Shiv Sutra #5

Atman chittam—the Atman is chitta.
This sutra is supremely important.
In the ocean a wave is seen; the wave too is the ocean. However agitated the wave may be, however much on the surface—within it lies the infinite ocean. The minute carries the vast within itself. In the particle the Paramatma is hidden. However mad you have become, however disturbed your mind; however many ailments and afflictions surround you—still, you are the Paramatma. It makes no difference that you are asleep, unconscious. Even in your unconsciousness, it is the Paramatma within you who is unconscious. Even asleep, it is the Paramatma sleeping within you. It makes no difference that you have committed many sins, entertained many sinful thoughts. Those thoughts too are being thought by the Paramatma within you. Those sins also happened only through the medium of the Paramatma.
Atman chittam means: your chitta is but a transformation of your Atman.
This is of great importance to understand. Otherwise you will begin fighting the chitta. And whoever fights the chitta will be defeated. The way of victory is this: accept the chitta as belonging to the divine. No futile conflict, no duality, no war—let there be the understanding that the wave is also the ocean. With this very vision, the distortions of the mind begin to thin out. The day you see that the vast is concealed in the minute, the smallness of the small begins to dissolve. Its boundary is only of your believing. Even the tiniest particle has no real boundary. It too belongs to the boundless. The boundary appears because of your eyes. The moment you see that the infinite is hidden within the finite, the finite dissolves.
This is life’s most profound realization: the day one begins to see the Paramatma even in one’s chitta; sees Him even in one’s so‑called evil; finds His footprints even in one’s wanderings—from that very day the wandering ceases. Wandering means: you have conceived yourself as separate from the Paramatma. In that separateness lies all your sin, all your perversion. You have assumed yourself to be other—that is your ego.
And it is a great surprise that regarding ego there is not an atom’s difference between the sinner and the virtuous. The sinner is as stuffed with ego as the one we call virtuous. Their acts may differ; their vision is the same. Both consider themselves separate. One thinks himself bad, the other thinks himself good; but both consider themselves separate. And as long as you consider yourself separate, you will remain separate. Separate you are not; your belief has narrowed you. Your notion has bound you. You are imprisoned in your own fancy, in the prison of your own idea. Otherwise, on all sides is open sky and nowhere any wall. No one has stopped you, no one has erected any barrier. How to melt your I‑sense?
Atman chittam—this means: you are not you; you are the Paramatma. You are linked to the vast. You are not a small wave, you are the whole ocean. With the realization of this vastness, your ego will disappear. And where there is no ego, there is no possibility for sin. There is only one sin: that I am separate. And this sense of separateness persists even in the one we call a sadhu.
I have heard: a hatha yogi died. He reached heaven. He knocked on the door. The door opened and the guard said, Welcome! Come within! The hatha yogi halted. He said, If in heaven everyone is welcomed like this—for you have not asked address or identity; you have not asked deeds; you have not asked who I am; what I did, virtue or sin—nothing asked, and straightaway such a welcome to any Tom, Dick, or Harry? Then this heaven is not for me. No reservation, no booking, no inquiry; straight welcome! Then this is not the heaven of my conception.
This ego is full of merit, not of sin. He has practiced; he must have gained great siddhis; but all the siddhis have become futile. All the siddhis have only filled the ego—turning into a great failure.
Bernard Shaw received the Nobel Prize. In Europe there is a small but very prestigious club. It grants membership to only a hundred persons on the whole earth; a select circle of those of great renown—Nobel laureates, or others of rare achievement—great painters, sculptors, writers. But only a hundred; the number never exceeds that. When a member dies, only then does a new entrant come in. People wait a lifetime to receive that membership.
When Bernard Shaw won the Nobel Prize, an invitation to join that club came to him. The club wrote: We shall be honored to have you as our member. Bernard Shaw replied: Any club that would be honored by making me a member is unworthy of me. It is below me. I would like to be a member of a club that is unwilling to admit me.
Ego always seeks the inaccessible, the difficult; and life is utterly simple. Hence ego remains deprived of life. And nothing is simpler than the Paramatma. Therefore the ego never approaches that door. That door stands open. There is welcome there—without asking who you are. If at the door of the divine you are also interrogated—who are you?—and only then welcomed, then that door has become worldly. It is you who stand with your back to that door. If you have turned away, it is your own doing. If your eyes are closed and you do not see the door, it is your own doing. Otherwise the door is forever open and the invitation is forever for you. Welcome is always written there.
Atman chittam—this means: do not consider yourself separate, however bad you may think you are.
This does not mean: go on doing your evil. This does not mean: remain wicked. You will not be able to remain so.
Psychologists say: a person becomes as he believes himself to be. Belief slowly becomes life. Psychologists say: even if a man is bad, do not call him bad. Because by calling him bad—repeating again and again, You are bad, you are bad—this becomes a mantra. And if all around everyone repeats that you are bad, then that person also begins to repeat within, I am bad. Not only does he repeat it; he also begins to try to prove everyone’s expectation. Slowly he gets bound in badness.
