Samadhi Kamal #8

Tonight we take leave.
In these three days many things have been said. And you have listened with such love, with such peace, that their result is certain. They will go within you and become seeds, and from them something will be able to happen in your life.
It is in this hope that I have spoken. And a brief compass for the seeker’s life must have become clear before you. You must also have felt what is to be done. Now it is upon you that whatever felt lovable becomes a part of your life.
Man’s weakness is not—certainly not—that he cannot recognize what is right. The weakness begins where, even after recognizing, he goes on walking the wrong path. After living long in the wrong, attachment arises even to the wrong. When a prisoner has been confined in jail for long, he becomes attached even to the prison.
An incident occurred in the French Revolution. There is the Bastille—there the great and old prisoners of France were kept: those sentenced for life, or to death, or long terms. When the Revolution came, the revolutionaries overturned the power and decided to demolish the Bastille, so that those confined there for life might be freed. They thought the prisoners would be overjoyed, their bliss of freedom would be boundless. They went, they broke the prison, freed the captives, and told them: Now you are outside the prison! Now you are free! Now you are liberated! They stood and listened; nothing made sense to them. Someone had been locked in for thirty years, someone for forty; there were those who had been confined for fifty years. They heard, but they could not understand. One of them asked, What are you saying? Has the prison been broken? Are we free? Is this possible? The revolutionaries said, Do you not see the walls are torn down! Do you not see the whole arrangement has collapsed! You can go.
Very fearful, very nervous, they stepped out—untrusting; they did not believe. And the greatest surprise, something never before in human history: by evening more than half of those prisoners returned. They said, It doesn’t feel good outside. They said, It doesn’t feel good outside; we are fine here. Life has passed here; why get entangled for a few remaining days in a new arrangement!
It seems astonishing that one would return to captivity and say, We are fine here; life has passed here—why get into the hassle of a new arrangement!
To leave the old, to leave even the wrong that has become familiar, and to walk the path that appears right—this requires a great, arduous courage.
A religious man’s life is forged by courage and made of courage. One who can turn his face from the past, who, seeing a wrong road, can turn back even from the middle of it—perhaps it was going badly, but if it is seen to be futile, he can dare to drop it—he is still young, he is not yet old; still there is courage in him; still a revolution can happen in his life. Without courage no man can be religious. The weak, the timid, cannot be religious.
But what do we see? We see that all who are cowardly appear religious, and all who are weak become religious. Their religion arises out of fear, out of panic, out of the desire for security. They cannot be religious.
Mahavira has said: abhaya—fearlessness—is the foundation of the religious man. One who stands upon that fearlessness can reach truth. One who stands upon fear cannot reach truth.
A courage is needed to experiment; a boldness is needed to walk in terrains where we have never walked, and to place our feet on paths that are utterly unfamiliar. One who keeps circling in the ring of the familiar, the known, the recognized, can never enter religion. Into the unknown, into the uncharted—upon that path on which our feet have never trodden—one who cannot dare to step can never enter religion.
So for religion a fundamental courage is needed—a courage to enter the unfamiliar. The unfamiliar gives fear. In fact, fear of the unfamiliar is natural. Unknown roads, with which we are not acquainted. And the most unknown road is only one—the road of the Atman. We are utterly unfamiliar with it. In this world there is no road as unknown as that—so unfamiliar, so dark, so uncertain about what lies ahead, so solitary that no one is there with us—no road as solitary as that. To escape that aloneness, to avoid that courage, to avoid the daring leap into the unknown, we have created social arrangements in the name of false religion, in which no courage is needed. We have devised hollow rituals in which no courage is needed. We have made such a cheap face of religion in which no sadhana is needed. We have done this so that we can deceive ourselves that we are becoming religious and also be spared the courage that true religiosity requires.
