Santo Magan Bhaya Man Mera #18

Shukla! I welcome you too. I welcome everyone. I am the welcome. I am ready to give; only your readiness to receive is needed. You have not only become miserly in giving, you have become miserly even in receiving. Miserliness reaches its final limit when a person becomes miserly about receiving.

I want to give, because what has come to me is eager to be shared. But it cannot be given to everyone, nor can it be forced on anyone. This treasure is not of a kind that can be thrust upon someone. Only those who are ready to receive—eager, thirsty—can be its owners. Yet people are afraid even to receive. There are many reasons for this fear.

First, receiving hurts the ego. Many times a person may be willing to give but not willing to receive, because receiving feels like “Should I take more?” The ego shrinks, pulls the hand back. The ego resists receiving. Only those who have dropped the ego can receive.

I am the door, but only those can pass who are willing to leave the ego right there at the gate—outside the door.

Second, there is fear in receiving because what I am giving you is unknown, unfamiliar. You have never seen it, never heard it; you have never had any relationship with it. Yet what I give you is your very nature. I am not giving you anything new. I am giving you recognition of what is already yours. Nothing is going to pass from my hand into yours. What lies dormant in your own life-energy will awaken. This giving is not like giving; it is like awakening. You are a seed. Give me a chance and you will sprout.

The day your flowers bloom, it will not be that someone gave you something—you did receive, yet no one gave; recognition came, remembrance came. The diamond that already lay hidden in your being became visible. The diamond is with you; your eyes are closed. What I give you opens your eyes. But many dreams are attached to your closed eyes, and you fear that if you open them, the dreams may break. The dreams will break. Whoever wants truth must have the capacity to shatter dreams—courage enough, willingness to risk. Hence the fear: these sweet dreams are going on, what if they are broken, fragmented, dissolved? Keep your eyes closed, live inside your dreams. But where will dreams take you? Dreams are dreams. If not today, then tomorrow you will have to awaken.

And it is good to awaken near someone from whom a current is eager to flow toward you. If you can let that current enter you, your seed can crack open now. When I say to you, “I welcome you,” I am inviting you to come with me on a journey. It is a long journey—because it is the journey to the Divine, a pilgrimage. And difficult too. It is a climb up the mountain, not a descent. You will have to drop all your burdens, for as one climbs higher, one must be ever lighter. Only oneself can be carried to the peak; all else must be left behind. It is frightening—leave everything! What you called wealth, what you considered all-in-all till now—knowledge, religion, temple and mosque, Hindu and Muslim—everything has to be left. So I welcome you, but you shrink back.

You ask: when I said, “I welcome you,” a strong response arose within you.

Good. That is how it should be. Whoever is alive will feel it. When the call comes, the ears of those who can hear will ring with resonance. Only the deaf will be deprived. When the sun rises, whoever has eyes will be delighted by the morning rays. There will be a resonance, a responsiveness. You used the wrong word—unwittingly perhaps. You may not know the difference between reaction and responsiveness. It is not a reaction; it is a responsiveness. There is a difference. In the dictionary they may be given as the same, so you erred, Shukla. But in the dictionary of life the difference is great.

Reaction means something fixed and conditioned. When you respond in the way you have always done—out of habit—that is reaction. Someone asks, “Is there a God?” and you have always said, “Yes, there is”—because you were born in a theistic household; that answer was taught to you. The answer is empty; you know nothing of God. Your answer is false, but you keep walking with belief. A lie, repeated many times, starts to feel like truth. One forgets that at the beginning it was a lie. Someone said so—father, mother, guru—you heard it somewhere: there is a God. Today someone asks, “Is there a God?” and you say, “Yes, there is.” That is reaction. But if someone asks, “Is there a God?” and you turn within, you look, you search, you try to recognize—Do I know God? Have I ever had any glimpse? Has any light of his fallen into my eyes? Have I seen his aura? Have I ever been flooded by his glory? Has his dance ever descended into my heart? Have I heard that song whose name is God? And all becomes silent, because you have not heard that song. And you open your eyes and say, “I don’t know.” That is responsiveness, not reaction. It is a conscious answer. It is a spontaneous answer.

Reaction means a fixed groove. Responsiveness means accepting the challenge of the moment and answering it freshly from awareness. Reaction comes from memory; responsiveness comes from consciousness.

I was watching you yesterday, Shukla—something surely happened. It was not reaction; it was responsiveness. Because when I welcomed one person, your welcome was included in it. What I say to one, I do not say only to one, I say to many. One is just an excuse, a pretext. Whoever has ears to hear will hear. Whoever has eyes will see. Whoever has a heart will feel. Such a feeling happened to you. Every hair of your body trembled—I saw your every hair quiver. I was delighted.

Whenever I see a sannyasin’s every hair tremble, I am filled with joy. Spring has arrived. The flowers will not delay now. The veena has been tuned taut; now only the stroke is needed and the resonance will arise.

You said, “Every hair began to say something; my eyes began to shower tears; within a sentence resounded—Ya Ilahi!”

This is responsiveness, not reaction. Such a thing has never happened to you before—this experience was unique—so it cannot be reaction. Reaction is from past experience. This was so new—this thrilling, this trembling of every hair, these tears flowing from the eyes. These are not your old, familiar tears. True, if you took them to a doctor for chemical analysis, there would be no difference between your old tears and these. But ask one who has known—there is a tear of sorrow and a tear of joy, and chemistry cannot catch that difference. That difference is spiritual. When you cry in sorrow, the taste of tears is salty; when you cry in bliss, the taste is also salty. But within there is another taste that has turned sweet. That inner taste can only be sensed from within; there is no way to grasp it from outside.

