Santo Magan Bhaya Man Mera #2

Because you know nothing of God. You have only heard about God. And those you have heard it from also do not know. How can there be conflict between God and the world? If there were conflict, how could the world live even for a single moment? Without the support of God would your breath move? Without the support of God would trees grow? Would the sun have light? Would the moon and stars shine? Without the support of God, from where would motion arise? From where would energy come? From where would life throb? God and the world in opposition! Nothing could be more foolish. Yet this is exactly what the priest has told you, what the pundit has taught you, what your so‑called mahatmas have been planting in your mind: that God and the world are opposed. Centuries of such teaching have left deep conditioning within you.

Among the greatest delusions that have flourished in the name of religion, the greatest is this: that God and the world are in opposition. Why was this delusion created? There must be a reason—a deep one. The secret is: if there is no opposition between God and the world, then the pundit and the priest are unnecessary. If there is opposition, there is a need. If there is opposition, the pundit can instruct you how to be free of the world and how to attain God. But if the world and God are strung on the same thread, if there is no opposition, then what need is there for your mahatmas? If there is no illness, what need is there for the physician? If you are already living in God, what need is there to devise methods to find him? That is why the so‑called religious trade had to raise a long controversy about the opposition between God and the world—had to convince you that you are worldly and that you must become God‑filled; that as you are, you are wrong, and you must become right—and the method to become right is with them.

This has not made everyone non‑worldly—being non‑worldly is difficult, because to be non‑worldly means to set yourself against the energy of God. But it has certainly happened that a few mad people tried and became warped, deranged. And even those who did not try have had their minds poisoned. You are in the world, but not joyfully. You sit in your shop, but you are sad, because you believe you should be sitting in a temple. You work, but there is no relish in the work—this is the world, and within you it stands condemned. You raise children, so you do the work; a wife cooks because the husband will come home hungry, but everything proceeds in a dull sadness. Your religious teachers have robbed your life of all delight, filled your life with a great emptiness. You have not found God—that much is clear. But the savor that could have been available from the world has certainly been spoiled.

Those who know, their knowing is of a different kind. They are not against the world—how could they be against the world? They are in favor of God. Now listen carefully, word by word, or you will misunderstand. They are for God, not against the world. Your pundits and priests, your saints and sadhus are against the world, not in favor of God. Those who are for God do not want to tear you away from the world; they only want to connect you with God. And the day you are connected, you will discover that even in the world you were already connected with him—you were connected while asleep; now you are connected awake. That is the only difference. Asleep, you were living in God; awake, you begin to live in him. There is no opposition at all.

It is as if someone were sleeping deeply in this garden. The cuckoo comes and sings, birds are chattering, the sun rises, breezes dance through the trees; but someone is fast asleep. The breezes touch him, the birds’ songs echo at his ears, the sun’s rays play on his face, but he knows nothing. Then someone comes and shakes him awake. His eyes open—the glory of the sun is revealed, the song of the passing breeze is heard, suddenly the cuckoo’s call, the fragrance of flowers. Do you think something new has happened? Everything was already there, just as it is. Only this man has become new—nothing else has changed. The same garden, the same sun, the same flowers, the same birds—everything the same; only a small difference: he was asleep; he is awake.

The meaning of “world” is: you are asleep in God. The meaning of “God” is: you are awake in the world. That is the only difference; there is not the slightest opposition.

When Dadu Dayal pulled Rajjab down from the horse, it was not out of opposition; he simply woke him. He called out, “Rajjab, what a strange thing you are doing!” Just a call: What are you up to? Wake up—the morning has come; this is the time to awaken. Are you going to sleep? Going to sleep again? Not yet bored with sleeping? You have tried to see God while asleep—how will you see him that way? Now open your eyes; see while awake. Closed eyes, open eyes—that is all the difference. Closed eyes is the world; open eyes is God. It is one and the same reality. And as it is, so it is; it never changes. Your wandering, your closing your eyes, your falling asleep do not change the world. You drink wine today and think the world has changed. You stagger down the road and feel that a storm is coming, that squalls are rising, that there is an earthquake and houses are shaking. But the houses are not shaking; there is no squall, no storm. Only you are intoxicated; your legs are wobbling. When the intoxication passes, you will find there was no earthquake, no houses falling.

One night Mulla Nasruddin was returning home—quite drunk. He tried to put the key into the lock, but it would not go into the keyhole; his hand trembled and wandered here and there. A policeman standing on the road watched and felt pity—he often had to come to Nasruddin’s aid. He came and said, “Mulla, you are wasting your effort. Give me the key; I will open it.” Nasruddin said, “I will keep the key, and I will open it. You just do one thing: hold the house steady so it does not move.”

The house is not moving. How would the house move? You are moving. Your consciousness is trembling. Your mind is full of thoughts and waves; you are asleep. Because of sleep there is no fragrance in your life. Because of sleep there is no bliss in your life. Bliss is a symptom of awakening; the shadow of awakening. A sleeping person is always in sorrow. Sleep cannot be exhilarated. It is unconsciousness—how can there be festivity?

So you are restless, troubled, and then you go to someone and ask how your restlessness, how your trouble can be removed. He says, “You are worldly; become spiritual. Leave the world—leave the wife, leave the children, leave the home, leave your work—run to the mountains; God is there.” Is God not here? God is everywhere. Just open your eyes—then he is here. Keep your eyes closed, and you will not find him even on the Himalayas. Keep your eyes closed, and even if you reach heaven you will not find him. Keep your eyes open—then where is hell? Wherever you are, you will find him there.

You have no idea of the Divine; otherwise you would see that the world is the Divine’s expression—his dance, his song, his flute. All these colors are his; all these styles are his. In the rainbow of this world are the signatures of that Painter. These beautiful faces, these flowers, these people, these lovely nights and radiant days—all bring news of him. But for centuries you’ve been taught that the world and the Divine are in opposition; you’ve been taught to oppose the world and told that then you will find God. I tell you: oppose the world and you will never find the Divine—and you will lose the world too. Torn between two, you get neither. You become like the washerman’s donkey—belonging neither to the home nor to the riverbank. That is all I consider your so‑called sadhus and renunciates to be: washermen’s donkeys—neither of the house nor of the ghat. This may hurt, it may pain you, because you have formed a habit, a conditioning, of thinking in a certain way.

