ignorant, you cannot avoid lying. To satisfy a fool, you must give a foolish answer. Don’t be concerned with satisfying anyone. No one is here to satisfy anyone else. We are not responsible for anyone. Each person is responsible for himself. You just speak the truth.

The simple truth is: there is no schedule here. You come in the morning to listen to me. Perhaps you think that because you come at eight, I speak at eight. You are mistaken. Because I speak at eight, you come at eight—remember this. I am not speaking because of your arrangement. This is the time when speaking happens; I call you. The day it doesn’t happen, I will tell you it doesn’t.

When sleep comes, I sleep; when speaking happens, I speak; when silence happens, I am silent. There is no duty. I am not doing you any service. Don’t fall into the illusion that I am serving you. This is my joy—like a flower that blooms from its own joy. If someone receives its fragrance, that’s another matter; if not, no harm. If speaking must happen in me, even if you are not here, I will speak—to the trees, to the birds.

Birds sing in the morning. Their song is as meaningless, as purposeless, as my speaking. I have no desire that you should change. To desire change in another is an effort to control the other. If change happens, fine; if not, all is well—it makes no difference. I speak out of my joy; you listen out of your joy. If something happens between these two, let it happen; if not, let it not happen. But remember: I have no schedule.

People come and ask me, “What is your mission?” Am I mad? Missions are for madmen. A mission means: do something for others, improve others, change others. Has anyone ever changed another? Has anyone ever been able to? I have no mission. I rejoice in my own joy. If it delights you to dance with me, dance; if it delights you to sit with me, sit. I am seated in my joy; you sit in yours. Do not do me a favor, and I am not doing you a favor. I have done you no service, and you have no need to serve me. You are in search of your own joy. If you get a glimpse near me, good; otherwise continue your journey.

There is no deal between us—not even a religious deal. I am not giving you anything. I am something. Out of what I am, there is no way to “give” it to you. But if, by being near, some resonance arises in you and your own nature begins to express itself, then the work is done.

Understand this a little. The day you find it, you will not feel, “He gave it.” You will feel, “In his presence, I came to know what was hidden in me.” Neither did I give nor did you take; simply in my presence you felt: if it can happen to one person, why not to me? Like a seed coming near a tree feels: if one seed became a tree, I too am a seed; I can become a tree. Let only this much realization happen. Even that I did not give; you took it yourself. How could I give? Who can give to whom?

In this world, each is to be himself. Each sits hiding the whole within. Merely seeing such an event in someone, you gain a sense of your own possibility, a small glimpse of your future appears in me—and that is enough. You set out on the journey.

No schedule.

It is natural that people ask, because they wish saints would serve them. Outwardly they say that they serve saints, but inwardly they want saints to serve them. I do not appear to be serving anyone. I have no program of social uplift and social transformation, because I do not believe in such foolishness.

Society will always remain as it is, because society is a crowd of the sleeping. From it a few can awaken. Those who awaken cease at once to be part of this society; they belong to another realm. The sleeping man and the awakened man are two different kinds of beings: one lost in dreams, the other risen into truth. Whatever truly happens in this world happens in the individual, not in the crowd, because the crowd has no soul.

I speak to you one by one, not to your crowd. What is there to say to a crowd? Is there even such a thing as a crowd? Each of you will get up and go; the crowd will be left behind—no one remains, the place is empty, a void. I speak to each of you directly. Community, society, nation—these are mere words; behind them there is nothing. And these words have created great trouble.

So I have no program, no mission, no desire to change anyone. I consider even that to be violence. The desire to change another is deep violence. Who am I to change you? It was my joy that I changed. It will be your joy that you change. And if you have decided not to change—if that is your joy—then my blessings. I have not the slightest wish to deviate you from your nature. Become that which you can become. Let there be not even the slightest obstruction because of me. Therefore I do not step into your path. Therefore I do not give you a discipline that will imprison you; I do not give you rules and rituals that will bind you. This is exactly what troubles people outside: that I do not give my disciples, my sannyasins, a specific code of conduct, a discipline, a mold, a propriety.

