Tao Upanishad #127

There is a great difference between love and love, because love can express itself on many levels. When love manifests in its purest form—uncaused, unconditional—it becomes a temple. When it appears in its impurest form—like lust, like exploitation and violence, like jealousy and hatred, like dominance and possession—it becomes a prison.

A prison means: you want to get out, but you cannot. A prison means: something that weighs on your personality from all sides like a chain, that gives you no growth, hangs on your chest like a stone and drowns you. A prison means: inside it you writhe for freedom and cannot be free; the door is shut, chains are on your hands and feet, your wings are cut. A prison means: you see no way to rise above it or go beyond it.

A temple means: a door that is open; just as you entered, if you wish to leave there is no prohibition—no one holds your feet. There is as much freedom to go out as there was to come in. You will not want to leave the temple, but the freedom to leave is always present. From a prison you want to get out every moment—and the door is shut! No way remains to exit.

A temple means: that which carries you beyond yourself; from where transcendence becomes possible; that which forever affords you the grace to move higher and higher. Even if you have fallen in love with someone and the beginning was impure, as love deepens, purification should increase. Even if love began as the attraction of bodies, once the journey of love begins it ceases to be merely bodily attraction and becomes a pull between two minds, and by the journey’s end even that mental pull disappears and it becomes the meeting of two souls.

That love in which, ultimately, you can have a vision of the divine is a temple; that love in which you can experience nothing beyond your inner animal is a prison. And love can be either, because you are both. You are animal and you are divine. You are a ladder whose one end rests with the animal and whose other end rests with the divine. It depends on you whether you climb up or go down that ladder. The ladder is one; its name is love. Only the direction changes. By the same steps by which you climb to me, you can go away from me.

The steps will be the same, you will be the same, your feet the same, the strength in your feet the same—everything the same; only your direction will change. In one direction your eyes were lifted to the sky and your feet followed your eyes; in the other, your eyes are fixed on the ground, on the low, and your feet follow that.

Ordinarily, love drags you down into the animal. That is why people have become so afraid of love; they are not as frightened of hate as they are of love. An enemy scares you less than a friend. What can an enemy really do? There is distance between you and your enemy. But a friend can spoil much. And a lover can destroy you completely, because you have given the opportunity to come so close. A lover can pull you down into hell. Hence, in love people get their first glimpse of hell; hence they run away from the world of love, they become deserters. Religions all over the world have taught: beware of love. Why? Because they saw that ninety-nine out of a hundred only drown and are ruined in love.

There is no fault in love; the fault is with those who drown. And I tell you: those who descend into hell through love will descend into hell through prayer too, because prayer is also a form of love. Those who went down by the staircase of love at home will go down by the staircase of prayer in the monastery. The real issue is not to change the staircase, nor to run from it; the real issue is to change your direction.

So I do not tell you to leave the world and run away, because those who run away gain nothing. The one who abandons the staircase, one thing is certain: he will not fall into hell. But another thing is equally certain: how will he rise to heaven? Hell may be avoided, but the means to heaven is gone as well—because they are two names for the same staircase. The renunciant lives in safety; he has blocked the way to hell—but at the same time he has blocked the way to heaven. He will not suffer as you suffer, true; but the bliss you could have attained, that possibility is lost to him. Granted you are in hell, but you can be in heaven—and by the same stairs by which you descended. Ninety-nine out of a hundred go downward, but that is not the staircase’s fault; it is yours.

To blame the stairs without transforming yourself, to condemn the stairs without undergoing inner revolution, is deep unintelligence. If the steps are taking you toward hell, know for certain that these very steps can lift you to heaven. You must change direction, not run away. What will that change of direction look like?

When you love someone—whoever it may be: mother, father, wife, beloved, friend, son, daughter—love’s quality is one; whom you love is not the big question. Whenever you love, two possibilities arise. One: through love you try to dominate, to own, to possess the one you love. Then you have begun to descend toward hell. Where love becomes possession, accumulation, dominance—love is no more; the journey has gone wrong. If you want to be the owner of the one you love, the mistake has begun. For the one whom you make a slave makes you a slave. Slavery cannot be one-sided; it is a double-edged blade. Whenever you enslave someone, you are also enslaved. You may be sitting on their chest while they lie beneath, but neither can they escape you nor can you escape them. Bondage is mutual. If you seek dominance, the direction downward has begun.

When you love someone, set them free; let your love be their liberation. The more you free them, the more you will find yourself becoming free, because liberation too is a double-edged sword. When you free those nearest to you, you free yourself as well; by freeing them, you destroy their means to enslave you. What you give is what returns to you. When you hurl abuse, abuse rains back. When you offer flowers, flowers return. The world is an echo; the world is a mirror in which you see your own face in a thousand forms.

When you make someone a slave, you too are becoming a slave; love starts turning into a prison. Do not think the other throws you into prison. How can the other? What power has the other? Only when you imprison the other do you fall into prison; it’s a joint venture. You enslave them; they enslave you. Look at husbands and wives: they have become each other’s slaves. And naturally, how can you love one who enslaves you? Deep within there will be resentment, anger; deep within, a desire for revenge. It will manifest in a thousand ways—in petty, petty things. You will find husbands and wives quarreling over trifles. Lovers fighting over such small matters that you cannot believe love ever visited their lives. Where an event as great as love has happened, can such petty squabbles arise? Those petty quarrels show that the ladder is tilted downward.