So we have invented all kinds of cheap devices—very cheap—and we deceive ourselves that in this way we have become religious. While we have not become religious at all; we have only saved ourselves from a great courage, and we have put on a flimsy cover. Cheaply—some by putting on a tilak, some by going to the temple, some by tucking a scripture under the arm, some by wearing special clothes—in this way we deceive ourselves. But this deception is fatal. And it is fatal because life is uncertain. Today we take leave here; it cannot be said whether we will meet again. It cannot be said whether this meeting will happen again. This journey on the earth is so strange that with those we meet on the pathways—who knows whether our paths will cross again or not!
I was somewhere recently, on a journey. It was raining. We came to a stream; the car could not go across; the stream was in flood, so we had to wait there two hours. Two cars came and stopped behind me; they too could not go. Those in them were strangers. Seeing me sitting there, they came naturally and sat by me; a few words were exchanged; I spoke a little with them. We had to wait two, two and a half hours there. They said to me, Your words are very delightful, and it is a great good fortune that we heard them; if ever we get the time, we will surely experiment with them.
I said to them, If those words were truly delightful, if they felt like good fortune, you would not say, If we get time we will do them. That would be impossible. If they were delightful, if they felt a benediction, they would seem to be to be done this very moment. Because if you will do them when time comes, then in the meantime what will you be doing? Something more fortunate, more important—so you will do that first, and only later glance at these.
Then I told them, Remember this: we are strange people. The trivial, the futile—we settle every day. The vast, the meaningful—we postpone to tomorrow. And often that tomorrow never comes. In very few lives does that tomorrow arrive when we do the vast. Because the petty is present every day. It will not be finished; the petty stands up each day. Thirst that came today will come tomorrow; hunger that arose today will arise tomorrow; the clothes you wore today you will wear tomorrow; the house you stayed in today you will stay in tomorrow. What is today will be tomorrow. The petty reappears daily; it does not vanish. The petty has this peculiarity: however much you dissolve it, it rises again fresh, just as much—perhaps more. It never ends; it becomes perpetually new. If because of it there was no time today, there will be no time tomorrow, nor the day after. And as life grows tired, strength will diminish, and the entanglement will remain as it is. One who postpones to tomorrow is postponing forever. I told them this.
They said, That seems right; surely I will think about it.
I said, Whatever you are saying—still you say, I will think—so again you are postponing. It may also happen, I told them, that tomorrow we will not be. It may happen that by tomorrow morning many people on this earth will not be; among them we may be counted. And one day certainly we will be counted. One day it will be that we are here one night—and the next morning we are not. That is certain. One day tomorrow will not come for us; today will be the last. That can be today.
They were quite cheerful. They said, Fine. Then the stream subsided. They left before me; I followed after them. Our car had a flat on one side; we stopped and changed it; fifteen minutes must have passed. Fifteen minutes later we reached—two miles ahead—and they were finished. Their car had crashed. They were three—and all three were gone. Just fifteen minutes earlier we had spoken: It may be that there is no tomorrow—and fifteen minutes later we found that for those three there was no tomorrow.
The driver with me said, This is such an uncanny thing! I was hearing your talk. I didn’t understand much; I understood at least that tomorrow is not certain. And this—what has happened!
Now there was no way to tell them, Do what you wanted to do. No way to urge them, Hold what I had said—live it. No way at all.
Only this, on this last day, I have to say to you: let it not happen that you are in that place where there remains no time to tell you again—Do it. It is right to do it before that; it is necessary to do it before that. Before that, a movement toward the truth of life and the inner nature of life—toward that direction—it is necessary to set out. The benefits of setting out are wondrous. If death comes, we will not be able to do it; and if we do it, death will not come. If death comes, we will not be able to do it; and if we do it, death will not come.
You will say, The first statement seems right; the second—never have we seen that someone’s death did not come. Even Mahavira’s came, Buddha’s came, Krishna’s came—death comes to all.
But I say to you, if one does it, death does not come. Mahavira’s death appears to us; it does not appear to Mahavira. Buddha’s death appears to us; it does not appear to Buddha. They see: that which is dying is not they; and that which they are—its death is not possible. One who enters into himself before death becomes free of death; he does not die.
