Santo Magan Bhaya Man Mera #3

Do you know what mumukshu means? It means one who longs for moksha, liberation. For one who truly longs for liberation, the question of honor or insult simply does not arise. If honor and insult still rise in you, you are still worldly; you have not yet tasted even a single drop of that longing. And then you ask why there is a distinction between a mumukshu—a mere aspirant—and a sannyasin? There is a distinction because there is a real difference—hence the distinction. You don’t ask why there is a difference between woman and man, or between a man and a tree. There is—so it is recognized.

Sannyasin means one who has staked something, who has had the courage to risk. Courage creates the difference. You want neither to risk nor to be courageous, and yet you want respect. You are not a mumukshu yet. What honor or insult? To be a mumukshu is to have seen through the futility of the whole race—then what honor, what insult?

If you still want honor and status, look elsewhere—go to the false temples. Here the value is for the gambler of the spirit, one who can put his life on the line because he has seen through the hollowness of the chase, who has recognized the insubstantial as insubstantial, and has set out in search of the essential—whatever the price.

Cheap religions flourish in the world because people do not wish to pay the price. Someone is a Hindu, someone a Muslim, a Christian, a Jain—but in truth, none of these labels make a man. These are only names. You were born in a house by chance; since childhood you heard certain things by chance; they impressed your mind by chance; because of them you go to one temple, I to another—again, by chance. Neither of us has truly gone to a temple. One goes to a temple only when this world has become utterly futile to him—not due to conditioning, but because the truth of that futility has dawned. One goes to a temple only when the search for Rama has begun in his life.

Rama is neither Hindu nor Muslim; he is not in the Gita nor in the Quran—Rama is in the heart of the seeker, in the yearning soul burning with longing. One who has seen, “My temple is empty without Rama; there is no other way to fill it—there is no substitute for Rama. I have tried placing everything else upon that altar and the temple remains empty.” Understand such a man’s grief, his anguish, his tears. Out of those tears, that anguish, that desolation, true religion is born; otherwise, only hypocrisy arises.

The priest’s trade is to hand you hypocrisy because you demand cheap religion. In this world there are three kinds of middlemen. First: the priest—his trade is to keep the devotee and God apart. For if they meet, he becomes unemployed. He must maintain the distance so that he can “mediate.” He says: “I will take you there; I know the path; I possess the key.” Not only that—he declares every other priest’s key false: “Only the Veda opens the lock,” or “Only the Quran,” and so on. “Follow me and I will deliver you.” Yet he must ensure you never arrive—because the day you arrive, you will bow and say, “Now I have no need of you.”

Some professions are self-defeating if successful. The doctor lives off illness, yet his job is to make you healthy: a dilemma. He heals you a little with one hand and—unknowingly—keeps you a little unwell with the other. Once you fall into the doctor’s loop it’s hard to get out—unless you switch to another doctor, another system: allopathy to ayurveda to homeopathy, but always somewhere in a loop.

I heard: An old doctor’s son returned, fresh from medical school. The father took a break in the hills; the son ran the clinic for two months. When the father returned, the son said proudly, “You’ll be happy to know I cured that lady you couldn’t in forty years.” The father smote his head: “Fool! Who raised you, who paid for your studies? That lady! She was our lifelong support—you’ve ruined the business!”

The priest’s trade is just as dangerous: “I will unite you with God—perform these rituals,” while he ensures no glimpse of God ever occurs in your life—else the priest becomes worthless.

The second middleman: the broker, who keeps the producer and consumer apart. The third: the politician, who keeps citizens apart. Among these, the most dangerous middleman is the priest, because he stands between man and the divine. It is not your sins that have blocked your way to God; it is your priests and pundits. I want to tell you this again and again: your so-called sins cannot stop you from God; his great compassion is far greater than your small misdemeanors. Your priests have told you, “You are blocked by your sins; until they are washed away you cannot reach.” And then they label natural things as sin—so they can never be “washed.” Fasting is virtue, eating is sin—yet eating is natural, fasting unnatural. You can fast a day or two, but you must eat; the moment you eat—sin! They have called your nature sinful; thus you can never be free of “sin”—and they keep you bound.

The truth is different: until you are free of the priest, you cannot meet God. Not sin but the priest blocks the way. His seat is entrenched everywhere; he cannot allow you to arrive. Therefore whenever a real uniter arises—Buddha, Krishna, Christ—the priests turn against him: “These men ruin the trade. They bring people to the door now.” The priest builds long, circuitous stairways—lifetimes long—so you never complete the journey. He constructs theories in which you get lost. The Buddhas break such labyrinths: “The divine is here and now; open your eyes. God is not on credit; he is cash.”