Whenever you seek to dominate someone, you have murdered love. The child of love was aborted; before it was even born you strangled it.

Love blossoms in the sky of freedom; its birth is in the climate of independence. In a prison, love is not born; there the tomb of love is built. And as soon as you dominate, jealousy is born. If your wife smiles and speaks a little with someone else, your life trembles. “She is making a window to escape my prison; a breach in the wall!” Your wife and laughing with someone else? Your wife speaking to another? Your husband praising another woman’s beauty? Impossible! For you it appears the first danger, the first attempt at freedom. Lovers kill it at the very outset. Jealousy is born.

Remember: if you love one woman, in truth through that woman you love all women. She is a representative, a symbol. In her you have loved the feminine. When you love one man, through that man you have loved all men who are here, who ever were, who ever will be. Personality is on the surface; within is the pure energy of masculinity or femininity. When your eyes have learned to appreciate beauty in one, how can those eyes fail to see beauty in another when it is there? There is no sin in seeing beauty. If you exult in the light of one lamp, how can you not rejoice when you see the light in another?

But a woman will try that you no longer see beauty anywhere else. And a man will try that for the woman the entire world become devoid of men; only he alone be visible. Then a crisis arises. The woman tries that no beautiful woman be visible to the man; slowly the man begins killing his own sensitivity, because if sensitivity remains he will see beauty. Beauty has no licensed agent; where it is, it will be seen. And if love is free, everywhere and in every beauty the man will glimpse his beloved, and love will deepen.

But the woman cuts away the man’s sensitivity; the man cuts the woman’s. They murder each other’s sensitivity. And when no woman anywhere appears beautiful to the man, do you think the one sitting at home will appear beautiful? She will become the ugliest, because through her your sense of beauty died. And if no man appears beautiful to the woman, will her own husband appear beautiful? When men themselves are no longer beautiful, the masculinity within is no longer attractive.

It is as if you decide: you will breathe only near the woman you love, and the rest of the time hold your breath. And she says, “See, don’t breathe anywhere else! You yourself said your life is only for me. So when you are with me, breathe; otherwise, keep your breath shut.” What will happen? If you try this, when you return to her you will be a corpse, not alive. And if you can’t breathe anywhere else, do you think you will be able to breathe near her? You will be dead.

This is how love becomes a prison. Love gives great promises—and can fulfill them—but they go unfulfilled. Hence everyone is filled with the melancholy of love. Love painted great rainbows and promised poetry would shower upon you; and when the rain comes you find there is neither poetry nor beauty—only quarrel, turmoil, conflict, anger, jealousy, hostility. You had set out to fly with someone in the sky of freedom; you find your wings cut. You had gone to breathe freedom; you find your neck strangled.

In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, love becomes a noose—yet not because of love, because of you. Your religious teachers said it is because of love. There I differ. And they will seem right to you, because they lift the burden of responsibility off your shoulders. They say, “It’s the mischief of love; we warned you—don’t get into it.” So they have condemned love, and you approve, because they do not hold you guilty; they blame love. The mind is always pleased when the blame goes elsewhere.

I hold you guilty—one hundred percent. Love is not even slightly to blame. Love could have fulfilled its promises; you did not let it. You strangled it. The stairs could have lifted you; you went down. Going down is easy; going up is laborious. Love is a discipline. To make love a prison is like a stone rolling down a mountain; the pull of the earth takes it along. The two journeys are not the same, because to go up you must change. To rise, you must become worthy of height; moment to moment, your level of consciousness must rise—only then can you climb the steps. To fall needs no effort.

Mulla Nasruddin bought a bicycle for his two sons. “Share it half and half,” he said—no quarrels. One day he saw the elder repeatedly go up a hill and ride the bike down. Many times he saw him descending from the hill on the bicycle. He called him and said, “I told you: half and half with your younger brother.” The boy said, “We are doing half and half. The younger brother pushes the bicycle up; we ride it down—half and half.”

Pushing a bicycle uphill—there is no comparison with riding downhill. The younger one, panting, somehow reaches the top; the older sits and makes the downward journey. This is not equal halves. The downward “journey” isn’t a journey; it is a fall, a descent below even where you were.

So the one who turns love into jealousy, domination, possession will soon find the fire of love lost; only smoke remains to blind the eyes. One begins to live in a dark valley; the mountain heights and the sunrises and sunsets seen from them are lost. The animal within manifests easily; it needs no practice.

Whoever wants to take love upward must practice love as one practices yoga. Both are upward journeys; hence the discipline begins. Love is tapas, austerity. As one undertakes tapas, so too love demands tapascharya. And love is an even greater tapas, because another person is with you. You are not to go up alone; you must give your hand to another and carry them up. Many times the other will feel heavy; many times the other will refuse to climb; many times the other will long to go down. But if there is love in your heart, you will support and guard the other; you will not let them fall. Your hand will not lose compassion; your love will not quickly turn into anger. Many times you will have to go slow, because the other is walking with you; you cannot run. That is why I say: tapas is not as great—because in tapas you are alone; you can run whenever you want. Love is a greater tapas.

But you come to love as if you were already prepared. There the mistake happens. Everyone imagines he is worthy of love. There the mistake lies. You learn everything else, spending your life on small skills. Have you ever learned love? Ever reflected on it? Ever given it attention? What is love? You sit as if you already know. That assumption will take you downward, toward hell.

