Tao Upanishad #20

Life can be of two kinds. One, to live in such a way as if I myself were the center of the whole world. As if the whole world has been created for my sake. As if I am Paramatman and the whole world is my servant. This is one way of living. The other way is just the opposite. To live in such a way that I am never the center of the world, I am the periphery. To live as if the world is Paramatman and I am only His servant.

These two ways of living are precisely the difference between the irreligious and the religious man. The irreligious man lives taking himself to be the God, the whole world his servant, as if the world is made for him—indeed to be exploited by him. The religious man lives contrary to this; as if he is not, only the world is.

The outcomes of these two kinds of living will be utterly different.

Lao Tzu says, heaven and earth are eternal, everlasting. Their span is immensely long. What is the reason for their lasting so long? What is the cause of their eternity? Because they do not live for themselves!

The more one lives for oneself, the more tense, anxious, restless, and troubled one’s life becomes. The more one lives for oneself, the more one lives in trouble; the quicker one’s life is exhausted. Anxiety consumes life. The less one lives for oneself, the more one becomes free, weightless, empty of tension, available to deep rest.

Consider a few things so they can sink into your awareness.

When the child is in the mother’s womb, he sleeps for nine months. When he is born, he sleeps twenty-three hours; wakes for one hour. Then he sleeps twenty-two hours; wakes for two hours. Then he sleeps twenty hours. Slowly, slowly his sleep decreases and waking grows. In middle age he sleeps eight hours. Then six hours, then four hours. In old age perhaps only two hours of sleep remain. Perhaps you have never wondered why a child needs more sleep, and why an old man needs less.

When life is building, then no remembrance of the self is needed at all. The remembrance of self becomes an obstacle to the unfolding of life. The child is being formed, so nature keeps him asleep twenty-four hours; so that the child may not become aware of “I am,” so that ego-consciousness may not arise. The moment the child becomes aware that “I am,” his growth begins to be hindered. That “I,” that ego, becomes a load upon life. As the ego grows, sleep goes on decreasing. And in old age sleep bids farewell; because death is coming near. Life need no longer be constructed, life is now approaching dissolution. The old man can remain awake the whole time; there is no difficulty now in staying awake. But the child cannot remain awake.

Physicians say that if a man is ill and together with that he loses sleep, then it becomes difficult to cure the illness. So the doctor’s first concern will not be the disease, but his sleep. First let him sleep; then to remove the disease will not be very difficult. Why? Because in sleep he will forget the “I,” and for as long as the “I” is forgotten, life becomes weightless. In that interval all the functions of life can work to their fullness. If the sick man cannot sleep, his wakefulness becomes more dangerous than the disease; anxiety will remain upon his head twenty-four hours.

After sleeping eight hours at night, you feel fresh in the morning, you feel cheerful. There is no other reason. For six or eight hours you were free of the ego. If mankind, for thousands of years, has been drawn to alcohol, intoxication and narcotic substances, there is only one reason: man is so filled with anxiety and ego that living becomes difficult if he cannot forget himself. Alcohol will not dissolve the ego, but it will make you forget it. And for as long as you forget, it feels good. But when consciousness returns, the same ego will stand up having gathered double the strength. It had been repressed for a while; it will take its revenge for that too.

As man’s ego has increased, the arrangement in the world for becoming unconscious has had to increase. The more civilized a country, the more alcohol! And now newer things have to be found: marijuana, mescaline, LSD—so that somehow man may be able to forget himself.

But why does man keep remembering himself so much that he falls into trouble?

Lao Tzu says, nature is so eternal because it has no idea that “I am.” The sky is so everlasting because it is not for itself, it exists for others.

We are all for ourselves. And the more a person lives for himself, the more troubled he will be, he will go mad. The larger the circle of one’s living becomes, the less the insanity. One who can live for more and more people becomes that much lighter. Wings grow within him; he can fly in the sky. And if someone utterly forgets his “I,” then no gravitation, no pull has any effect on his life. No roots remain in the earth; he can fly free in the sky. In the East, such a person has been called the liberated one, the mukta—whose life is not I-centered, not ego-centric.

I told you that sleep makes you lighter because for that duration you forget your ego. I also told you that in old age the need for sleep decreases, because the ego becomes so condensed that it does not allow sleep to come; the mind becomes so burdened that the relaxation required for sleep becomes impossible.

But there is another kind of man in whose case the inner need for sleep finishes. Krishna says in the Gita that such an awakened one is awake even in sleep. Buddha also said: I do sleep, but that sleep is only of the body, not mine. Mahavira said: as long as sleep continues, know that the experience of Atman has not yet begun within you.

There is another awakening in which no need of inner sleep remains, because there is no ego left within that requires sleep, requires unconsciousness, to unload it. When no ego remains within, there is no tension. Without tension there is no need of sleep. The body will tire and will sleep; but within, consciousness will remain awake. Within, awareness will keep watching: now sleep has come; now sleep has spread over the body; now sleep has ended and the body has come out of sleep. Within, someone remains continuously awake and sees even this.