Yesterday, Shukla, the tears that came to your eyes were new. They did not come from any sorrow. They came because some door beyond the ordinary opened. A deep touch struck within. Your every string vibrated. Something sleeping awoke. A closed eye opened. A bud cracked. In that celebration, tears flowed. And when tears flow in celebration, there is nothing on this earth more beautiful. When tears flow in celebration, they are of this earth and yet not of it—transcendental. Their value exceeds pearls. Pearls are nothing, because in those tears a certain taste of the Divine begins to arrive. That is why devotees have wept so much—have wept to their heart’s content. They have made weeping their prayer. They understood one thing: where words cannot reach, tears can reach. Where calling and even shouting cannot reach, silent tears arrive.

The speed of tears is very swift. No other movement within you has the velocity of tears. If you ride on tears, the Divine is not far. If you ride on thoughts, he is infinitely distant. The Upanishads say: That Divine is both far and near. It sounds contradictory—far and near. He is far if you travel on thoughts. He is near if you travel on feeling. Tears are feeling.

What happened was beyond logic. Because of that, the question arose. Shukla is a thinking woman; she must have thought, What happened? Why did it happen? She must have churned it over, and nothing came into her grasp, because what happened was beyond the mind—deeper than the mind, on the far side of mind. Hence the question.

Now remember: when something happens beyond the mind, deeper than thought, accept it. Do not analyze it. Embrace it. There are things in life that die when analyzed. A rose blooms in the garden—so lovely—and your mind says, Let me analyze this beauty. What will you do? You will pluck apart the petals, searching for where beauty is hidden, wanting to catch the origin of beauty. Or you will take it to a scientist; he will examine and separate—how much earth, how much water, how much sun, how much air—he will lay out the five elements: this and this were in it; beyond these there was nothing. Weigh them if you like—the total weight equals that of the flower. Ask him, Where is the beauty? He will say, Beauty is nowhere to be found. These five elements were in it, and here they are.

The scientist denies beauty because beauty never appears in his analysis. It is like seeing a dancing, singing child, and you cut and dissect the child to find where the song is, where the dance is, where the soul is. You tear limbs, rip out hands, cut the neck, dissect each part. All will be lost; you will be left with bone, flesh, marrow. The weight will be the same as when the child was laughing and dancing; yet something is missing—no laughter, no dance. Life is gone; this is a corpse. Analysis kills the living. Analysis works perfectly on dead things, but it kills what is alive. Therefore do not analyze what is alive.

By analyzing, man has brought himself great suffering. He analyzed God—killed him. Analyzed the soul—killed it. Analyzed beauty—killed it. Analyzed love—killed it. Prayer disappeared; all that was precious vanished; man was left with trash—because science can only verify trash, the dead. Life eludes its grasp. Life is too subtle. Science catches the coarse; the subtle slips away. And it is the subtle that is truly valuable.

So your mind must have said, What happened? The question came not at the time, but afterwards: Ya Ilahi, what is this mystery? Because I said to someone else, “I welcome you,” and you heard it. I spoke to another, yet the resonance arose in you. I intended to touch another’s heartstrings, and yours were plucked. My hand was extended to another’s heart, and it reached yours. Hence the question: Ya Ilahi, what is this mystery? I was not addressed, there was no gesture toward me, no hint, no glance at me—what is happening to me? Why am I thrilled? Why is every hair ecstatic? Why are my eyes moist? In that very moment thought came in. From thought, the question arose—Ya Ilahi, what is this? Thought was confused. We are not disturbed by what we understand, because what we have understood we possess; it is in our fist. What we cannot understand upsets us because it is bigger than we are, distant and mysterious. Human curiosity wants to possess.

Watch little children—or the old; they are alike. A child sees an ant going by; quickly he crushes it. What is he doing? He is a little scientist. He wants to see what the mystery is. Ya Ilahi, this ant is moving—what moves it? From where does it get its motion? Do not think he is violent or has enmity with the ant.

He catches a butterfly that was flying—that flying butterfly is a challenge for the child. Only if he catches it will he feel satisfied. He runs, chases, catches, and is delighted. Then he tears off its wings to see what is inside. Leave a child alone at home—he will open the clock to find what makes the tick-tick. There is no real difference between the scientist and this child. Science is very childish. And all our mental gymnastics are the gymnastics of curiosity.

Something unprecedented happened; your mind could not comprehend. It cannot—that is not its work. Hence the question arose; you thought to ask.

Keep in mind: with me, such things will happen often, day after day. Learn to accept them, to embrace them. Do not bring the intellect in to interfere. Do not argue, do not analyze, do not refute, do not break things apart. In breaking, all scatters. With a sense of wonder, close your eyes and accept. Let those happenings be absorbed in you. Assimilate them—not into your intellect, but into your being. Let the mystery remain a mystery. There is no need to know it. Knowing is not necessary. In truth, it is this hunger to know that has put man in great difficulty. The more a person knows, the more religion vanishes from his life.

Have you not seen? The educated person tends to become irreligious. The student returns from the university and becomes irreligious. The more the world is educated, the more irreligious it becomes. Why? Education provides a method—of thinking, reflecting, analyzing, reasoning. For twenty-five years we are trained in logic; in a life of seventy-five years, one-third goes to learning logic. Then logic sinks deep. Then you try to grasp everything with logic. And when something cannot be grasped, logic has only one device: what cannot be grasped does not exist. And if it does happen, logic says it is madness.

If you ask the mind, it will say: this sudden thrill, these tears in the eyes, this flash of lightning in the heart, this momentary illumination—madness! And what you call madness, you begin to suppress. Nobody wants to be mad. We suppress it, deny it, protect ourselves. Slowly we are severed from our very roots—the sources of our life. We are cut off from our own ground.

Remember, here such events will increase by the day. Here you are being invited to something greater than yourself within yourself. Here you are placed at a door from which the open sky is available, from which the moon and stars will peer within you. And your intellect will not understand any of it. Put the intellect aside. Tell it: this is not your work; you are fine in the marketplace, but not in the temple. You are fine at the shop, at accounts—but there are things beyond accounting. And the truth is, only those are valuable. For those one can live and die. What can be measured in accounts—who would live or die for that?