Perhaps the explorers of the religious realm recognized this truth long ago. They asked you to make the supreme truth of life your mantra: Atman chittam. You are the Paramatma. Your Atman itself is your mind. This is the greatest thing that can be said about you. And if this becomes your mantra; if it saturates your life; if its resonance permeates every pore, then slowly you will find that what you thought, you are becoming; what you churned within, that has begun to appear in your life.
Religion begins with the sutra—You are not; the Paramatma is. Granted that you are asleep; granted that in many ways you are bad; granted that you have made many mistakes; but none of this touches your nature. Purity is your nature. However much evil you have done, let the remembrance arise that I am the Paramatma—then all evil will be cut at the root.
If you want to cut your evils one by one, you can try that too; then births upon births will not suffice. For evil is without end, and he who sets out to cut evils one by one will never finish. Because when you cut one evil, you simultaneously create ten others. You cut one evil and ninety‑nine still remain within you. They will color even your one good deed, make it evil too.
Hence even your virtue becomes like sin. You touch nectar and it turns into poison; because the remaining evils pounce upon it. Even if you build a temple, humility does not arise; ego is filled. And the ego has very subtle pathways! It is filled from the most trifling.
Mulla Nasruddin had a dog. Neither was its breed known, nor any poise; ugly to look at, weak; always frightened, timid; legs bent, body frail. Yet Nasruddin would praise him to the skies.
I asked him, Tell me something about this dog. Nasruddin had named him Adolf Hitler. He said, The exact breed of Hitler may not be known; but he is a very precious animal. And no stranger can set foot near our house without our knowing. Hitler immediately gives the news.
I asked, What does your Hitler do? Because to look at him gives rise to the doubt that he can do anything at all. Does he bark, shout, scream, bite—what does he do? Nasruddin said, Not these! Whenever a stranger comes, Hitler promptly rushes under our bed and hides. It has never happened that a stranger arrives and we do not come to know. But that too is a virtue!
Your ego is like Mulla Nasruddin’s Hitler. No known lineage. Do you know from where your ego is born? How can that which is not be born? It is a delusion. It can have no lineage.
You are born of the Paramatma; from where has your ego arisen? You yourself have fabricated it. And have you ever looked closely at your ego? The name you have given it may be Adolf Hitler—as everyone does—but its legs are utterly bent, poor and puny!
Even the greatest ego is beggarly and mean. Why? Because even the greatest ego is impotent. It has no energy of its own; energy belongs to the Atman. The source of energy is elsewhere. Therefore you have to prop the ego up twenty‑four hours a day. It cannot even stand on its own feet; you have to lend it your legs. Sometimes we prop it with position; sometimes with wealth; sometimes with virtue; if nothing else, then with sin.
Go to a prison! There people boast of sins they never committed. One who has killed a single person says, I wiped out hundreds. For in prison that is the only way to have a big ego. Petty prisoners, small fry—there the big ones are those who created great disturbances. What is the worth of those with only one or two counts against them! Those with ten or twenty‑five charges; those with a hundred, two hundred cases pending; who appear in court daily—today for one case, tomorrow for another—they are the dons in the jail. There a man even talks of false sins he never did.
With virtue, with sin; with wealth, with position—you prop up the ego. Even then it cannot stand; death knocks it down. For death erases only that which is not; that which is, cannot be erased. You will remain. But note—when I say you will remain, I speak of that you of which you have no inkling. That which you take to be your being will not remain; it is only your ego. Your name, your form, your wealth, your reputation, your skills, all that you have acquired—none of it will remain. If apart from all that you still are—if you begin to have even a faint line of contact with that which is beyond your capacities, which you did not earn, with which you were born, which was with you even before birth—only that will remain after death.
Atman chittam.
That very Atman is worth seeking. Even in your chitta its ray is present; otherwise chitta too could not function. Even to commit sin—who will do it? Doing requires energy. That energy is received from That alone. You are misusing that energy. But you will not be able to transform misuse into right use—because the root cause of misuse is the ego.
There is only one sin—and that is to conceive oneself separate from existence. Then all sins follow like a shadow. And there is only one virtue—to understand oneself as one with existence. Let the wave become one with the ocean, then all virtues follow on their own.
The Atman is chitta. Non‑discrimination regarding kala and the other tattvas is maya.
What is this maya? Then why is there darkness upon the chitta if the Atman is chitta? Because of non‑discrimination concerning kala and the other elements! You do not know who within you is the doer; who is the real artist within; what is the original element—you do not know. And what you take to be the doer within, is not. You are living clutching a nothing; hence the trouble. A whole life of running, and troubles do not end—they only increase. A whole life of labor, and not a single drop of bliss is obtained; only mountains of sorrow grow. Yet man runs after the futile till his last breath. Why so much relish in the futile? Try to understand. The futile has one specialty.
A man bought a new bungalow. He planted a garden. He sowed flower seeds. Saplings began to appear; but weeds sprouted alongside. He was a little anxious. He asked his neighbor, Mulla Nasruddin, How to recognize what is weed and what is the real plant? Nasruddin said, Simple trick! Uproot both. That which sprouts again is weed.