You have no clue about the Divine; don’t talk about God yet. For now, see just this: my life is full of sleep—how can I wake up? Forget God! Don’t get entangled in theoretical discussions. Ask only: how can I awaken, how can I come out of the dream? The moment you come out of sleep you will find you have always been in the Divine—and there is no other way to be. Even when you were wrong, you were in him. Even when you were in sin, you were in him. The sinner is in him, the virtuous is in him—there is no place outside him. Where could you go beyond him? How could you go, where could you go? All this vastness is his. Whatever you do, good or bad, you do in him. Rama is in him, and Ravana too. On his stage the whole drama is enacted. And he is as present in Rama as in Ravana. The only difference is: Rama knows; Ravana does not. That’s all—the difference is awareness versus unawareness. Beyond this there is no difference between the worldly person and the so‑called saint. The difference is not sin and virtue; it is consciousness and unconsciousness. But habits form, and then we keep thinking along those ruts. Take courage—drop your habits. With stale, borrowed patterns of thinking, no new movement is possible.

I have heard: A mother gave each of her two children a laddoo and went into the kitchen. A little later the younger one began to cry. The mother asked the older boy, “Why is the little one crying?” He said, “Because I’m eating my laddoo, Mother.” She said, “That’s strange—I gave the little one a laddoo too.” The elder replied, “I know. Even when I was eating his laddoo, he was crying. Mother, he’s just got into the habit of crying!”

A way of seeing and thinking becomes a deeply rooted habit. You have heard again and again that there is opposition between God and the world: “Leave the world if you want God.” You’ve heard it so often that this lie, through repetition, has begun to feel like truth. Even the biggest lie becomes truth—just keep repeating it. Don’t worry about people; just keep repeating. When people hear something so many times, gradually they begin to suspect: if it is said this often, it must be true. This is the whole science of advertising—repeat and repeat. Don’t even worry whether people read the newspaper ad; even if they don’t, as they flip the page their eye catches it: Lux Toilet Soap. Walking down the road a billboard appears: Lux Toilet Soap. Watching a movie: Lux Toilet Soap. Listening to the radio: Lux Toilet Soap. Wherever you look—Lux Toilet Soap. It is repeated so many times you don’t even notice the imprint settling inside. Then one day you go to the market to buy soap, the shopkeeper asks, “Which soap?” and you say, “Lux Toilet Soap.” And you think you have decided; you imagine you researched which soap is best; you think you made a careful calculation. You did nothing. You know nothing. The thing was planted inside you; it sat in your depths. Repetition is the only way to fix such things. That’s why advertising must be repetitive from every side; wherever you go—whether you want it or not—the ad should meet your eye.

For centuries you’ve been told that the Divine and the world are in opposition. You’ve clutched at it. But how can this be? It would be like saying the center and the circumference are in opposition. Like saying the soul and the body are in opposition—then how would this union continue even for a moment? It would break: the soul would go its way and the body its way. What would keep them together? If the Divine were opposed to the world, he would have flown from it long ago; trees would have withered, flowers shriveled, birds’ throats would have fallen silent, rivers would have ceased to flow. No, this has not happened. Saints may be against the world; the Divine is not. Otherwise why would the world go on? Who would run it?

And remember, I am not against the world. I am certainly for the Divine. What is the difference? The difference is vast—like the distance between earth and sky. I am for the Divine; the world is a small fragment of the Divine. And when you know the Divine, you will recognize him in the world too. Then it won’t be that you can’t see the Divine in your own son, merely because he is your son.

When Swami Ram returned from America, his chief disciple Sardar Puran Singh wrote in his memoirs: I lived with him for a year. He was a remarkable man. But one day I was in great difficulty. His wife had come from distant Punjab to meet him, bringing the children. He had left his wife; she had lived in hardship, grinding grain by hand to feed the children. Now the husband, renowned and returned from a foreign land with great fame, she came for darshan—not to claim him as a husband, but for darshan, and to let the children have it too. When she approached the hut and Ram saw her, he said to Puran Singh, “Close the door. I do not want to meet my wife.”

Puran Singh writes: I was astonished, because he had never asked me to close the door. Many other women had come, many men too; he had never refused anyone. Why refuse only his own wife? I said, “I will close the door, but you have raised a question in my mind. You see the Divine in everyone—except in your own wife? You have been telling me that the Divine is in all. Then merely because this woman is your wife, is there no Divine in her? Why have the door closed? What sort of discrimination is this?” Ram was a man of brilliance; in a moment he saw the point. Tears rolled from his eyes. He said, “Forgive me. Open the door. There must be fear in me. How can there be a division? The Divine is in all. How does it make any difference that she was once my wife? The fear is in me. Perhaps she may not have come with any attachment, but within me some fear must be hiding. Open the door. You have rightly startled me; you warned me at the right time. Otherwise this mistake would have been made—and even such a small mistake is enough to keep one far from the Divine.”

The day you experience the Divine, do you think you won’t see the Divine in your son? Then it is the same in the son, in the wife, in the husband. When you sit in your shop, you may be sitting there as a shopkeeper, but you will see the same One in the customer too. You will know you are doing his work. The only change is this: now you think you are doing your own work; then you will know you are doing his. Whatever his will! If for now his intention is to make you a shopkeeper, then a shopkeeper you will be. If his intention is something else, then something else you will become. Apart from his intention, we have no intention of our own. His will is our will. Such surrender is what is called religion.

Therefore I do not tell you to run away from the world. I do tell you to awaken in the Divine. And the moment you awaken you will discover: the whole world is filled with him, inundated with him.