Let me tell you a historical incident. Socrates died for his truth, because truth was so valuable that even life was not too high a price. Jesus was crucified for his truth, because truth was so valuable that not one but a thousand lives could be given, and truth still not abandoned. Mansoor had his hands and feet cut off; as they were severing his limbs, he looked to the sky and laughed. A crowd had gathered; they asked, Mansoor, why do you laugh? He said, I laugh because I want to tell God that he will not be able to deceive me. Let him take my life if he wishes, but I have seen him—now I cannot forget. I have recognized him; now even if he takes everything, I will not leave him. I will hold him in all circumstances. I laugh because this is my test; he is examining me. And I am passing, while his device is failing.

But Galileo could not do that. He said the sun does not go around the earth. Till Galileo, people believed the sun circled the earth—so it appears to us daily. It rises in the morning, makes half a circuit, and sets in the evening—rises in the east, sets in the west; the circle seems clear. The earth appears still; the sun seems to move. This is ordinary experience. On this basis humanity thought the sun moves around the earth.

Galileo found the contrary by scientific experiment: the earth moves around the sun. Because the earth is so vast and we so small, we do not sense the earth’s motion; an illusion arises. Sometimes you sit in a stationary train; the train beside you begins to move, and you feel your train is moving. Or your train moves and you feel the other moves. Such illusions happen. The earth is moving; it seems the sun is moving. Galileo proved convincingly that the sun is not moving, the earth is. But the Church could not tolerate it, because the Bible says the sun moves. Galileo was summoned to court and told to apologize. He apologized.

His apology was very thoughtful. This was not the kind of truth worth dying for. Why should Galileo give his life? I too feel he was right—not to die for it. What difference does it make to his being whether the sun goes round the earth or the earth goes round the sun? His life was not woven into that truth. This was not a Jesus-like, Socrates-like, Mansoor-like truth—more valuable than one’s own self. It was a scientific fact. Theirs were truths of the heart.

Understand the difference: that was a mathematical fact; these are truths of the heart. Galileo said, I will apologize. He knelt and apologized. The words of his apology were very clever—he was a man of mathematics. He said, I apologize that what I stated was not correct, although I would like to submit that my saying so or not makes no difference; the earth is circling the sun. I accept that I erred in saying what I said; it is only my mistake in saying it. Now what can I do? If the earth is circling, you may extract an apology from the earth—but it is the earth that circles. Yet he kept reminding the court: remember, I am not refusing to apologize. I am ready to apologize—what is it to me who circles whom? I am not ready to lose my life over this. And I think he was right. Why should Galileo lose his life?

This is not a great Truth. To call it truth is not quite right either. In my view, truth is only that for which you are ready to give your life. Truth is that for which one lives—and, if needed, dies. All else are facts, not truths.

Understand the difference between truth and fact. Facts belong to mathematics; truth belongs to the heart.

Yesterday a truth began to happen in you. But the intellect says: quickly turn it into a fact—understand it, grasp it, define it; if you cannot catch hold of it, shut it down. If you can catch hold of it, classify it neatly. Hence arose that sense of astonishment in you: Ya Ilahi, what is this mystery? This very mystery is the ultimate form of religion. Real religion means entering the mystery that lies beyond understanding.

Next time it happens, do not raise a question. Accept it with a questionless mind. More than that—cooperate with it. Because even the slightest non-cooperation and these subtle sensitivities vanish. Your body was thrilled, each hair awakening, and if you shrink even a little, it will close. These are delicate matters. A slight change of mood and the thrill departs. Tears were flowing, and if you become a little hard, the eyes will dry. Cooperate. When the body begins to thrill, relax, be at rest. Support it—say, I am completely willing. I am with you. Cry, dance—I am totally with you. I am behind you. Take my energy. Flow, tears—I will flow with you. And tell the intellect—be quiet now! This is not your hour. As we remove our shoes before entering a temple, so too the intellect should be left outside. The intellect is stale and soiled, and borrowed. Only the one who leaves the intellect outside can enter the temple.

Yesterday, Shukla, you stood right at the threshold of the temple. In a single moment everything could have happened. But thought arose and broke the current. The question arose and split the mystery. You fell into thinking—and missed. Next time do not miss—and it will happen many times. The first time, everyone misses; for the first time, you do not remember what to do. The old habit asserts itself—you do what you have always done.

Remember: the first uprising—hair thrilled, tears flowed—this was responsiveness. And the “Ya Ilahi, what is this mystery?”—that was reaction. Whenever something has not fit your understanding, that very question must have arisen. Whenever you have been bewildered, that question must have come. Do not miss again. It will come again, again and again.

And remember this too: when I speak to others, sometimes the one I am addressing misses, because he is so tense about listening, so concentrated, so agitated. This I have seen again and again. Often I have to say to B what I want to say to A, because if I speak to B, B is taut, alert—afraid to miss anything—while A sits at ease: nothing is being said to him; it is not his question. Sometimes the blow aimed at B’s head misses B and strikes A. A had no idea; he had no time to guard himself.

Therefore do not judge by the direction of my arrow. Do not assume by the address on the letter. Many times I have to speak to someone else to reach you. The other sits relaxed; it is not “about him,” so a state of repose is present. Thus, the one to whom I said, “I welcome you,” did not feel the thrill yesterday; his eyes did not shed tears. And Shukla felt the thrill, and her eyes shed tears. Well, the arrow struck someone at least! It struck somewhere! Somewhere a spring flowed! Next time it happens, cooperate.