The futile has one specialty—uproot it, nothing ends. In uprooting, the meaningful will be lost; the futile will sprout again. Sow the meaningful, and even then it is not certain you will reap a harvest; for there are a thousand obstacles. Do not sow the futile at all—and still you will reap it; uproot and throw it out again and again, and it will sprout again all the more. To grow the futile, no labor is needed; to grow the meaningful, great labor is required. Hence you have chosen the futile. It grows by itself.
No one has to labor to become a thief; theft grows like weeds. To be filled with lust—does one have to work for it? Any prayer, any yoga, any sadhana? It sprouts like weeds. Do you have to go to some university to learn anger? No—it is like weeds.
If you want to learn meditation, difficulties begin. If you want to learn love, great difficulties begin. Attachment increases by itself like weeds. Love demands labor. And if love is to be brought, then weeds must be uprooted every moment; otherwise they will devour all that is meaningful; cover it, hide it.
The futile has one advantage—it asks no labor from you; remain lazy, it grows of itself. It will clutch you even to your dying moment.
A sadhak is one who has begun the search for the meaningful. To attain the meaningful is a journey—toward the mountain, toward the heights. To attain the futile is like rolling down; like a stone tumbling from a hill—it comes on its own. Gravity pulls it down; nothing needs to be done.
You have done nothing thus far in life, hence you are futile. You will say, No, not so. I earned wealth. I reached position and prestige. I accumulated great degrees.
Even so I tell you, you did not do all that; it grew of itself like weeds. And if you carefully analyze within, you too will see: to earn wealth you did nothing—only the craving for wealth, like weeds within, grew. Even if you try to uproot it, it grows. You did nothing to build a house; that craving grew within like weeds. It will clutch you till your last breath.
Sadhak means one who understands this truth: that which is growing on its own must be futile; I must sow something.
I have heard: a woman went to a psychologist. She said, Now I need help. I put it off for long, but now I must speak—please help. The psychologist asked, What is the problem? She said, The problem is not mine, it is my husband’s. The problem is that the love he showed at first has gradually faded. And the intense passion that was in him earlier has slowly diminished. He used to be like a flood; now he is becoming like a dry river. The psychologist wanted to laugh within, but outwardly he kept professional seriousness and asked, What is your age? The woman said, Only seventy‑two. And your husband’s age? Only eighty‑six. Everyone thinks this way—only eighty, ninety—this ‘only’ is slapped against death, as if it is no age yet! As if just the beginning!
And the psychologist asked, When did you start noticing the symptoms that your husband’s energy is failing, his power declining, love and passion growing less? The wife said, Last night—and again this morning.
Till the final dying moment, one clutches trash; because for trash nothing has to be done—it grows by itself.
People come to me. They say, We meditate, it slips; it runs for two days, then stops.
This does not happen with lust. It does not happen with anger. You never forget them. You keep holding on. What is the matter? You do meditation, it slips; you do two days and then you forget. Then after four or six months you remember again. You pray—and it slips. But anger? Greed? Sex? Attachment?
Try to understand one fact—because you have to do meditation, therefore it slips. Those are seeds you must sow; they must be tended. And all this rubbish grows by itself. Whatever runs on its own, count it as futile. And as long as you go on living in it, you will attain nothing. At the time of death you will find that you came empty‑handed and you are going empty‑handed. And this non‑discrimination is maya—this swoon, this inability to discern what is meaningful and what is futile.
Shankara called discrimination between the meaningful and the futile—knowledge. Let it be seen in life: this is meaningful, this is futile. Both are there. There are weeds and there are flower plants. By life’s experience you will have to decide what is meaningful. If the gaze turns to the meaningful, the gaze has turned to Brahman; if it remains fixed on the futile, there is wandering in maya. You do not know who you are; you do not know in which direction you are going; you do not know from where you have come; you are entangled with the trash on the roadside. You have made the roadside your home. And you are filled with anxieties on account of that futile trash which grows without you. There is no need to harbor any concern regarding it.
Non‑discrimination is maya.
Non‑discrimination means: inability to distinguish, lack of discrimination—failure to decide what is a diamond and what is a stone. You must become a jeweler of life. Only by becoming a jeweler of life does discrimination arise. You have life—now inquire. And I call this the touchstone of inquiry: whatever runs on its own, know it to be futile; and that which does not run even when you try to move it, know it to be meaningful. This is the touchstone. And the day that begins to move in your life which you wanted to move, which was difficult to move—know that flowers are coming. And the day that stops sprouting which used to sprout by itself—know that maya is ending.
A yogi veiled by moha attains siddhis, but not Self‑knowledge.
And the futile has become so important in life that when you go to practice the meaningful, even then the meaningful does not succeed—the futile succeeds.
People come to meditate; if you try to understand their expectations there is great surprise. Even from meditation they ask for the futile. They come to me and say, I want to meditate, because there are bodily illnesses. Can you assure me that by meditating they will disappear?
It would be better if they went to a physician. Better if they sought someone who treats the body. They come even to the physician of the soul for the treatment of the body. They are ready to meditate, but meditation to them is nothing more than medicine; and that medicine too for the body.
