Samadhi Kamal #3

Yes. It is the very craving to eat that makes eating unbalanced. How much food is actually needed is put aside, and the relish of eating becomes more important. Very few of us feed the body; most of us feed the tongue. Taste is not a requirement of the body; taste is the mind’s lust. And because of taste we overeat. If you act a little consciously, this won’t happen. Be a little more aware and keep the simple remembrance that what you eat should be beneficial for the body as well as agreeable to the mind; it is not as difficult as we imagine.

And if the desire to eat more arises, it is better to chew much more. Then you will eat for a longer time. After all, what pleasure can there be in eating for half an hour? For half an hour one keeps experiencing taste. So the amount of food you finish in fifteen minutes, chew over half an hour. You will have the relish of eating for half an hour, and the benefits will be many. The food, being well-chewed, will be digestible; it will not make the stomach heavy; in a smaller quantity your body will receive more nourishment; the body will be healthier. And food that makes the body healthier becomes a support in quieting the mind. If the body is in a perfectly healthy state, the mind’s becoming quiet is easy, not difficult. Much of the mind’s restlessness has physical causes.

As for what Tarachandra-bhai asked: it is possible that yesterday things did not go well for him. Two reasons are possible: first, he ate too much; and in the evening he also walked too much. That fatigue will also be harmful.

Let there be right diet, and let there also be right exercise. Right (samyak) exercise means you exert yourself only to the point where the exertion does not give you a sense of fatigue. The moment labor begins to produce a feeling of tiredness, understand that the body is not willing to work beyond that limit. If exercise is not right, there will be discomfort and obstacles in meditation. If there is no exercise at all, there will be obstacles; if there is excess, there will also be obstacles. Samyak means: perfectly balanced, exactly in the middle, the mean.

One who does no labor at all will have a certain laziness hanging over his body and mind; that laziness will be a hindrance. One who exerts too much will have a certain fatigue in body and mind; that fatigue will be a hindrance. If you have done no labor all day, you won’t sleep at night; and if you have overexerted, you won’t sleep either. In both situations rest is obstructed, and likewise meditation is obstructed.

So let there be right diet, right exercise, and right sleep.

Right sleep will mean something different for each person—just as right diet and right exercise will differ. In our country there is a bad notion regarding sleep—at least in the minds of seekers. They think sleep is a sin; the less taken, the better. This is wrong. Neither is too much sleep good. If there is too much sleep, the result will be a lack of freshness through the day; the body will feel slack, the head heavy. And if there is too little sleep, that deficiency will try to complete itself throughout the day, and you will feel drowsy.

Some people just told me they fell asleep in meditation. Sleep can come in meditation only when your sleep has been deficient; otherwise it cannot. If you slept too little at night, then when you sit to meditate—body relaxed, mind quiet—the very first thing that will happen is that sleep will come. Because these two are needed for sleep as well: the body relaxed and the mind a little quiet. If the mind is very agitated, full of worries, sleep disappears. If there are many tensions in the body, sleep disappears. These two qualities are essential for sleep, and they are also needed for meditation. These two initial steps are the same for both. So the one whose sleep is lacking will, after these two steps, immediately move toward sleep. But the one whose sleep is complete will not go into sleep; he will then be able to enter meditation. The preliminary stages are the same; the final state is different. In sleep, with the body relaxed and the mind quiet, a kind of stupor comes. In meditation, with the body relaxed and the mind quiet, wakefulness arises. The difference at the end is between wakefulness and stupor.

Therefore sleep too should be right. And each person should determine for himself—by experimenting for a few days—how much sleep he needs. Children will sleep eighteen to twenty hours; then it will keep decreasing; then it remains ten to twelve hours; later eight hours; and in old age it comes down to four or five hours. So your notion that sleeping less is good is also wrong; if you begin to sleep less in youth, old age will arrive early—that is a symptom of old age. Never, even by mistake, attempt to sleep less. Religious people, once they become keen on religion, start doing this—and even feel proud: “I sleep three hours, four hours; I sleep only five hours. I am accomplishing something great.” They are simply being foolish.

The body’s need for sleep decreases when the formation of new cells stops. A child sleeps eighteen or twenty hours; in the mother’s womb he sleeps twenty-four hours. At that time construction is happening in the body; all energies are engaged in building—there is no time to be awake. As the body’s constructive forces wane and the destructive forces intensify—more cells break and fewer are formed—sleep keeps decreasing. In old age, cells break but are not formed; hence sleep vanishes. So sleep becoming less is not a good sign.