No, it is not a befooling by the mind. Not the mind’s trick. This is not coming from the mind. This is precisely my message. This has reached you from me. This is what I am saying to you, continuously—through a thousand ways, in a thousand styles, by a thousand devices—only this: there is nowhere to go; the Divine is here, right here, now. Do not postpone to tomorrow—It is today, this very moment. God is not a goal, God is a presence. Present now, in these trees, in the birds’ calls, in the movement of the wind.

But for centuries you have been taught that God is up there in the heavens, to be found after death. And I tell you: what cannot be found in life will not be found after death. And what can be found after death can only be found in life—because life and death are not opposed. They are one continuum. Death is only a step of life. Death is not the end of life; it is an event that happens in the midst of life. Many times death happens, and life keeps on flowing. At most, death is a turn in the road, a halt—no more than that. Yet you have been taught for ages that God will be found after death. That is a device to postpone, a strategy to defer to tomorrow. That is the mind’s trick. If you leave it to tomorrow, the mind says, “Then for now do what you want to do—worldliness now, God tomorrow.” This gives a tactic, a convenience: live in the world now; tomorrow is long, eternity is ahead; someday we will live in God. That is the mind’s deception.

Those who said “God is tomorrow” deceived you. Your mind has seized upon their words. You too want God to be tomorrow—not today.

I have heard: A Buddhist monk from Lanka neared death—eighty years old, now aged. He had thousands of disciples, and all his life he spoke only of nirvana, of samadhi. On the last day he gathered all his disciples; they came from far and wide. He said, “Now I am going; my hour to depart has come; my boat has reached the shore. All my life I have explained nirvana to you, taught you samadhi, but none of you is ready to be absorbed in samadhi—you say, ‘Tomorrow.’ Now I am going; there will be no tomorrow, for I will not be here. Whoever wishes to go with me, whoever longs for nirvana, stand up.” No one stood. Only one man slightly waved his hand—he did not even stand; sitting, he waved his hand. The monk said, “What do you want to ask?” He said, “I only want to say that I certainly must come to nirvana—but not yet. First I must get my daughter married, and I have just opened a new shop, and my son has returned from the university. I will come, surely I will come—and since you are going, please give me the method. I will remember the method, and when the time comes, I will use it.”

Have you ever thought that this hunt for methods may itself be the mind’s trick? The mind does not want to admit, “I am not really eager for God.” The mind says, “I am very eager; who is more religious than I?—but not now.” Whenever you say “not now,” know that you are deceiving yourself. Either now, or never.

And God is not in some other world. You have also been told He is in the next world. There is only one world. “Here” and “there” are not divided by a wall. There is no boundary between the two. Sitting here, one can be there. Buddhas walk on the earth, and their feet do not touch the earth. They eat, and they do not eat. They are in the crowd, and they are in solitude. They stand in the market, and the market is not within them. Being here, one can be there—and this is the real art of being. Between here and there there is no opposition, no enmity.

Very dark is this night, but
in this very darkness is made manifest
that river of blood which is my eternal song;
in its shadow lies the city of light.
Those waves of gold that are your gaze,
that grief which, at this moment, in the rose-garden
of your arms is smoldering,
that grief which is the fruit of this night—
let it be tempered a little more
in the heat of our sighs, and this very thing
becomes the secret elixir.
From every black-boughed bow
as many arrows as have broken in the heart,
we have plucked them from the heart,
and turned each into a hatchet.
O ill-fated ones, O heart-torn ones—
your dawn is not in the heavens.
Where you and I are standing now,
the bright horizon of dawn is here.
Here the sparks of sorrow, blossoming,
have become the garden of the rosy dawn;
here the murderous hatchets of grief,
row within row, row upon row of rays,
have become a flaming necklace.

‘Almanasib’—the unfortunate, the sorrowing. ‘The dawn of the heart-torn’—the dawn of those whose hearts are wounded—‘is not in the heavens.’

Where you and I are standing now,
the bright horizon of dawn is here.

On this very earth, here, now, the source of all light lies hidden.

Here the sparks of sorrow blossom—
here the embers of grief blossom; they become flowers.

They become a garden of the dawn. The embers of sorrow themselves become the flowers of joy—here. What is needed is the alchemy, the art.

Here the sparks of sorrow blossom
and become the rosy garden.
Here the murderous axes of grief,
row upon row, rays upon rays,
become a flaming necklace.

All has happened here. All happens here.

So do not think, “Again and again it seems there is nothing to gain, nowhere to go; there is life, to be lived—perhaps this is the mind’s trick?” Not in the least. This is the voice of the inner being. There is nowhere to go. Nothing to attain. What we think we have to attain, we already have. It is our innermost. What we seek outside is present within. That for which we set out, we set out having already attained—it has been with us since the very first day.

The Sufis have given God two names: al-Awwal and al-Akhir—the First and the Last. The first is God, and the last is God—both are God. From the very first day you are divine. It is not that on the last day you will become divine. If you are not divine from the first day, how will you become divine on the last? What is not, cannot become. Only what is, can be. Keep this seeming paradox in mind: you can only become what you are. You have to be what you are. There is no way to be otherwise. And whatever you become otherwise will be false, not your nature. It will be something imposed from above, an outer garment, a covering—not your inner core.

I tell you again: you are God. There is not the slightest lack in you. Only your eyes blinked, and you began to dream. All your lacks are lacks seen in dreams. All your sins and merits are acts done in dreams. Wake up—and you have done nothing bad, and you have done nothing good. With awakening, your link with doing drops; your link with being is joined.

Understand this definition of sleeping and waking.
To sleep means: the link with doing is attached—you become a doer. Then someone becomes a sinner, someone a virtuous man, someone a saint, someone a non-saint—then there are a thousand modes of the doer. Awake, and you are a non-doer, a witness; all relationship with action drops. On awakening there is neither saint nor non-saint. On awakening there is only God—and upon that, no covering; God naked.