People come to me and say, Life is going with great difficulty—there is financial trouble; will everything be set right by meditation?
The veil of moha is so thick that even if you seek nectar, it is for poison. It is a great wonder! You could become nectar—but you want to commit suicide with it. And with nectar, no suicide is possible. Drink nectar and you become immortal. But you come seeking nectar with the aim of suicide. Wealth or body—some worldly thing—you want to acquire even through religion.
Listen to people’s prayers; what do they ask in the temples? You will find they ask for the world in the temple too. Someone’s son is not getting married; someone’s son has not found a job; there is strife in someone’s home. Do you go to the temple to ask for the world? Your temple must be a supermarket, a big shop where these things too are sold, where everything is sold. But you have not yet recognized the temple. Therefore the priests who sit in your temples are shopkeepers; because those who come there are customers of the world. You will avoid the real temple.
I have a friend, a dentist. I was a guest at his house. I was sitting in his drawing room one morning. A little boy tiptoed in, frightened. He looked around, startled. Then he asked me—whispering—May I ask, are the doctor‑saab inside or not? I said, They just went out. The child became happy. He said, My mother had sent me to show my teeth. May I ask you—when will he go out again?
That is exactly your situation. If you happened into a temple, you would escape. Toothache you can endure; but the pain the dentist will give, you are not ready to endure. You are like small children. You can endure the world’s pain; but you are not prepared to endure the pain of religion. And of course religion too will give pain. It is not that religion gives pain; your worldly teeth are so decayed that in pulling them out there will be pain. Religion does not give pain; religion is supreme bliss. But you have lived in sorrow and you have earned sorrow. All your teeth are full of pain; to pull them will be painful. You are so afraid of having them pulled that you accept their pain and poison. You are becoming poisoned thereby; your whole life is rotting away.
But you are familiar with this sorrow. Man consents to endure familiar sorrow; even unfamiliar happiness frightens him! These teeth are yours. This pain is yours. You are familiar with it for births upon births. But you do not know that if these teeth are pulled and this pain lost, for the first time the door of bliss will open in your life.
Even when you go to the temple you ask the priest, When will the Paramatma be out? Then I will come. Even when you go, you do not want to go. The tricks you play upon yourself—hard to calculate.
Watching you continuously, seeing your problems, I have come to this conclusion: your only problem is that you do not clearly know what you want to do. Do you want to meditate? Even that is not certain. Then when meditation does not happen you are disturbed. But that which you are not certain to do you will never do with your whole heart; you will do it half‑heartedly. And by half a heart nothing happens in life. The futile runs even without your heart. It asks nothing of you; it has its own momentum. But into the meaningful you must pour your life—you must stake yourself.
This sutra says: A yogi veiled by moha attains siddhis, but not Self‑knowledge.
The veil of moha is so dense that even when you turn toward religion you seek miracles there too. Even there, if Buddha were standing, you would not recognize him. You would recognize Satya Sai Baba. If Buddha and Satya Sai Baba stood together, you would go to Satya Sai Baba, not to Buddha. For Buddha would never play such stupidity as handing out talismans, or dropping ash from his hand; Buddha is no conjurer.
But you are in search of conjurers. You are impressed by miracles. Because your deep craving, your lust is not for the Paramatma; your deep craving is for the world. Where you see miracles, you think: here is a guru. Here hope arises that lust will be fulfilled. The guru whose hand can produce a talisman, if he wishes can produce the Koh‑i‑Noor as well. You only need to serve at his feet; today or tomorrow the Koh‑i‑Noor will also come out. What difference does it make to the guru! If he can produce a talisman, he can produce the Koh‑i‑Noor too.
Your craving is for the Koh‑i‑Noor. For the Koh‑i‑Noor, not only small men but the greatest men are ready to be thieves. The one from whose hand ash can fall out of emptiness—if he wishes he can grant you immortality; only guru‑service is needed!
No—you will be deprived of Buddha; for there no miracles happen. Where all craving has dissolved, there is no question of gratifying any of your cravings either. With Buddha the supreme miracle, the final miracle, takes place—the light of desirelessness. But your eyes filled with desire will not see it. You will see and understand and bow at Buddha’s feet only when the futility of the world has truly become visible to you, when the veil of moha has torn.
Moha is intoxication. As a drunkard walks—staggering; without certainty of where he goes or why he goes; walking in sleep—so you have been walking. However much you steady your feet, it makes no difference. Every drunkard tries to steady himself. You may deceive yourself, not others. Every drunkard tries to show he is not drunk; the more he tries, the more obvious it becomes. And moha is intoxication.
And when I say moha is intoxication, I say it in a strictly chemical sense. In the state of moha your whole body fills with intoxicating secretions—even in the scientific sense. When you fall into the love of a woman, your blood is filled with special chemicals. Those substances are the same as in bhang, ganja, LSD. Hence the woman in whose love you have fallen begins to appear otherworldly. She no longer seems of this earth. The man whose love you have fallen into no longer seems of this world. When the intoxication wears off, he appears worth a few coppers. As long as the intoxication lasts!