The pundit speaks of a dawn that never comes through him; and when it does come, it comes despite him. If Buddha attained, it was by slipping out of the priests’ net; if Christ attained, it was by being free of the rabbis; if Kabir or Dadu attained, it was by breaking tradition. Real knowing happens only outside of tradition; otherwise, there are only false dawns and their promises.

This stained light, this night-bitten dawn—
this is not the dawn we waited for,
this is not the morning we set out to find,
trusting it would appear somewhere.
At heaven’s hand the stars’ last halt—
somewhere the weary tide must find a shore;
somewhere the boat of the heart’s sorrow must come to rest.
But when our young blood took to those enigmatic roads,
how many hands clutched at our hems,
how many arms from beauty’s impatient boudoirs
kept calling, bodies kept beckoning—
yet the passion for that one dawn was dearer than all.
Our longing sobbed, our fatigue was hushed.
They say the separations and unions have happened,
the customs of the suffering have changed,
union’s ecstasies are now licit, separation’s torments outlawed.
But the fire of liver, the surge of sight, the burn of heart—
no remedy for separation seems to work.
From where came the Night’s beloved and where did she go?
No news yet reaches the lamp at the road’s head.
The heaviness of night has not yet lessened,
the hour of the eye and heart’s salvation has not come.
Keep walking—for that destination has not yet arrived.

And so it goes life after life: promises of arrival, and arrival never comes; talk of God and no meeting; lofty words about liberation and no liberation descends; songs of bliss but no flute begins to sing within. Nothing happens.

The fire in the entrails, the surge in the gaze, the burn of the heart—nothing seems to cure the pain of separation. People say, “Morning has come,” yet nothing is felt.

The darkness of night remains as it was; the hour of seeing the Beloved never comes. For lifetimes you have heard of God; there has been no seeing, only talk—more words sprouting from words, and you are left holding empty phrases.

Keep walking—they say—yet the destination never appears. Some basic confusion is at the root. It seems the goal we seek is not far but near—and therefore it is found not by running, but by stopping; not by doing more, but by a cessation of doing; not by formal religion, but by informal love.

Today’s sutras point that way. Understand:

“O saints, such is the ‘conduct’ out there,” says Rajjab—addressing the saints, not the non-saints. Why? Only the saint can understand. Speak where there is a listening. “Saint” means one who has turned his back on the world and his face toward the divine—one who is now face-to-face with Rama. Sanctity is simply this change of orientation. You are turned away from Rama and face the world; the saint turns away from the world and lifts his eyes toward the divine. He has understood, “My temple is empty without Rama.” Now he seeks Rama; without him nothing is worth having; whatever I have, I will stake it. Life without Rama is futile; not a single breath do I wish to take unless in Rama.

“O saints, such is this conduct.” Rajjab says: The “conduct,” the ritual behavior you have heard about and practiced for centuries, is hollow—deception. Look at what passes for religion; see its fraud and dishonesty! It has prestige because it is old, repeated millions of times. Thus its falseness is hard for you to see.

Take fasting. You imagine the fasting man is thinking of God. Try a fast and you will understand: a fasting man understands for the first time the Upanishadic utterance annam brahma—food is Brahman. Shvetaketu returned from the ashram full of talk of Brahman. His father Uddalaka, being realized, saw a parrot of words. He told him, “Fast a few days.” After a couple of days, the son had no juice for metaphysics—only food came to mind. After a week, even the word Brahman disappeared. Then the father said, “Now speak. What arises in your mind?” “Only food,” he said. “Then know: Food is Brahman.”

Sometimes, absorbed in God, fasting happens of itself—that is another matter. Love makes you forget food; you have all known evenings like that with a beloved friend. That is fasting. But contrived fasting does not bring remembrance of God; it brings remembrance of food. A full stomach remembers God more easily than an empty one.

Or daily temple-going, ringing the bell at seven sharp, chanting set words—do you call this religion? Can remembrance be regimented? It comes like a breeze from the unknown. You cannot schedule it. Habit creates a craving of its own—like the itch of a missed cigarette. Many feel restless if a daily ritual is skipped; that restlessness is no different from nicotine withdrawal.