Propriety should come from your awareness. I give you awareness. And if I cannot give awareness and instead give propriety, then I am your enemy. That is exactly what other religions have done. They did not give you eyes; they gave you a stick to grope your way. I do not give you a stick; I give you eyes. Let you begin to see. Still, if you want to fall into a pit, then fall joyfully, fall while seeing. If your desire is to fall into a pit, perhaps that is God’s desire—let it happen. I only say this much: with eyes open, fall into the pit—fall while seeing. If someone can fall while seeing, there is no harm.

But I have never seen anyone fall into a pit while seeing. Who, having eyes, tries to pass through a wall?

I do not point out doors; I give you eyes. Understand this distinction very carefully. Those who pointed out doors have imprisoned you; they gave fixed rules—“Eat in the day, do not eat at night”—and it became a rigid thing. You eat in the day and avoid eating at night. But do you see any difference between one who eats in the day and one who eats at night? None. Some essential point has been missed.

He who told you not to eat at night did not intend a quarrel about day and night; he wanted you not to commit violence. When Mahavira told people not to eat at night, there was no light; only emperors and the very rich could have lamps. The poor slept and ate in darkness; insects would fall into the food. It was neither healthy nor clean, and it was violent. Mahavira said, “Do not eat at night,” but the meaning was: avoid violence.

Today there is electricity. You can have more light at night than in the day. There is no obstacle now. Yet you follow the rule: do not eat at night. And you have no concern about violence; do as much violence as you wish—do it in the day. Strain the water before drinking, but drink blood without straining! So you see a strange thing: you will find Jains more prone to anger than others, because no outlet is left for violence.

Psychologists have made deep studies and found a surprising fact: hunters, who go into forests and hunt animals, are simple-hearted people—because the violence gets released. Those who cut wood, fell trees, are also simple-hearted; in chopping, the urge to chop is discharged. Raise the axe and strike the tree—it brings as much relief as striking a neck might, and the mind becomes light.

But the person who neither chops wood nor hunts, who filters water all day, does not eat at night, and guards himself from every kind of violence—inside him a great anger accumulates. That is why you will not find monks more irascible than Jain monks. If you do not notice their anger, try provoking them a little; then you will know. Their very name may be something like “Shantinath”—Lord of Peace—but you will not find peace there.

Life is complex. It changes through awareness, not through rules. No revolution happens by walking like a blind man along fixed lines. Therefore I do not give you propriety; I give you only one propriety: the propriety of awareness. Live awake! Then do whatever seems right to you. And even that I do not want to impose upon you. It is simply that, living in that way, I have found joy, so I offer it. Perhaps someone will like it, find it fitting, pleasing. If it helps someone, good; if it helps no one, nothing is lost. It has helped me; my work is complete.

My happiness does not depend on your transformation; I am utterly happy. I am not waiting for you to change before I can be happy. Otherwise no one would ever be happy. I am happy. If you all attain bliss, attain God, my joy will not increase by even a fraction. And if you wander in hell, my joy will not decrease by even a fraction.

So I have nothing to gain or lose. It is just like this: on the road, if I see there is a pit nearby and you are going that way, I tell you: there is a pit ahead. If you wish to fall, fall while seeing; if you do not wish to fall, see and go on. And if the capacity to see arises, you will avoid not only this pit, you will avoid all the pits in the future.

If someone gives you a fixed rule, you may escape one pit—but how will you avoid the rest? You need open eyes.

There is no purpose. What I have to say is of use to all. It is not that what I have to say is only for one person; it is for everyone.

And then, after long experience with your “illnesses,” I have come to the conclusion that they are not different. If there are ten people and I give them separate chances to talk, each will take half an hour. The questions are the same—anger, sex, greed, disturbance, restlessness. If I give ten people half an hour each, that is five hours. If I seat the same ten together, the same questions are settled in half an hour.

For many years I did give private interviews. Then I found it was useless; there was no substance in it. People do not have separate questions. They cannot. Human illnesses are of the same kind—only the proportions vary a little. One is troubled a bit more by greed, another a bit more by anger; those are differences of degree. So now, discussing each person’s disease with him alone is unnecessary.