First of all, my emphasis is not on practice. My emphasis is on understanding, not on practice. Understand what I am saying. Don’t rush into practice. But that knot lies deep within us—we don’t care to understand, we just want to practice. You have forgotten that understanding is enough. I say to you: here is the door—go out through it. Don’t go to the right, there is a wall; if you go, you’ll bang into it. You say, “Fine—but now how should we practice?” If you have understood that the door is to the left, what is there to practice? Just go out. But you say, “I’ve heard you, but it’s difficult; practice we must.”

What will you practice? Practice that you won’t try to go through the wall? Will you stand before the wall and swear, “Now I will never pass through you! I firmly resolve that even if a thousand thoughts, emotions, attractions arise in my mind, I will never again try to pass through you!” Will you stand before the door and vow, “I take a vow that from now on I will always pass only through you”? If the point is understood, practice happens on its own. The uncomprehending are the ones who practice. The wise simply see things. The wise understand; the unwise practice. “Practice” only means you have not understood. If you have, don’t even ask how to practice.

One who really understands that smoking is poison doesn’t ask, “How do I quit now?” If there is a half-smoked cigarette in his hand, it will fall right there. All that is needed is that the understanding dawn: smoking is poison. Yes, if it hasn’t dawned—if you’ve only heard it, but not understood—then the cigarette doesn’t drop from your hand, and new questions arise: “You’re right; if you say so, it must be right, and you say it for my good—but how do I practice? How should I stop smoking?”

Think a little—this is the sign of stupidity. The man who says, “How do I stop smoking?” is both foolish and dishonest: foolish, because he cannot see a simple thing; dishonest, because he won’t even admit that he cannot see it. He wants to appear as if he’s understood—“I’m no fool. I’ve understood that this is not right—now practice...” Practice means: “I’ll quit tomorrow. First I’ll do penances—do push-ups and squats, stand on my head, count my beads, go to the temple, sing bhajans and kirtans—tomorrow I’ll quit.” And tomorrow never comes. Has it ever come, will it ever come? Tomorrow this same man will still say, “What should I do? I’m practicing.” He will practice all his life. This is double stupidity. If he just kept smoking, at least only that time would be wasted; now time is wasted both in smoking and in practicing quitting. Double the waste! The earlier way was better—enough.

You can see it—you know it from your life and from the lives of those around you—people spend their lives trying to quit smoking, as if the only worthwhile task in life were to quit cigarettes. I know people who have been trying to quit for thirty years. I tell them, “Good man, now at least quit quitting! You haven’t quit the cigarette—thirty years wasted—so at least quit quitting; smoke in peace. At least you’ll have that much peace. You’ll have a little awareness in the smoking itself: smoke with a bit of joy; you’re not committing some great sin—you’re only taking smoke in and out. If you live a couple of years less, what’s the loss? The world is overcrowded anyway; you’ll vacate a seat a little sooner. Don’t be so troubled.”

And after thirty years you still haven’t quit! And suppose after fifty years of trying you die having finally quit, and God asks you, “What have you achieved?”—with what face will you say, “I quit smoking”? You will feel ashamed—your head will hang: “In fifty years I quit a cigarette.” First you picked it up—that was the original foolishness; in a world with so many things to pick up, you picked up a cigarette! Then you spent fifty years dropping it! And you think that dropping it becomes a great virtue. People often think: who is virtuous? The one who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t chew betel, doesn’t take tobacco—that’s virtue! Are these qualities? Then tomorrow you’ll also say, “I don’t eat stones; I don’t eat dirt”—will that be a virtue?

Remember: in trivial matters there is no substance either in grasping or in renouncing. The substance is in seeing the trivial as trivial. Recognition is the substance. Once recognized, the matter ends there. The sutras I give you are not for you to practice.

I was a guest in Calcutta in the home of an extraordinary man—unique in his own way among the wealthy of this country—Sohanlal Kothari. He had great affection for me. One night he sat with me and said, “Now what is there to hide from you?” He was about seventy. “I have taken a vow of celibacy four times in my life.” “Four times?” A devout gentleman sitting with us was very impressed—looked at him as one looks at a great saint. I said to him, “Don’t be too impressed. Do you know what it means to take it four times? It means the first time didn’t work, nor the second, nor the third. And first ask whether the fourth time worked—or did you just get tired and stop taking vows from the fifth time onward?”

Sohanlal was an honest man. He said, “You are right”—tears came to his eyes—“I didn’t take it the fifth time. Not because it was fulfilled, but because it never got fulfilled and each time brought dejection. I’d vow and then break it—then I’d repent. I’d feel guilty. I wondered, what’s the point of this vow? It brings no fragrance into life—since it never completes—yet every time it breaks, more self-condemnation and self-loathing arise, a stench is created. I’ve been falling in my own eyes. The first time I took the vow there was some respect for myself; after four times, I lost respect for myself. I gained nothing and lost a lot.”

I told him, “It’s not your fault. This is what has been happening for centuries. Brahmacharya is not a vow; it is not a practice to be maintained by oath. Have lives ever changed through vows? Lives change through understanding, not through vows. And those who take vows are not the understanding kind. To take a vow is to declare one’s lack of understanding. The understanding person sees—why would he take a vow?

What is the basis of a vow? The basis is: ‘Right now it seems what you say is right. If I take a vow now, I’ll be bound by it, held within a line of conduct. If I delay even a little, the understanding might slip away.’ That’s why people, in the company of saints, in temples and mosques, under the influence of religion, take vows. There’s applause, praise, the ego enjoys it, the blessing of the holy man—so the vow is taken. In that moment, they don’t remember their own unconscious, their own mental patterns, their past—nothing. It’s only the impact of the moment. By the time they reach home, the obstacles begin. By the time they get home, they start regretting: ‘What have I done?’ But whom to tell? It’s not right to tell anyone now. Now quietly struggle. And the more you bind yourself, the stronger the urge becomes.

