Tao Upanishad #22

Whatever Lao Tzu has said is indeed twenty-five centuries old; but in one sense it is as new as the dewdrop of morning. New because it has not yet been tried. New because the human soul has not taken even a single step upon that path; the path is utterly untouched and virginal.

Old because Lao Tzu brought the news of it twenty-five centuries ago. But new because that news has not yet been listened to. And today it is needed as never before. For man has experimented with the masculine mind. These past twenty-five centuries are the history of that experiment—of reason, struggle, violence, aggression, the longing for victory. We have tried it. Day by day man has become more and more miserable. What we wanted we did not get; and what we had, we lost. We have tested this way of the masculine mind—and failed.

When Lao Tzu spoke, the failure of the masculine mind had not yet ripened. That is why he was not heard. It would be better to say: Lao Tzu was born twenty-five centuries too early. That was his mistake. He should have been born today. Today his word could be heard.

It is like a disease has not yet appeared, and the physician has already arrived and spoken of a remedy—but no one pays attention, because the disease for which the medicine is meant has not yet manifested. In these twenty-five centuries we have produced the disease for which Lao Tzu is the medicine. The experiment of the masculine mind has failed. It has brought us to total war. Beyond it no movement is visible. There is no road ahead. Either humanity ends, or humanity begins to walk a new path. That is why it is meaningful to speak of Lao Tzu today. Today Lao Tzu can be chosen—must be chosen. If man is to be saved, there is no way now without establishing the virtues of the feminine mind.

The masculine has tried to build the world on itself alone—and failed. The feminine is a deeper element than the masculine; without it we could not build life. We have indeed turned the whole earth into a madhouse; we have not been able to make it a family. Without the feminine at the center, any house will become a madhouse. With the feminine at the center, a thousand tensions are dissolved. If culture, too, has the feminine at its center, then our myriad tensions are released. We will have to give the feminine mind a foundational place in the making of culture. And the time has come: within the next thirty or forty years we have to decide. That is why I found it apt to begin speaking on Lao Tzu.

Certainly, today Lao Tzu looks completely contrary. Man is very complex, and Lao Tzu speaks of simplicity. Man is very egoistic, and Lao Tzu speaks of humility. Man wants to climb to the peaks, to the moon and stars, and Lao Tzu speaks of the law of valleys and hollows. Man wants to be first, and Lao Tzu says: without becoming the last there is no way to the joy of life. So it may seem: who will listen to Lao Tzu in such an inverted age?

But let me tell you: only when we reach one extreme does our preparation begin to shift to the other extreme. We have reached the extreme of complexity. There is no way further. Now the opposite can make sense. Only when a man has toiled and is utterly tired can the talk of sleep make sense. Sleep is the very opposite of toil.

But if one has not toiled—as often happens—those with comfort avoid labor by day and then complain that at night they cannot sleep. They think that since they avoided exertion, deeper rest should be available; but they are mistaken. Rest is available only to one who has gone into deep labor. Only after deep labor does the possibility of deep rest arise. And only after deep rest does one regain the energy to plunge again into labor. Life is always like the current of a river flowing between opposite banks.

We have lived long enough on the masculine shore. The time has come to slide toward the feminine shore. From that sliding a balance, a harmony, a right poise can be created. This is a time of shift. So I do not see it as: man is complex, so how will he understand Lao Tzu? I see it this way: precisely because man has become so complex that further complexity will not be understood, now only the talk of rest can be understood.

In truth, man has reached the point where the masculine mind is in its full expression. There is no beyond. When tension comes to its peak, rest becomes available. If a man keeps running and running, runs to the very end, he falls and stops. Have you ever thought: what is the final destination of running? Nothing but a fall. In the end the opposite arrives in your hands.

Lao Tzu can be grasped now. In his own time people could not understand him, because they were not so complex as to need him as a physician. They were not so troubled that his word would occur to them. They had not yet stood first, to understand the secret of becoming last. But we have stood first. People did not have enough wealth for the delight of poverty, the joy of being without, to even occur to them. Today so much wealth has been piled up that any day the freedom of poverty may be recognized.

I remember an incident. Confucius was passing through a village and saw an old man in his garden, drawing water from a well with his son yoked alongside him. Confucius was astonished. He went to the old man and said, “Don’t you know that now people draw water with horses or oxen? And in the capital they have even made machines to draw water!” The old man said, “Speak softly, lest my son hear. Come back in a little while.”

Confucius was puzzled. When he returned a little later, the old man, lying under a tree, said, “Do not bring such talk here. I know that horses can be harnessed. If I harness a horse, I will save my son’s time—then what will I do with his time? If I harness a horse, I will save my son’s strength—what use have I for that strength? Keep your machines and your horses in the city; do not bring their news here.”