Love is the greatest art. There is no knowledge higher. All other knowledge is smaller, because through them you can only know the outside; only in love do you enter the inner sanctum. And if the divine is hidden anywhere, it is not on the circumference but at the center.

Once you enter the inner sanctum of one person, the art comes into your hands; the same art serves to enter the inner of all existence. If you learn to love one, through that one you learn the art of loving. One day that very art will take you to God.

Therefore I say love is a temple. But it is not a ready-made temple. You must build it, step by step. The road is not paved in advance, not a royal highway. You will walk step by step, and by walking the path will appear—like a footpath. You will make it by walking it.

So I am not against love; I am in favor of love. And I say to you: if love has plunged you into sorrow, accept your own mistake, not love’s. There is great danger if you accept love’s mistake. Under the influence of saints and monks you may drop the path of love, because there you suffered. You may even become a little more comfortable. But the rain of bliss will never again drench you. How will you climb? You have left the staircase! For fear of falling you climbed down from the staircase itself. How will you ascend now? That you will not fall is certain.

The one we call worldly, householder, falls from the stairs; the one we call a renunciate, by the old notion, has run away from the stairs. I call renunciate the one who does not leave the stairs; who begins to change himself, and who, from the very valley of love, slowly begins the journey toward love’s peak.

It is difficult. Life’s treasure is not free; you must pay—pay with yourself, stake yourself. Nothing demands as severe a test as love. Therefore the weak run away. And by running, no one arrives anywhere. You must pass through love’s gate. Yes, you must go beyond it—do not stop there. It is only a gate.

In Japan there is a temple—as all temples should be—that is only a gate. It has no walls and nothing inside; only a gate.

The temple is a doorway; it opens toward the unknown. The past is left behind; it opens toward the future. Time is left behind; it opens toward the timeless. The petty, the momentary is left behind; it opens toward the eternal. But it is only a doorway. Whoever stops in the temple is foolish. A temple is not a place to settle—rest for the night, but set out again in the morning.

How will you make love a temple? Do not dominate the one you love. Do not let jealousy stand around your love. Do not expect anything from the one you love; if you can give, give; do not ask. Then you will find that love deepens day by day, rises day by day. Slowly, slowly, new wings will sprout in your life; your consciousness will become capable of a new journey. But be alert to these mistakes. They are entirely common, and they begin the moment you fall in love. You begin to expect. Where there is expectation, bargaining begins; love is no more.

Give the one you love full freedom to be themselves. Many times there will be things you do not like. But what of your liking? The other is a complete person in their own privacy; who are you? You have the right to love them as they are, but do not cut and trim them. Do not say, “Become such-and-such, then I will love you.”

A woman comes to me. A love marriage—but everything was ruined by a small issue: the husband smokes. She cannot bear it; his breath smells. She cannot sleep with him at night; he sleeps in another room. Twenty years have been spent in this quarrel: the wife’s insistence that he quit cigarettes; the husband’s insistence that the wife may leave, but the cigarette cannot. They were in love, married against their parents’ will—hard won. Different castes, different religions; both families opposed. They staked everything for the marriage, and then staked everything on the cigarette. I told them: at least reflect on how much you have lost for such a small thing! But the ego is strong. And the wife says, “I will not climb down from my condition.” Twenty years gone, and life will go.

When you love one person, suppose he gets pyorrhea—what then? Suppose his breath smells—what then? Is love so small it cannot endure that little odor? Suppose tomorrow he falls ill, is crippled, bedridden—what then? Tomorrow he is old, the body weak—what then?

Love is unconditional. It remains present beyond all limits—through happiness and sorrow, youth and old age.

The wife cannot endure the cigarette. Love appears smaller than a cigarette; the cigarette appears enormous. She is willing to lose love, but not to endure the smell of smoke. The husband is ready to live away from his wife, but not to leave his cigarette. Taking smoke in and out seems more valuable; the wife seems worthless. What kind of love is this? But almost all loves are stuck on such points. The cigarette may be replaced by other excuses, other pegs—but stuck they are.

If you want the other to behave exactly as you want, you have begun to poison love. As soon as you expect, the other will begin to expect. Then you start improving each other. Love does not try to improve anyone. Though through love inner revolution happens, love does not attempt to reform. Reform happens of itself. When you love someone totally, as much as your life-breath can love, not holding back a grain—will the beloved, after so much love, still lack the understanding to drop a cigarette? Will there not be that much understanding after such great love? If not, then love is impotent. But love is not impotent; there is no power greater. Your love itself will make him leave it. But do not expect. Expectation, and you begin to descend into the valley. Expectation, and you start to reform—trouble begins.

Small children will be born in your house. You love them, but more than love you are worried about improving them. In that worry your love dies. No child can ever wholly forgive his parents; the resentment lingers to the end. He may touch their feet—because custom demands it—but inside? Inside, the parents feel like enemies. Because over tiny matters they tried to improve the child. What does a child understand? He understands only this: “As I am, I am not worthy of love; as I am, I am not enough. I must be cut and hammered and made into something—then I will be worthy of love.” The child hears the tone of condemnation. It is a condemnation.

Remember: love only loves; it does not seek to improve. And love brings about great improvements. In the shade of love great revolutions occur. If parents truly love their child, that is enough. That love will sustain him; that love will keep him from going wrong; whenever he starts to descend from the path, that love will rise up as a barrier. He will remember mother, father, their love—their unconditional love—and his feet will turn back.