But I know people prefer to meet in private—for many reasons. I have told you why I don’t: it feels pointless to me; there is no need to waste time. Why do people want private meetings? First, because they are afraid to state their illness in front of others. If ten people are sitting there, you feel afraid—how can you say you are tormented by sexual desire? You want privacy.

Now that privacy is your problem, not mine. Why impose your problem on me? And if you are so frightened even to put your problem on the table, I don’t believe you will be able to solve it. Do such timid people ever solve problems? Those who cannot even bring them to light—how on earth will they resolve them? And what is the reason for your fear in admitting that you have a problem with sexual desire? It is ego. Outside, perhaps you are proclaiming that you are a celibate.

Monks and renunciates come to me—they want it absolutely private. They say, never in front of others. Because their problems are such that, if their disciples hear them, they will run away.

A Jain muni came to see me with ten or so disciples. As soon as he arrived he said, “In private!” I said, “These disciples are yours, not mine. Why hide from them? Had they been mine, there might be some reason to hesitate.”

“No,” he said, “it is better only in private.”

The disciples were sent outside. Then his questions were the same as any ordinary man’s. There was nothing to hide.

But he has built an image that he is a guru to many. And if the disciples find out that the revered swami too is troubled by sexual desire, they will look for another swami. If they hear that the swami still suffers greed and fear, that the swami still cannot meditate and thoughts keep running in his mind—then the disciple who has been fasting on the swami’s word, keeping vows, observing the Paryushan festival—his whole boat will begin to rock. “If even he has not attained peace yet, how will we attain peace by following him?”

So there is a business to protect; there is an ego, an image, to protect.

This is part of my diagnosis—and also part of the therapy: I tell you to present your problem in front of everyone as if no one were present. Half the disease will be cured just by this. Because the person who has gathered that much courage—to set down his image, to lay down his ego, to acknowledge his illness before people—he will feel half the weight lift immediately. In privacy it does not lift like that.

I also found that when someone reveals his illness before ten people, and those ten also reveal their illnesses before him, an understanding arises: this is the human condition. I am not something separate and special. People want to be special even in illness—“my illness is special, no one else has it.” The ego is so deranged it seeks distinction even in evil. And when you see that everyone has the same trouble, a deep sense of kinship arises with all humanity. Then you feel the question is not “my illness,” it is an illness in the whole of humanity. Half your burden falls right there. Because up to now you were hearing an inner voice of condemnation twenty-four hours a day—“I am bad, I am a sinner.” You come to know that you are not bad, you are not a sinner; you are simply human. Others are the same. All humans are like this.

This is a very revolutionary insight: the whole of humanity is afflicted by one kind of illness, gripped by one illness. From this your self-condemnation will lessen.

Second, compassion for human beings will arise—everyone is troubled in the same way. We are all in the same boat. There is no need to fight each other; we need to support each other. Our boat will sink together.

It is like this: I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was traveling by boat. Where he was seated, he began to make a hole. People shouted, “What are you doing?”

He said, “Mind your own spot. I paid for this place. If I make a hole here, I am not making it in your place. If we sink, we will sink because of our hole—why are you upset?”

But if there is one hole in the boat, the whole boat sinks. You are not sinking alone with your illness; your illness is linked, connected, to all humanity. If you rise, humanity rises with you; if you fall, humanity falls with you.

When you can clearly see the inner disease of all human beings, a great compassion arises. You feel tenderness for yourself, and for others; hardness melts. Then, seeing a thief or a dishonest person, you will not at once become violent and murderous. You will say, this is normal. This is hidden in every human being. Nothing very exceptional has happened. This person is worthy of forgiveness.

In courts, magistrates are sentencing thieves. If they could understand that the thief standing before them is the same thief that sits within them; that the one being punished and the one punishing are parts of the same humanity—and if the magistrate looks carefully, he too will see how many times he has stolen, by how many subtle routes. Perhaps his routes are more skillful; he is better educated, more clever. This other man is uneducated; he was caught, he could not save himself. He did not have the means to escape.