But sleep can lessen for another reason as well. Do not reduce sleep; take as much as seems necessary for you. At least seven hours—at least that much is necessary for everyone. At most eight hours, at the least six hours; generally, not less than this and not more than this. If you have lived the twenty-four hours rightly and in order, it may happen that your sleep completes itself in six hours; after six hours you feel no reason to keep lying there. That means you are so quiet and so well-ordered that not many cells are breaking, and thus your sleep has lessened a little. Little sleep is not necessary; but if, through meditation and a peaceful way of living, your sleep decreases a little, there is no harm. If you force it to decrease, there is harm. And in this century in particular, three or four of our things have come under attack. I said: right exercise, right diet, and right sleep. Our civilization has broken all three.

Sleep has been struck hard. We behave as if sleep were unnecessary, something to be taken if time remains. Our scientific inventions are mostly opposed to sleep—cinema, radio, and so on. Our civilization and culture are also against sleep—as if the world begins only after evening. You work all day, and after evening the world begins. You remain engaged late into the night, and in such activities that put great strain on the eyes—reading or watching films. Because of this pull and tension, even when you go to sleep the nerves within the eyes remain taut; they will not let you sleep.

This century is the most afflicted with insomnia. And you can gauge how “civilized” a country is by this: the more its people sleep less, the more civilized it is. America is the most civilized country because there insomnia is most prevalent. For hundreds of people—numbers increasing daily—it has become impossible to sleep without medication. A time will come, when we are all utterly civilized, that no one will be able to sleep without drugs.

Because our civilization runs contrary to nature, our whole life is becoming disordered. Sleep has been badly hit. We have forgotten to value it—as if it were nonessential, to be taken only if there is time. I say it is the most essential thing and it must be right.

So let your sleep be right and balanced; let your food be right and balanced; and let your exercise also be balanced and right.

Exercise has been snatched from us too. Today there are two kinds of people: those who only labor and are troubled by the excessive burden of work; and those who do no labor and are troubled because there is no burden of work at all. If socialism brings any one benefit to the world, in my view it will be the equal distribution of labor. Whatever other benefits there may be, at least labor should be evenly distributed. Some are pained and oppressed by toil—life is drained by work. Others are pained and oppressed by rest—life is drained by idleness. Balance is broken on both sides. You should maintain this balance in your life. If you want to move into meditation very swiftly, maintaining this balance is of great value.

These three things will greatly support you. Let me add one more point—that each of these three has a gross meaning, which I have told you, and also a subtle meaning.

Take right diet, for example. Ordinarily we take diet to mean food, but there is a subtler meaning too: whatever we take in through the senses is all diet. Through the eyes we take forms—that is diet. Through the ears we hear sound—that is diet for the ears. Form is diet for the eyes. By touch, the hands take in impressions—that is diet for the hands. Diet means: whatever enters me through the senses. Food, of course, is diet; but so are all these. If these too become right, meditation will gain astonishing momentum. If, with the eyes, you see only that which is worth seeing and do not see what is not worth seeing, you will find great progress in meditation. With the ears, hear only what is worth hearing; do not hear what is not worth hearing—and great peace will come into your life.

As of now we make no distinction between what is worth seeing and what is not. We go on seeing everything. We don’t bother about what is worth hearing and what is not—we hear everything. If someone throws garbage into my house, I will quarrel; but if someone throws garbage into my ears, I do not quarrel at all.

From morning I have been watching: all around, each person is putting something or other into someone else’s ears. It is astonishing! And you sit there happily tolerating it: “Go on, keep putting it in; I’m sitting here.” That becomes the ear’s diet. Do you think you are free once it is put in? You are not. After it is put in, you will churn it; it will run in your mind and trouble you. And we are so eager to put anything into each other’s ears! If it had any value for us, some value would have come into our life; but we are all enemies of each other’s ears.

It is astonishing: you will read the newspaper; having read it you have already erred, and then you will put it into someone else’s mind. You erred by giving your eyes the wrong diet; now you will spend the day propagating what has entered your mind. There are three billion people in the world—and imagine how many are after each person! One poor fellow—how much capacity do his ears have to listen! He is listening twenty-four hours. Then you add to it; then there are speeches in the streets, politicians, journals, magazines, newspapers, posters, radio—all twenty-four hours. This diet, once it goes inside, will create restlessness and disturbance; it weakens your energy. What will happen if you read a newspaper? Ninety percent of it is such that it would not have mattered at all if you had not known it.