Therefore none of your so‑called loves can be permanent; for they were forged in intoxication. They are a form of moha—not in awareness but in unawareness. Hence we call love blind. Love is not blind—moha is blind. We mistake moha for love. Love is the eye; there is no eye greater than love. Through the eye of love the Paramatma becomes visible—veiled in this world. Moha is blind; where nothing is, it sees everything. Moha is a dream.
And those whom we call yogis are also afflicted by this moha. Siddhis do blossom for them. They obtain certain powers. Powers are not difficult to obtain. The thoughts of another’s mind can be read—only a little technique is needed. Another’s thoughts can be influenced—only a little technique is needed. A man comes—you can tell what thought is in his mind—only a little technique is needed. This is science; it has nothing to do with religion. There is a science of reading the mind, as there is a science of reading a book. The illiterate sees you reading a book and is amazed—what miracle is happening! Where he sees nothing but black marks, you are in such bliss—of poetry, of Upanishads, of Veda—spellbound! The illiterate is astonished.
In Mulla Nasruddin’s village he was the only literate man. And when there is just one literate, it is not certain whether he is literate at all—who is there to verify? Whosoever needed a letter written would go to Nasruddin. He wrote letters. One day an old woman came. She said, Write a letter, Nasruddin! Nasruddin said, I cannot write now—my leg is hurting badly. The old woman said, This is too much! What connection is there between a pain in the leg and writing a letter? Nasruddin said, Don’t go into such details now. I say my leg hurts, and I will not write the letter. The old woman was stubborn. She said, I will not leave without knowing. I am illiterate, but I have never heard of any connection between a pain in the leg and writing a letter. Nasruddin said, If you won’t accept, I will tell you. Then who will go to the next village to read it? I myself must go. Only I can read what I write. Right now my leg hurts; I am not going to write.
The illiterate, seeing a man lost in a book, is astonished. But reading can be learned; it is an art. Thoughts move in your mind. You see them; another too can see them—it is an art. But that art of reading thoughts has nothing to do with religion. No more than the art of reading a book. Magicians learn them—they are no siddha‑purushas.
But you will be much impressed. You go to some sadhu and he says, Come! He speaks your name, tells the address of your village, and says there is a neem tree by your house. You go crazy! But what has a sadhu to do with the neem tree, with your village, with your name? A sadhu is one who has come to know that no one truly has a name, a form, a village. Names, forms, villages all belong to the worldly realm. You are worldly! This sadhu too is influencing you, for he is deeper in the world than you. He has learned extra tricks. He speaks what you have not told. He wants to impress you.
Remember, as long as you want to impress another, you are afflicted with ego. The Atman does not wish to impress anyone. What is the essence of influencing the other? What does it mean? It is like lines drawn upon water—what will I gain? Whether ten thousand are impressed or ten million—what changes? By impressing them, what will I get?
The eagerness to impress the crowd betrays ignorance. That a politician wants to influence others is understandable. But why would a religious person be eager to influence others? And whenever you want to influence another, remember one thing: you are not established in yourself. To want to impress another means you are established in ego.
Ego feeds on the attention of others; it lives on that. The more eyes recognize me, the more my ego inflates. If the whole world recognizes me, my ego becomes supreme. If no one recognizes me—I pass through the village, along the road, and no one looks, no recognition, no acknowledgement; no gleam in anyone’s eye, as if I do not exist—there the ego is hurt. Ego wants others to pay attention. It is a great joke: the ego does not want to pay attention; it wants others to pay attention to it—to have the whole world look at it, to become the center.
A religious person does not care whether others look at him; he cares that he looks at himself. For in the end only that will go with me. This is the way of children. Children are happy when others praise them. They come home dancing with certificates. But if you are still demanding certificates in old age, then you have wasted your life.
The craving for siddhi is a craving to influence others. The religious person has no such craving. That is the very nature of the worldly.
This sutra says: A yogi veiled by moha attains siddhis, but not Self‑knowledge.
He may obtain the greatest of powers—by his touch the dead may become alive, diseases may disappear, water may turn into medicine—but none of this has any relation to Self‑knowledge. The truth is the opposite: the more he becomes filled with siddhis, the farther he drifts from Self‑knowledge. For as ego fills, the Self empties; and as ego empties, the Self fills. You cannot fill both simultaneously.
Drop the desire to influence others, otherwise even yoga will be corrupted. Then the yoga you practice will be politics, not religion. And politics is a net. Then by fair means or foul a man wants to influence others. But why do you want to influence others? Because you want to exploit them.
I have heard: elections were underway; one evening three men were locked up in the police cell. In the dark they introduced themselves. The first said, I am Sardar Sant Singh. I was working for Sardar Sirphod Singh. The second said, Amazing! I am Sardar Shaitan Singh. I was working against Sardar Sirphod Singh. The third said, Vahe Guruji ki fateh! Vahe Guruji ka Khalsa! This is too much! I am myself Sardar Sirphod Singh.