But you do not love; you reform. And your urge to reform becomes the very attraction that draws the child off the path. Children will lie, will smoke, will swear, will be rude—just because you want to reform them. You are hurting their ego; they answer from ego. A struggle begins. And it is costly, because from parents a child first learns of love—that is where it gets poisoned.

A boy who could not love his mother will never be able to love any woman; obstacles will always arise—because every woman has the mother hidden in her. Everywhere, every woman is a mother. Motherhood is the deep nature of woman. Even a little girl is born like a mother; she gathers dolls and cares for them, starts a little household.

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was away. Their little daughter, seven years old, took charge of the dining table that day with solemn gravity, performing like a full-grown woman. But her younger brother, five, did not like it. He said, “Alright, I accept you are Mother, but answer one question: what is seven times seven?” The girl replied gravely, “I am busy; ask Daddy.”

A little girl! But every girl is born a mother, and a man remains a small child to his last breath. No man ever goes beyond being a little boy. Every man seeks the mother in a woman, and every woman seeks the child in a man. Therefore when a man loves a woman deeply, he becomes like a small child, and in the deep moments of love the woman becomes like a mother. The rishis of the Upanishads blessed newlyweds: may you have ten children, and in the end may the eleventh be your husband becoming your son. They spoke very rightly.

But if a child does not learn love—unconditional love—from his mother, where will he learn it? The first school is missed. And if a girl does not receive love from her father, she will not be able to love any man; the well became poisonous at the very spring. And when you become entangled in love, your saints and monks stand ever ready to say, “We warned you: beware of woman and gold; woman is the root of all sorrow; woman is the mine of hell.” Your scriptures are full of condemnation of women. There is no condemnation of men—because no woman wrote the scriptures. Otherwise there would be just as much condemnation of men, because a woman lives in just as much hell as you do. But since the writers were all men, there is bias; the scriptures are political; they are full of partiality.

Your monks sit ready, hooks baited, waiting for you to panic and get caught. As soon as you become frightened of householder life, their song, always playing, greets you: “Come, run away; we told you so. You have wandered long enough; now flee, leave all.”

Millions have been pulled away from the life of love. And they gained nothing thereby. Yes, hell was lost—but so was the staircase that could have led to heaven.

I want you to recognize your life rightly; this very life can become a staircase to heaven. From where you are, the path begins. There is nowhere else to run. Hell is here now—and it is because of you. A little understanding, and the winds of hell turn into the breezes of heaven; the flames of hell transform into the coolness of paradise. Just a little understanding. Just a little awareness.

With awareness, love becomes a temple; with unconsciousness, love becomes a prison. Therefore, if you can join meditation to love—love plus awareness—then all is well. Love plus unconsciousness—and all goes wrong.

Do not avoid love; add meditation to love. Love imbued with awareness is prayer. And then the little child you love will no longer appear merely a little child; you will begin to glimpse the baby Krishna in him. In his toddling steps the meaning of Surdas’s songs will appear; the tiny anklets chiming on his feet will become the music of the Supreme.

Wherever you are, do not run from love; join love with awareness. That alone is my teaching. And love will become a temple.

Opposite poles can always meet; in fact, deep down they are already one. Because opposite poles are the two ends of the same thing; they are not separate. So don’t try to make them meet; in trying to make them meet you will create difficulty. Try to understand that they are already united.

Complexity and simplicity are two sides of the same coin. Truth and untruth are two sides of the same coin. Night and day are two sides of the same coin. Life and death are two sides of the same coin. They are already one. There is no need for you to join them. What is needed is to wake up and to know that they are already one. And the moment you awaken and know this, you become simple instantly.

To be a Lao Tzu you need not struggle with your complexity—otherwise the poles will never meet. The more you fight complexity, the more complex you become. Understand this well: when a complex person fights complexity, he becomes even more complex; the complexity doubles. The first complexity is already there; now a second complexity is created—the fight. And if you go on like this, then what logicians call an infinite regress begins—you can continue for eternity and nothing will happen. You fight one lie; you will have to erect a second lie. Because if you want to fight a lie, it can only be fought with a lie.

Mulla Nasruddin was coming home on a train. He had placed a basket on the upper berth; the basket had many holes in it. A man became curious about the basket—especially about the holes. He asked, “Excuse me, I’ve never seen such a basket; why are there so many holes?”

Nasruddin said, “There’s a mongoose in the basket; it needs air to breathe, doesn’t it?”

The man was even more surprised. He asked, “What is the mongoose for? Where are you taking it?”

Nasruddin said, “Better understand the whole thing, otherwise your curiosity will go on increasing. My wife sees snakes in her dreams at night, so I’m taking a mongoose to scare the snakes away.”

The man said, “This is too much! If she sees them in dreams, the snakes are false.”

Nasruddin said, “And do you think this mongoose is real? Not at all—I’m just carrying the notion. To scare false snakes you don’t need a real mongoose. And how will you bring a real mongoose to deal with false snakes? Only a false mongoose can fight a false snake.”

If a false illness catches you, do you need real medicine? You will only get into more trouble. If a false illness has caught you, don’t go to an allopathic doctor, or you will be in a big mess—his medicine will create more complexity. If a false illness has caught you, then saints, sadhus, Sai Baba—go there. A false illness needs false ash; that works. A real illness needs real medicine; a false illness needs false medicine.