No, there is nowhere to go; you have only to come home. Do not search elsewhere, do not seek; recognize the seeker himself. In the seeker is hidden that which you are seeking.

There is life—and to live. The feeling rising in you is right. There is nothing to do—there is to flow. Life is—and to live; the breath is moving—and you are to breathe. When the breath moves, breathe with joy, with absorbedness; and when the breath stops, then with joy and absorbedness let it stop. So long as there is life, live; when death comes, die.

The Zen masters say: When hungry, eat; when sleepy, sleep.

While life goes on, go on; and when life begins to scatter, scatter. Whatever happens, accept it simply; do not strive to be otherwise. From the effort to be otherwise comes tension, unrest, anxiety, sorrow, despair. Whatever is, however it is—be absorbed in it. This is my message to you, first and last. If you understand this one small sutra, you have understood everything. Then nothing remains to be understood; the essence of all the scriptures has come into your hands.

The first freedom hasn’t come yet. So where is the question of a second or a third? Freedom has never come. Nor does it ever come from the outside. It cannot. From the outside only the styles of slavery change—the color changes, the wrapping changes. Sometimes slavery of this kind, sometimes of that kind. Freedom is an inner happening.

You can be free; no one can make you free. And you can be free even in the greatest prison—free right there. There is no need even to go out. Because freedom is an inner experience. Meditation is freedom, love is freedom. But man keeps arranging great deceptions. He doesn’t have the courage to seek the inner freedom, so he goes on seeking small outward freedoms—political freedom, economic freedom.

Do you know what a man who is making money is actually doing? What is he seeking? He is seeking economic freedom. He says: Poverty is a great bondage. I want to buy this car—can’t buy it. If I had money, I would be free. Whatever I wanted to buy, I could buy. I would live in the house I want. I would do exactly what I want. There is a lack of freedom. That’s why man seeks wealth. He thinks wealth will increase freedom. It doesn’t increase; it decreases. The more wealth, the more the difficulty. Because as wealth grows, you have to guard it, worry about it. The poor man can sleep at night; the rich man cannot. What kind of freedom is that! The rich man thinks the whole night. He has plenty to think about, plenty to worry about. And the more wealth comes, the more one feels: the boundary has stretched a little—now the car I wanted, I can buy; the house I wanted, I can get; but the airplane I want, that I cannot buy. A new bondage starts being felt. If there were a little more money, then even the airplane I want I could buy. And it goes on like that.

This world’s sprawl has no end—the shop just keeps expanding. Day after day, newer and newer bondages are felt. The bondages a poor man never experienced, the rich man experiences. Only the rich can experience them. A poor man doesn’t feel any bondage in this; he sits happily under his tree, leans back and rests in the afternoon—the cars keep passing by; he doesn’t even distinguish one car from another. What’s it to him? The question doesn’t arise. It doesn’t even occur to him, “Let me buy a car.” If such a thought does arise, he will laugh it away: “What nonsense are you talking? Are you in your senses?” But if a bicycle passes, he wonders, is it a Phillips or a Raleigh—what bicycle is it? This is a bicycle worth buying! He too has a rickety one; somehow he drags it along. There’s no need to ring a bell on it; it rattles so much by itself that wherever he goes, people know from far away that he’s coming! It’s worn out.

He can’t think in terms of a car, but he can think of a bicycle. So seeing newer and newer bicycles he feels his bondage; but seeing newer and newer cars, nothing registers. Cars are not visible to him. We only see that which we desire. Remember: what we desire is exactly what comes into our experience. Things are seen only in the light of our desire. What cannot be had, we don’t even see. We don’t bother with the trouble of seeing it. So as your wealth goes on increasing, your bondage keeps increasing. You thought freedom would increase, but now newer and newer things begin to be felt: that could be bought if there were money, this could be bought if there were money.

Political freedom too is an illusion, a hoax. A person himself cannot be free—because that is a costly affair; it requires sadhana, you will have to descend into your own depths, into your abysses. So he erects small external freedoms: politically we became free. As for what I said to you yesterday about the third freedom, that I said just jokingly. I was reading a story, and from that it came to my mind.

I was reading a story: “The Third Freedom.” It’s a lovely story. The third freedom arrived. Such freedoms have kept arriving, and will keep arriving—the third will arrive too. Now in the second one all the old fossils have clambered aboard; in the third the young will pull them down. The work has begun. Because how can freedom come from corpses? How can revolution come from corpses! Jayaprakash staged such a revolution as no one in the world had ever staged. He took corpses straight out of the cremation ground and seated them in power. And that is “total revolution”! Yes, it’s total revolution. Seating a corpse on the throne is no small thing. And now the corpses are moving on the strength of the throne. There is power in power. If power is obtained, even a corpse starts moving—remember that. And if a living man loses power, he dies at once—his very breath stops. The third freedom is not far—just think of it as waiting by the roadside; preparations are being made. The preparations have begun; the disturbances have started. People are tired of the second, because it never came, so now they will bring the third. And the matter won’t be finished with the third either—the fourth will come, the fifth will come—freedoms have kept coming and will keep coming.

So I was reading this story that the third freedom had come. And then, after freedom, the biggest work that always happens happened: several commissions were set up. After freedom the biggest work is exactly this—that those who were previously in power were wrong. No other way suggests itself for proving oneself right; it seems one has no capacity to show something by actually doing it. There is only one way to prove the other wrong: you demonstrate something right. That is a bit of a troublesome affair. It doesn’t happen; so set up commissions. At least prove that the other was wrong.