These are not the ways to change life. Understand! Don’t even talk of brahmacharya—understand sexual desire. When you fully understand it, one day you suddenly find that its grip on you has gone; you are no longer in its fist. You don’t have to take a vow of celibacy; sexual desire slips away from your life by itself. If you have to force it out, that’s dangerous—it will return, to take revenge, because that which you threw out will strike back. Let it drop of its own accord. What is needed is a life of awareness. Understand your sexuality. Why so much panic? Why so much hurry? Live your sexuality attentively, thoughtfully, with your whole heart. Don’t let the so-called saints come in between. Learn only from your own experience. In this world, no one has ever learned from another’s experience, nor can anyone. That’s where you go wrong—you want to make someone else’s experience your own. If life were so cheap, then with one Mahavira’s liberation the whole world would be liberated; with one Buddha’s liberation the whole world would be liberated. And when Rajjab got down from the horse, all would have gotten down. Rajjab getting off the horse was not a practice.

Remember, it happened in a single instant. Rajjab didn’t say, “You are right, Maharaj—O Dadu Dayal, what you say is right. Now I will practice. One day I will surely attend satsang. You spoke well; I’ll think about it, I’ll practice, I’ll come. Band, play on!” He would have tightened the reins even more. And if someone forces himself off the horse, the danger is not that he’ll get off; the danger is he’ll hoist the horse onto his head. Getting off is not such a problem; carrying the horse is a calamity. That’s what happens—the opposite practice begins. Sexual desire seizes you strongly; you start practicing celibacy.

When sexual desire seizes you, understand it! It is a gift of God; there must be a secret in it, a treasure of mystery hidden there. I tell you—your treasure of celibacy is hidden within your sexuality. If you go deep into it, you will find within it the very fragrance of celibacy. Then it won’t be a vow or a practice; it will be a natural, effortless flowering. It will come from experience. It will come silently, without noise. No one will even get a whisper of it. You yourself will be amazed that the desire which had gripped you so strongly has gone as if it had never gripped you at all.

You know this: there was a time when you were a small child, and sexual desire had no hold over you. You have forgotten those days. At fourteen a powerful current of sexuality swept over you. But there were days before that too—you lived without it. Those days can return. But they won’t come by force; if you impose them, they won’t come. Live what God gives—experience it—enter into it with attention, with thankfulness, with gratitude—and you will be astonished: nothing that life gives you is useless. If today it seems useless, tomorrow in that very thing you will find the concealed meaningfulness.

Understand it like this: a man has piled cow dung outside his house; there is a great stink. Spread that very dung over the garden—it becomes manure, flowers become fragrance. That very stench blossoms in lotus, in rose, champa, chameli, juhi. That very stench takes on the form of innumerable fragrances. I am on the side of this transformation.

You ask: “It is difficult to practice what you say.”
Not difficult—impossible. Because my emphasis is not on practice at all. Don’t practice my words. Understand them. I also understand your difficulty—you are not keen to understand. Even while I am explaining, inside you are calculating how to practice it. Even while I am explaining, you don’t dive fully into understanding; you don’t merge with me. Inside you are fixing your own arithmetic: “All right, this rings true; I’ll do it like this.” Because of your arithmetic you miss me.

People come here who quickly pull out their notebooks and start jotting things down. You are crazy! What will happen by taking notes? Understand what I’m saying. But they think, “I’ll note it in the book and understand it at leisure at home.” If you couldn’t understand with me, will you understand at leisure at home? Dive in, in unison with me. Drop this nonsense about practice and such. I don’t want to make you practitioners. I want to give you the natural, effortless way. I want to give you the light of understanding, of wisdom. I want to give you the lamp of meditation. You ask for a map. You say, “Tell us exactly: to reach the station, turn left, turn right, then there will be a crossroads, an imli tree, a peepal tree—give us the map, the precise directions; then we’ll practice and reach.” I say to you, I will give you a lamp and I will give you eyes, so that you yourself can read the signs on the milestones along the way, see the arrows. Why should I give you the details?

A blind man says, “Explain to me what is written in the scriptures.” How many scriptures will I explain to him? I say to him, “Let me treat your eyes; then you can read the scriptures yourself. Then the scripture of life, the whole of it, will be available to you.”

There was an old man. At seventy he lost both eyes. He was clever, experienced, worldly-wise. The vaidyas said, “There can be treatment—an operation.” He said, “What’s the need? What’s lacking in my house? I have eight sons—their sixteen eyes; eight daughters-in-law—their sixteen eyes: thirty-two; two eyes of my wife—thirty-four eyes available to me. Whether my two eyes remain or not, what difference does it make? I’ll manage.” But by coincidence, a few days later a fire broke out in his mansion. Those thirty-four eyes were all suddenly outside. Those thirty-four eyes didn’t even remember him—only when they got outside did they remember. Everyone ran! When life is at risk, each person first saves his own life. No one thinks and plans; the flames rose and people fled—whoever could, through doors, windows—jumped and got out. Once outside, safe, when they caught their breath, then they all remembered: “What have we done? We left the old father inside.” And now going in was difficult—the flames had risen. The blind father groped door to door, trying to find a way out, and was getting burned in place after place. You can imagine his condition—think on it, meditate on it.

In that moment he remembered: in the critical hour, only one’s own eyes are of use. When there is no crisis, others’ eyes can also serve. But when the real need arises, only your own eyes help.

I want to give you the process by which your eyes open. I have no taste for practice and the rest. Don’t impose things on yourself. Practice means imposition—hammering and beating yourself into some mold. A character so imposed is, in my view, a mischaracter. There is a character that arises by itself, in simplicity. What rises in simplicity—that is the saint. What comes by superimposed practice is not saintliness. Outwardly he is a saint; within, the non-saint is seated—ready to appear any time. But you have been taught to practice. Every task has been taught to be done by practice.

No—life’s ultimate truths are not attained by practice. The divine is present—no practice is needed—only understanding. You ask, “Understanding? What do you mean?” I mean only this: empty the mind of your hackneyed notions. They have done you no good, yet you go on carrying them. Because of them your understanding is suppressed. Otherwise, everyone is born with the capacity for Buddhahood. Every person is a Kohinoor diamond. But it is buried under trash. And the strange thing is, you think the trash is precious—you hold it to your chest. You lose the diamond and clasp the rubbish. Drop the trash.