If it began to be seen that all humanity is in the same boat, the magistrate would find it difficult to punish. Perhaps he would want the person to be treated rather than hanged; to be supported, educated, given bread and livelihood. Because the magistrate would understand that the same human being who is hidden within me is hidden within him.

I have spoken with many kinds of people. I found that when I used to give private interviews, a different kind of crowd came—politicians, the wealthy, the socially respected, panchayat heads, mayors—the likes of these came, because: privacy! Now more simple, straightforward people come, who are not afflicted with the disease of ego. Those with the ego-disease get scared right there.

A government officer sought permission to come. I said, “By all means.” I was sitting outside in the garden, talking with ten or fifteen people about their questions. The gentleman came to the edge of the garden, stood for a moment and looked, then at once turned back. I sent someone to ask what happened.

He said, “I wanted to meet in private. I hold a high post. If people come to know that I too came there, and that I too have such small matters of the mind, illnesses, what will happen to my position? I can only come if there is privacy.”

So I found there is no point in meeting such egoists. If their ego does not crack even after coming to me, if they are not ready to let it break, my words will not reach them. The wall of ego will not let anything enter.

I also found that when you come and ask me a question directly about yourself—“I am afflicted by sexual desire, what should I do?”—you are so consumed by the question, so anxious, so distressed, that you cannot listen properly to what I say. But the ten others sitting there have the same question, and when I speak to you, they listen attentively. They have no anxiety; at that moment it is not “their” question. Unknowingly, they listen more calmly, more harmoniously, more patiently—“this is someone else’s question; what have I to do with it?” Though it is their question too, a human question. But what is heard in that calmness goes deep within. Then when I speak to them, you too listen—because then you are at ease; now you have no hassle.

I observed that when I speak to someone directly, it is hard for him to listen; when I speak to someone else, it is easier to listen, and things become clearer.

You must have experienced this too: if someone else is in trouble, you can give good advice; but when the same trouble befalls you, you forget your own advice.

For example, someone in another’s house dies. You go there and at once become a knower of the Self: “The soul is immortal. Why are you crying? What is the point? The body will remain, dust returns to dust; the soul has met the Supreme. Crying is useless. Everyone has to go.”

Tomorrow, when someone dies in your own house, you will not be able to say the same things to yourself. Perhaps the neighbor, to whom you had said it, will come and tell you, “Why are you crying? Why are you upset? The soul is immortal.”

Why is it easy to advise others? And why does the other receive good advice, though it is easy to give? Because you are not carrying your own anxiety; you are detached. From a detached standpoint, what is seen is clearer and cleaner. The tangle is not yours; it is the other’s. You stand at a distance; you are a mere witness.

So I also observed that when I am speaking to one person, others understand more. The one I am speaking to is upset. First he worries how to ask, whether to ask, whether to tell the whole thing. Somehow, flustered, he says it, and then he worries what people are thinking. He is so entangled that he cannot listen.

Therefore I have stopped private interviews altogether. I have seen that humanity as such is ill. This is not a personal illness, not a personal question. And I want to keep away from the egoists; better they do not come.

The ashram is not a marketplace; it is not open to the crowd. Here I am available to those few who genuinely want to be transformed. Sightseers, passersby—there is no purpose in their coming here. The invitation is only for those who have truly come close to transformation, for that small number.

Therefore there is privacy in every respect. And the privacy will increase. Because as I see that more of the unnecessary can be sifted out, I will sift them out—since they themselves gain nothing, and by their presence they do not let others gain either.

I have remained open to all for a long time and have seen what happens. I found that the crowd of the pointless becomes so thick that the meaningful person gets no chance at all. The merely curious surround so much that the true inquirer is left standing at the back. The mumukshu—the one who longs for liberation—is humble. He says, “When I get a chance, I will ask.” He never gets the chance. Those who have come to ask all kinds of rubbish stand in front—the newspapermen, the journalists—they push to the front. I have gotten rid of all that.