Have you ever thought—have you ever seen your sleep arriving, or ever seen it departing? If you have, you are a religious man. If you have not, you are not a religious man. How many temples you visit has no relation to it; nor how much Gita or Koran you read. The criterion is different: have you seen your sleep arriving? Only he can see sleep arriving who remains awake within even when sleep comes. Otherwise how will you see? When sleep comes, you will already have fallen asleep. When sleep goes, then you will awaken; so you never see your sleep. When sleep had come, you were not present; who would see? And when sleep goes, you were asleep; who would see? Sleep and you never meet. Which means, you yourself become sleep. When sleep comes, you become so unconscious that no inner corner remains separate, standing apart, to see that sleep is arriving.

And the person who has not seen the coming of sleep within will not be able to see the coming of anger either; because before anger too a state of stupor spreads in the body. He will certainly see later, afterward—when anger is gone, or after anger has done its work. Then he will repent and say, bad happened, I should not have been angry. But when anger comes, in that first stage he does not see. And the one who sees anger in its first stage becomes free of anger. Lust, sex will arise within; it will not be visible in the first stage. The one who sees it in the first stage becomes free of lust. For the whole arrangement of life—as we are—is run by stupor. And the center, the original source, of our stupor is our ego.

Lao Tzu says, nature is eternal because it does not live for itself.

Only he will not live for himself who has no thought of himself at all. We all live for ourselves. The Upanishads say a very wondrous statement: the husband does not love the wife; through the wife he loves only himself. The father does not love the son; through the son he loves only himself. The mother does not love the child; through the child she loves only herself. The Upanishadic statement says that even when we say we love another, even then we love only ourselves through that other. Even when we say we live for others, it is not true; there is delusion in it. For the one for whom we say, I live for you—tomorrow we may be ready to kill that very person.

If I say I live for my son, and if tomorrow the son annoys me and goes against my desires, I can raise all kinds of obstacles, all kinds of troubles in his life. And I used to say that I lived for him! As long as he was my son, moved according to me, was my shadow, satisfied my ego, was only an extension of my ego—till then I said I live for him. I can say to that wife that I live for you—if she is a means of my gratification, a fulfillment of my desires, if she lives around me as my shadow. But let no delusion arise: I live for her only so long as there is utility for me. The day she is no longer useful for my ego, I will throw her away just as we throw away a thing that has been used in the house and is now useless. It all goes out as trash.

Yet we claim that we live for the other. We cannot live for the other so long as our ego remains inside. However much we may say it, we will live only for ourselves.

A man says, I live for the country, I die for the country. But no one lives for the country, nor dies for the country. He lives for my country—and even in that dying, there is the gratification of my ego. If I am a Hindu, I can die for the Hindu community. But imagine the last moment: I am standing on the gallows and I am told just then, you were under a misconception that you are a Hindu—you are in fact a Muslim by birth, only your parents brought you up in a Hindu home! In that very instant I will realize that all the hanging has been in vain. In that very instant my whole face will change. I was not dying for the Hindu; I was a Hindu, my ego was Hindu, and in dying for the Hindu there was gratification for my ego—so I was ready to die. Now the gratification is not there, so the matter ends. Now I will regret: what madness have I done!

As long as the ego is, whatever we do, the ego remains the master of it. Understand this well. We do many things thinking they have nothing to do with ego. But whatever we do, as long as the ego is within, it will be related to that. We can impose humility upon ourselves; that too will become an ornament of our ego. I can fall at your feet, be the dust of your feet; yet my ego will go on proclaiming that no one is more humble than me. I am the dust of feet! My “I” will exploit this humility and become stronger through it. The ego can even renounce, can leave everything, but itself remains. It has no end.

So when one like Lao Tzu says that only then is the eternal, the deathless life available when one begins to live for others... I can live for the other only when my inner “I” is no more—or when my very “I” begins to be seen by me in everyone. These are the same event. If my “I” is seen by me in all, that is the same happening. Or if within me the “I” becomes empty, that too is the same happening.

Only then can I live for the other—this sentence may sound paradoxical, but I want to repeat it with emphasis—only then can I live for the other, when the other is no longer other for me. As long as the other is other for me, I cannot live for the other. I will go on living for myself. If even the sense remains that the other is other, that sense itself belongs to my ego. Otherwise, how would I know the other as other? Let the other not appear as other to me—only then can I live for the other.

We can also say it thus: let me expand so much that all begin to appear to me as my own form. Then I can live. And such a life is a life without worry; such a life is a weightless life; such a life is the life of supreme freedom. Only with such a life do connections begin with the eternal. Otherwise, our connections are with the temporal, not with the eternal. Our connections are with the momentary. For nothing is more momentary than the ego; hence the ego can relate only with the momentary.

The ego is almost like this—let us take the Buddha’s symbol to understand, for Buddha gave the same meaning to ego and to self. Buddha used to say: the ego or the “self” is like this—at dusk we light a lamp and in the morning we put it out; we think the lamp whose flame we lit in the evening is the one we put out in the morning. That is wrong. The flame of the lamp is extinguishing every moment and new flame is arising every moment. We do not see the gap. One flame turns to smoke and goes into the sky; another takes its place. The interval between the two gets filled so swiftly that our eyes cannot catch it. If somehow we could slow down the motion, make the flame move in slow motion, or increase the speed of our eyes, we would see that one flame went out and another came, the second went out and a third came. Through the night a series of flames burns and goes out. The flame we lit in the evening is not the one we put out in the morning; in the morning we put out a flame in the same series that was not there in the evening at all.