Ramakrishna sometimes worshiped, sometimes not; sometimes the temple would remain shut for days; sometimes he would dance all night. The trustees objected: “What kind of worship is this?” He said, “When it happens, it happens; when it doesn’t, I won’t lie. If the heart does not call, how can the lips call? Keep your job!” True worship has no method; when done methodically, it becomes false. It must be simple, spontaneous—an upsurge of the heart, a gust of wind, a visitation from the unknown. Your practices are rehearsed, arranged—practice breeds falseness. Do not live by practice; live by spontaneity.

“They commit countless sins in the name of worship; there is no reflection in the heart.” Do you know what all has been done in the name of religion? There is no sin that has not been sanctified: animal sacrifice, human sacrifice—even today, in places, it continues. Mothers have slain their sons, believing it religious. In religion’s name, women have leapt into their husbands’ pyres. If it sprang from flaming love, I would agree; but ninety-nine out of a hundred were coerced. Priests stood ringed with torches so a living woman thrown into fire could not escape; drums beat to drown her screams; smoke was thick so people would not see her running out. If a widow didn’t burn, society made her life worse than death—her very shadow an ill-omen. Thus, compelled, she chose to die. All this in the name of religion!

Your fire sacrifices—yajnas—declare your inhumanity. Even now, millions worth of ghee and grain are burned “for world peace” while people starve. So many yajnas—has peace come? The human being walks like a blind man, not by his own eyes. It is hard to find a man.

Diogenes in Greece carried a lantern even in the day, lifting it to faces. When asked why, he said, “I’m searching for a human being.” As he was dying, people asked, “Did you find one?” He replied, “No—but at least my lantern was not stolen! That is achievement enough.”

“In worship they kill countless living beings—there is no consideration in the heart. Ants die in the kitchens; borers burn in the firewood. The grinding stones and stoves crush life—and yet they think they understand.” They pluck living flowers to place before dead stones. A flower, alive on the branch, was already worshiping in its fragrance and dance; you break it to offer it to a stone smeared with vermilion you have named “Hanuman.” That vermilion is a symbol of blood; once people smeared blood itself; when that became difficult they found a substitute. Once they cracked human skulls; later, coconuts—bearded like a head. We think we have become civilized because we use substitutes; the underlying urge is unchanged.

It is not accidental that communal riots often flare on religious festivals—Muharram, Eid, Dussehra, Holi. Something in these festivals stirs deep, primitive impulses; decent people become brutal; the thin veneer of culture peels away. In the name of religion, the living is sacrificed to the dead. Jesus—the living flower—was nailed to the dead Moses, three millennia old. Buddha was stoned in the name of the Vedic rishis; now you worship Buddha, but if a living Buddha appeared, you would stone him too. You are partisans of the dead; how then will life’s splendor descend in you?

Bring down the stones from your temples and offer them at the feet of living flowers. Stop bowing the living to the dead. Honor life.

“Moths turn to ash in your aarti flames—but there is no understanding in the heart.” Extinguish such lamps. Life itself is the divine; bow before life.

“Lifelong they destroy life—these are the corrupt six rites.” And there is a second kind of corruption. Freud discovered two fundamental drives: the sex-drive and the death-drive. Man wants to live—and also, secretly, to die. Two kinds of false religion follow from this. One harms others—sacrifice, violence. The other harms oneself—ascetic self-torture. Jainism uniquely gives religious sanction to suicide—fasting to death. A truly consistent Jain monk, having made life joyless, will wish to die. He harms no one else—but he harms himself. Both are forms of violence.

A truly religious person neither harms others nor himself. His very orientation is away from suffering. Yet we revere suffering—someone lies on nails and we run to bow. He is sick, in need of treatment, not worship. If someone starves another to death we call it sin; if one starves himself, we call it virtue. Both camps will oppose me, because I oppose both. I want to give you a religion whose faith is in joy: one that harms neither others nor oneself. Joy flowers only when all harming ceases.

“Sinful machinations ride on the head—yet are labeled ‘religion’.” A man builds a temple or dharmashala; no one asks how the money was made. Under religion’s cloak, all is hidden. He will steal millions and donate a hundred thousand to assuage his guilt, and society will hail him as a great benefactor. Thus religion and sin march together.

What is sin? To inflict suffering—on others or on oneself. Avoid it wherever possible. You may not be completely successful—some people insist on taking offense even when you give none. But let it be clear: you were not trying to hurt. Those who want to be hurt will find a way. Smile and someone will be hurt; be healthy and someone will be hurt; be joyous and many will be hurt—they cannot forgive happiness. They stoned Buddha, drove iron spikes into Mahavira’s ears, because their joy exposed everyone else’s misery.

