Sanch Sanch So Sanch #3

Anil Bharti, whoever sets out to find the meaning of life is bound to be defeated, to fail. To seek the meaning of life is to assume that life is not a mystery but a mathematics—just a puzzle to be solved. But life is not a puzzle. That is precisely the difference between a puzzle and a mystery: a puzzle can be solved; a mystery remains unknown even when known—no matter how much becomes known, the unknown still remains.

This is the difference between science and religion. Science divides existence into two parts—the known and the unknown. What was unknown yesterday is known today; what is unknown today will be known tomorrow. Between the known and the unknown there is no essential, qualitative difference; they are two sides of the same coin. And science says there is nothing beyond those two. That is its denial of consciousness.

Religion divides existence into three categories—the known, the unknown, and the unknowable. The unknowable means that which will never be known; that which is, was, and will remain mystery. That very mystery we call the divine.

For a thousand years
I have crossed so many rivers and plains,
and yet the meaning of this walking
I have still not understood!

For thousands of years, for thousands of births you have been traveling; but defeat is bound to be your lot, because what you are demanding is something existence cannot grant. You want to know the meaning of life—to open and read life’s book. But life is not a book. And if it is a book, it is like the Sufis’ book—its pages are blank. Even if you open it you will find nothing. No letters, no aphorisms. What can you read on blank pages? Only one thing can happen: if you keep gazing at blank pages, one day you too become blank.

Life’s mystery is to be experienced, not opened. It is not a lock that has a key. In fact there is no lock at life’s door—everything is open, open to infinity. Search as you will, you will find no bottom. It is unfathomable, ungraspable. Not “difficult”—if it were merely difficult, man would have crossed it long ago. Not just “deep”—if it were only deep we would have measured it by now. It is bottomless. Therefore, if you carry this demand for meaning for not just a thousand but even a million births, defeat is what you will get.

The meaning of this walking
I have still not understood!
I am lost,
I am lost.

But existence is not responsible for your defeat. Your demand is wrong. Your demand does not accord with the law of life. And what need is there to know life’s “meaning” anyway? It is the utilitarian mind that wants to know the purpose of everything. Look at life a little as poetry. Look at life a little as love—soaked in affection. Then there is joy; there is celebration; there is no worry about meaning. The mad will investigate meaning; the wise will dance, play the veena, set melodies on the flute, let the anklets ring on their feet. Their life does not concern itself with meaning. This moment is enough. Our obsession with meaning is because we are steeped in arithmetic; we want to fit everything into accounts—why? We want an answer to every why. Where we run out of answers, there despair takes hold.

And let me tell you: the questions that have answers are not worth much. Questions that have answers are two-bit questions. The only precious questions are those that have no answers—and cannot have any—because only there do you come close to the spell of life, to touching its magic.

Life is a magic, a mystery. Live it. Why try to know it? Wealth has meaning, position has meaning, “use”—because they are means, and through them some end can be achieved. The end is what meaning is. But life itself is the end; it is not a means to anything else. How, then, can it have a meaning?

Nor can I say that life is meaningless. I cannot say that either, because that too is said only by those who go in search of meaning. Western existentialists say: life is meaningless—Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard, thinkers of that kind. I would say to them: life will appear meaningless if you go searching for meaning. Meaninglessness is the outcome of your demand for meaning. Otherwise, life is neither meaningful nor meaningless. Life simply is. Plunge into its is-ness. Dive into its being.

The art of that diving is meditation. Philosophy searches for meaning; meditation takes the plunge. If there is thirst, drink—what will you gain by knowing the meaning of thirst or the meaning of water? And if you go on thinking about meanings, thirst will kill you. You don’t ask what meaning food has, you don’t ask the meaning of breathing. Ask—and you will get into trouble. Flowers have bloomed, birds are singing, trees are green, rivers are rushing to the ocean, there is light in the moon and stars—suchness simply is. Live this is-ness—totally, wholly.

But Anil Bharti, bent on searching for meaning, you have found only non-meaning. You are the reason. Then you say you are defeated by your passions.

Who told you to conquer passions? You will not conquer them; in the attempt to conquer, defeat is guaranteed. I say: live your passions, recognize them, test them, be a witness to them. Drop the language of conquest. This is not wrestling. It is not a matter of fighting and quarrelling. In fighting, at most, repression happens. And what is repressed pops up again and again. Then you will say, “What can I do? I am defeated, badly defeated!”