Buddha said, the ego is a series. It is not a thing, it is a chain of events. But the chain moves so swiftly that we feel “I am one ego,” solid. If you have ever seen a projector slow, the film slows down—slow motion. If a man raises his hand from below to above on the screen, to raise the hand that much needs a thousand frames. A thousand positions of the hand are photographed: a little lower, a little higher, a little higher. Those thousand pictures run with such speed that the hand seems to be rising.

Even now we do not take motion pictures; we take pictures only—static frames. The images we take are not moving images; all are stills. But when we project those stills at great speed, one upon another, the empty spaces between do not appear; the hand appears to move.

So if you have seen the cuttings of a film, you must have been surprised—one scene contains thousands of nearly similar pictures; tiny differences. If we capture a man descending a staircase in all the positions of his movement—as in Picasso’s painting “Nude Descending a Staircase”—you cannot even recognize where the man is; thousands of legs are descending, thousands of hands, thousands of heads; all have intermingled. If we could see with such speed, the man would not be visible, only movements would be seen. If my hand goes from below to above and you could see the whole continuity, you would not see the hand at all—countless forms would appear from the bottom to the top, in which nothing could be fixed. Because we cannot see the gaps, the hand appears.

The ego is a fast-spinning film. Every moment the ego is being produced, just as the flame is produced every moment. Therefore you do not have one ego; in twenty-four hours it changes a thousand times and has a thousand forms. If you give your mind’s projector a little slow motion, you will recognize it.

You are sitting in a room; your servant enters. Then notice—does your ego have the same status as when, in the morning, your own servant had entered? When the servant comes, your ego takes one form; to tell the truth, the servant’s coming and going may not even be noticed. If he is new, you may notice; if he is old and there is adjustment, you do not even register when he came and when he went. In one sense it is good, because if the servant’s coming were noticed again and again, it would be troublesome. He comes, sweeps, goes; you do not even notice. You continue to sit as you were; your gestures, your posture do not change. Whether he comes or not, you remain the same.

But let your employer enter, everything changes. You are no longer the same person. You stand up, prepare to welcome him. Your posture changes; if you were sad, you begin to smile.

Your ego takes another form with the master, another with the servant, a third with a friend, a fourth with an enemy, and still another with a stranger. In twenty-four hours your ego keeps changing. But it changes so quickly that even you never become aware that such a rapid transformation is going on; in a fraction of a moment it has altered.

Ego is not a thing. Ego is an event arising among relationships—an event, not a substance. Therefore if you are left alone in a forest, you will not have the same ego as in the city, because the conditions that were creating that ego are not present. If you are left utterly alone, you will not remain the person you were in the settlement, for the situation in which that ego used to arise cannot be created there.

Hence many feel in the forest a great relief, a peace. That peace is not of the forest; it is because the places where your ego would arise are not available there. The forest does not give peace. One who can arrange to be free of ego in Bombay will be beyond ego even at Chowpatty. But you need to go to the forest or to the Himalayas because there you are cut off from the whole arrangement—the oil you used to get for your ego is not available there.

But for how long will it not be available? You are habituated. You will create new egos. Prisoners who are in jail for long begin to talk to themselves. They divide themselves into two. There are reports of such prisoners who start conversing with lizards, with spiders, even giving them names, answering on their behalf.

You may laugh, but you do not know—you will do the same. Because alone it becomes difficult to maintain the ego. Even the help of a spider can be taken. It is not that palaces alone feed the ego; even a loincloth can provide oil to the flame of ego. If needed, the loincloth will do. And my loincloth will give me as much pleasure as my empire used to give—no difference in quality, only in quantity.

I have heard: Akbar came to the banks of the Yamuna. The one who took him for darshan there was the chief priest of that ghat. Naturally, there was competition among the people—who would have the honor of showing Akbar the pilgrimage. Whoever did, who knows how much reward Akbar might give! The chosen one was fortunate; all others were filled with envy. A huge crowd gathered.

When Akbar had completed the visit, understood everything, he picked up a cracked copper coin lying on the road and gave it as a reward to the Brahmin who had been his guide. The Brahmin touched it to his head and closed his fist; no one could see. Akbar knew it was a worthless cracked coin, the Brahmin knew it too. He closed his fist, bowed, thanked, blessed.

The whole village was in a stir: who knows what gift Akbar has given! Surely something very great. Whoever asked the Brahmin, he said: Akbar has given such a thing that even if generations in my house spend and spend, it will not be finished.

A cracked coin cannot be spent at all. News of this spread and reached Akbar’s palace. Courtiers, full of envy, asked: what gift have you given? The Brahmin says that now for generations there will be no need; it cannot be exhausted. Akbar too became uneasy; he knew he had given a cracked coin, yet suspicion seized him—perhaps there was some trick? Maybe something hidden in that coin? He even lost sleep one night. Everyone was eager; his wives too: you never gave us such a gift, what did you give that Brahmin?