When you fight one lie, you raise a second lie. Then you panic even more: “This too is a lie; I must fight it,” and you raise a third lie. There is no end to it. Layer upon layer, layer upon layer, untruth keeps piling up. You become entangled in your own disturbance.

No—if there is a lie, don’t fight it; just know it, awaken. The moment you awaken, the lie drops. Your complexity is a lie; it is not real. In truth, you are as simple as Lao Tzu. In the very core of your life, you are as simple as any enlightened one. There is not the slightest difference, not a hair’s breadth. Because if there were a difference there, then there would be no way to transform anything. There, you are as simple as a newborn child, as the morning’s dew, as the first star of evening—utterly fresh. Between the freshness of Lao Tzu, Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna and your inner freshness there is not the slightest gap, no difference. You are what they are. If there is a distance, it is in the outer layers—the false garments you have put on.

There is no need to fight those false garments; just understand that they are false. You won’t even have to take them off, because taking them off would be needed only if they were real. You are naked as you are; you have only draped yourself in untruth. You don’t have to remove them; see them, and they are gone. Awareness is enough. Wakefulness is enough.

That is why all the enlightened ones go on saying one thing: meditation, meditation, meditation. Meditation means: simply wake up. Look at yourself with a little awareness.

Imagine you come home and, right at the door, you begin to prepare for your wife—you pull a smile across your lips, which is false. The lips have been trained, so you can stretch them. Some people practice so much that even in sleep their lips don’t relax—they remain stretched. If practice goes too far, there is no need to laugh at all; the lips just stay stretched. You have pulled your lips. Now what must be done to be free of this false smile?

Just bring a little awareness, and the lips will return to their place. The moment you see that there is no laughter within—so why are you putting it on your lips? And whom are you deceiving? Your wife? No one has ever managed that; you are attempting the impossible. Your stretched lips won’t make any difference. In fact, your stretched lips will only convey one piece of news to your wife: you must be coming after committing some offense. Otherwise why are you laughing? Why are you smiling? Whom are you trying to deceive? Your smile is false. You are deceiving only yourself. Wake up a little. Do nothing—let the smile remain stretched; just wakefully see that it is false, and you will find the lips have returned to their place.

This fist of mine—I am holding it tight deliberately. To open it, nothing needs to be done; I only have to understand that I am clenching it unnecessarily, without reason, without any substance—and the fist opens. You don’t have to open it; you only have to clench it. When understanding dawns, the clenching drops; it opens.

Understanding is simple; non-understanding is complex. Knowledge is utterly simple; ignorance is very complex.

So don’t ask what you must do to become simple like Lao Tzu. You already are; just wakefully look at your nature. The treasure is with you; you don’t have to go searching anywhere. You have not lost anything; there is only the idea that you have lost. You have to bring back remembrance. In truth you cannot lose it—because if you could lose it, there would be no way to regain it. Who would lose it? Your nature is simplicity.

To become complex you have to make an effort. To be complex you must always be on guard. Consider: to be complex you have to do something. What do you have to do to be simple? Understand it like this: if a man has to go somewhere, he must walk. But if he doesn’t have to go anywhere, if he is to sit at home, does he have to walk? He simply sits. He is already at home. Whenever you have to do something, it means you are trying to obtain something that is not your nature.

It happened that the emperor of China came to see Bodhidharma. The emperor said, “I get very angry—tell me some device so I can be rid of it.” Bodhidharma asked, “Are you angry twenty-four hours a day, or only sometimes?” He said, “Who could be angry twenty-four hours a day? Only sometimes.” Bodhidharma said, “Then don’t worry. Whatever is only sometimes cannot be your nature; nature is twenty-four hours.”

By nature I mean that whether sleeping or waking, standing or sitting, walking, eating, drinking, in virtue, in sin, in theft, in saintliness—it is always with you. Nature means you. Nature has nothing to do. Nature is not an act; nature is your being, your existence.

Therefore don’t even ask what we should do so that the opposite poles may meet; the opposite poles are already one. Kindly don’t do anything; pause a little in non-doing. For a little while, do nothing. Each day, if you can sit silently for an hour and do nothing. Thoughts will come; let them come, let them go. Don’t stop them, because that too is doing. Don’t even do this—“we won’t let them come”—because that too is doing. You do nothing; let whatever is happening happen. Sinful thoughts are arising—let them arise. Who are you? Smoke has come; it will go by itself. It came on its own; it will go on its own. You just sit silently and watch.

If you do only this—sit empty for an hour—one day you will suddenly find that Lao Tzu has manifested within in his full majesty; Buddha is enthroned; you have become the Bodhi tree; in your shade Buddhahood abides; you have attained the ultimate. You had never lost it. The whole difficulty is one of stupor.

Whoever tells you, “God must be searched for—somewhere in the sky,” will mislead you. I tell you: don’t search for God; you never lost him. God is within you—you are. Even to say “within you” is not quite right—you are that. A little dust of the journey has gathered; you need a bath, that’s all. You are coming from a long journey, dust-laden. You have lived many lies; layers of untruth have accumulated around you. But they are only layers of untruth; there is nothing to fear. Truth is powerful. What power can the layers of lies have? Light the lamp of truth, and the layers of untruth dissolve—just as darkness disappears when a lamp is lit.

If you can remember this, it is the essence of all the scriptures: you are the Supreme—just a little asleep, a little drowsy; you’ve dozed off a bit, that’s all. Splash a little water in your eyes, have a cup of tea, gather a little awareness. Nothing has ever been lost. No one has ever lost anything. Because losing is not possible.