H. G. Wells imagined machines—among them, one by which you could read the thoughts of the person standing before you. By some strange chance one day that very device fell into Mulla Nasruddin’s hands. Mulla told me:

Stumbling, I picked up the machine,
and there was a whoosh-whoosh in my head, a whirring sound.
I jerked my neck and looked at my wife.
From the device came my wife’s voice:
“I’m fed up with him.
He doesn’t know how to walk on the street,
has no manners, no sense.
He even forgets his wife is with him,
and like a beggar he picks things up off the road.
That engineer in Poona was better—
he’d seat me in the jeep and take me shopping.
At least he didn’t trip and stumble along the way.”

Mulla said:
“I thought—so far so good.
But if at night while sleeping
she again remembers the Poona fellow,
how will this marriage survive?
This device is dangerous,
and by coincidence it has come to me—
and the moment it did, the Poona man bloomed in her mind!
Well, let’s see what other blooms appear.
Let me drop in on some friends.”

So I knocked on a friend’s door.
He opened it, came out smiling.
In my head there was a stirring,
some whoosh-whoosh, some whirring.
From the device came the thought:
“He’s come alone—
hasn’t brought his pin-up siren, Gulbadan.”
Out loud he said,
“Oh! What a fancy shirt!
All well? And how is the wife?”

I said,
“Your wife—or your siren, Gulbadan?”
He said,
“Take some medicine for your wits, sir! What nonsense are you babbling?
How can you use such words for my wife?”
I thought, how he’s acting!
Denying the very thought he was just thinking!
So I decided from now on I’ll only listen—
no good or bad reactions at all.

One day in a B.A. final class
a girl sat by the window.
It looked as if she wasn’t listening to my lecture
but humming something within.
So I switched the device on, and what did I see?
A line of delight drew itself across my heart.
From the device came the thought:
“Sir is very nice—
if only he were taller, how smart he’d be!”

A boy was walking down the road
and having an illicit affair with Hema Malini in his head.
I thought, Freud got it all right:
inside a human skull there’s nothing but sex.
Some things are so disgusting
language itself is too small to tell them.

Whatever you repress—where will it go? It will remain inside. It will whoosh and whirr. You will read the Gita and it will speak up in between. You will recite verses of the Quran and it will jump up and down in between. Whatever you repress is what will harass you; it will come into your dreams. Then you will think you have been defeated; life will be seized by gloom; sorrow will thicken.

For centuries religions have taught humanity the process of repression; the result is that the whole human race has lost itself in a dark night of suffering—a new moon night that seems to have no dawn; a night that seems endless. Your religious leaders are responsible.

Anil Bharti, even after coming to me are you still fighting with passions? I teach becoming a witness. There is no question of conquering—whatever is within and without us is to be seen rightly. Neither to conquer nor to be conquered—to see. Sharpen the vision. Clear the eyes. And why carry this prejudice in advance that passions must be conquered? The dust of centuries has settled on you; it doesn’t come off easily; it’s caked on. You sit with me, but hum your own tunes. How will you hear me?

You say, “I am defeated by my passions. Even after realizing the futility of desires, why do they not go?”

Have you realized the futility of passions? Or have you only heard it said? Is it just the babble saints and moralists have kept up for centuries that is whooshing in you? The day you truly realize the futility of passions, there is neither victory nor defeat. With awareness, passions are transcended. With awareness one attains Buddhahood—then what remains? Awareness is Buddhahood. And the awareness of passions: that very night becomes the full-moon night when Gautam Siddhartha became the Buddha! In your life too the bliss of Buddhahood, of divinity, will pour, the nectar will overflow.

But you do not have awareness. Don’t call it awareness. These are second-hand notions. They have entered you and are repeating like a gramophone record. For centuries it has been said and heard that passions are wrong, to be conquered, to be subdued.

People come to me and say, “We want to conquer passions.” I tell them, “Victory is possible if you drop the very idea of victory.” They say, “All right, we will drop the idea of victory; then victory will happen, right?” What kind of dropping is that? The craving to win has become so deep they are even ready to drop the craving—provided winning is guaranteed. “If victory is certain, if there’s a guarantee, we will even drop this desire—that desires must be conquered.” Let me tell you, that is the greatest desire of all—the desire to conquer desires. All other desires are small; this one is vast.