In the world, people who set out to prove the other wrong are always impotent. The effort should be to prove oneself right: let me do something and show—this is what I did. In comparison, the other will automatically be shown wrong. Draw a longer line, and the other’s line will become shorter by itself. It will be clear who did what. But that is a costly business. The tangles are great; the problems are great. Giving promises during elections is one thing, and fulfilling them is an altogether different thing—no one has ever managed it. That is why, when giving promises in elections, people feel no hesitation. Why hesitate? No promise ever gets fulfilled anyway, nor does anyone have any intention of fulfilling them. By climbing the ladder of promises people reach power. Once they have reached, they forget all the promises. They don’t even remember them; they even kick away the ladder—because keeping the ladder is not wise, otherwise someone else might climb up on it. So an intelligent man kicks away the ladder after climbing it, so that no one else can climb up.

So the third freedom arrived; many commissions sat, cases were launched. Because now those who had come into power would prove that you had done nothing. I was reading that very story; from it came the idea of the third freedom. Morarji Desai is being questioned—the Justice Ray Commission is sitting. They ask Morarji Desai: What did you do during your tenure? He says: I served the people. The judge asks: How did you serve the people? Morarji Desai says: I served the people by becoming Prime Minister. The judge asks: Please be a little clear—how did you serve by becoming Prime Minister? What did you actually do? He says: I became Prime Minister—what else is there to do? I labored all my life to become Prime Minister; at the age of eighty I became Prime Minister; I served the people. The judge says: This service we don’t quite understand; please explain a little in detail. He says: The detail is that six hundred million people wanted to become Prime Minister; I saved them and I became Prime Minister. I put the noose around my own neck—what more service do you want? I sat on the throne, I mounted the cross—what more service do you want? I saved so many people from the bother.

Such are the questions a commission asks. The commission asks: And what hand did Jayaprakash Narayan have in this revolution? Morarji Desai says: None at all. But the judge says: We have heard that he was the one who made the revolution, that he is a Mahatma like Mahatma Gandhi. And Morarji Desai says: Hush! There is no Mahatma like Mahatma Gandhi except me. Then why did you call him Loknayak—leader of the people? Morarji Desai says: We had to give him something. We couldn’t make him Prime Minister; he wasn’t ready to become President; we had to give him something. He did go to jail, after all, so we gave him the title “Loknayak”—it didn’t cost anything. To many questions he keeps saying: Hush! Hush! Hush! And the judge asks: What is this hush-hush you’ve started, Morarjibhai? Why don’t you answer properly? And he says: Now I cannot answer anything at all, because my inner voice says that it is time to take the dried dates and drink “life-water.” I need thirty minutes’ facility. Alarmed that he might begin to drink “life-water” right there, they take him to the adjoining room and lock the door. The story runs like that. I was reading it; hence the memory of the third freedom came.

But freedom has never come, nor does it ever come—don’t get caught in such dreams. If you truly want freedom, the secret lies in that very word: swatantrata. It means: the swa—the self within you—its tantra, its ordering be established; its expanse be established.

The words we have chosen in this country are not chosen just anyhow. Azadi doesn’t have the flavor that swatantrata has. Because the entire secret is in that “swa.” A sense of lordship arises within oneself. That is why we call a sannyasin “Swami.” Only one who is free is a swami. Only one who has set out in search of freedom is a swami. Swami means: one who is declaring his own lordship; one who will no longer accept slavery to anything. And who is it that will not accept slavery to anything? Only the one who recognizes the master sitting within.

The master sits within you, and you hold out your hands outside. You search now here, now there. And there is one place you never search, where alone it has always been found. Close your eyes, go within, take a little inner journey and you will find freedom—that is the first freedom. That is the second, that is the third. All freedoms are there. The original source of freedom is within you.

Buddha became free, Jesus became free, Mahavira became free, Krishna became free. Not because of any outer freedom. Outside, everything goes on as it is. The outer commotion will go on like that. Freedoms will keep happening and nothing at all will happen. Don’t get caught in this entanglement. Do not tie your engagement to the outer commotion. Slowly, slowly, be free from as many outer agitations as you can—that is good. Do only as much outside as is necessary. Do not spend even a little time on the nonessential. Yet people spend a lot of time on the nonessential. Save time and energy from the nonessential. The energy thus saved is the one that can undertake the inner journey.

Why do people fail to go within? They fail because there is no energy left that’s fit to go. They waste it all outside. Some goes into money, some into position, some into prestige—some here, some there—everything gets scattered. Inside they are left empty; no capacity remains fit for going within.

Save a little capacity. Outside, do only that much—the minimum—that is necessary. Two meals are needed—earn them. A roof is needed—work for it. Clothes are needed—work for them. Arrangements are needed for the children—do that much. But only as much as is necessary. All the rest of the time, spend in the search within. Refine yourself. Right now you are an uncarved stone. But God is hidden in the stone. Once the image begins to appear, an ecstasy will arise within you. That is the real freedom.

Fourth question:

No, not merely a good wish. That the world is suffering does not mean you are fated to remain miserable. The world is suffering; you are not suffering. You can be free of sorrow. The wonder is that you are trapped in sorrow. The astonishing thing is how you have joined yourself to the sorrow of the world. Imagine a man lying in a muddy puddle who says, “There’s a muddy puddle—what can I do?” We tell him, “You can get out! You are not the mud. You are a lotus; you can rise above the mire. Mud is mud; you are you.”

In truth, “Sarve bhavantu sukhinah”—may all be happy—does not mean the world will become happy. It means only this: that in the world all may awaken and recognize that our nature is not sorrow; we are of the nature of joy, of sat-chit-anand. But I know this sutra has not been interpreted in this way, because those who comment on it are worldly people. They interpret even the sutra to suit their desires. When you hear the rishis proclaiming:
“May all be happy,
May all be free from illness,”
—may all go beyond sorrow, may all attain bliss, may all be blessed—naturally you think they are saying you should get wealth, rank, prestige, that everyone should get these. That is where you miss. The rishi speaks his language; you understand in yours.