If you want to increase confusion, then anything you hear will increase it. It looks as if you are on the lookout for confusion, searching for where it can be multiplied. Otherwise the matter is utterly simple; there is no question of confusion at all.

There is no contradiction between the two. The first step is an extreme, and the last step is an extreme—both are extremes. To stop before even the first step is one extreme. And to be able to stop only after the last step is the other extreme. There is not the slightest difference in essence. Lao Tzu is also saying that transformation happens at the extreme; I am saying the same: transformation happens at the extreme. Lao Tzu says: stop before the first step. But you have already taken the first step, so I am saying: now take the last step. Now Lao Tzu won’t be of use to you; I will. What will you do with Lao Tzu now? You took your first steps long ago. How far you have already walked in the world! Is there any question now of not taking the first step? You have taken thousands of steps, traveled thousands of miles. So I say to you: don’t delay—complete the journey, take the final step.

Revolution happens either before the first step or after the last step—never in the middle. In the middle you are half-baked. How can revolution happen there? Either when you were utterly simple, like a child—untouched by complexity, a virgin, you had not known desire—then; or after you have known desire fully, in all its forms, so that not a single corner in the mind is left with the feeling that something remained unknown. Know it in all its manifestations, auspicious and inauspicious, so that the mind is sated, so that you get bored, so that you awaken through your own suffering. Take the last step. Lukewarm revolutions do not happen.

Lao Tzu is absolutely right; there is no mistake. But for whom will Lao Tzu’s counsel be useful? For you? You have already taken many steps. Where will you find a person who has not taken the first step? How will you find such a person?

Lao Tzu’s statement is right, but it isn’t of practical use for you. What I am saying is of use. I am speaking looking at you. I have not yet seen a single person who has not taken the first step—because how would such a person even come to me? To come to me you must already have taken quite a few steps. That is why I say: take the last step. It’s already been too long; you’ve walked enough. Not much remains—just a few corners here and there. Settle those too. My insistence is: do not enter revolution with half a heart, or that half left behind will keep pulling you back again and again.

We have a word: yogabhrashta—“one fallen from yoga.” It simply means someone who became a yogi halfway. He was neither fully sated with the world nor fully unsated; something of the world still lingered in the mind—some buried desire, some remaining flavor. He still felt there were things left to know, but he was taken out prematurely—unripe, not mature. An unripe fruit was plucked: the tree was wounded and the fruit remained unfulfilled. The sap was still flowing. The time to drop from the tree had not come; maturity was not yet there. It happened due to some accident.

Accidents are possible. You read a scripture, felt impressed for a moment, and in that moment committed a mistake—left home. Now returning is difficult; people will laugh. And monks know the trick. Whenever they give initiation, they have the band and drums played loudly so that everyone knows the man has taken sannyas. Not like me, who gives quietly so that nobody even notices. You yourself don’t realize how you became a sannyasin—others are a different matter. No bands, no drums, no procession on an elephant. That pomp is a device. There is a reason behind it—a big trade secret. Once the procession goes out on an elephant, the ego climbs onto the elephant. You won’t be able to return easily. Your own wife will fold her hands.

It happened. A Jain monk friend of mine realized he had run away halfway. I said, “Then drop it.” He said, “Drop it? I ask my father if I may come home; he says, ‘Now you would disgrace us.’ I ask my wife; she says, ‘Don’t even set foot here by mistake.’ She used to beat her chest and weep earlier; now she says, ‘Now it will be a disgrace.’”

They had put him on the elephant. Now his own people weren’t ready to take him back. No one was ready to take him back. Wherever he would go he would be considered fallen, corrupt. That elevation to the elephant is a device—to make return impossible. Hence the loud bands, the grand receptions, as if some great event were happening.

What is happening really? A man is leaving home. What need for such fanfare? If he is going with understanding, he himself would say, “What is the noise for? Until now I was unwise; now I have understood. That’s all.” He lay in the gutter because he had no awareness; now awareness has dawned. If a drunkard falls into the gutter at night and in the morning comes to his senses, do you take out a procession with drums that he has regained his senses and gotten out of the gutter? When awareness comes, one simply returns home.

But there is a reason behind the noise: to inflate your ego so much that when you yourself want to go back, the doorway will seem too small, and no one will agree to take you in. Your wife, your children will fold their hands: “Don’t commit this mistake—one mistake you already made by running away; don’t make another.” The whole world will stop you. Now it’s a question of ego, of prestige.

So that monk’s father told him, “Commit suicide, but do not come home. Think of us too.”

Now the monk lives on, unwillingly. The passion runs toward home; God does not come to mind—his wife does. He reads scriptures; the world runs in his mind. He’s also preaching to others. He told me, “My trouble is that I am telling others, ‘Renounce! Why are you entangled?’ and I myself am in a fix as to why I renounced. Here, I get neither joy nor any taste of liberation. And it now seems that what I was getting before—perhaps that is all that can be got; more cannot be had.”

Neither of home nor of the ghat—the washerman’s donkey: neither belongs at home nor at the riverbank. That will be your state if you break off unripe. So I do not tell you to turn back unripe. That is why I say: transformation comes at the extreme. Live—live to the full. Whatever flavor you have in food, exhaust it; allow the point of nausea to arrive. Mature by your own experience. Let nothing remain in the world—not because scriptures say so, but because you have known. Not because monks sing praises of the bliss of liberation; nothing will come of that—you will fall into greed. Many greedy people have been trapped that way. That is an accident.