Don’t get into this mess. Whatever is within, whatever is without—accept it. No condemnation. Awareness is not there yet! I am showing the way to awaken awareness. Awaken it gradually. First, become a witness of the body.

One evening Buddha was speaking. An emperor had come to listen. He sat right in front, idly wiggling his big toe. Buddha stopped speaking mid-sentence and began to gaze intently at the emperor’s toe. The emperor felt awkward, uneasy, embarrassed. Others too began to look—what was happening? Seeing Buddha’s gaze, the emperor quickly stopped his toe, which had been moving. Buddha began to speak again. A little later the toe started wiggling again.

There are people like that—you seat them on a chair and they keep shaking their legs, scratching here and there, doing something or other. No awareness of what they are doing.

Buddha again stopped speaking. The emperor’s discomfort grew. His minister sat beside him, his queen too, and they felt this was most embarrassing. The emperor asked, “Why do you stop speaking? And why do you look at my toe?”

Buddha said, “I look at your toe to ask: why is it moving? Give me the answer.”

The emperor said, “I have no awareness. When you stop and look at my toe, then I notice it is moving. Then I stop it at once; then I forget again, and it starts moving.” Buddha said, “Is that toe yours or someone else’s? Your toe moves and you don’t even know—then someday you might cut off someone’s head, because your hand is yours and you might not know.

And this is no joke. Many murders happen where the murderer didn’t even know in the moment that he did it; only afterward does he discover: ‘Oh! What have I done?’ There have been cases where the accused told the court, ‘I did not do it.’ Earlier we assumed they were lying. Now psychologists say they may well be telling the truth—they might not know. The murder may have occurred in such a state of stupefaction. In a frenzy of rage a person becomes almost unconscious. In deep anger there are glands in your body that release poisons into the blood, and because of that poison a stupor descends. In that state one can commit murder—even suicide.

And this is how you are living—mechanically. First become alert to the body. Walk knowingly, with awareness. Sit knowingly, with awareness. Lie down knowingly, with awareness. Bring such depth to your awareness that a time comes when even if you change sides at night you do it knowingly. And ultimately, even while the body sleeps, you remain aware that the body is asleep and you are awake. The day this happens, one milestone is crossed—one third of the journey is complete.

Then the second experiment is with the mind. Then begin to watch the mind’s thoughts, longings, desires, pursuits, memories, imaginings, dreams. You can see this whole web of the mind only when your alertness has taken firm root in the body’s gross processes. Then you can descend into the subtle. One step at a time. Whoever succeeds with the body will succeed with the mind—he has found the key.

And when your awareness deepens over the mind, you will be amazed. When awareness deepens in the body, a grace, a delicacy, a beauty, a benediction descends; a music, a rhythm, a cadence pervades. In standing and sitting a wondrous elegance appears; divinity pervades your whole bearing—a deep peace, a silence, a flowering. An ecstasy in every pore! And when awareness deepens in the mind, passions and thoughts depart on their own; no fighting is needed. Whoever fights loses; whoever awakes wins.

Remember this well: Whoever fights, loses. Then you will have to say:

For a thousand years
I have crossed so many rivers and plains,
and yet the meaning of this walking
I have still not understood!
I am lost,
I am lost.

Defeated, defeated—badly defeated! In thousands of years of journeying you have crossed so many rivers and forests, yet still could not discover the meaning of walking. Defeated—badly defeated!

Defeat is the outcome of your wrong method. Whoever watches the mind with awareness—his mind departs. You awaken, and the mind goes. To the degree you awaken, to that degree the mind is gone. If you are ten percent awake, there will be ninety percent mind. If you are ninety percent awake, there will be ten percent mind. If you are ninety-nine percent awake, there will be one percent mind. And if you are one hundred percent awake, the mind becomes zero. Then a unique happening occurs: just as a benediction pervades the body, so in the mind an unprecedented elation arises—uncaused joy. No reason, no cause, no motive, no goal—suddenly springs begin to burst forth, streams of bliss begin to flow! And when this happens in the mind, then the third step remains—the subtlest: awareness of the heart’s feelings. That is the most subtle realm.