So my point is: the ear too needs a right diet. Listen only as much as seems useful to you; then ask to be excused and bring it to a close. Because my mind is not a garbage dump that you can keep throwing anything into.

We have made it exactly a garbage dump. And we don’t stop anyone. And it isn’t part of our civility either that we... I consider this the mark of a civilized person: that he does not shove anything into another’s mind by force. Unless the other invites him—“Please come and put it in”—he should be kind enough to ask, “May I put something into your mind? Are you willing, or not?”

From morning till evening I watch—people are at it on all sides. What are you doing? Twenty-four hours you are talking—twenty-four hours you are talking. What is the point? Why are you talking? Are you saying anything of meaning to anyone? Can you remember ever having said anything meaningful in your life?

There was a monk in the South, living in his master’s ashram. A very great scholar came. The monk got into a debate with him. The master sat listening. When the debate ended and the scholar left completely harassed and defeated, the young man looked at his master with great pride, expecting perhaps a pat on the back. The master said, “I am amazed that you could go on talking such nonsense for so long. And I ask you: have you ever in your life said even a single thing that was of any use? And if you haven’t, then be alert from now on!”

He looked back over his life; he couldn’t recall having said anything that was meaningful, something that needed to be said, without which something in this world would have gone wrong. In that very instant he fell silent.

The master asked him, “Do you understand?”
He said nothing.
The master said, “Why don’t you speak?”
He never spoke again. He lived another forty years, and he did not speak. People said to the master, “He seems completely mad. He has gone silent.”
The master said, “If there were a few more such madmen in the world, the world would become a much better place.”

I am not telling you to become mad to that extent. But if even a little understanding arises in you, please, do not pour useless talk into another’s ears, and do not allow others to pour useless talk into your ears. It is more immoral than throwing garbage into each other’s houses; it is more ill-mannered than throwing peels on the street. What you are doing is very costly—and utterly futile.

So let there be a right diet for the ear, and for the eyes as well. Through the eyes too you go on with useless things. I see you walking along the road—why are you reading the posters pasted on the cinema walls? Or I noticed, a lady was traveling with me the other day: every car that went ahead, she would read its number. I asked her, “Why do you read these numbers?” She said, “It’s just become a habit.”

Would you call this being conscious of what you are doing? What purpose does it serve? You are feeding the eyes the wrong diet. And if it goes inside and then troubles you, whose responsibility is it? Better to open the eyes only when there is a need; if not, let them stay closed—what special need is there! You are sitting on a journey—why keep your eyes open idly? Close them. You get a spare moment at the shop—why are you staring at the street? What is the point? Close the eyes for a little while. For that time the eyes won’t be fed; they will rest. For that time at least the eyes will be in meditation. When someone is speaking uselessly, just close your ears, become silent; for that time at least the ears will be at rest.

If we give our senses the right nourishment—after all, it is from these very senses that our mind is made.

Whatever we accumulate is what our mind is made of. The mind is the collector for our senses. What we take in through the senses gets stored there. Then that becomes the cause of our peace or our restlessness. So I say: be alert to the diet of each of your senses. If you truly wish to go deep into meditation, all this will be supportive. It will provide the background, and you will be able to enter very swiftly. This I have said concerning right diet.

Right sleep has a deeper meaning as well. Ordinarily, sleep means that at night we leave the whole body to rest; the subtler meaning is that during the day we should not keep tense those parts we are not actually using.

I see a man writing in an exam. He is writing with his hand; at most the thumb and finger should bear the strain. But his legs are taut, his neck is stiff, his arms are rigid. Why are you straining all this? There is no need. You are expending unnecessary labor that has no meaning. Exert the part that is needed; let the other parts remain quiet.

Try this as an experiment. You are riding a bicycle: the whole body does not need to be under pressure—only the legs are enough to move it. So let the legs do the work; let the rest of the body be at ease. You will be surprised: when you ride with your whole body tense, you tire within a mile; now you will ride ten miles and not tire. Because you were taking a great deal of needless labor from the body—unnecessary labor.

Are you understanding what I am saying? If, out of the twenty-four hours, one organ is working, let the other organs go to sleep. Do not keep them awake; that is, do not make them work. Work only with what is needed; that is enough. The result will be that a source of energy is created within you. A human being has immense energy, but he has made many holes; through them it all leaks away. At the end of life we find we are like an empty drum, with nothing inside. In the end you discover you are an empty tin with nothing within. When you were born you came with a great source, but life went so wrongly that everything kept diffusing, leaking away day by day. Your vast power keeps getting wasted in very petty things. There is almost nothing you do in which energy is not lost. So do only as much as is necessary; let the rest be at rest. This too is included in right sleep: let it rest. After finishing one task, it is much better to leave yourself for two moments in complete rest, and then begin the next task.