Don’t go toward God out of the greed that you will get supreme bliss. One who goes seeking bliss in God has not yet finished his hunger for pleasure. Don’t think that in moksha nectar rains day and night. If you are going with a thirst for nectar, your fear of death has not ended; you still fear death. And don’t imagine a heaven where apsaras dance, their bodies golden, never a drop of sweat or odor—eternal spring! And their age never passes sixteen—stuck at sixteen, retarded, they never grow beyond that; such apsaras dancing around you in heaven. You sit beneath a Kalpataru, a wish-fulfilling tree; whatever you desire is instantly fulfilled.

If you turn to religion driven by such craving, there will be an accident. For there is no such heaven anywhere—this is a net cast by monks to catch fish. There are no golden-bodied apsaras anywhere, and there is no Kalpataru under which all desires are fulfilled. Then you are still full of desire. What you could not fulfill in the world you try to fulfill under the wish tree. What you could not obtain from worldly women you now hope for from apsaras. But you are trapped—you have not understood by experience.

A wise one would say: if there are apsaras in heaven too, then what is wrong with what is here? And if under the Kalpataru desires are to be satisfied, what is wrong with satisfying them here?

I have heard a contrary tale. A fakir slept one night and dreamt he was sitting under a Kalpataru. In huge glowing letters it said: Kalpataru—neon letters shining. “Ah,” he said, “I have reached heaven! Let’s see if what the scriptures say is true.” He immediately ordered—though nobody could be seen—“Food!” Beautiful platters arrived. He said, “It is certain.” “Apsaras!” Apsaras began to dance; music and instruments began to play.

This went on for some days. But how long can you keep it up? Even this becomes boring. Food the moment you say food; bed the moment you say bed; apsaras begin to dance the moment you ask—how long will you run this?

The man became a little restless. He said, “Can I get some work to do? How long will this go on sitting around—let me do something!”

A voice came, “That is precisely the problem. There is no work here. Here, whatever you want happens without work. Work has no place.”

So he said, “In that case, hell is better.”

The voice replied from within, “And where do you think you are? This is hell!”

Your wish trees will take you to hell, because it is your search for wish trees that has turned your world into hell. The world is not hell because of the world; it is hell because of your desires. When one looks at this very world without desire, one finds God enthroned. His signature everywhere, his footprints everywhere—leaf by leaf, particle by particle, he alone; everywhere he alone, manifest in countless forms, the formless in every form. It is because of your desire that the world has become hell; not because of the world. The world is moksha; you are the formula for hell.

If you break off unripe, wherever you go you will recreate the world.

I have heard a Sufi story. There was a man. The villagers thought him a simpleton, so they named him “Bewaqoof” (Fool). Gradually he got used to it; such things happen in villages. “Fool” became his very name. And his wife’s name was “Fajeeti” (Trouble). And the wife of a fool will indeed be a trouble—that seems perfectly logical.

Once a quarrel arose between Fajeeti and Bewaqoof, and Fajeeti ran away. He set out to find her. He was in great difficulty, because a fool cannot live without trouble. He cannot live with trouble, and he cannot live without trouble either. You know this too. You cannot live with your wife, and you cannot live without your wife. That is the trouble. Searching, he came to a Sufi fakir and asked, “Master, have you seen my wife?” The fakir asked, “Who are you?” He said, “My name is Bewaqoof, and my wife’s name is Fajeeti, and she has run away from home.” The Sufi said, “Simpleton! If the fool is solid, trouble will be found anywhere. Why worry?”

So the world will find you anywhere. Why worry? You will find it in an ashram, you will find it on the Himalayas. Being a fool is enough; trouble will appear anywhere. The world is full of troubles; what is there to look for? Where are you wandering? Just sit down, and trouble will come by itself. Being a fool is sufficient. Therefore you cannot escape the world by leaving it; wherever you go you will take it with you.

Only when one is ripe does revolution happen; while unripe you will remain unwise. So I say: don’t delay—ripen. Enter experience. Live each thing with awareness. And gradually you yourself will see: in this world there is nothing to grasp and nothing to renounce.

Let me repeat this. If you are unripe you will think there is something in the world to renounce. If you are ripe you will find there is nothing to grasp and nothing to renounce. What is there here worth renouncing? When there is nothing here worth enjoying, what is there worth renouncing?

So the man who renounces as the opposite of indulging has not changed his foolishness. For the one to whom both indulgence and renunciation are pointless—nothing to hold, nothing to drop. There is no treasure here—what will you seize and what will you discard? Renunciation is the act of the ignorant, indulgence is the act of the ignorant; the wise simply awaken and see that both indulgence and renunciation were parts of a dream, happenings in deep sleep—they do not happen upon awakening. The wise simply live; they neither indulge nor renounce. The wise are witnesses; neither enjoyers nor renouncers; they do not become doers. To be a doer is to be ignorant.

There is no contradiction between Lao Tzu and me. Lao Tzu says what is not very useful for you. I am saying what is useful for you. Both statements are true: transformation happens at the extreme.

It is significant. It needs to be understood.