Feelings are deeper than thoughts; more delicate than thoughts. The final experiment is to watch your feelings. Whoever has succeeded with thoughts will succeed with feelings. The key is the same, the alchemy the same, the art the same; only the depth increases. If you know how to swim, what difference does it make whether the water is shallow or deep? The realm of feeling is the deepest. When you awaken to feelings, to the degree you awaken, feelings too depart.

And when all feelings have departed, the moment of the unique event has arrived of which the seers have said: Raso vai sah! Rasa is the last definition of the Supreme. The savor flows. Rasa is a wondrous word; no other language has its like. God is of the nature of rasa—pure essence, pure savor.

There are three steps—and after those three, the fourth is grace. The fourth exists too, but it is not your step. You take the three; the fourth is taken by the divine. That fourth is called turiya—samadhi. When you have completed the three, you have become worthy, a vessel, for the fourth. You cannot take the fourth; the divine takes it. The whole existence then stands in support of you. And when the fourth is taken, and samadhi becomes dense, when the clouds of samadhi gather—Asadha has come, the soft rain begins—then there is victory in life. That you may call the state of conquest. Before that, only defeat upon defeat.

Anil Bharti, do not fight—awaken!

Ajit Kumar Jain, brother, what’s the hurry? The satsang is going on pleasantly—let it go on. The surrender, you say, is going on pleasantly—let it go on. You say your surrender is complete, satsang is complete; then how can courage be lacking? You say if someone criticizes me, if someone bickers about me, you at once jump in to fight, or your eyes fill with tears. From this you feel that your surrender is complete, your attachment complete. Naturally you have reasoned, you must have thought: then where is the deficiency? “Courage is lacking,” you say.

No, Ajit Kumar Jain, your surrender is not yet complete. If surrender were complete, no lack would remain. Yes, if someone criticizes me you do get into a tussle. But even that fighting you do because of your ego, not out of surrender to me. It is not that I am being criticized, hence you fight; it is that what you believe in is being criticized, and so you fight.

And at times your eyes fill with tears—not because someone is saying something wrong about me, but because you think: the one to whom I am surrendered, utterly surrendered—if anyone says something wrong about him, is it not wrong about me? The hurt is to your ego; it may show up sometimes as tears and sometimes as a scuffle. They are two sides of the same coin—and the coin is ego.

You also say that the family because of whom you have held back from taking sannyas are not giving you any happiness either. Everything is in place, only you think the lack is courage. That cannot be. If surrender is complete, courage cannot be lacking. If surrender is complete, it means that if I say, “Take sannyas,” then what will you do? Will you still say to me, “I lack courage—how can I take it?” Then what kind of completion of surrender is that? And every day I am saying only this: dive in. Yet you ask me to give one more, a last, push.

I could give you the last push, but the question is: in which direction will you run? Very likely you will run back home. Very likely if I push too much, you may stop coming here altogether. So I will not push. I will say only: what’s the hurry? Why, you have a lifetime ahead! And not just one lifetime. In this country there is every convenience: endless births are available.

Mulla Nasruddin is a very lazy sort of fellow. He has a pet phrase: “What’s the hurry anyway!” He repeats it on every occasion. Once his friend Chandulal saw Nasruddin driving very fast somewhere. He was astonished, because he had never seen the mulla drive so fast. When there is never any hurry, why drive fast? Nasruddin drives a car the way one drives an ox-cart. In the evening he asked, “What was the matter, Mulla? Today you were driving very fast—what happened?”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “I’ll tell you, brother—what’s the hurry!”
The next day Chandulal asked again, “Well, now at least tell me what it was. Why were you driving fast yesterday?”
Nasruddin’s answer was the same as before: “I’ll tell you, brother—what’s the hurry after all!”
After he had asked for several days, one day Nasruddin told him the whole story. He said, “That day I was going comfortably to my office—the same old ox-cart speed—when I saw an old woman crossing the road ahead. I saw that she had come to the middle of the road. I wanted to slam on the brakes, but I thought, What’s the hurry! And meanwhile the old woman went under the car. Even then I thought I’d still apply the brakes, but you know my pet phrase—I thought, What’s the hurry!—and I drove right over the old woman. By then a crowd had begun to gather. I thought, Now I should stop the car, but again the same old mantra: What’s the hurry! And in that panic my foot didn’t go to the brake, it went to the accelerator. And once my foot was on the accelerator, many times I thought, My God, what am I doing! But again the same old phrase: What’s the hurry! So that day I was going very fast—my office was left far behind.”