Leaders, followers, pro‑party, anti‑party—all are fit for prison. That is exactly where they belong. For sin begins where I set out to influence another person. Ego knows neither good nor bad; ego only knows to fill itself. How it fills itself is secondary. Ego has only one urge—to fill itself and become full. And because ego is a hollowness, even after every device it cannot be filled; it remains empty. As age slips from the hand, the ego goes mad—still not filled, the journey incomplete and time passing.
Hence old people become irritable. That irritability is not for anyone else; it is for the failure of their life. What they wanted to fill, they could not fill.
And the old man’s irritability grows denser; he feels that as he has aged, people have stopped paying attention to him; rather, people are waiting for him to end.
Mulla Nasruddin turned a hundred. I asked him, Can you tell me some reason why the Paramatma gave you such a long life? Without a blink he said, To test the patience of my relatives.
All old people test the patience of their relatives. Twenty‑four hours a day they see attention turning away. Death will erase them later; people’s turned backs erase them earlier. Hence the irritability.
You cannot imagine how irritable Nixon must be now. All backs turned, even from those faces that used to smile. Those who were one’s own have become others. Friends have become enemies. Those who once supported have taken away their support. All attention withdrawn. Nixon is unwell, restless, disturbed. Whoever goes to him, the first thing he asks is: Was what I did right? What are people saying about me?
Just now this man was at the peak; now he lies in a ditch. What were this peak and this ditch? The man is the same as yesterday when he held office; the same man still. Only ego was on the peak, now in the ditch; the Self remains where it always is. If only this man remembers That which has no peak, no ditch; no defeat, no victory; whether people see or not—no difference; which is even.
You will know that evenness only when you stop seeking people’s attention. Stop this begging. What will siddhis do? People will call you miraculous; crowds of hundreds of thousands will gather. But what does it prove to collect hundreds of thousands of fools—that you are the focus of their attention! You are the arch‑fool! What will you gain from the praise of the ignorant? He who could not gain knowledge himself—what will you do with his praise? Those who themselves wander lost—will you become their leader? How much worth has their respect?
I have heard: a Sufi fakir, Farid. When he spoke, if people clapped, he would begin to weep. One day his disciples asked, This is too much! People clap—why do you weep? Farid said, When they clap, I understand that I must have made some mistake. Otherwise they would never clap. These wrong people! When they neither clap nor understand, only then do I feel that I am saying something right.
After all, what is the value of the clap of the wrong? Before whom are you trying to prove yourself a ‘siddha’? If you want to prove yourself a ‘siddha’ before this world, you are greedy for the praise of fools. You are still foolish. And if you think you want to prove yourself a siddha before the Paramatma—then you are a greater fool. For before Him, humility is needed. Ego will not work there. Only if you go erased will you be accepted. If you go there stiff, your stiffness itself becomes the barrier.
Therefore the so‑called siddhas do not reach the Paramatma. Supreme siddhis come to them, but the real siddhi is missed. That real siddhi is Self‑knowledge. Why is Self‑knowledge missed? Because siddhi too looks toward the other, not toward oneself. If there were no one else in the world, if you were alone—would you want siddhis? Would you want that by touching water it becomes medicine? That by touching a sick person he becomes healthy? That by touching a corpse it becomes alive? If there were no one on earth and you were alone, would you want these siddhis? You would say, What would I do with them? There is no one to see. Siddhis are for the onlooker.
As long as your attention is on the other, your attention cannot be on yourself. And Self‑knowledge happens only to one who turns his gaze from the other back upon himself.
When moha is conquered permanently, sahaja vidya blossoms.
When moha is conquered permanently, sahaja vidya blossoms! Moha has to be conquered. What is moha? Moha means: Without the other I cannot live; the other is my center.
You have read children’s tales in which a king keeps his life locked in a bird—a parrot, a myna. Strike the king—you cannot kill him. The bullet passes through, the king lives. The arrow pierces the heart—the king does not die. Give him poison—no effect. The king lives. You have to find that parrot, that myna in which his life is locked. Twist its neck—and the king falls dead.
These children’s tales are very meaningful; fit for old people to understand as well. Moha means: you do not live in yourself, you live in something else. Suppose someone’s moha is in his safe. Twist his neck—he will not die. Loot his safe—he dies. His life was in the safe. If his bank balance is lost, he dies. Strike him—he will not die. Give him poison—he will live.
Moha means: you have removed your life from yourself and placed it elsewhere. Someone has placed it in his son; someone in his wife; someone in wealth; someone in position—but life has been placed elsewhere. Where it should be, it is not. Your life is not throbbing within; it is throbbing somewhere else. Then you will be in trouble.
This very moha is the world; for wherever you have placed your life, you will become a slave to it. A king whose life is in a parrot will become the parrot’s slave; for everything depends on the parrot. If the parrot dies, our life is gone. So he will guard the parrot.
I have heard: an emperor once became very angry with an astrologer; for the astrologer predicted the prime minister’s death for the next day. And the next day the prime minister died. The king became anxious. And suspicion seized him that perhaps the prime minister died because of this man’s words. The impact was so deep, the suggestion so powerful, that he died. And now this man is a nuisance. If he says to me, Tomorrow you will die, then surviving will be very difficult; for his influence will affect me.