There are three states. First: you sit with paper and pen to decide what to ask, and at once thousands of questions arise, thousands of demands arise—as will happen with ninety-nine out of a hundred people. You won’t be able to decide what to drop and what to ask for. You’ll be in a quandary about what to choose and what to leave. The paper will seem too small; the desires too many. The ink in the pen will seem insufficient. Questions will arise—many, endless. This is one state.

Ordinarily, this is the state of a person who has never had any taste of meditation. If a slight glimpse of meditation has begun, another condition appears: you will sit with paper and pen, your hands will stop; nothing will occur to ask. Nothing will seem worth asking. Nothing will seem worth desiring. The mind will remain empty, and like the mind, the blank paper will remain blank. Yet the pen and paper will not fall from your hands.

Then there is a third state—the state of one established in samadhi. From his hands even the paper and pen fall, because the meditative state is in-between. You cannot even think what to ask; whatever does arise does not seem worth asking—seems futile, like rubbish.

A small glimpse of meditation has rendered all questions meaningless; it has rendered all demands meaningless. But in the unconscious it still feels as though perhaps something remains to be asked; perhaps some question that does not come to mind is still there. Therefore you keep holding the paper and pen in your hands. There is doubt. Meditation has not yet become samadhi. You are not yet utterly without doubt that, indeed, no questions remain. It may be that this question is not right, but perhaps some question is hidden within and will surface from behind. Granted these demands have become futile, yet perhaps there is some desire hidden in the innermost that is standing far back in the line and is coming forward. Hence you cannot let go of the paper and pen; perhaps some precise question, some precise desire will arise. You wait!

The third state is of the one in samadhi, in whom the conscious and the unconscious have become one. Now he can see on all sides. The unconscious is no longer hidden in the dark; there is no need to wait; there is light within. There is no question, no demand; the paper and pen drop.

These are the three states. The ordinary state of mind: questions upon questions—so many, where to hold them! Demands upon demands—so many, with no end in sight! Then the intermediate state of meditation: when thoughts have quieted a little; the mind has begun to be absorbed; the uprooted tree has begun to take hold a little, to grow roots. It has not yet fully taken root; it is not assured, but it is no longer restless. It has not utterly disappeared, but it has become quiet. Derangement has gone; liberation is about to arrive. What was futile has departed; there is waiting for the meaningful to arrive. The house is empty for now. The world has begun to recede from the mind; the Divine has not yet become enthroned. The throne has been vacated by the world; but there is a little time yet before the Lord’s advent.

The third state is when the throne is filled again. First, the restless mind—filled, but with useless junk and trash. Then, the meditator’s mind—void, empty. And then, the mind of one in samadhi—filled again, but now with the essential, with essence, with the Divine.

So first you are full—of the world; then there is the saint who is full—of the Divine. And in between the two is the seeker, emptied of the world but not yet filled with the Divine. Therefore it will happen thus: the blank paper will remain blank, and yet you will not have the courage to let the pen slip from your hand. It will feel: perhaps! perhaps! now it is coming, now the desire will arise—who knows? For there is great darkness within. A small corner has become illumined. In that which is illumined you are assured there is no desire, no question. But regarding the shadowed corners, who can guarantee? Perhaps some wave may rise. Therefore.

But it is a precious state. Even this is not small. To be released this much from derangement is a great deal; half the journey is done. And when half is done, the remaining half does not take long; it also is completed soon. One who has taken the first step has already taken the last as well.

Lao Tzu says: step by step, the journey of a thousand miles is completed.

If the seed has come into your hand, how long will the tree take? If the seed has come, then in essence, in brief, the tree has come. It has come in the unmanifest; soon it will become manifest; it will sprout, branches will shoot, it will leaf out, it will flower. But the seed is in your hand.

Meditation is the seed; samadhi is the tree. Very soon, very soon—if one walks rightly, guarding one’s energy, avoiding the useless, not straying here and there from the path, not wasting time and strength; guarding oneself—because just now your energy is little—conserved, restrained, if one keeps walking, the goal arrives quickly. Then there is nothing left to guard. Then flow like a river in flood; then give, then share. And the more one shares that treasure, the more it goes on increasing. Has anyone ever exhausted the Divine by distributing it? Then the doors of the infinite are opened.

But until then, walk very carefully, placing each step with care; energy is little, strength is limited, the path is long. Until the goal is found, consider it far. In truth it is very near; but if you take it to be near, there is the danger that you will waste your energy here and there, thinking, “It is so near; we will arrive anyway.” No: know the goal to be far—until it is attained. For the one who attains, it is discovered to have been right here, close at hand. For the seeker it is appropriate to understand that the goal is far, the road long, there is much walking to do; and energy is little, limited; it must be conserved. The realized ones always say, “The goal is attained already.” They, too, are right; it was never far. But this is the realization that comes after attainment.

Therefore ponder even the words of the realized carefully. Sometimes even the words of the realized can become a cause for your going astray, because you are so eager to go astray that you can use even their support to wander. Always keep in mind your own eagerness to be distracted, and your own ambition that is ready to get entangled. Be careful. If you proceed carefully, if meditation has come, soon samadhi will knock at the door.

And keep one thing in mind—the last thing: meditation you have to do; samadhi you do not have to do—it comes. You just go on meditating. You just go on becoming like a blank sheet of paper. You take care only of this: that everything be finished—questions, demands, ambitions, expectations—let all be finished; become a blank page. The day you become a completely blank page, you will suddenly find that upon that very blank page the Veda of the Divine has begun to descend.

That’s all for today.