The ideas you have heard, read in scriptures, parroted from pundits and priests—because of all these your own diamond cannot shine. You have also heard that you must practice. No—there is no question of practice. Do you need to practice throwing the trash out of your house? Once you see it is trash, you throw it. You don’t go around the village beating a drum that “Today I have renounced trash; look, there is no ascetic like me—I’ve piled such a heap outside my house.” Your practicing renouncers give up wealth and houses, and then go about announcing how much they have renounced.

Whoever says “I have renounced” is really saying the hour of renunciation had not yet come, the trash had not appeared as trash; there was still confusion in the trash about wealth and property. I only tell you to understand. Listen, ponder, and calmly see within what is useless, what has never served you—if it had, you wouldn’t be here—what has not served you: drop it. But you bring it along here. You listen to me from behind its screen—so you miss; then the question of practice arises.

Someone sits there as a Hindu, someone as a Muslim, someone as a Jain—he is listening, but his religion stands in between. Who knows how many sages are standing in between—lines of them. One sage takes my words and passes them to another; something gets distorted; he passes them to a third—more distortion—and by the time the words reach you, they are completely perverted. Listen directly. Bow to these sages in the middle and tell them, “This is not a bus—why are you standing in a queue here? Go home. Leave me alone. Let me meet face to face. I’ve heard enough of you—if anything had to happen, it would have happened by now.” And these sages aren’t alive either—they are all dead. They must have been alive once. And it may be you went to listen to them then too and missed them as well—because other dead sages stood between you and them. Such a strange game.

You have listened to Buddha, you have listened to Mahavira. When you listened to Mahavira, Maharshi Patanjali stood in between; now you listen to me—Mahavira stands in between. Tomorrow, when you listen to someone else, I will stand in between. But when will you listen directly? When will you see the light directly? Remove these borrowed eyes. Listen empty, quiet. From listening itself you will get the sutra—no practice will be needed. I assure you of an immediate revolution. I tell you—you can go from here transformed—today; there is no need to postpone till tomorrow. But you say, “How today? Give us some practice—then we’ll practice for six months or a couple of years and slowly we’ll change.” You don’t want to change. You are dishonest. You don’t want to change—you want to create the hollow pretense of changing. That’s why you say “tomorrow,” “day after.”

There is a story in the Jain scriptures. A young man returned after listening to Mahavira. He was sitting in his bath pavilion; his wife was rubbing ubtan on him, bathing him—an old story; now no wife bathes her husband. Even if the husband is bathing, she knocks at the door: “Come out—how long will you sit in there? There are other things to do than bathe!” Those were earlier days. She was rubbing ubtan, cleaning his body. They began to talk. The wife said, “You’ve returned from listening to Mahavira; my brother also goes to listen. He’s so impressed that he says, ‘In two or four years I’ll take sannyas.’” Her husband laughed. He said, “Sannyas—‘in two or four years’! There is no certainty of tomorrow, no certainty of the next moment!” The wife said, “I know—he’s practicing at home right now. When his practice is complete, he’ll leave everything.” The husband said, “Death may come first and all the practice will be left lying there. And what practice is needed? If it’s clear the house is on fire, do you practice getting out? Do you say, ‘I’ll get out after practice’?” He stood up, opened the door, and went out—he was naked, bathing. The wife said, “Where are you going?” He said, “The matter is finished. I am not going to practice. The matter is finished—namaskar.” The wife cried, “It was a joke—what are you doing?” He said, “Sannyas is no joke. I am sannyas itself.”

The whole village gathered to see—no one had seen such a sannyas. People practice; they climb one step at a time—first step, second step... Among the Jains, especially the Digambaras, there are five steps—by the fifth step, becoming a sky-clad monk takes a whole lifetime. Only on his deathbed does a man manage to become a naked renunciate. This young man—married only a few years ago—neighbors gathered, seeing him naked at the door, “What has happened to you?” He said, “Nothing happened—I have seen the point. I am graced by Mahavira, and even more than by Mahavira, by my wife—she struck the blow exactly. I had just returned from listening; the words were resounding in my mind—and she struck. She asked, ‘Can you renounce right now?’ Once the point is seen, what is to be let go is either let go now or never.”

This is what I call understanding. Then who looks back?

You ask: “It is difficult to practice what you say.”
Practice is not possible at all—it is impossible. The questioner’s name tells where the obstruction comes from—Chandrashekhar Shastri. The shastra must be the obstruction. Now look at that young man who left the bathhouse and renounced—he certainly wasn’t a “shastri.” Is this some scriptural way of renouncing? What could be more un-scriptural? But this is what I call spontaneous sannyas. One glimpse—and everything changes. A gust of wind—and the dust flies away.

Don’t practice my words—otherwise you will go mad. These are not things to be practiced.

Again the scripture intrudes: Whom to remember? The very meaning of meditation is that the mind becomes empty. If you ask “whom to remember,” it means the mind will be filled again—filled with something or other. In one person’s mind a film song is crammed: “Lare Lappa”—and someone else sits doing Hari-bhajan; it is no different from “Lare Lappa.” All words are alike. No difference.

When you sit and keep repeating—Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram—what are you doing? You are simply declaring that you cannot sit empty. You are simply saying you cannot give the mind even a brief pause, a little rest. Either you will think of money or of the marketplace. If you resolve not to think of money and the market, then you will think of something else—but the thinking will continue.

Meditation means thinking does not continue; thinking drops. In meditation one is not to remember anyone. It is because of remembrance that meditation is arrested, obstructed. Meditation is your nature, not someone’s remembrance. When all remembrance falls away and nothing at all is remembered, you remain bare—like a clean mirror in which no reflection forms—not of the marketplace, not of the temple; not of the world, not of liberation; no memory of wealth, no memory of religion; nothing is remembered at all. A clear mirror remains, no reflection forms, no ripple rises. The rippleless state is called meditation.