So he put the astrologer in prison. The astrologer asked, Why? The emperor said, You are dangerous! It seems to me the prime minister did not die because he was going to die; he died because you said it. The idea entered his mind; he became hypnotized and died. You are dangerous.
The astrologer said, Before you imprison me, let me tell you one thing—I have also worked out your future. The emperor tried his best not to hear it; but the astrologer spoke anyway. The emperor said, Quiet! The astrologer said, There is no way to be quiet now. The day I die, you will die three days later.
Now trouble began. The astrologer had to be kept in the palace—with great care and service. The king would massage his hands and feet—because the day he died, three days later…
Wherever you place your life, you will be in its service. Watch people—how they approach their safe. Hands joined, as if approaching a temple. On the safe—Labh‑Shubh, Shri Ganeshaya Namah. The safe is God! They worship it. On Diwali watch the madmen—each one worships his own safe. Their life is there. See with what feeling they perform it. Every year the shopkeeper begins his ledger by drawing a swastika, writing Labh‑Shubh, writing Shri Ganeshaya Namah. Do you know why he praises Ganesh so much?
Ganesh is an old mischief‑maker. An ancient tale says Ganesh is the deity of obstacles. He even looks such that he must be mischief. For one thing, the head is not his own. Whoever has no head of his own is a madman. He can do anything—anything is possible. Look at his posture—suspicious. He rides a mouse. That mouse is logic; it cuts like a pair of shears. Logic is never trustworthy. Wherever logic enters, there obstacles arise. Where logic enters a life, disturbances arise, chaos arises, all peace is lost.
So Ganesh is the ancient deity of obstacles. Wherever something auspicious is happening, he would appear. People began to fear him. Out of fear, they began to fold hands beforehand—Please, be gracious; keep your grace here, we will handle the rest. And slowly the situation came to this: the deity of obstacles became for people the deity of auspiciousness. They have forgotten the story. Yet their folding of hands is right—that he may not come here. Keep your gracious glance here.
Look—what feeling the devotee shows at the safe, worshiping wealth!
The veil of moha means: your soul is locked somewhere else. Whether in wife, wealth, position—wherever—it makes no difference; but your soul is not within you—that is moha. And permanent conquest of moha means you have dropped all dependence. Now you do not live dependent on another; your life is dependent on itself. You have become self‑centered. You have made your own being your center. Let wife be or not be; wealth be or not be—no disturbance. They are waves upon the surface—you will not become unstrung. Success or failure, pleasure or pain—no difference. Earlier there was difference because you depended on them.
Moha‑jaya means becoming utterly free; the realization—I depend on no one. The feeling—I alone am enough, sufficient. The sense that my being is complete—that is moha‑jaya. So long as your being depends on the being of another, moha will clutch you; you will clutch the other that he not slip away, not be lost on the way—for without him how will you live!
Mulla Nasruddin’s wife died; formally he was weeping. But a friend of Mulla Nasruddin was weeping even more loudly—beating his chest, shedding tears. Even Mulla could not bear it. He said, My brother, do not make such a commotion; I will marry again. You need not be so unhappy. That friend of Mulla was the lover of Mulla’s wife. Mulla’s life was not there—but his was. So Mulla spoke right—Do not shout so much; I will marry again.
Whatever makes you weep—that is your moha. Whatever loss makes you feel impoverished—that is your moha. Think—what is that which, if lost, would make you utterly wretched? That is the point of your moha. And before it is lost, loosen your grip upon it. Because it will be lost. Nothing in this world is permanent—neither friendship nor love—nothing is permanent. Everything here is changing. The nature of the world is change from moment to moment. It is a flow—like a river. Nothing here is static. However much you try, nothing can be held still. It is your effort to hold it still that creates your misery. That which is forever flowing you want to make still; that which is running you want to stop, to freeze. It will not freeze. It is not its nature.
Change is the world—and there you want a permanent support. That is not found. Hence you are unhappy every moment. Every moment your supports slip away.
Try to find out which things, if lost, would make you unhappy. Before they are lost, begin to loosen your hold upon them. This is the method of moha‑jaya. There will be pain; but this pain is worth bearing—it is tapas. There is no need to leave and run away—no need to leave your wife and run to the Himalayas. Remain where you are. But slowly cut the dependence upon the wife. There is no need to hurt your wife by this. She need not even know. There is no reason to let anyone know anything.
Jesus has said: Let not your left hand know what your right hand does—then you are a true sadhak. For the wish to let the other know is also the wish of ego. You want to let people know: Look, I have left the wife, I am going to the Himalayas! What a great deed I have done!
Nothing great. Ask any husband; all husbands want to go to the Himalayas. They cannot go—that’s another matter. There is nothing special in it.
Mulla Nasruddin one day arrived at the village madhouse and knocked. The superintendent opened the door and said, What’s the matter? Mulla said, Has anyone escaped from the madhouse? The superintendent said, Why? Did you see someone escaping? Mulla said, No—someone has run away with my wife. So I thought, surely someone has escaped from the madhouse. We ourselves wanted to escape; he came and got trapped by his own hand.