I will tell you the same—what’s the hurry! It will happen—if not today then tomorrow; if not in this life, then in the next; and if not then, then in the next after that. Buddhas are not going to run out; they will keep coming. Their business is to come and wake up those who are asleep. And the sleepers’ business is to let the awakeners keep awakening, while they go on sleeping.

Now, if you become a sannyasin, Ajit Kumar Jain, think also: what will the future buddhas do then? Spare a thought for them too—whom will they liberate? Do you want to leave everyone completely without work? Some people will have to be left behind. You be among them. There’s no hurry yet. And don’t fix a date; don’t even think, “I’ll take it tomorrow or the day after.”

Seth Chandulal, a Marwari, was famous throughout the village for his miserliness. He had never invited anyone in the village even for a cup of tea. Once someone spread the news that Chandulal was going to give a grand feast and invite the whole village. People heard it and dismissed it. But when the rumor gathered force, the whole village went to Chandulal’s house together. Outside, Chandulal’s son Tillu Guru was playing. The villagers asked him, “We’ve heard your father is going to give a great feast!”
Tillu Guru replied with a laugh, “You have heard exactly right, brothers. My father is going to give a very big feast—on the Day of Judgment!”
Tillu knows his father: before doomsday he cannot give it, so when the last day comes, then he will give the feast. Hearing this, the villagers went back. They said, “We knew it already.” Chandulal heard this conversation from inside the house. When the villagers left, he called Tillu in and started slapping him. He said, “You good-for-nothing! What was the need to fix the date of the feast right now?”

Why be in a hurry, Ajit Kumar Jain? It will be done—by doomsday at the latest. Why fix a date! Let the satsang go on; it is going on pleasantly, conveniently, without any hassle.

This is not a lack of courage; it is a lack of surrender. You have not understood surrender at all. And you wonder: from those from whom I am getting no joy—the same society, the same family—why am I held back because of them?

We cling even to our misery. Our grip is like that: whatever comes, we cling to it. We even cling to suffering; we cannot let go of it. Who knows—if this misery goes, perhaps an even greater misery may come! So at least this one is familiar.

From the society that gives you no happiness, from the family that gives you no happiness—then what is the fear? From those from whom you receive only thorns and abuses—well, a few more thorns, a few more abuses!

And when this longing has been clouding your mind for so many days, why postpone it? If something auspicious is to be done, it should be done at once—because the mind is very cunning. If you leave it till tomorrow, it may be lost forever. And if something inauspicious is to be done, you should delay a bit—because if you drop it today, perhaps it will be dropped forever.

But we are very upside-down people. If we have to quarrel, we do it right now; if we have to meditate, we say we’ll do it tomorrow. If we have to abuse someone, we do it immediately; but to offer someone a flower—who knows how much calculation we do, how much time we waste. For two pleasant words we defer; for unpleasant words—cash on the nail! Here and now! Never left for tomorrow.

Gurdjieff’s father, when he was dying, said to Gurdjieff—Gurdjieff was only nine—and later Gurdjieff said that that one small teaching changed his whole life. It was a little thing; what more can you say to a child of nine? He called him close and said only this: “I don’t know what else to tell you; I have nothing else to give you. But what my father gave me, and which changed my whole life, that I give you. Remember one thing: if ever you have to be angry, do it after twenty-four hours. If someone abuses you now, reply to him exactly twenty-four hours later. For now, just tell him, ‘Brother, I need twenty-four hours to think; then I will come and answer you.’”
And Gurdjieff used to say that this little formula changed my whole life—because if one waits twenty-four hours, then will one still abuse? Will one still be able to do a bad act? If it is stopped, whether good or bad, it doesn’t happen.

Therefore, if you are to take sannyas, then today! To postpone it till tomorrow is to postpone it till doomsday. Tomorrow never comes; what comes is today. And you have been waiting so many days—how long will you wait? In the end will you also have to repeat this Bengali song?