In the 1942 movement, when Gandhi-ji was arrested: after he returned from a meeting to the place where he was staying, Mahadev Desai said to him, “Bapu, it won’t be long before the police arrive and arrest you.” Mahadev’s hands and feet were trembling. Everyone was trembling, everyone was anxious. And Gandhi-ji said, “Then I should take a little rest till they come. They’ll be here any moment. After a day-long meeting, I’m tired; let me take a short nap till then.”

Mahadev writes in his diary: I was so astonished—Is this man a man or something else! At such a moment, a nap? How does this even occur to him? And Gandhi lay down and began to nap. Before the police arrived, he wanted to take a nap. Could you do that? If you cannot, you do not know the meaning of right sleep.

The police came; Gandhi-ji, having taken his nap, was ready, he washed his hands and face. The police arrived with a warrant. Everyone was anxious—deeply anxious—because he had ignited such a great revolution; perhaps the rulers might not even let him live, or perhaps there would be a very long imprisonment; who knew whether one would ever meet him again. And Gandhi-ji said, “It’s time for my lemon; squeeze the lemon.”

This is what I call right sleep. It means the man is utterly at rest; all the trouble is not pulling him, not upsetting him.

He drank his lemon and sat in the car. The car began to move and everyone stood there in tears, not knowing what to ask. Someone asked, “Do you have any final message to give?”

He said, “I have given the message all my life. And when I’m no longer outside, what value has my message? Those who are outside will give it. One thing, though: this morning Ghanshyamdas—Birla—took goat’s milk from the ashram; six paise remain due from him. Collect them and deposit them.”

This is what I call a mind in rest. In the midst of such revolution, such conflagration, the whole country about to burn—yet: “Ghanshyamdas took goat’s milk worth six paise; deposit it.”

When Socrates was dying and the cup of poison was placed in his hand, his friends asked, “Any final words?”

Socrates said, “Final? What was my first is also my last. But I had bought a six-anna chicken from Achiliyat, and I could not pay him. So, my friends, gather the money and pay him. He is a stranger; at the time of death, it’s acceptable to leave a burden on friends, not on a stranger.”

The cup of poison is in his hand. He had bought a six-anna chicken and not paid. At the moment of death, when the poison is being given to you, would you remember? Such memory is only possible when the mind is unagitated, thought-free, at rest. In that moment of rest, whatever has been forgotten is quietly grasped.

So by right sleep I mean right relaxation. It is a twenty-four-hour affair, not just a matter of sleeping at night. Whenever you get a moment, loosen up a little. In that little loosening you will regenerate a great deal of energy. It will awaken again; you will become alert again. And if you keep doing this through the day, always, you will find that when you sit to meditate you have great energy.

In the same way, right exercise has its meaning. The broader meaning I have given you—let our exertion be right, be balanced. Look more deeply: whatever labor you do—on the mental plane or the physical—let it always be right; never let it slip into excess. If it goes to excess, it will be harmful.

A prince named Shron was ordained with the Buddha. He was raised in great luxury, had never seen sorrow, had never walked barefoot on the road. He became a mendicant; he had to wear rags and walk barefoot. But the Buddha was amazed to see that while other monks walked on the proper path, he would deliberately walk where thorns lay. And when his feet bled and blisters formed, he felt pride in it. He took it to be austerity, renunciation. In three months he withered into skin and bone. He had been very handsome, fair; he turned dark and dried up.

One day the Buddha went to him and said, “I want to ask you something. I have heard that when you were a prince you were very skilled at playing the veena. Tell me: if the strings of the veena are too loose, does music arise?”

He said, “If the strings are too loose, how can music arise? They won’t even sound.”

“And if the strings are too tight,” asked the Buddha, “does music arise?”

Shron said, “If they are too tight, they will snap; then too, there will be no sound.”

The Buddha said, “I have come to tell you that the rule of the veena is the rule of life. If the strings are too loose, they are useless; if the strings are too tight, they become useless. There is a state of the strings where they are neither loose nor tight. That state in which you can neither call them loose nor tight—that is where music arises. And in life too, music arises where there is balance, where you do not go to extremes on either side.”