So this is wondrous. Wondrous—that one who knows escapes death; and one who keeps postponing to tomorrow is caught by death—he escapes knowledge. Knowledge and death are opposites. Self-knowledge is the enemy of death. Yes, the body will fall; but we will know that which is not the body, which is our very being—and that will not fall.
To taste amrit is the true utility of life. One who cannot taste amrit should know he has not lived—he has only been slowly dying. The day I was born—people think I was born that day. Now I can see: I began to die that very day. From that day I have been dying continuously, day by day, every moment. I was here three days—three days—and three days more I died. Thus I will go on dying daily. One day the process of dying will be complete.
What we call life is not life. It is gradual death—a progressive dying. After birth we go on dying day by day; then one day this whole dying is completed—we call that death. Death is not an event; it is a development. Do not mistake it for life. And that is why I say do not mistake it—if this were life, how could its termination be death?
Life and death are opposites. If you sow the seeds of life and the fruit is death, some doubt should arise that the seeds we took to be life were not of life—they were of death. Because what bears in the fruit is already present in the seed. What comes at the end is present at the beginning; only then can it come. So for whom death comes at the end—I say to you—he was death from the beginning; otherwise how could death arrive at the end? What we call life is not life. Life begins with knowing one’s own being.
Man has two births. One is the birth of the body, which the parents give. If we take that bodily birth as life, we are in error. The birth of the body is not life. There is a second birth, available through sadhana. Through that birth we experience the spiritual being, the Self-being. Life begins from there.
People think life is enclosed between birth and death. And I tell you—life is not enclosed between birth and death. That which is life has neither birth nor death. That which is born is certainly mortal. So life has neither birth nor death. Birth and death are not of life; they are of the body.
The body is not life at all; the body is only earth. Within it there is a life that manifests through it and deceives us into thinking the body is life. As from an electric bulb light streams from within and we may fall into the illusion that the glass shell is giving light—the glass shell is not giving any light. The light is within; the glass only allows it to pass through—it is transparent. This body is transparent only for life; it is not life. It lets life come forth; it is translucent. And because of this we are deceived and it seems the body is life.
To know that truth within us which is different from the body, separate from it—upon knowing it the experience of life happens. And the moment life is experienced, birth and death become illusions, become false.
Then we know amrit; then we know that which is our being. To know that is the very meaning of life. One who does not know it should understand that he has wasted life in vain. I am not saying this to someone else—I am saying it precisely to you, to you alone—understand it within yourself. This is not my speech. Through these three days I have not tried to give you a speech, nor have I given any sermon. What I feel, what I see, what was in my innermost, I have opened before you. And only with this intention I have been speaking to you and saying to you—not for someone else—see it within yourself: that which until now you have taken to be life—is it life? If it is not, then let the resolve grow dense. If it is not, let the resolve be firm. If it is not, then take courage, dare, and transform your life. Set it moving in a new direction. For those who miss, death will not wait.
Understand it so—as if death were to be the very next moment—what would you do? And it is the very next moment. Taking it to be that near, gather courage, gather resolve, and engage yourself. That engagement—if God wills—will arise in you; if you will, it will surely arise. It depends wholly upon you, upon your resolve.
On this last day—I have nothing much more to say—only this much: do not take what I have said as ideas; do not take them as good thoughts. There is no need to praise by hearing them or to applaud. If in hearing them some sobbing rises in your heart, some anxiety, some anguish, some regret, some repentance—then I will understand that the matter is complete. From that very repentance, that very anguish, that very alarm, that very pain, that very thirst—the resolve will be born that changes life. That changes life from death and joins it to amrit, and that opens a door where we become part of another kingdom, where we become members of another realm. For becoming members of that realm, this invitation I have given these three days. I feel my voice must have reached you, and somewhere it will resound in your mind, and somewhere that word will keep echoing—and something will happen in your life. I hope this, and I pray this.
Now we will sit for the night’s meditation of this final day. After meditation, there will be no talk.