The whole reason for the privacy is simply this: now I want to have a deep dialogue only with those—only those—who are utterly ready to change; who have looked into life and found nothing; in whose thousand desires I am not one more desire; who have dropped those thousand desires and now have just a single longing—to be with me. I am only for them. That is why there is privacy. And the privacy will increase, because there is no point in taking in the rubbish. It does not benefit even the one who brings it; it only wastes time. And those whom I could benefit are left deprived.

The ashram belongs neither to India, nor to China, nor to Japan; the ashram belongs to human beings. It is an international fraternity. And perhaps people don’t really understand what “foreign” means. When they use the word, it sounds as if “Foreign” were the name of a single country. Leaving India aside, the whole world becomes “foreign.”

In the world, one out of six people is Indian; the same ratio should prevail in this ashram too—out of six, one Indian. Only then is it an international fraternity. In fact, the Indian proportion here is a little higher than it should be. That too is natural, because India is close to the ashram; England is a little farther away.

Remember, the ashram is not India’s. It may be in India, but it is not India’s—nor England’s, nor America’s. India may be near, America a little far; but as far as the ashram is concerned, it has nothing to do with being Indian or American.

The ashram does not put its faith in politics. Dividing the world into countries is the province of politics. “This is India, this is Pakistan, this is China”—these are political boundaries. And if religion also accepts such boundaries, I call that politics, not religion.

So here the ratio will be this: if there are six people, one will be Indian and five will be from abroad. And “abroad” is not a single country. The proportion of Indians is more than needed—and that too is natural: it is easier for them to come; they are nearby.

An international fraternity—a small family—is settling here, will continue to settle here, in which there will be no Indian and no foreigner; no “ours” and no “others.” The ashram is small, but today it is difficult to find another place on earth where people of all races, all religions, all nations meet, and where the confluence happens without any discrimination.

At the U.N.O. people meet, but like enemies. That is no fraternity. That is no friendship. Even when a hand is extended there, it is conditional—there is a condition behind it. Here all discrimination has been erased. Here there is an effort to create a confluence, to create a place of pilgrimage.

But Indians—especially those outside the ashram—may feel: why are there foreigners?

Your eyes are blind. You don’t see the human being; you see only native/foreign, white/black. You don’t see the inner soul, which has nothing to do with any country. Here are seekers of the divine. Here there are no communists, no non-communists, no socialists, no Chinese, no Indians, no Pakistanis; here are people who have set out in search of God, ready to lose themselves. In that, they are ready to lose their country too, their caste too, their religion too.

Naturally, people with political minds outside will be troubled; they will see all this as an obstacle. But we are not responsible for their difficulty. They should make their minds a little lighter, a little clearer. Do not make any effort to satisfy them. Tell them exactly what is true. Whether they are satisfied or not is up to them.

This is indeed something to ponder. Ordinarily, in ashrams you see elderly women—old, lame, maimed, that sort of thing. Typically, women go to ashrams only when the world offers them no other way. Ashrams have been like junkyards: when someone’s life seems to have no use left, they are thrown there.

You won’t find beautiful women in ashrams, because a beautiful woman is not interested in religion; she has plenty of juice in life. Plain or ugly women become interested in religion because life doesn’t taste sweet to them, and they themselves have little zest for life. With nothing else left, they surround the ashrams.

Once, in a town, I was a guest in a home. There was an All-India Women Poets’ Conference. The family would go and kept urging me to come along. I said, I’m not interested. But if you’re going, keep one thing in mind: find out how many poetesses are there and how many of them are beautiful—then report back to me. They asked, Why? I said, Come back and we’ll see. They returned and said, There are eleven poetesses. But you won’t believe it—none of them are beautiful! I said, No beautiful woman writes poetry; she herself is poetry—what would she write! When a woman is ugly, she creates some mischief. Generally, if a woman is beautiful and healthy, that is enough; she doesn’t need to do anything else. She won’t do social service, won’t write poetry, won’t sit in an ashram, won’t enter politics—none of that concerns her.