Now I see: a man overeats, and then one day he fasts. Both are insanities. One man keeps overeating, then one day he goes on a fast.

No, I do not tell you to be without food, nor to overeat. I tell you: right diet. The overeating you did was one mistake, and the fasting you are now doing is another mistake—another excess. It is a regular rule of life that one who errs at one extreme immediately goes to the other extreme. One who is excessively sexual—if ever he makes the other mistake, he will adopt celibacy instantly. He can only err. One who is very fond of food—if ever he makes the other mistake, he will become foodless. One who was very indulgent—if he errs, he immediately goes into renunciation.

Neither indulgence is self-restraint, nor renunciation is self-restraint. Self-restraint is the state of the mind in which you have no taste for either indulgence or renunciation. In that moment a music begins to arise within you, a balance begins to be born.

By right exercise I mean: in any direction of life do not go to such an excess that it loosens your strings, or tightens them so much that you break. Remember: keep the strings in the middle so that music can arise. In these three words—right diet, right exercise, and right sleep—I understand the whole of life.

Yesterday someone asked: What should the daily regimen be?

Those who asked should understand: let your way of living be like this. If, with this way of living at the center, you cultivate meditation, it will grant immeasurable bliss—and you will have a momentum.

My point is: compared with bad literature, reading does of course appear good. One man is reading a film’s storyline and another is reading the Ramayana. On the surface it does seem proper to say that reading the Ramayana is better and the film story is useless. But truly—do you think there is anything essentially different in the film story and in the Ramayana’s story? The same triangle: two lovers and one beloved. The same quarrel between two lovers over one beloved, the same battle and commotion. What is it after all? What is that story about? What does it contain? Yes, in that love-story many edifying sermons have been inserted. The plot is of love, the uproar stands on love, it stands on the tug-of-war over a beloved—yet inside it lofty ideals are inserted. And you think that reading it makes it “good literature.”

As I see it, you cannot even recognize good literature until something good is born within you. Until then everything is merely “literature”—there is no real good or bad. One man will memorize a film plot; another will memorize the Ramayana’s verses—and both are junk until the awareness of the Good is born within. You will begin to repeat them; those couplets will stick in your memory just as film songs stick in some people’s minds. There is no difference. In fact there is a danger here which does not exist for the reader of bad literature: he won’t have ego, while you will. You will have the ego that “I am knowledgeable in the Ramayana, the Gita, and such-and-such scriptures.” The poor fellow reading pulp will at least feel afraid that people might find out what he reads; you, on the contrary, will want two or four people to pass by and see what noble literature you are reading.

No, I am not saying don’t read the Ramayana. I am only saying that, as your mind is right now, whatever you collect will be almost rubbish. If you must read, then yes, read the Ramayana or the Gita—take it as a necessary evil. Understand me well: a necessary evil. If you have to read and won’t settle without reading, better than detective novels read the Ramayana, read the Gita—but take it as a necessary evil, a concession to a mind that won’t yet listen.

But if there is understanding, even that concession is unnecessary. If you do not stuff the mind with this kind of thought and keep the mind empty and innocent, guileless, then something else will begin to descend upon you—that which is real knowing. If you want to give it a chance to come, do not block your mind with this trash; leave it empty. Then Truth will descend within you. And then you will be able to discern literature—what is true and what is false. At present, in the matter of literature, you cannot even distinguish truth from untruth. That discernment will arise when the mind is perfectly silent and truth has been felt; then you will see truth and falsehood in literature.

But until then, if the mind simply won’t rest without reading—our entire education has trained us to read—if that is your condition, that you must read something, then it is better to read what you feel is noble and religious. Only keep one thing in mind: it should not nourish your ego.

Otherwise it is hard to find anyone more conceited than a “religious” person. His ego is razor-sharp, very keen—because he goes to the temple, sometimes fasts, turns his beads every day. I am amazed how our religiosity manages only to nourish the ego, while true religiosity begins exactly where the ego dissolves.

So, if what you take to be good literature does not feed your ego, consider it right nourishment and read it. If it feeds your ego, consider it wrong nourishment; reading it will not benefit you, it will harm you. Do you understand? While reading, your state of mind will determine whether what you are taking in is right or not. If your state of mind is such that it swells your pride…

Rumi, a Sufi fakir, once told his young son, “Come with me every morning to the mosque and pray.” For two or three days the boy went. It was winter; people slept late. After five or six days, as they were returning, the boy said to Rumi, “Look how sinful people are—they’re still asleep!” Rumi there and then prayed, “O God, I have made a great mistake bringing him to the mosque. When he slept at home at least he didn’t consider anyone a sinner.”