The Brahmin was certainly a clever man. Finally Akbar had to summon him.

He came delighted. He said: blessed are my fortunes; you have given me such a thing that can never be spent. Even if we spend for lifetimes, it will not be exhausted. Akbar said: come with me alone, inside! What is the matter? He said: nothing at all; it is your great kindness! Akbar tried through many tricks to make him tell, but it was difficult to draw anything out of a Brahmin who had created such an uproar over a half-coin. He kept saying: it is your grace; blessed are my fortunes! There have been many emperors, but such a gift was never given by anyone. There have been many Brahmins to take alms, but what has come to my hand has never come to any Brahmin. This is a historic event.

Finally Akbar said: I fold my hands to you; now tell the truth—what is the matter? What have you received? I gave you a cracked coin! The Brahmin said: if the ego is skillful, it can erect an empire even upon a cracked coin. I have erected an empire on that cracked coin. Even in your mind jealousy arose—who knows what he has got! And you know well it was a cracked coin.

The ego is skillful—indeed it is. Even a cracked coin can be the foundation of an empire. In the name of ego, none of us has anything; perhaps not even a cracked coin. Yet we erect empires.

If we move away from the world of relationships, of interconnections, there will be emptiness for a few days. That’s what happens in the mountains, in solitude. But after two or four days the mind will make new arrangements, create new relationships, gather new oil, and the wick will begin to burn again.

But one thing must be remembered: we have to produce the ego twenty-four hours a day. It is not something that is. It is like a man riding a bicycle: as long as he keeps pedaling, it moves; stop pedaling and it stops. Do not be under the illusion that without pedaling the bicycle will keep going. It may go a little on old momentum, or downhill for a while—but it will fall.

So too with the ego: pedal it twenty-four hours and it goes on. There is no need to destroy it; just stop pedaling—that is enough. But ordinarily people ask: how to annihilate the ego? If you ask “how to annihilate,” you start pedaling in order to annihilate. It does not die that way. If you have asked “how to annihilate,” you have not understood. Teachers go on explaining to people to annihilate the ego—because it is easy to read Lao Tzu, very difficult to understand him. Reading him, only one idea arises: how to destroy the ego; for Lao Tzu says, if the ego disappears, life becomes eternal, nectar is attained. Our mind is tempted—not understanding, but greed arises: how too can I attain the nectar, the deathless? How to reach that life where there is no death, no darkness? How to attain the eternal consciousness? Greed seizes the mind, and greed says: Lao Tzu says, let the ego go. So greed asks: how to annihilate the ego?

Then we begin efforts at annihilation. Someone leaves his house, someone his wife, someone wealth, someone clothes, someone runs away from the village. We begin to drop things thinking perhaps by dropping this the ego will be destroyed. This delusion arises because it seems that the ego is becoming big due to something—so drop that. You have a palace; it seems my ego is big because of the palace. When I pass by the hut of a poor man my ego becomes strong because I have a palace.

Therefore the unwise—let me repeat, the unwise—who want to reduce the ego say: leave the palace, the ego will go.

But you do not know: when one passes by a hut after leaving the palace, he may have a bigger ego than the one who has the palace. Then he looks at the one living in a hut as a sinner! He will rot in hell! He cannot even leave a hut—and I have left a palace! The man who left the palace has collected new oil; he has again lit his wick. No difference.

No one has an ego because of palaces. Yes, from the ego palaces arise—but palaces do not produce the ego. The ego can stand taking support of anything. The real question is: how to stop this moment-to-moment production of ego. There is no treasure of ego to be destroyed; it is produced every moment. We pour oil into it daily, water its roots, make them deeper; daily new leaves come. It is our daily labor.

Therefore when we sleep we feel light in the morning; at least during the night we could not nourish the ego. The pedals are off for the night; we rise light. Morning a man is different. That is why the face looks different in the morning. If you hope something good from a man, ask him in the morning. By noon all is spoiled.

That is why beggars come in the morning, not in the evening. They know you well: in the morning, perhaps, with good sleep, a man may have forgotten himself a little—two coins might fall from him. In the evening there is no hope; the day-long pedaling has made the ego robust.

Often people go to sleep after fighting—whether with their wives or with someone else. Often the last event before sleep is a quarrel, some kind of hostility. The whole day the ego grows; there is a lot of smoke around it. If it becomes too much, sleep will not come; the tension will hold the whole night. It will enter within; the nerves will not relax, blood will keep racing in them. The more civilized a man becomes, the more ego, and the more sleep decreases.

Ego is not a thing. According to Lao Tzu, the ego is an event—and even “event” is not precise; better to say, a series of events. If the series is broken anywhere, the event collapses. Truly, let us not give it new speed and power.

How do we give it speed and power? What is our arrangement?

Our arrangement is this: twenty-four hours we try to give more oil to the ego. There are many ways of oiling; the greatest way is to attract people’s attention toward me. The greatest oil for the ego is other people’s attention. Hence politics becomes so effective, and the world becomes more and more political; because nothing else can draw the attention of people so powerfully as politics can.

Many have confessed in courts that they committed murder only so that their names would appear on the front page of newspapers in big headlines. No other attraction. A man can kill so that his name becomes the headline! So that his picture is printed once! The whole world sees him!