So their objection is natural, because they have seen ashrams of the lame, crippled, and blind, not of the healthy and beautiful.

But here we are experimenting with beauty itself. My view is that religion became crippled because of the ugly, the ungraceful, the lame and the crippled. The ashram should welcome the vibrant. Religion is a festival. The best should gather there. This doesn’t mean others should not come; but if they do, they should remain secondary, not become dominant. The song of life should be primary there; the note of death should not drown it out. And if death comes, let it remain hidden behind life. That’s why I favor beauty, I favor youth.

Even so, understand this too: there are as many women here as men, not more. And that is the right balance. Any mosque in which you see only men offering namaz is a false mosque—what happened to the women? It cannot be true.

The Jains say that liberation cannot happen in a female form; it happens only in a male form. This is men’s politics; it has nothing to do with religion. What has liberation to do with man or woman? Is liberation of the soul or of the body? That would reduce it to a question of bodily frames—bones, flesh, and marrow. Since when does the soul have gender?

Wherever life flowers and wherever it is balanced, men and women will always be present in equal measure. They should be. I don’t want this ashram to become a men’s club, nor a women’s club. Here the proportion of women and men should be equal. And wherever feminine and masculine energies are equal, a certain music arises that cannot arise otherwise.

Have you ever noticed? If ten men sit in a room, a certain dryness pervades. Let one woman enter—and a freshness comes in, a gust of breeze arrives. Ten men become rough. Ten men are like one kind of electricity that repels itself. You have seen magnets: negative repels negative, positive repels positive. Negative and positive come close, draw nearer. Closeness and intimacy happen.

The ratio of men to women is the same all over the earth. When the divine honors that proportion, we represent the same in this ashram, not something different. That will be our ratio.

And why are there young, beautiful, healthy people here? There should be. Until now, people have taken religion to be the last thing to do at the time of death. I take it to be the very foundation of life. When you are young, full of energy—then pray; only then will your prayer soar to its loftiest heights. When your breath is faltering and your body is decrepit, you may say “Ram-Ram,” but that sound will not travel beyond the bones of your heart.

This does not mean I tell the elderly not to come. It means that only those elderly will come to me who, in some sense, are still young. If you see a young person in other ashrams, you will find a dead young man—someone who has become old before his time, and that is why he has landed there; otherwise he would have no place there.

Understand this distinction clearly. Even the elderly will come to me only when, in some sense, they are young and have not lost the energy of life. Otherwise no connection will be possible between them and me. My words will not appeal to them. Only the youthful capacity within will resonate with what I say. And if in other ashrams you find a young man, you will find a dead young man; for some reason he has become old before time, that’s why he has reached there—otherwise he has no place there.

So far, religion has been the last part of life; I want to make it the first. And I want to adorn religion with the beauty of life, the poetry of life, and the glory of life. Therefore whatever you see here is absolutely natural. And if it raises questions in you, it is only because your mind is tainted and filled with very unnatural notions.

Absolutely true. Trees bear flowers; women bear children. They should. We are not here to make women barren, nor do we have any desire to emasculate men. Our concern is to make the current of their lives as right, as harmonious, as musical as possible. We have no idea of severing anyone from life; our vision is to dedicate life itself, in its totality, to the divine.

A sannyasini should have children. They will be beautiful children—more beautiful than those of an ordinary woman; they will come out of meditation, out of samadhi, out of deep inner joy. The world will be more beautiful. It is not a question of laying waste to the world; it is a question of filling it with a greater fragrance of the divine.

People’s objection is natural. By “sannyasins” they mean the barren—those on whom no flowers bloom, no fruits ripen. My sannyasins are of a different kind—like trees that blossom and bear fruit. You never praise a tree by saying, “It bears no blossoms and no fruit—what a great tree!”

Perfectly natural. There is no aspiration here to go against nature. If nature itself leads someone into celibacy—fine, blessed! If nature leads someone into marriage, into love—blessed! Good fortune!

Sannyas means living with naturalness.

And the last question:

Ask Lakshmi about Lakshmi. That’s all for today.