Now you ask me: “Whom should we remember?”
Am I your enemy, that I should spoil your meditation? If I tell you to remember this or that, I become the cause of destroying your meditation. But I understand your difficulty: your habit has become so distorted that you cannot be empty even for a moment. So you say, “All right, we won’t remember the world; just give us some mantra—at least give us the Namokar mantra, or some other mantra...” People come to me and ask, “Give us some support, some prop. We need a support.” I say, “Drop all supports, because every support is alien; become supportless.” In that very supportless state, what lies asleep within you will awaken. As long as supports remain, it will not awaken. I say, “Throw away all crutches”; you say, “We’ll drop this crutch, but please give us another. If not a wooden crutch, then give us one of gold.” But a crutch is a crutch! What difference does it make whether it is of wood, plastic, gold, or iron? Because of the crutch you will remain dependent, enslaved, heteronomous.

Sit and keep chanting Ram-Ram—it will make no difference. I tell you: ajapa. Don’t chant; only then does real japa begin. This may sound contradictory to you, but I am helpless too—the matter itself is like this; what can I do? Ajapa alone is the real japa. And when all names are lost, the remembrance of the real Name begins. Where there is neither the name of Hari nor the name of Ram, there alone is true devotion; where the mind is absolutely untainted, that state of mind is called meditation. Meditation is your nature.

The love I am speaking of is not the love you have understood. I am saying one thing; you are understanding another. Your love is only a dream. So the moment you remember that it is a dream, your love will break. If love breaks when you remember “this is a dream,” know that that love is false; true love has not yet been born. When, even knowing “this is a dream,” love does not break—when the dream breaks and love keeps flowing—then know that true love has appeared. This is the touchstone.

Whatever ends just by thinking “this is a dream” was obviously a dream. Have you ever tried an experiment at night, inside a dream? Try it, if you haven’t; it will be valuable and lead you into a deep experience. Every night, as you go to sleep, go to sleep with one remembrance: tonight, when a dream appears, I will immediately remember, with total clarity, “this is a dream.” It won’t happen in a single night. But between three and six months, if you fall asleep every day with this resolve, the event will occur. And when it does, it will give you a most wondrous experience.

Each night at the very moment of falling asleep—and when I say “falling asleep,” I don’t mean half an hour earlier or an hour earlier—at the exact point you are passing from waking into sleep, when wakefulness is ending and sleep is descending, when the first light gusts of sleep begin to come, when you are a little awake and a little asleep—the state of drowsiness—you have not gone completely under; you can hear the cars on the road, a child crying sounds as if from far away; but you are not fully awake either. You are in between, moving from waking toward sleep; soon everything will be lost, darkness is descending and will soon envelop you. This is the moment to remember. In that moment, fall asleep with the remembrance: tonight, when a dream comes, an immediate and profound awareness will arise—“this is a dream.”

Some day between three and six months this remembrance will arise. It certainly will; by the laws of the mind, it must. And the day this remembrance comes within the dream—“this is a dream”—you will be astonished. Right then, in that very instant, the dream will shatter. In that same instant you will wake up. Not a single moment will be lost.

But these trees are green. Sit beside them and keep thinking, for three to six months, “this is a dream”; for three to six years, or three to six lifetimes, “this is a dream”—even then the tree will not go away. Your calling it a dream won’t make it disappear. The tree will remain. Say “it’s a dream” as much as you like, persuade yourself a thousand times; if you try to walk through the tree assuming it is a dream—your head will break. Reality is reality; it does not change because you think so. Yes, but a dream is a dream; it changes because you think so.

I certainly say: do not break love. But that does not mean I am telling you to tie love to dreams. Break from the dreams, not from love. Do not become the enemy of love; do not set about destroying it. That is what your monks and renunciates have been doing. In panic they destroy love, because a fear has taken hold of them: whenever love happens, it carries one into dreams. Where there is love, there is fear. Let a little love happen and the commotion begins. A small love, a small attachment—and the whole world comes trailing behind it.

I have heard of a saint who was dying. His disciple asked, “Master, you are leaving—any final message?” The dying saint opened his eyes and said, “Remember one thing: never keep a cat.” And he died. He did not even explain what he meant! Nothing in the scriptures says, “Do not keep a cat.” The disciple searched the scriptures—there are all kinds of inquiries in them—but cats! And the gentleman had died after saying it; whom to ask now?

Still, he went on investigating. He asked an old sage, who said, “I know. I know your master’s story. He told you rightly: don’t keep a cat; a cat ruined your master.” “Please, tell me the secret behind this maxim,” the disciple pleaded. The sage said, “Your master renounced and went to the forest, leaving everything, taking only two loincloths. But a trouble arose. He would wash a loincloth and hang it up, and mice would nibble it. He asked a villager, ‘What should I do? It’s a big problem.’ The man said, ‘Keep a cat. She’ll eat the mice; the matter will be settled.’ He kept a cat. But does any matter end by keeping a cat? Here, matters never end—just start! Now the cat needed milk; otherwise, the cat would leave. At every turn she stood there with an ultimatum: milk! So he asked the villagers again. They said, ‘How long can we keep giving you milk? Better keep a cow. We villagers will gift you a cow; after that, manage on your own.’ So, behind the cat came a cow.

“With the cow, more troubles began. She needed grass and fodder. The villagers said, ‘How long can we keep supplying you? That land around your place—grow fodder there.’ All this work left no time for God-remembrance—grow fodder, take the cow to graze, bathe the cow, milk her, feed the cat, the cat eats the mice, your loincloths are saved… and what is saved in the end? A loincloth! A very long tail behind a loincloth! The saint said to the villagers, ‘This is too much! I came for God, and I’m carding cotton!’ When will I do my worship? They said, ‘There’s a widow in the village with no work. She will also have her two chapatis, and she can manage your cow and your farming. She will grow the fodder, harvest your wheat, and some vegetables too.’ It sounded reasonable—and compassionate.

“The widow came. More entanglements followed. She was a good woman—sometimes she would press the saint’s feet, sometimes his head if he had a headache; slowly attachment grew. The villagers said, ‘Master, you should marry, otherwise there will be gossip!’ They got him married. Children were born.