So that mosque-going became wrong; it became a sin. If going to a mosque or a temple makes others appear to you as sinners, then not going would have been better, would have been right. If we observe carefully, we will see our religiosity makes us behave exactly like this.

Perhaps you have no desire to be a saint at all; the real relish is in calling others unholy. Do you want the thrill of condemning others? Then become a “saint”! There will be great relish in slander and condemnation; in calling others sinners and sensualists. And the very imagination that others will rot in hell will give you pleasure.

I am saying only this, just a little thing: it depends on your inner disposition, your grip. If your disposition is such that it makes you more simple within, then whatever you read will become right nourishment for you. It may even happen that a film story, a detective novel, becomes right nourishment for you.

A fakir lived for a long time with a thief. People said, “You live with him? What bad company! You, a holy man, staying in a thief’s hut!” He replied, “From this thief I have learned what I never learned from any saint.” They asked, “What could you possibly learn from a thief? He’s the one who needs to learn! What did you learn?” He said, “I learned many things; this man changed my life—he is my guru. The first night I stayed with him I noticed amazing things. First, his work begins when everyone else has fallen asleep. I learned from him: the work of seeking God should not fall under anyone’s eye; it is theft of the Divine. Let no one notice it—otherwise you’ll be caught, and the whole thing will be ruined. I learned that my practice should be when the whole world sleeps; it should be such that no one knows. The craving to be known is an obstacle in practice. The urge that people should come to know that I meditate, that I do this and that—you are no seeker then; you are searching for new ornaments for your ego. You had a big house, fine furniture; now one ornament was missing: that you are religious and even God is in your possession. That will complete your vanity.

“Second, I saw that on some nights he went and came back—couldn’t get in. Next night he went again—couldn’t get in—returned. Guards were posted; the way was lit; voices inside the house. But he didn’t stop going. I said to myself: perfect! Many times I go within and cannot enter; I fail to break the lock. This thief keeps trying; I too must keep trying. I kept trying.

“Third, everyone told him, ‘Stop this! What madness!’ Everyone told me too, ‘Give up this God nonsense!’ He never gave up. I said, then I too will not give up. From him I learned three things that I learned from no saint. In his company I received what I found nowhere else.”

So I can tell you: the company of a thief can be satsang (holy company), and the company of a saint can be bad company. It depends on your inner disposition.

Therefore, what literature you read is not, in my view, the crucial question. It depends on your inner disposition—what is it doing to you? Stay a little alert to what it is doing to you.

I see simple, straightforward people going to sadhus; they come back with a few parroted phrases and return more complicated. They were simple people with no conceit of knowing; after a month or two with a sadhu they come back full of the conceit of knowing. They get busy instructing and correcting others; they become argumentative and insistent. I would say they have returned from bad company, not from satsang.

So nourishment—or anything else—depends greatly on your inner disposition. If that disposition is kept in view, then whatever you do will become right.

Understand it this way: I had spoken of three things; now let me say it in one: right attitude encompasses all three. One who has the right attitude will sleep rightly, eat rightly, walk rightly, read rightly, listen rightly. So take those three things I spoke of separately and understand them in a single word: Right Attitude. Or if you like Mahavira’s term—Right Vision (samyak drishti). What difference does the word make! If your vision is right, everything becomes right. If your vision is not right, everything is wrong. Keep a little watch on that; it will be useful.

There are many questions… “How are life’s duties and responsibilities to be carried out properly?”

If you have understood me since yesterday, I will say: if you are right, all your duties and responsibilities will be carried out properly. If you are not right, try as hard as you will, spend your whole life—you will neither fulfill duties nor carry responsibilities.

Don’t think about what you are doing; think about what you are. If you are right, whatever issues from you will be right. If you are wrong, whatever issues cannot be right. My entire emphasis is on you—not so much on your behavior.

Do not take this to mean that I give no value to behavior. I value it greatly. But I see that since behavior issues from you, it cannot be other than you. If inside you is darkness, your conduct will be dark. You will not be able to fulfill your duties. You will be under the illusion that you have fulfilled them; those towards whom you think you have fulfilled them will complain you have not. You will think you are giving love; the one to whom you are “giving” will have no sense that he has received love. His complaint will be that he has not received love.

Do you not experience this daily? In your family, do you not see that you think you are honoring your father, while your father feels there is no son more disrespectful? You think you love your wife, and she thinks it is misfortune that there is no trace of love. Is this not the perpetual complaint in all your relationships? When people say to you, “We love you,” do you feel that they love you?