Ask husbands! Whoever is standing in the world, his sorrow has no end. He cannot escape—because he sees no happiness anywhere else; where to go? And wherever he goes, the world will go with him. And then, with great craving he has built this place—now after such building, breaking is hard; the whole life becomes wasted.
Search out your mohas. Without which things you cannot live—begin the inner effort to live without them. And create such a condition that even if all those things were lost, there would be no tremor within you—then moha‑jaya has happened. It is possible; it has happened. If it has happened to one, it can happen to all.
Shiva’s sutra says: When moha is conquered permanently, sahaja vidya blossoms.
And the day moha is conquered, that day you find that a knowing begins to be experienced within you—that knowledge begins to shine which is sahaja, which is learned from no one. That is Self‑knowledge. There is no facility for learning Self‑knowledge from another; it flashes within. As flowers come upon trees, as streams flow—so within you too there is a flow, murmuring ever; that is your own, sahaja; it is not to be taken from anyone. No guru can give it; all gurus only point toward it. When you find it, you will know it was hidden within; it is your own treasure. Therefore—sahaja vidya.
There are two kinds of vidyas. The world’s vidya must be learned from others; it is not sahaja. However intelligent a man may be, worldly knowledge must be learned from others. And however dull a man may be, Self‑knowledge need not be learned from others. It is within you. The obstacle is moha. When moha is cut, the clouds disperse, the sun appears!
To such an awakened yogi there is the realization: The entire universe is the effulgence of my own rays.
And the day sahaja vidya is born, when awakening comes, then it becomes visible that the whole universe is the pulsation of your own rays. Then you become the center. You had greatly desired to become the center of the whole universe. With ego it never happened. Every time you were defeated. And the moment ego is lost, you become the center.
That which you want to attain will be attained—but you are searching in the wrong direction. You are on a false path. What you want can be received—but not by the means you have chosen; you have chosen a wrong charioteer, you have chosen a wrong vehicle. Through ego you will never become the center. And the egoless becomes instantly the center of the universe. Buddhahood blossoms under the bodhi tree; the whole world becomes the periphery; the whole universe becomes the circumference; Buddhahood becomes the center. Then all the rays are mine. All life is mine. But this ‘mine’ flowers only when ‘I’ is not. This is the paradox. As long as the ‘I’ remains, however vast you make the spread of ‘mine’, however great an empire you build—you are deceiving yourself.
You have been burned enough, you have wandered for lives and lives, still not alert!
I have heard: one day Mulla Nasruddin boarded an airplane. No sooner had he sat in his seat than he called the stewardess and said, Listen! Oil, water, air, petrol—everything alright? The stewardess said, Sit quietly in your place. This is not your job. This is our concern. Nasruddin said, Then don’t ask in the middle to get down and push.
Someone told me, so I asked Nasruddin—Did such a thing happen? He said, It did. A man burned by milk blows even on buttermilk. A bus traveler keeps his anxiety even in an airplane—lest in the middle we be asked to get down and push.
You have been burned so many times. Yet you have not learned to blow even on milk, much less on buttermilk.
The greatest dilemma of life is that we do not learn from experience. People say, We learn from experience—no sign of it. No one seems to learn from experience. Again and again you repeat the same mistakes. Make new ones at least—there is some skill in that. Make new ones—then there will be some movement, some maturity in life. The same mistakes again and again—repetition.
Chitta is a wheel. You go on revolving in the same groove like a potter’s wheel. And that wheel is driven by your moha. Break moha, the wheel will stop. As soon as the wheel stops you will find you are the center. You do not have to become the center—you are. You do not have to become the Paramatma—you are. Therefore that vidya is sahaja.
To such an awakened yogi there is the realization: The entire universe is the effulgence of my own rays.
And there is supreme bliss in this realization. With this realization the supreme nectar is tasted. With its arrival all darkness disappears from your life—all sorrow, all anxiety. You are filled with exultant joy. A drunkenness, a song is born in your life. Your every breath becomes thrilled and fragrant—from some unknown source.
That is sahaja vidya; no scripture can teach it and no guru can teach it. But a guru can help in removing the obstacles.
Take this rightly to heart. There is no way to learn that supreme vidya, but you must learn the ways to remove the obstacles on its path. Meditation will not give you that supreme treasure; meditation will only give you the key to the door. Meditation will only open the door. That supreme treasure is within you. You yourself are That! Tat tvam asi! That Brahman—you are.
All methods are to remove obstacles—to clear the stones on the path. The goal—you carry it with you. Brahman is sahaja; the difficulty is of your moha. The difficulty is not that Brahman takes time to be found; the difficulty is that you have clutched the world so tightly that the time you take to release it—that much time will seem to pass before finding That. You can drop it this instant—attainment is instantaneous. If you want to delay—you have been delaying for births upon births, you can delay for more births.
But enough—more than enough delaying has been done. To delay further has no meaning. The time is ripe; from the tree of the world you should fall. And do not fear that if you fall from the tree you will be lost. You will be lost—but only your futile part will be lost; that which is meaningful will be received multiplied without measure.
Enough for today.