“And all this behind a loincloth! Do you see what a world kept arriving?”

Therefore your master told you the very essence of it: his whole life went into it; in a single line he gave you the gist—just remember one thing: don’t keep even a cat.

People have become afraid of love, because love is like keeping a cat. They have become frightened of love: where love comes, attachment comes, infatuation comes, spread comes, expansion comes, distraction happens. People got scared of love, so they decided to destroy love at the source. Love is a sin, they said. But if you take love to be a sin, how will you call upon God? How will you pray? How will a loveless heart open in prayer? Then your prayer will be dead; there will be no life in it, no heartbeat in it. How will you raise your eyes to the sky and call Him? There will be no prana in your call. Your call will be impotent. Only through love can your call have life.

So I say to you: do not kill love. Do not let it be joined to the false, and keep it alive. The discipline of life is like the acrobat walking a rope—do not fall to the left, do not fall to the right; balance in the middle. Life is an art—the greatest of arts. All other arts are pale before it.

And what is the essence of this art? Keep to the middle; neither this way nor that. Lean too far left and you will fall left; lean too far right and you will fall right. If you let love latch onto every passing thing, you will be entangled in a thousand disturbances. And if, out of fear that love entangles, you destroy love, uproot its roots from the heart, then how will you call upon God? How will the search begin? How will devotion be born? How will fondness for the Divine arise? Prayer is nothing but love in a new form.

What is prayer? Love turned toward God is prayer.

Therefore I am asking you to do a difficult thing—almost impossible it seems—but it happens. It is walking on the razor’s edge: arduous, yet possible. And because it is arduous, it is a challenge. And because it is arduous and a challenge, from it the soul is born.

Do not connect love to the wrong. Do not tie it to money, to house, to business—but do not kill it. Free love from the futile and dedicate it to the meaningful. Draw love up from the earth and let it fly toward the sky. Gather it back from the petty and offer it at the feet of the Vast—make it a sacred offering. Love is what misleads, and love is what delivers; therefore, walk very alertly. The love you have given to your wife or husband—let that love reach God. Do not let it stop at the wife or the husband; for behind the wife too God is hiding—go a little deeper, seek the Divine within the spouse. The love you have given your child—do not let it stop there. If love does not stop but keeps flowing on, then as every river reaches the ocean, so every love reaches God. Only do not let it stop; do not let it stagnate. If it stops, nothing comes to your hand; the river dries up, is lost in some desert, becomes a stagnant pool—filth—and you are left with nothing. Let it flow on, stopping nowhere—that is the path of devotion.

Dreams will go. However sweet, they are dreams. Guard them as you may, you will not be able to save them.

I have heard: a man went to the doctor and said, “Doctor, I keep having the same dream: beautiful young women go racing past me.” “What do you want from me in this?” asked the doctor. The man said, “Give me a medicine so that either those girls slow down a bit, or my speed increases a bit.”

People arrange even within their dreams.

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin, in the middle of the night, half asleep, opened his eyes and said to his wife, “Bring me my glasses!” She brought them and asked, “What do you need glasses for at midnight?” Mulla said, “I’m seeing a very lovely dream. You know my eyes don’t see well—I want to see clearly; everything is blurred.”

People want to put on glasses even to see their dreams. They don’t want even dreams to be hazy. You have taken your dreams to be real. For as long as you take them as real, they are real—you have poured reality into them with your belief. Then you sit waiting; dreams keep running on, and nothing comes to your hand.

“No one is likely to come even today, and yet—
why am I still adorning myself so late?”

People keep adorning themselves; no one comes—no one has ever come—yet they go on making themselves ready, thinking someone will come, someone must come, someone surely will come. Who has ever come into your life? What has happened in your life? It is empty—just empty. Yet you wait, watching the road—today, if not today then tomorrow; tomorrow, if not tomorrow then the day after—sitting there with the lamp of hope lit. That lamp of hope is the world. Blow it out. No one has ever come; no one will ever come. Do not keep your eyes fixed on the future. Because of that fixation you miss the present. And God is now, here; but your eyes are stuck ahead.

What is the meaning of dream? That which is not, the “may be,” the “perhaps someday,” hope; and that which is, which is right now, which surrounds you on all sides, whose pulse beats within and without—you are missing that. Because of dreams, man is missing truth.

I say to you: separate love from dreams, but do not destroy love. Separate love from dreaming and offer it at God’s feet—you have offered many flowers at His feet, but those flowers are not yours. That is why your prayers remain incomplete, unfulfilled. You have but one true flower to offer—if ever you wish to offer—love’s flower.

What is a human being’s flower? Love. On the rosebush a rose blooms; on the bush of a human being—what blooms? Love. But people are very cunning. They deceive people, and they deceive God as well. They pluck flowers from the bush and place them at God’s feet. Nothing of theirs is in it: the flower belonged to the bush; the feet are God’s; what of yours is there? And you think you have done much—prayed, worshipped! Offer your own flower—of consciousness, of love, of meditation. Offer your life-energy. Offer what is supreme within you. What is supreme within you is love; only by offering that will you attain.

“Jan Rajjab aisi vidhi janai, jyu thaa tyun thaharaya.” Make this sutra heart-understood. Let it sink within. Then everything will happen on its own. The mistake is in the search itself. The delusion is in the search itself. Whoever sets out to seek God will only go farther and farther away. Because God is not far that you should go looking; God is near, and in searching you go far. If God is near, there is nowhere to go—there is to awaken. Drop the language of going.
Kundan says: “For seven years here I have been searching for my medicine in the dispensary.”
It was because of the search that you kept missing. If you search, you will wander. But I am not saying there should be no search—one has to search; yet God is not found by search. One has to search, and then one day, seeing clearly, one must drop the search; then He is found. Do not imagine that the one who did not search has received. Many there are who have never searched; they have not found. Those who did not search will not get—because the longing has not yet arisen within them, love has not yet blossomed. No tears have come to their eyes, no call has been born, no flame has leapt. And those who search do not arrive either, because they become engrossed in the search itself. Their whole life-energy gets spent in the searching. To search already means we have assumed God is far. To search means we have assumed we have lost God.