What is the intoxication in being seen by thousands of eyes? When a thousand eyes look at you, your ego receives a lot of oil. Others’ attention becomes the oil for your ego. There is a very subtle intoxication in others’ eyes; if they see you, your ego receives juice, momentum.

If you want to dissolve the ego, there is another way: give attention to the other. Therefore whenever you give attention to the other, you feel very light. What we call love is nothing but giving attention to the other. When you are in love with someone, the mind feels very light. When the one you love is near you, you are almost weightless, wings grow, you could fly into the sky, expand. Why? Because you are giving attention to someone you love. The situation reverses: you give attention. A new kind of caring arises, a concern turned toward the other.

When a mother is giving attention to her child, she has utterly forgotten herself. Attention is one-way traffic. Either you can attend to yourself, or you can attend to the other. When you attend to the other, you have forgotten yourself. When you attend to yourself, the other is forgotten.

And we are all engaged in making others attend to us. We devise a thousand strategies so that people pay attention. Someone wants to be an emperor so that people pay attention. Someone wants to be a president so that people pay attention. If these avenues are not available, a man becomes bad; if the good road is closed, he chooses the wrong one: he becomes a killer, a goon—so that people pay attention. In school, students become mischievous—so that people pay attention.

Hence an old trick in teachers’ hands: make the most troublesome student the captain; then he stops making trouble. For the very reason for his mischief gets fulfilled by making him captain. He was attracting attention. He was saying: I am also here; I cannot live neglected. Everyone should feel my presence in this room. He can choose the right path if it is available; if not, he will choose the wrong.

In America today there are hippies, Beatles, and twenty-five kinds of new disturbances. The most important reason is that the hierarchy of status, wealth, organization has become so fixed that the new youth has no hope of climbing it. He cannot believe he will reach where Nixon reached, or become a Ford, or a Morgan, or a Rockefeller. No hope. But he can stand on the street in weird clothes; he can live in filth without bathing—and then even Nixon has to pay attention. Then it becomes compulsory to pay attention. But whatever they are doing is only an arrangement for attracting attention. The ego asks for attention: if it does not get it rightly, it asks wrongly.

But know this: whenever you demand attention, you are pedaling your ego. Remember this—whenever you demand attention! You have entered the house and your son did not get up to greet you; the hurt that happens is not because the son has become uncultured or discourteous. That is only rationalization. The pain is: even the son does not pay attention—then who will? The whole world seems to collapse—because even the son does not pay attention!

In India parents have always been very satisfied, for they devised a fine arrangement: the son, from morning, would touch their feet; the heart was peaceful for the day. Technical, routine; it was not troublesome for the son, nor did he have to do anything special, but the father was quiet for the day.

Western fathers will have to find some way; for in the West there is no arrangement for expressing reverence. Yet the demand for reverence is there. Without an arrangement for expressing it, there is a difficulty; the demand remains. The father wants that when he enters the house the son should acknowledge: the father, the master of the house, is coming in. The mother wants the same. The son wants the same. Everyone wants the same. Even a small child’s ego wants it.

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin as a little boy was sitting by the road smoking a cigarette. An old lady stopped—good and virtuous—and said, son, does your mother know that you smoke? Nasruddin blew a smoke ring and said, does your husband know you stop on the street to talk with a strange man—in a lonely place, on the roadside—an unknown man!

Even the smallest child longs that everyone should look at him. Hence mothers are always worried: when there are no guests in the house, the children are quiet; but the moment a guest enters, they begin creating a ruckus. Why? Because when there are no guests, even if the children make a fuss, the mother is not anxious. When no one is there, the children remain quiet, engaged in their work. Let someone arrive, and they start mischief.

Actually, the moment someone enters, the children say too: pay attention to us also; we are here too. How to declare “I am here”? They throw things, make noise, begin to cry, demand food. A while ago their mother was telling them to eat and they were saying: no need. Now a man enters and immediately they feel hungry. It is not hunger; their ego is already learning pedaling. They are trying to make someone see that we are here. I am here.

From the child to the old man, the same childishness persists. Remember this, then Lao Tzu’s sutra can be understood. Do not demand attention from others. One who demands attention will create a momentary ego; but his life will be momentary. He will never own the treasure of the eternal.

Give attention to the other. When Lao Tzu says “live for the good of all,” living for others, he means: give attention to the other. The moment you give attention to the other, a revolution begins in your life; for then you can smile—others’ foolishness begins to be seen. The instant you give attention, you see how his ego flares up. The same was happening with you until yesterday; now you can have compassion.

Giving attention to the other you discover: the deeper your attention goes to the other, the more you have disappeared. And when within there is utter emptiness—just as attention flows to the other, within becomes empty—then for the first time you taste what a non-tense state is.

Someone asked Freud when he had become quite old: you study the mental diseases of so many people, you deal with so many madmen from morning till night—has your own mind not gone crazy?

Freud said: I never get the chance to pay attention to myself. Without attention to oneself, it is very difficult to go mad. From morning I get busy with others’ troubles; at night I sleep thinking of others. There is no opportunity to attend to myself.