It cannot be otherwise. You create the illusion that you will fulfill duty—but it cannot happen. You think you will “give love”—but if love is not within you, how can you give it? Before you offer it, it must exist within. You lay plans to give, but you don’t possess it; whatever you give will not be love but something else. You may remain in the illusion that it was love, but how will the other remain in your illusion?

Our whole life stands on great illusions. The greatest illusion is that we want to give others what we do not possess: not reverence, not love, not respect, not sympathy, not pity, not compassion—yet these are exactly what we want to give. Not even service do we truly have. These counterfeit coins do not pass, and life gets spoiled. Others hand us the same counterfeits. So a person suffers a double discontent: the sorrow of not being able to give what he wanted to give, and the sorrow of not getting what he wanted to receive. Life turns into grief.

You will be amazed: if love arises within you, you will not only give to those you wished to give, but a double event occurs with love: the power to give appears and the desire to demand disappears. One who has love—what would he ask from anyone: “Give me love”? We all crave love because we lack it; the lack bites, so we ask it of others. We want someone to give us love. Why? Because inside there is no love, hence the begging from others. The joke is that those from whom we beg also have none—they are begging elsewhere. We are all beggars gathered together, mistaking one another for kings.

A Muslim fakir, Farid, lived in Akbar’s time. The people of his village said, “The emperor respects you. Ask him to open a school in our village.” Farid said, “If I go, I’ll ask.” He went to Delhi, to Akbar’s palace. He was shown in with honor. “The emperor is at prayer now,” they said. Farid said, “I’ll see what prayer he offers.” He stood behind him in his private mosque. When Akbar finished and rose, he prayed, “O Heavenly Father, give me more wealth, more riches, expand my dominion!” Farid turned back. Akbar saw him descending the steps and said, “You came and are already leaving! Why?” Farid said, “I came with one thought, and am leaving with another. I thought you were an emperor; I found you a beggar. We had planned to ask something of you; finding you yourself asking, we turned back. We will ask from the One you ask from.”

This is our whole life. This is not a matter for laughter but for tears. Nothing could be more tearful. We have nothing; those around us have nothing. And everyone’s complaint is that no one gives us anything. And everyone’s complaint is also that he is giving everything to everyone, but no one gives him anything. This is your illusion. You don’t have; they don’t have.

So I will not tell you to fulfill duties and carry responsibilities. These are coercions. If someone tells me, “Love so-and-so”—how will I love? We teach children, “Love one another.” We instruct people, “Love your neighbor.” How futile! Can love be done on command? And love done that way—will it be love? Parents teach, “Children, respect us.” Teachers teach, “Students, respect us.” How strange! Can respect be done like this? Can duties be “performed”?

The moment the idea of “performing” arises, falsehood has begun. The moment you think, “I am fulfilling my duty toward my father,” the duty has already ended; you are carrying a burden, not fulfilling a duty. If you were truly fulfilling it, it would arise from within, and you would never feel “I am doing it”; you would feel, “I am not able to do enough.”

Right now the situation is reversed: the one toward whom you think you are doing feels you are not; the one who thinks he is doing feels he is doing a lot. If love is within you, love always feels, “I have not given what I should have given.” Right now we feel, “I gave everything; the other did not acknowledge.”

I speak not of your duties; I speak of your state of consciousness. If love and peace arise within you, you will find that duty fulfills itself. What is there to perform, to think about? It will happen on its own. And one more change: when love is within, the demand for love vanishes.

Let me give you a simple aphorism: In the person who has love, the demand for love disappears. And know this as well: only the one whose demand for love has disappeared can give love. One who is begging cannot give.

In this world only those can give love who have no expectation of your love—only they! Mahavira and Buddha give love to this world; we fail to understand them. We think they are beyond love; in truth they alone give love—because they are utterly free of demand. They ask nothing of you; they only give.

Love means: where there is no asking, only giving. Where there is asking, there is no love—there is a bargain. Where there is bargaining, if the transaction goes even a little awry, what we call love turns into hatred. The transaction breaks. Why do lovers break? For one simple reason: the give-and-take went wrong. We did not receive as much as we expected, or the return was not commensurate with what we thought we gave. Where love is a transaction, it can swiftly become hate—because there is no love there at all. Where love is only giving, it is eternal; there is nothing to break, for there was no demand. There was no expectation: “Only if you do this will I love.” No conditions. Love is always unconditional. Duties and responsibilities are merely transformations of love.