Hajar bochhor dhore
koto nodi-prantar,
beriye gelam.
E cholār māne tobu
bojha gelo na!
Ami hariye gelam.
Ami hariye gelam.

In a journey of thousands of years I crossed so many rivers and forestlands—and still I did not take sannyas! And still I did not take sannyas! And only defeat came to my hands—only defeat came to my hands!
Ami hariye gelam.
Ami hariye gelam.
E cholār māne tobu
bojha gelo na!

Today! Either take it today, or drop the matter forever. Then don’t raise this question again. Why bring it up again and again?

Rajendra Agneya, can politics be left so easily? You will become a poet and still you will do politics. Politics can be dropped only when the ego dissolves. All politics is hidden in the ego. The ego is the seed of politics. That’s why you find poets entangled in politics too: one poet dragging another down, one trying to throw the other flat on the mat. Someone is climbing on someone’s chest, someone is climbing on someone’s chest. Poets have their gangs, factions, godfathers. All the same disturbances are there among poets. No difference.

Politics isn’t so easy, Rajendra Agneya, that you say the word and it is gone. It will drop only when you go deep into meditation. It will not drop because you say so.

And what is it that you write as poetry? Send me a few samples. Let me see what you do as “poetry”! Because in the name of poetry, so much rotten stuff is being churned out—if that’s the kind of poetry you write, then better you do politics instead.

Liquor in the belly
a cigarette in the hand
hashish in the cigarette
this songwriter
a first-rate con man
borrows feeling
on credit from men of letters—
a little from here, a little from there—
and passes it off as his own!
He writes wholesale,
and though it’s cheap
it sells dear!
Blazing, heavy-hitting,
a popular hit,
thrashed in literature,
fits right into films.
In the name of songs
a mishmash of squeaks,
and the critics say—
“an ugly blot!”
The intellectuals say—
“he’s wrecking the bedframe
of Nirala’s dreams.”
Fools, all of them!
He’s just making
his building bigger!
He plays with banknotes,
and in broad daylight
he cudgels the chest of literature!
What has he to do
with the eternal values of letters?
He only wants to row
a silver boat
on a river of gold!

What has politics to do with poetry? And how will you be able to leave so soon? Still, I’ll grant you this: if you say you can leave it, then by all means, leave it. It doesn’t seem to me that anyone can drop it so quickly. To drop politics is possible only for the enlightened. Otherwise, wherever people are, they will do politics there.

There is a politics of money, a politics of literature. In universities there is the politics of the professors. Among monks and sadhus, at the seats of abbots—their akharas by name—there is heavy politics. Everywhere there is politics. Politics has many colors, many facets. But if you say so, I accept it; I have no objection. If you can leave it so easily, it is very auspicious—though this cannot be.

If you want to drop politics, dive into meditation. Through meditation both things will happen: politics will fall away, and if there is a natural talent for poetry in you, it will manifest; if there isn’t, at least you will be saved from writing trashy verses.

But you ask: what is the poet’s dharma?

In olden times there was one dharma; it was clear—speak of love, talk of love! Others loved; those who could not love, they spoke of love.

The joyless, smoldering evening is going out;
soon, rinsed and pure, night will flow from the moon’s spring.
And with longing eyes it will be listened to,
and by those hands these long-parched hands will be stroked.
Is it her veil, or cheek, or the fabric of her dress?
Something there is that makes the screen glow with color.
Who knows, in the imagined dense shade of that tress—
does that pendant still tremble and glitter, or not?
Today again the beloved’s beauty will be in that same style—
those drowsy eyes, that same line of kohl;
on the hue of the cheek that light dusting of rouge,
on the sandalwood hand the blurred script of henna.
The world of my thoughts and my verses is only this—
this is the dear theme, this the witness of meaning.
Under the red-and-black shadows of the centuries till today,
what has befallen the children of Adam and Eve?
In the daily battle-array of death and life,
what will befall us, what befell our forefathers?
The abundant populace of these glittering cities—
why do they live only with a longing to die?
These lovely fields, bursting with youthful ripeness—
why is it that only hunger grows in them?
These mysterious, harsh walls on every side,
in which the lamps of thousands of youths were snuffed out;
these killing grounds at every step for those dreams
whose reflections light up thousands of minds—
these exist, and there will be many such themes besides.
But those coquettish, slowly parting lips,
ah, those damnably alluring lines of that body—
tell me yourself, is there any spell to match these?
There is no subject of speech apart from these,
no homeland of the poet’s temperament apart from these.