Therefore great scientists often become quiet; their entire attention is given to something else. In the lab their attention remains glued to some test tube. Einstein had a difficulty: he would forget himself. Sometimes he would sit for six hours in the bathtub, six hours! His wife would knock twenty-five times; but she did not dare knock loudly—who knows in what thought he might be lost.

When Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia went to meet him, Einstein’s wife said: I can give you a time; but whether he will meet you at that time I cannot say. Lohia said: I have little time; I will come with difficulty for an hour. If I cannot meet him, it will be a problem. She said: we will try, but Einstein is not reliable.

That is what happened. When Lohia arrived, she said: sit, now I will try. I am knocking at the door; he has gone into his bathroom. When he will come out—hard to say. He came out five hours later. Lohia asked: what do you do for so long? Einstein said: I got entangled in a question.

If attention goes deeply into a question, Einstein disappears, the bathroom disappears. Where he is—that too disappears. Attention given to anything cuts the ego immediately. Therefore great scientists often become egoless, great painters become egoless, great dancers become egoless. And great renouncers sometimes do not—because the renouncer pays full attention to himself: I will not eat this, I will not drink that, I will not wear this, I will wear that, I will sleep here, I will rise there! In words he is a renouncer, but too much ego-consciousness all the time—what I should do and not do—the entire attention is on “I.”

Therefore often this accident happens: renouncers do not get free of ego, and sometimes ordinary people—whom we call hedonists—do. But the secret is one: the less your attention goes to you, the less oil your ego receives; the more your attention goes out of you. How far you can carry your attention outward—that is your journey toward egolessness.

So Lao Tzu’s statement: “Heaven and earth are eternal because they do not live for self-fulfillment; therefore their continuity is possible.”

Therefore they can remain forever; there is no need for them to be destroyed. Only ego is destroyed. In this world only the ego is mortal. This will be a little difficult to take in.

In this world neither matter ever perishes, nor Atman ever perishes—only the ego perishes. The body never dies. This body of mine was there even when I was not—its every particle existed. There is nothing new in it. Whatever is in this body existed even when I was not. When I will not be, then too not a single particle of my body will die; all will remain. The body is eternal; nothing in it dies.

Scientists say we cannot destroy even a small particle. Nothing can be annihilated. Whatever is in the body is eternal. Water will merge into water; fire will dissolve into fire; the sky will become one with the sky. But all is eternal. The form will be lost; but whatever was hidden in that form will remain. My Atman does not die either. Then who dies? Death does occur!

Only the relationship between my body and my Atman breaks. Between the two, the ego—that I produce every day—breaks. If I come to know that the ego is not, then there is nothing mortal in me. As long as I think I am the ego, there can be no taste of nectar within me. No way. Identified with the ego, one with the “I,” nothing but death will happen; because the thing with which we have identified is the only mortal thing in this world.

This may sound astonishing: in the whole world only one thing dies, the ego. Nothing else dies. For only one thing is born—the ego. Nothing else is born. Everything else is. Only the ego is produced—a by-product. As I walk on the road, the sun is there. The sun was there when I was not walking. Noon is full, the sun above, the road below. I am sitting in my house; I am, the sun is. Then I come into the sun’s light; a new thing is produced—my shadow. It was not. When I was in the house, it was not. When I was in the house, it was not even under the sun. I came into the sunlight; from my relation with the sun a by-product arises—my shadow behind. That shadow is mortal. The moment I move away or the sun moves away, the shadow is gone. Even now it is not. If I take myself to be the shadow, I will get into the same mess as, I have heard, a fox did.

In the morning she came out. The sun was rising. She saw her shadow—very long! She thought: today I will need at least a camel for my meal; for only by looking at one’s shadow can one know how big one is; there is no other way for a fox to know her size. Seeing her shadow so big, she thought: there is no doubt I am big! She thought: less than a camel will not fill me today. She went in search of food. Noon approached—she searched but found no camel; even if she had, it would have been of no use. Hunger grew; food was not found. She looked again at her shadow: the sun had come overhead; the shadow had shrunk. She thought: now even a small rabbit will do. Even a small rabbit will do now.

Who lives by a shadow will get into such mess. Sometimes the shadow seems big; it is a matter of circumstance. In youth everyone’s shadow looks big—then the sun is rising.

Mulla Nasruddin used to say: when I was young I had decided I would die a millionaire. This was my firm resolve. But when he was saying this, he was saying it to a beggar friend; both begged. The friend asked: what happened to your resolve? Nasruddin said: later I found it easier to change the resolve than to become a millionaire. I changed the resolve.

Later everyone finds the same. Not because of anything else—only the shadow has become small. Even a rabbit will do. By the time he grows old, the man finds it fine. In youth the shadow seems big—it is circumstantial. In old age everything shrinks. But those who know, know in youth too that the shadow is shadow; it is not me.

Exactly such an inner shadow is there—called ego. We can call it the inner shadow. From life’s relationships an inner shadow is produced—my ego—by which I measure who I am. And we have to change it daily; for it too depends on circumstances.