I have heard: a cat went on a trip to England. When she returned, the other cats surrounded her and asked, “What did you see? Did you see the Queen or not? Did you see her throne? Did you see her crown set with the Kohinoor?” And she said, “I went to see all that, but I couldn’t. The Queen was sitting on the throne; the throne was beautiful; the crown was very lovely; the diamond in it was glittering—but I got into trouble, because there was a mouse sitting under the throne. Because of that mouse I couldn’t see anything else. I just kept watching the mouse—such a lovely mouse! Such an extraordinary mouse! My mouth started watering.” Now if a cat goes to England, what else will she see? Let the Kohinoor lie there, and a mouse sit right beside it—what will the cat look at? To hell with the Kohinoor! What will you do with it—eat it, drink it, wear it? When a mouse is present, who cares for the Kohinoor!

The rishi speaks his language; we understand in ours. There is the slip. When the rishi says, “May all be happy,” he is saying, “As I am happy, so may all be.” You hear and say, “All right, then the rishi is saying we should get a car, a big house, a beautiful woman”—you start hearing your own notion of happiness, understanding your own happiness. The rishi is speaking of his happiness.

And what is the happiness of the rishis? That everyone may find the Divine. Only upon reaching there does one go beyond all sorrow. In this world there is nothing but suffering. But you need not be miserable; it is not necessary, not inevitable—you can be happy. I am happy, and I tell you that you too can be—I am a witness. All the rishis are witnesses. But even when you go to the rishis you ask for the blessing that you may get the mouse.

People come to me and say they have come for a blessing, that they are standing in an election. They would make me commit sin too—standing in an election! They come for a blessing that they may win! Or they are fighting a court case and come asking for a blessing for victory. When people come and say, “Give us your blessing,” I say, “First tell me exactly—what is your intention? For what do you want the blessing?” Because in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases you will be asking for the wrong thing. That I cannot give.

The world is suffering. And what you are running after as happiness will only increase your suffering, because there is no happiness there—it is a mirage.

Serpents of fear lift their hoods on every side;
Darkness wanders here with its tresses undone.
How many shriveled frames of parched longings
Plead in a voice that is almost mute.
Time—like a hag crazed with hunger—
Licks away the blood of feeling from the corpses,
And in these lightless expanses there diffuses
A faint-hued fragrance wrapped in poison.
Seeing such black and terrifying roads,
Who would understand, who would even think,
That bearing the radiance of glowing cheeks,
Some moon-faced, lightning-like beauties have passed this way?

If you look closely at the suffering of life, you will not be able to believe that beauty could be here, that happiness could be here. Seeing this desert, could the thought even arise that oases might exist here somewhere? Looking at the thorns, it becomes hard even to dream that flowers could bloom here. Flowers do not bloom outside; they bloom within. Outside there is sorrow; inside there is joy. Outside means sorrow; inside means joy.

So when the rishis say, “May all be happy,” they are saying: may all be absorbed within; may all awaken within; may all come within; may all abide in their own home; may all recognize their Master; may all live in their own nature. That is my definition.
Although I am quite sure that if Maitreya has asked the question, he has asked it precisely because all the definitions of this sutra given so far are wrong. Those definitions are your definitions. And it is your pundits who keep supplying the meanings. The scriptures have fallen into the hands of pundits. And once in the hands of pundits, the scriptures have landed in prison. Their meanings have turned into something else. The scriptures say one thing; the pundit explains something else. The pundit is a broker of your desires. The pundit is your servant. The pundit is related to you, not to the scriptures, not to the rishis.
I have heard… Mulla Nasruddin was employed in a nawab’s household. Employed? He was a sycophant—skilled at it too. And nawabs need that.

The two sat down to eat. Fresh okra had come into the market; okra had been cooked. The nawab said, “It has been made very delicious.” Mulla said, “Of course it is delicious. There is no vegetable in the world higher than okra. It is the queen, the queen! It has great virtues.” He went on to recount what botanists say—how many qualities okra has, how wondrous it is, how health-giving—“Okra is nectar!” When a man exaggerates, he does not hold back.

The nawab heard. The nawab’s cook heard too. So the next day he cooked okra again. Then the third day as well. On the seventh day, when okra was served yet again, the nawab flung down his plate: “Okra, okra, okra—are you trying to take my life?” Mulla said, “This is dangerous, sir; it will kill you. Okra is poison. There’s nothing worse; it shouldn’t be fed even to animals.” The nawab said, “This is the limit, Nasruddin! You used to say it’s nectar; now you say it’s poison.” Nasruddin said, “Your Excellency, I am not a servant of okra; I am your servant. Whatever you say, I will heap praises on.”

That pundit is your servant; he has nothing to do with the rishis. Only rishis can have anything to do with rishis; with anyone else no exchange is possible. Only those who have reached that state of consciousness can interpret it rightly, because its meaning is not hidden in words—it is hidden in experience. Those who have known love will interpret love; and those who have known the Divine will interpret the Divine. But those who have only read the word “love” and heard the word “God” can also interpret—but their interpretation will be of the word only. Hence the mistake.

Yogini! Now you won’t be able to run. And if you run, where will you go? I will pursue. I will come right behind you—like a shadow. Once someone has related themselves to me, there is no way to run. Then I will enter your dreams, shake your sleep, swim in your feelings. I will become your memory. I will become your imagination. There is no way to escape, Yogini! No way to run. I know the urge to run arises. Panic too. This love is vast. If you drown, you drown. This is drowning in midstream.

People come to embark, and I drown them. People had come thinking they would reach the other shore, and I say—there is no shore other than the midstream! I coax them as far as the midstream, saying we are going to the other shore—that is only to explain, Yogini—when the midstream comes, then I say—the place has come; now take the plunge, now drown, now disappear! That was only a temptation. They are people clinging to the bank; they cannot leave that shore, so one has to give them complete faith in the other shore—that there is another shore, even more beautiful than this one; there golden and silver flowers bloom, there diamonds and jewels lie like pebbles, there thousands upon thousands of suns have risen, there nectar is raining. One has to show them the green gardens of the other shore; otherwise you are not willing to leave this shore. You say—then why should we go? This is fine: the flowers are fleeting, but at least they bloom; they are not of gold and silver—but what of it!