That was the old dharma of the poet: “The world of my thoughts, my verses, is only this.” This was the old definition—now worn out. Its time has passed; those days are gone. Times have changed. This much alone no longer suffices. Those who didn’t find love sang songs of love and made do.

In my vision, only one who has experienced love can be a poet—and not love alone, but love together with awareness. Love and meditation—these two words are my foundation. Meditation within, love without. Let the flower of meditation blossom within, let the fragrance of love spread without; then, if you have a natural capacity for poetry, you will be a poet; if for music, you will be a musician; for dance, a dancer; for sculpture, a sculptor. Then there will be no need to impose anything by effort. Whatever is imposed is false and counterfeit. Then whichever capacity is natural to you will manifest of itself. And whenever someone lives from his own spontaneity—whether he be a poet, painter, sculptor, dancer, or none of these, nothing that the world can easily recognize, even an utterly ordinary person—still there will be poetry in his life, beauty, sensitivity, because within him there is samadhi.

Tapan Chaudhary, there is only one condition. Not many—just a simple one. I call it meditation, silence, emptiness, samadhi. If you wish to join this great festival, sow the seeds of meditation, so that the flowers of samadhi may bloom, so that the fruits of godliness may ripen. Then there remains no difference between Kama and Ram, between sex and samadhi. Then whatever you do is samadhi. The way you live is the truth itself. Then in your every breath the divine will be throbbing. Your heartbeat will no longer be yours; it will be the heartbeat of this whole existence.

And until this happens, you may jump and dance, but celebration will not be born. You are right that such a unique expression of Tantra has neither been heard nor seen for centuries. Centuries have passed; the wondrous world of Tantra was destroyed. The temples of Khajuraho lay buried in the earth and survived. There were many such temples; they were all destroyed.

The temples of Khajuraho survived, but there is no trace of their priests. The temples survived, but the scriptures kept in them are nowhere to be found. The temples survived because some sensitive people had the urge to save them, to preserve them as works of art.

Among those sensitive people, Rabindranath Tagore’s name is foremost. The credit goes to him for saving the temples of Khajuraho. For Mahatma Gandhi and his great disciple Purushottamdas Tandon were organizing to have the temples buried again. They said these temples should be covered with earth; if ever archaeology required some investigation, the earth could be removed and the temples studied—and then covered again. Once in a hundred or two hundred years they could be uncovered for that purpose, otherwise they should remain buried. And when people like Mahatma Gandhi and Purushottamdas Tandon make such a proposal, who would refuse? I was not there then to refuse. But Rabindranath showed great courage. Though even in that courage, what I am pointing to was not present. He said only this much: these are beautiful statues, works of art; to bury them would be unbecoming.

They are not merely beautiful artworks, not merely beautiful statues. Behind them was an entire process of a life-vision—the complete science of transforming Kama into Ram. That was Tantra.

What you say is exactly my longing—that this tavern of mine become a living Khajuraho. That is why I am abused so much. When even dead temples, mere stone idols, were to be buried under earth at the wish of Mahatma Gandhi—and had Rabindranath not opposed it, it would have happened—Gandhi could not gather the courage to go against Tagore. But what is the use of saving temples alone? The entire life-vision of those temples must also be saved. I am engaged in saving that life-vision—reinventing it.

With the destruction of Tantra in India, religion lost its dignity. Religion then became hypocrisy, falsehood, repression—a mental sickness. Dense hypocrisy spread in the name of religion. My fight is with that hypocrisy.

Tapan Chaudhary, if you wish to join this great revolution, do join. There is no other condition—only one: meditation. Because only if you meditate will you be able to understand; otherwise everything I say will be misunderstood. Everything I say is being misunderstood. I say one thing, other meanings are drawn. It is not even their fault. The fault is mine: I am saying things that have not been said for centuries. I am voicing notes we had utterly suppressed, strings we had broken—from which this music could arise. I am striking some long-forgotten notes again. Those who could hear them have been lost. Those who could understand them are gone. I must not only strike new notes, I must also create anew the listeners who can understand them.