A man comes in the morning and says: you! A person like you has never been born on the earth! Instantly the inner shadow becomes big. That is the secret of flattery. And the great wonder is that no one recognizes it as flattery; no one. We never recognize it—because flattery is so pleasurable; it enlarges the shadow. What we cannot enlarge even with labor, flattery inflates at once.

It is said Mulla Nasruddin was sent to Hindustan by his sultan. He landed in difficulty. He came to the emperor’s court with greetings from his king. He said to the Indian emperor: blessed are you, O full-moon!

The ambassador from Nasruddin’s country immediately reported to his own emperor: what sort of man have you sent? He has called this emperor the full moon; your insult is done.

When Nasruddin returned, his emperor was angry: I have heard you called him the full moon. Is there anyone else a full moon besides me?

Nasruddin said: you? You are the second-day moon; but after the full moon comes the dark night. You still have much growth possible. You did not understand why I called him the full moon. Now death is near for that man, he will die; you are the second-day moon!

He brought honor and reward from there; and from here too. There he flattered the ego by calling him full moon; here he flattered it by calling him second-day moon. Man is so weak that he is seduced by the second-day moon and by the full moon as well. We are ready, sitting, waiting for someone to say. An ordinary woman is told: no one is more beautiful than you! She no more looks into the mirror; she believes it.

Nasruddin is sitting with his beloved by the sea. She says: there is great similarity between the sea and you. Whenever I see the sea I remember you; whenever I see you I remember the sea. Nasruddin swells. He says: certainly! The similarity must appear because the sea is also so vast, so raw, so wild, so romantic—just as I am! The sea’s expanse, its wildness, its raw sound, its romance—surely that’s why you remember me with the sea.

His beloved says: forgive me—you both make me sick! Nothing else. Seeing either of you makes me nauseous, that’s all. That is the similarity.

Say anything to anyone—he is ready to believe. People have believed all sorts of things! Women are ready to believe their eyes are like fish! No one’s eyes are like fish. Their lips like rose petals! No one’s lips are like rose petals. Fragrance like perfume comes from their bodies! Never from anyone’s body. Yet all are ready! Poets are ready to say, listeners ready to hear, acceptors ready to accept. Old stories, worn-out poems, dead phrases are said daily and they work. Why? Because that inner shadow—the ego—is instantly gratified. Even call a thorn a flower and it agrees. It agrees.

One must be alert—aware of this inner shadow. Lao Tzu says: the one who becomes aware of this inner shadow connects with that truth whose nature is continuity. One who remains bound to this inner shadow connects only with the momentary. In the next sutra Lao Tzu expands this.

“Therefore the knower of the essence puts his personality behind.”

Those who know put themselves behind. Jesus said: blessed are those who can stand last! Why this saying of Jesus—blessed are those who can stand at the end? Because, Jesus says, whether you know it or not—one who can stand last has already become first. For there is no higher glory than this. No greater achievement. One who has lost the inner shadow of ego—now there is no way to make him second; he is first, without becoming so. He no longer needs to stand first.

If Mahavira and Buddha left the status of emperor, it was not that by leaving the status ego would go; rather, because their ego had gone, they had no need to be emperors. They are emperors now. In what condition they are, where they are—it makes no difference. Irrelevant. Now Buddha, with a begging bowl, can go asking for alms; but in Buddha’s eyes you will not find a beggar even if you search. If a beggar ever walked this earth, it is Buddha—and yet no one asked more than he did, with a begging bowl in hand.

In truth, he is now so assured of his inner empire that the begging bowl makes no difference. Remember: he is so assured! His emperorship is now so confirmed that begging makes no difference. If we fear to beg, it is not because we fear begging; it is because if we beg we will be beggars—of any inner emperor we have no clue. If we beg, we become beggars. We become what we do. Mahavira and Buddha could beg with the assurance of emperors; because they were so confident that the day they stood last, on that day being first became their very nature.

Lao Tzu says: “Therefore the knower puts his personality behind, yet he is found in front.”

He wipes himself off, withdraws from everywhere; yet suddenly history finds him standing in front.

Do you know the names of the kings in Buddha’s time in Bihar? Perhaps not even one. They are lost. Do you know the names of the politicians? No one knows. And a beggar stands before us. Buddha’s father told him: you are mad. People labor a whole life and even then such palaces are not attained; this empire has been built by our generations. You are mad to leave it. But if anyone remembers Buddha’s father today, it is only because Buddha, his son, left home; otherwise his name would never have been remembered. There was no reason. No one would know it—because hundreds like Buddha’s father have sat on thrones and vacated them. If today his name is known, it is for one reason only: a son went begging.

Buddha left his state, because daily people would come and plead with folded hands: return. He went to a neighboring state, thinking he would not be bothered there. But the neighbor king heard and came running: you are foolish; if you are angry with your father, no problem—come to my house; I will marry you to my daughter; the state will be yours, for I have only a daughter. Don’t worry. If you are angry with your father, come to my house.

Buddha said: I am not angry with anyone. I am only trying to save myself. There I was evading a father; here you have appeared like a father. Have mercy—leave me alone. For what you want to give has no value for me now.

Buddha’s words are very precious: as long as I had no clue of my inner value, all things appeared valuable. Now that the inner diamond is found, all the outer diamonds have paled.