So I am not saying people will not get hurt; I am saying: do not be the one who hurts. Within you, let the very taste for giving or taking hurt disappear—that is virtue. Notice: there is a secret relish in hurting. It gives a sense of power. The more you can hurt, the more powerful you feel. Even small chances are relished. A clerk at the ticket window ignores you to savor his power: “Stand there, who do you think you are?” People enjoy saying “No”—it tastes like power—while “Yes” feels like surrender. Relationships become power matches: father versus son, husband versus wife, each proving “Who is the master?”

In my vision, sin is this itch to prove oneself stronger by giving pain. Virtue is the disappearance of this itch—for the same one dwells in all: in me, in the other, in the child and the mother, in the strong and the weak. There are not two here.

“You are miserable and you make others miserable—you have not known the Rama within.” What you give returns. Misery given brings misery back; happiness given brings happiness back. No cosmic judge is needed; it is intrinsic law. There is no Day of Judgment—these are nursery tales. Life functions by a simple rule: you reap what you sow.

“Says Rajjab: without the eye that sees within, you go on hurting—and outwardly erect hypocrisy.” Until the inner eye opens to the Rama within, your entire religion remains hypocrisy. The miserable man must hide his misery—thus hypocrisy begins. You put on a face for the world. Everyone does it; everyone deceives and is deceived, thinking “All are happy except me.” No one is happy. With misery inside and smiles outside, two layers form; the teeth to eat with and the teeth to show become different; you enter the realm of falseness. Then you fall in love with a mask and your mask enchants someone else; when the masks slip, suffering ensues.

Without vision, this state persists: misery within, performance without. The only cure is darshan—sight. See that the treasure of joy is in your own being; Rama sits within. The one you sought outside is inside. Stop seeking outward; turn within.

“My temple is empty without Rama; as the love-lorn, I find no sleep. If only I might find the helper who brings me to Govind.” The day you see the futility of life without the divine, you begin to seek the guru. The world you knew has proved empty; the one thing that could fulfill, you do not know. You will need someone who knows the way. For worldly learning, the whole world is your guru; for God, you must seek the rare one whose temple is full, whose lamp is lit.

“When this awareness dawns, nothing pleases the mind until the Imperishable is found. Day and night the pain of separation burns; nothing is sweet—neither home nor forest, neither praise nor blame.” Only one thought remains: “My temple is still empty; the guest has not arrived.”

“In all ten directions I search; the mind reels—who will show compassion?” In such a state you are vulnerable to false guides, for the true guru is rare while counterfeit priests are everywhere with cheap recipes. The true guru will not console you; he will dissolve you. Only when you are utterly gone does the temple fill.

“When the pupil is ready, the master appears,” says an ancient Egyptian proverb. Readiness is this: the world seen as void and an authentic thirst born. Then a hand appears, a ray finds you.

“The love-lorn mind is no longer pleased; until the Imperishable is found, day and night separation burns. The arrow of longing strikes the inner heart; the wounded reel. The fire of longing wastes the body—who will carry my message to the Beloved?” There comes an utter extremity when you feel you are sinking with no rescue in sight. It is precisely then that the great turning happens.

“Says Rajjab: Until the Lord of the world is met, each moment is a thunderbolt.” Until God is met, pain grows more intense; the lover becomes one great wound, eyes full only of tears. The world is futile; where hope now points, there is no address, no name. In such a moment the guru’s cloud inevitably arrives. When the heat is great, the monsoon comes; when longing burns intensely, the guru comes and the rain falls. In that rain is fulfillment.

Blessed are those who bathe in that shower of nectar.

Like lamps that suddenly glow in a ruined shrine,
so in a desolate heart the lamps of remembrance begin to tremble.
My broken boat spreads the carpet for the festival of the storm;
the waves dance, the shores smile.

When one takes such a plunge, the storm becomes celebration; the shore smiles. Union has happened—the very sunrise you sought through lifetimes.

Enough delay. Dismount your horse—whatever horse it is: wealth, position, pride. All these rides are false. Come down. The divine is not far. Step down—and the meeting happens.

I am ready to pull you down from the saddle. Do not come as a mere curious inquirer; I am not here to satisfy philosophical questions. Come with longing—with a heart ready to be pierced; come with the thirst that cries, “My temple is empty without Rama!”

Enough for today.