So I do not tell you how to fulfill duties. The very arising of the thought “How shall I fulfill my duty?” means there is no love within you. I will tell you how love can arise.

And note this in the same thread: love exists only in one who has attained bliss. The unhappy person does not give love; he begs for love, so that his misery may be soothed. The craving for love is proof that sorrow resides within. Therefore love can be given only by one whose within is free of sorrow, in whom only bliss remains. If sorrow is within, it expresses itself as a demand for love; if bliss is within, it expresses itself as the distribution of love. Love is the radiance of bliss. One who is filled with bliss will have love streaming around him; whoever comes near will receive love. For such a one, duties will be fulfilled, responsibilities carried. And that bliss—if I say love is the radiance of bliss—bliss is the experience of self-realization; before that, there is no bliss. Our sorrow is that we do not know ourselves; not knowing, we beg for love. If we know ourselves, bliss will be; if bliss is, love will radiate.

So I do not ask you to perform duties; I ask you to become available to love.

There is a question: What is the need to find oneself, one’s soul? How is one to gain what is already one’s own?

A very fine question—both very wise and very unwise.

You have written: “What is the need to find oneself, one’s soul?”

Exactly right: what is already one’s own—what is there to gain? There is nothing to gain in regard to the soul. But do you have the soul? Is what is yours actually with you? Do you feel that the soul is within you?

If you do, then truly there is nothing to gain. But do you feel it? At most you feel the body, perhaps the mind—what else?

Let me tell you: precisely because it is our own, it is not known. What is very near slips from memory. Distant things are seen; what is too near is not seen. That which never changes is not seen; that which changes is noticed. The soul is ever-present and therefore forgotten. We remember only that which is yet to be obtained. We remember what we have not got; what we have got we forget.

Therefore in the world, whatever you obtain you will forget; what you have not obtained will remain in memory. Desire does exactly this. The big house you already have—you will forget. The bigger houses you do not have will remain in your mind. The love you received—you will forget. The love you did not receive—will haunt you. What is not—keeps appearing; what is—ceases to be seen.

Thus the soul, precisely because it is continuously available, appears unavailable; there is no remembrance, no searching, because it never seemed missing.

Therefore the seeker must pass through a great paradox: he has to “re-obtain” that which was never lost; place his feet on the ground from which they were never removed; open his eyes to that which was always in his eyes and therefore had become invisible.

This may sound inverted, but it is natural. If you truly feel the soul within, then there is no question—no asking or not-asking, knowing or not-knowing, gaining or not-gaining. But if you do not feel it, then you do not even know whether there is a soul. The day you know “I am the soul,” there is nothing whatsoever to gain. Until that day, everything remains to be gained.

If someone concludes, “The soul exists, therefore what is there to gain?” he will ruin his life. This is mere talk—borrowed logic. You have heard others say the soul is within; then you have concluded, “If it is within, what is there to gain?” This is your trick to avoid awakening. In that sentence are two people’s conclusions, not one. “The soul is”—this belongs to Mahavira, to Buddha, to Krishna. “Then what is there to gain?”—this belongs to you. If the first is also yours, then there is no problem. If the first is another’s, you cannot draw your conclusion from someone else’s experience. Your experience will give your conclusion; another’s cannot give it to you.

So you are using a device. You are tacking on your half to someone else’s half—only to show that you do not wish to wake up from your sleep. You want life to go on as it is and still give yourself a neat rationalization: “What is there to gain that is already available!”

The Quran has a line: “Those who drink wine, those who commit adultery, those who revel in evil deeds shall inevitably go to hell.” A certain man drank and was adulterous. A saint told him, “Do you not know the consequence?” He said, “I have thought: if we cannot accept the whole sentence, at least let us accept half.” He said, “If the entire scriptural sentence does not suit us, at least we will keep half. Half the sentence is: those who drink, those who commit adultery, those who are unjust…” He kept that half and dropped the other half: “…shall go to hell.” We have extracted our “halves” from all scriptures—those bits that suit us. Without the other half they are not only meaningless; they are harmful.

So I say: the question is good. But if you sit satisfied that “the soul exists; therefore what is there to gain?” it will be disastrous. As of now, “soul” is a word you have heard, not an experience. The day it becomes your experience, indeed there remains nothing to gain. Until that time there is only one thing worth gaining: the soul. Before that, there is nothing else worth gaining.

We will take up the remaining questions in the afternoon.