Lao Tzu says: “Yet they are found to be ahead of all.”

History is a great crowd—everyone eager and frantic to be ahead. Suddenly, suddenly politicians disappear, emperors disappear, rich men disappear; and unknown people, who had put themselves behind, stand ahead!

It is two and a half thousand years since Lao Tzu. How many have come and gone in that time! But in front of Lao Tzu no one could stand. And this is a man who stood utterly at the back; so far back that it is hard to calculate.

They say Lao Tzu left China before dying only so that no one would build a samadhi for him. He left China so that after his death no one would erect a tombstone; for when I have left no marks, why after my death should there be any? But the one who erased himself so completely, we could not erase him. Ages pass—we cannot erase Lao Tzu. He is right: the knower keeps himself behind, yet he is always found ahead.

Do not keep yourself behind in order to be found ahead. It does not work that way. Someone might think, good—here is a trick: keep yourself behind, you will be ahead. No. Those who become behind are found ahead; but if someone keeps himself behind to get ahead, he remains behind; there is no way to be ahead.

So there is no causal connection here; it is a consequence. Keep this in mind, otherwise there is a mistake. People say, fine; the ego is pleased; it says—this is great: without being ahead, the trick to be ahead has been found—let us be behind. But will you be ahead? No. If someone is behind in order to be ahead, he is not behind at all. Being behind means the very idea of ahead is gone.

Therefore, the second sentence is not linked causally; it is not like “put your hand into fire and it burns.” It is a consequence, a result. Do not think of it mathematically: stand behind and you will be found ahead. You will never be found ahead that way. If someone stands behind, he is found ahead—but standing behind means the thought of ahead has dropped. He does not know whether he is ahead or behind; he does not know where he is.

“They neglect their own being, yet their being is preserved.”

They completely neglect themselves, forget themselves, drop their worry for themselves; yet their safety does not diminish. In truth, the moment someone drops his burden, the whole existence becomes ready to carry it. The moment someone says, enough, I will not worry about myself—immediately the whole existence begins to care for him. And the moment someone says, I will worry about myself—the whole existence drops its care for him. He becomes alienated, a stranger in this world, who unnecessarily carries his own load.

“Since they have no self-interest of their own, therefore their aims are fulfilled.”

These are the most paradoxical, and the most valuable, words ever spoken in human history. Each one of these could make a Bible. Lao Tzu says: since they have no self-interest, all their interests are fulfilled. He is saying: the supreme bliss of life—that alone is life’s self-interest. One who drops the ego becomes available to supreme bliss. And one who drops the ego, for him fear ends; for with ego there is fear: that I may not perish, may not be destroyed, may not be defeated, may not fail. All such fears drop. Where fear is not, there is safety.

We do the opposite: the more we secure, the more insecure we become. The more we try to save ourselves, the more frightened we become. The more we think: save ourselves, save ourselves—the more we find that we are being lost.

One last thing—and then we will talk tomorrow.

If you have seen whirlpools in a river—sometimes strong circular vortices form; if you drop something in a whirlpool, it soon takes it down. If you are thrown into a whirlpool and if you do not know Lao Tzu, you will get into great trouble. If you know, you can be saved.

If you fall into a whirlpool and it is powerful, naturally you will first try to save yourself—lest it screw you down. You will put all your force into saving yourself. The more force you use, the more your force will be broken; for the whirlpool’s vast force is against you—it will break you. In a little while you will be exhausted, dead; then the whirlpool will take you down. To be saved then is very difficult.

Lao Tzu says: if you ever get caught in a whirlpool, do the first thing—do not fight the whirlpool; be ready to go down with it. Then your strength will not be wasted at all. The whirlpool takes a man down quickly. Above it is wide, below it becomes narrower like a screw. From below, getting out is not difficult; one slips out by oneself. But those who fight above—by the time they reach below they have no strength left. Rather, go down with the whirlpool, and slip out. You will not have to do anything.

Understand it this way: you must have seen live men drown and dead men float. Have you ever thought why? Dead men float, live men drown. A paradox. What trick does a dead man know by which he floats? And what trick does a live man know that he drowns and dies? The living man knows only one trick: he struggles hard to save himself; he gets tired in struggling and sinks. The ocean does not drown you, water does not drown you, the whirlpool does not drown you—you get tired and drown. A dead man does not struggle; he says: carry me wherever you want. The ocean lifts him; he floats.

Those who know swimming, in a sense, learn the art of the dead. The real swimmers leave themselves on the water like a corpse; they do not even move their limbs, and the water does not drown them. There is no negotiation between them and the water, no compromise, no conspiracy. Only one trick is to be learned: lie like a corpse. What does it mean to lie like a corpse? Drop the fear of death—or assume you are dead. Then you float.

Lao Tzu says: safe are those who have no concern for safety. Fearless are those who have accepted fear, who do not avoid it. Those who stand behind come in front. And those who are ready to be effaced, to die—nectar is their attainment.

We will take the next sutra tomorrow. Join the kirtan—like a corpse! Do not just sit; flow in it like a corpse. Do not stiffen and hold yourself in the kirtan. If one can be immersed, even the kirtan can become a cause to lead you into deep egolessness.