Kundan, when did you lose God? As the fish has not lost the ocean, so we have not lost God. And the fish, if it wished, could even lose the ocean—because besides the ocean there are other places; but even if we wanted, we could not lose the Ocean, because apart from God there is no other place. In Him we are born, in Him we live, in Him we dissolve.

Now drop the search; the search has been enough. The hour has come to drop the search. Now let even the search go.

“I have been here seven years in the dispensary searching for my medicine.”
When are you sick, when are you ill, and what need is there of a medicine? There is no problem at all. Therefore no solution will be found. The problem is false, and all solutions are false. All questions are contrived, and all answers too.

“Now I have come to you, tired and defeated.”
Only by getting tired and defeated does one come. This is the benefit of search: it tires, it defeats—defeated, one takes the Lord’s Name. When someone searches and searches and, searching and searching, falls down tired, in that very moment the meeting happens. So long as the search continues, the ego continues—the feeling that I will do something, that by my doing something will happen.

What does it mean to be defeated by the search? That by my doing nothing will happen. I did everything that could be done—everything—and still nothing happens. In that hour of utter desolation, someone helpless collapses, falls in a heap. In that very moment the meeting happens—because in that moment you are gone and only God remains. As long as there is search, there is the seeker. When the search is utterly defeated—ultimately, completely defeated—the seeker falls; then, other than God, who is there?

Kundan, good. Now the right moment has come near.

“Now I have come to you, tired and defeated. Please, show me my path.”
Now there is no need of a path. This is the path. Now drown completely in this very defeat. Now do not raise the matter of search again. Now let questions and search and the like—all go. Now dive! And in this very plunge you will be carried across. Blessed are they who drown—because by drowning one crosses. This is such a destination that it is attained by drowning in midstream.

“I sit for hours weeping and asking, Who am I? Why am I?”
No answer will be found to this. There is no answer to it. And whatever answers come will all be false. Then you will be surprised: Why then did the wise say, Ask, Who am I? They said it so that you ask and ask and get tired and are defeated. This is a question for which there is no answer. Do you think some answer will come? That you are asking, Who am I? and the answer will come: you are a shopkeeper, you are a doctor, you are a man, you are a woman, you are beautiful, you are intelligent, you are ugly, you are a fool. Will some answer come? No answer will come. Asking and asking, asking and asking, slowly slowly the question itself will be lost; a silence will remain. That silence is the answer; that zero is the answer. All other answers are useless.

I have heard: Every day a gentleman would enter a betel shop, greet the shopkeeper, light his cigarette from one of the lighters kept on the counter, and, greeting again, leave. When this went on for several weeks, the shopkeeper became impatient. One day, as soon as the gentleman entered the shop, he asked, “At least tell me, who are you?” “Don’t you know me? I am the very one who comes here every day to light his cigarette.”
All answers will be like that: I am someone’s son, someone’s husband, someone’s wife, someone’s mother; I was born into some religion; born in some country; some color, some form. All that is on the surface. You have no name, nor have you any address. You are nameless. God too is nameless. You are God. In the seeker itself is hidden that which is being sought. You are looking outside; He is laughing within. You are groping outside; He sits inside enjoying. He is laughing to see all this fun—Here I sit inside, and outside the search goes on. God is laughing at you. Drop all search. Let even this question go.

“Even in Dynamic Meditation, for years I screamed and shouted asking this, but you did not answer.”
There is no answer. Whatever answers are given will be futile.

“Or perhaps the answer did not reach me.”
There is no answer. Had something reached, a wrong answer would have reached.

Kundan is on the right track. On wrong paths, answers are found; on the right paths, all questions are lost—answers are not found. A state of consciousness comes which we call questionless. That is samadhi.

“My state is like the gopis of Krishna, whose hearts found no place anywhere but Krishna. For me there is only you. What should I do?”
Now there is no question of doing anything more. When love arises, there is nothing else to be done; then all acts are small; whatever you do cannot take you beyond love. All methods and disciplines are for those in whose lives love is absent. They are small things, makeshift arrangements—yoga, austerity, renunciation—but they are for those in whose lives love is not. In whose life love is, they need nothing else. All yogas pale; all methods pale. Now just drown in this love.

I have been trying to bring you to just this moment. And let the love you have for me not become love only for me; otherwise it will be a hindrance. Look beyond me. At most, consider me a doorway. No one gets stuck at a door. From the doorway one looks into the far sky—birds flying in the sky, far-off moon and stars, white clouds sailing. No one gets stuck at the door. Do not get stuck on me. I am only a door. Nanak called the guru a door; this is right, and therefore Nanak called his temples gurudwara. Rightly said—temple means door. There is no God in a temple; there is only a door. God pervades the vastness. Do not get stuck at the door; look beyond the door, cross the door.

The right moment has come. You have searched much, asked many questions; now, absorbed in love, dance; now hum; now sing songs—because God is available. Now live God.

Great courage is needed to live God. And to that courage I am inspiring you. My whole inspiration is just this: that you begin to live God this very moment; do not say, “We will search tomorrow and live the day after.” If you have the courage, become one with God this very moment. You already are one; only out of lack of courage you do not declare it. You become afraid, you become nervous. Let the declaration happen now!

Those moments
that passed by your side—
their incomparable fragrance
is still with me.
How can I say
those moments are gone?
Those moments
have won.
Only those moments have passed
that were empty of you.
The moments that pass with you
do not pass—
they win,
over fate,
over the edicts of fate.

If, by coming near me, you receive a little nearness to God, my work is done. If you receive a little fragrance; if a single ray of God reaches you through my door—if just one ray comes into your hand, the whole sun will come into your hand. Then, holding the thread of a single ray, one can obtain the whole sun. The first ray is the real matter.

Kundan, the right moment has come. Do not let this opportunity be lost. Do not start searching again. Do not start asking questions again. Drop the questions! Drop the search! From this very moment begin to live God. Dance, celebrate; God is available.
Enough for today.