But once you set out with me, then on reaching the midstream I tell you—there is no shore. And there is no way to return. Because for the one who has come into the midstream, even the bank left behind is finished. That too was in a dream—it has broken. And the other shore was like a thorn. One thorn was stuck in your foot; we brought another thorn to remove the one embedded. Then both must be thrown away. Both shores are left behind; in the midstream one drowns. And those who drown in the midstream are the blessed ones. Because only they cross, only they arrive. Those who drown—they alone reach.

Jesus has an astounding saying: If you dissolve, you will find.

The last question will be on the day you do not ask at all—when it becomes clear to you that every question turns into an answer, and every answer turns into new questions. The day you understand this, asking will drop; you will sit by me, questionless—just I here, you there; and slowly, neither I here nor you there—both dissolve; a rhythm is set, a chord is struck, a music arises. In that presence is the whole attainment.
These questions and answers are only pretexts. They are a device to keep you engaged here. Perhaps you are not yet ready to sit here empty, day after day. You might manage for a day or two, but not every day. If you can sit silently by me, there is no need to say anything; because what I have to say cannot be said, and what I am saying does not need to be said. But you will not be able to sit silent. Your restless mind needs something to play with. These words are toys. Like a small child who makes mischief and is given a toy, and then becomes absorbed in it—so is your mind: restless, troublesome. I give you some words; words are toys, and your mind gets entangled with them. While your mind is thus occupied, the real work goes on alongside, indirectly. With the mind engrossed, you are moving closer to me, and I am coming closer to you. Slowly you will understand this secret.
That is why you see many people who do not understand Hindi also sitting and listening. Sometimes you wonder, “What are these people hearing?” They have understood the secret: it is not to be heard but to be imbibed; it is not about listening to the question, it is about being together—satsang. So it makes no difference what I am saying, or in which language I am saying it. Something in my presence speaks which is unsayable, beyond language; they are drinking that presence. When you too begin to drink that presence, then the last question has come. Otherwise, every question and answer starts a new chain, a new sequence of questions.
You ask: “The last question. The question is you, the answer is you; the questioner is you, the answerer is you—what kind of play is this?”
Because there is only One; there are not two. Two is our illusion. And I have stayed here with you so that you may realize this: that question and answer are not two; the speaker and the listener here are not two—the listener and the speaker are one. Slowly this feeling will arise, grow intense, deepen. And as it deepens, you will awaken in wonder: there never were two.
Here there is no I and you. Where I-and-you disappear, what remains—That—That alone is. Raso vai sah. That is the stream of essence. That is what is sought. That is the search.
This is not a lecture here; this is satsang. The whole arrangement is so that we may receive its essence within ourselves. This arrangement is like when you go to hear classical music: for a quarter of an hour, half an hour, the musician spends time just settling his instrument. He keeps tuning the strings—tightening here, loosening there—tapping the tabla here and there. Those who do not know classical music are surprised: why don’t they do this hammering and tinkering at home? Why make this clatter right here? But those who know understand that the strings must be freshly tuned; otherwise they go flat, and it makes a difference. They must be made fresh each moment. Right there before you—it may look crude: the banging, the tightening and loosening—could this not be done behind the curtain, brought ready from home? No, it cannot. Classical music is living music. Just as life is new each moment and must be prepared each moment, lived each moment, so it is. A musician spends a quarter, half an hour in this alone. Sometimes there are great mix-ups.
It happened once in Lucknow in the time of Nawab Wajid Ali. An English governor came to hear music at his court. Wajid Ali was a great lover of music; he had master musicians. He invited the very best—the governor had come. The musicians sat, the gathering was arranged, the mehfil assembled. And the musicians began their knocking and tuning—one tapping his tabla, another setting his sarangi, another tightening his sitar. Half an hour passed; the governor said, “I am enjoying this so much—let this music continue.” He knew nothing; he took this hammering and tuning to be the music—“let this music continue!” Wajid Ali was mad enough; he said, “Then let it continue.” He ordered them to keep doing just that. For three hours it went on. And the governor went away most satisfied.
Keep in mind: what I am speaking is only the tightening of the strings. Do not commit the stupidity of that English governor—do not take this as the music. This is only the instrument being set. And when the instrument is set, then there is silence. And that silence is the music. Do not only hear the words; listen to the gaps between the words. Do not just listen to what I say; listen to what I am. Listen to what I am not. Catch the emptiness, catch the silence. These answers I am giving are only the tuning.
When Rabindranath was dying, a friend said to him, “You are truly blessed! You have written six thousand songs. Never has there been a greater poet on earth. In England they consider Shelley a great poet—he wrote two thousand songs; you have written six thousand. And such songs that all can be set to music. You should go in joy. Why are there tears in your eyes?” Rabindranath opened his eyes and said, “The tears are there because I am complaining to God: only now had my instrument just been set—where have I sung the real song yet? I was still only knocking and tuning. These six thousand songs were written merely in tuning the instrument. Now it was just beginning to settle, I was coming close to being ready—and this moment of departure has come. It now felt that perhaps I could sing what I had come to sing; it was coming close, it was on the tongue—and the time to go arrived. What kind of joke is this! Only now was I getting prepared, the veena had been tuned—the music was just about to descend.”
What I am saying is only the tightening of the veena. What is left unsaid—that is the real music. Listen to that. Immerse yourself in that. That is the rasa. That is the Divine.

Done—I have kept you. I am keeping your heart here. This is the very meaning of sannyas: I take your heart and give you mine. This exchange is called sannyas. This communion is called sannyas.
That's all for today.