Tapan Chaudhary, you are welcome. All are welcome who can understand this celebration. At least you have done this much: seeing this celebration you felt yourself moved. If even a few such people remain in India, the fire buried in the ashes can be brought to flame again. Such few people are the living ones in India; the rest are a procession of corpses. As for the rest—what is this country but Mohenjo-daro. Mohenjo-daro means “the mound of the dead.” Now and then, somewhere, one living person appears. I am busy gathering those living ones.

But being alive is not enough; there must also be the fragrance of meditation in that life. Only then will what I am saying be understood. And then you will see that this is the new expression of the eternal religion—a religion that loves life, not one that denies it; a religion that accepts life’s melody and color; not an enemy of life, not filled with hatred and condemnation for life.

There is no such expression anywhere today, so how could you have seen it, how could you have heard it? That is why I have become alone—alone in this vast, rugged jungle. There are only a few courageous people to stand with me. Rarely does anyone courageous from the religious world dare to give support.

A few days ago, the Mahant of the Kabirpanthi monastery in Surat, Khemadasji, wrote to me: I have not yet had a vision of Hari, but my eyes are thirsty for that vision; I wish to come. That a Mahant can muster this courage is something new. A little earlier, Swami Vishnudas, in a talk in Baroda, said—this is courage for a Hindu sannyasin to say—that if you wish to find religion anywhere, pointing toward me he said: go there; if you want a living thread, it can be found there. In this country, where there are five million Hindu sannyasins, thousands of Jain monks, thousands of Muslim fakirs, pirs, auliyas—rarely does one person...

Just such a report—he wrote the letter himself from Ajmer—the head of the dargah of Moinuddin Chishti, a Muslim, desired to come. I sent word: come! But then no reply came. I sent my sannyasins in Ajmer to ask what had happened. They reported: he wishes to come, but his followers are creating obstacles. They say if he goes, it will not be right. If the head of Chishti’s dargah goes, it will be a great scandal. Then politics must have entered—fear that the position might be lost, that there might be defamation. If you come to me, defamation is assured.

Tapan Chaudhary, there is only one condition—no other: dive into meditation. If you dive into meditation, you will spontaneously dive into love as well—and into a love that is not ordinary, that is not exhausted on persons, but expands infinitely. It certainly begins with persons, but its spread is toward the infinite. Persons become doors—but doors to the sky. And then you will understand exactly what I am saying and doing. Not only will you understand—you will live it. Because without living it, it cannot be understood; and one who understands cannot stop short of living it.

All are welcome. But only the courageous will be able to enter. No one is barred. But what shall I do collecting the weak, the blind, the biased? My words cannot reach them. There are such hard walls around their hearts that crossing them will be very difficult. To melt those very walls I lay down the condition of meditation—because meditation ends your thoughts, brings your prejudices to an end, burns them to ash. What remains is pure consciousness. And the one result of that pure consciousness is that rays of love begin to stream into your outer world—as when a lamp is lit in your home and its light pours out through your windows and doors. In just this way, when the lamp of meditation is lit, through your windows and doors—through your eyes, your hands, your ears, your speech, your breath—love begins to flow in a thousand streams.

The combined alchemy of love and meditation is called Tantra. And Tantra is the miraculous expression of religion. The time of the old, obscurantist religions has passed. A future is coming in which only a temple built on the foundation of Tantra will survive. Only temples like Khajuraho will endure; the days of the rest of the temples are over—the days of mosques and churches are over. But very few have a vision that far. The one who can see that far is the messenger, the prophet. The one who can see the future today, who can recognize now what will happen tomorrow—that one is a tirthankara.

Here I am bringing forth tirthankaras, prophets. As your meditation deepens and your energy of love flows, you will clearly see the future. The old religions were past-dependent. My religion puts down its roots in the present, and its branches will rise into the future. This is a religion in which flowers will bloom—of joy, of celebration—filled with juice, fragrance, color. This is a religion of rainbows.

The rainbow is a symbol of joining earth to sky. I am in love with the earth and in love with the sky. I am in love with matter and in love with the divine. I want to join matter and God with the bridge of love. I am not merely a materialist, nor merely a spiritualist; I am both together. If you can understand materialism + spiritualism, you will understand Tantra. And the one who understands Tantra can understand me.

That’s all for today.