But such news cannot be stopped. If not to one father, it will reach another. Gradually, everywhere man was removed and machines arrived. That old man was a follower of Lao Tzu. But Confucius won. Today, however, Lao Tzu can win again. Wherever the machine comes fully, there the question will arise: what shall man do with his time? What with his energy? And the time and energy we cannot use, we are forced to misuse—because we cannot remain without doing. Something will have to be done. Jean-Paul Sartre has said: You can choose, but you cannot choose not choosing. You will have to choose. You will have to do something. If you do not do the right, you will be compelled to do the wrong. Energy will be used; if not creatively, then in destruction.

For twenty-five centuries Lao Tzu’s word has lain like a seed, waiting for the right time to sprout. That time has come. Now we can understand Lao Tzu: before you give a man a machine, first show him a creative use of his energy. And before you place an atom bomb in a man’s hand, make his soul vast enough to hold it. Otherwise, do not place an atom bomb in his hand. In the hand of a small man it is dangerous. Power in the hands of the ignorant becomes perilous. It is better that the ignorant be powerless; at least there will be no misuse.

Lao Tzu can be understood now, because we have walked the whole road which, Lao Tzu says, in the end produces only diseases. That is why I have chosen him: to reopen a twenty-five-hundred-year-old message—utterly virginal, because it has never been walked—so that perhaps man may now agree.

I say: perhaps! For often we are willing to die, but not to change—because dying seems easier than changing. Hence I say, perhaps man may agree. It is not necessary that he will. Man may even agree to die. Change hurts. And dying can be taken as martyrdom: we are becoming martyrs. But in change the ego is hurt—for we had to change. A man takes one step in a direction and then hesitates to turn back: “What will people say?”

I have heard: one night Mulla Nasruddin came out of a tavern—drunk, soaked. A deserted road. In the dark, only an electric pole stood as witness. He set out thinking, “Let me not bump into the pole.” He bumped straight into it. For when you try to avoid something, you will certainly hit it—because to avoid it you must keep it in mind. He kept watching the pole, “Let me not collide.” Watching so as not to make a mistake, he walked right toward it and struck. He fell, got up, and stepped back five paces. Then he did the same again: to avoid a second collision he watched the pole even more intently. Logic says: if you want to avoid it, pay full attention. Perhaps last time your attention was a little less. Now he forgot the whole road; only the pole remained in his vision—one-pointed, “Let me not collide!” He walked again—and collided again. His head split; blood flowed.

He got up and said, “I am in great trouble.” Tears came to his eyes. He tried a third time. But he did not change his way. The road was so wide. He could have gone elsewhere. He did not. He did what he had done twice before. The third time he did it with even more force. When he fell headlong, his head spun and one pole seemed like many. Now he was even more frightened. At last he gathered himself with all his might and, trusting in God, said, “Let me try once more.” Again he did the same, with all his strength. When he fell a fourth time, he said, “O God! There seems no way out. It seems I am surrounded on all sides by electric poles. Wherever I go, there is a pole.”

He was not going anywhere; he was going to the same place. And there was only one pole. Even a blind man could have passed without bumping into it. But this man with eyes—yet unconscious—could not.

We are all people with eyes, but unconscious. And our greatest unconsciousness is what Lao Tzu calls ego. He says: ego is our unconsciousness, because it does not allow us to be factual toward reality. It superimposes our projections upon the world. It does not let us see what is. We impose ourselves upon existence. We go on seeing only what our ego shows us, thinking only what it compels us to think, believing whatever it tells us to believe. We do not go to see the fact. And only one can see the fact whose inner projector—the ego—has departed.

Lao Tzu does not say, “Remove it.” Nor does Lao Tzu say that the ego is not born of nature. All illnesses are born of nature. Whatever is born is born of nature. Lao Tzu only says: if you cling to the disease of ego, you will suffer. If you want suffering, cling to it by all means.

But man is strange. He clings to the ego and wants to attain bliss. Then Lao Tzu says, you are speaking wrongly. If a man wants to die, let him drink poison; poison too is born of nature. But if he says, “Poison is natural, so I will drink it; but I don’t want to die,” then he will be in difficulty.

Lao Tzu says: if you want to die, drink the poison cheerfully and die. If you do not want to die, then don’t drink the poison. Death is natural, and drinking poison is natural. But the decision is in your hands—do you want to die or not?

Ego is natural. If one wants to suffer its pain, its hell, one can suffer it. If one does not want to, one need not. It is in your hands whether you turn the natural seed of ego into a tree or not. Lao Tzu does not say, “Eliminate the ego.” He says: if you do not want suffering, you will have to step away from the ego. If you want suffering, then increase the ego even more. We are upside down: we desire that which the ego can never give, and yet we are unwilling to let go of the ego. In this dilemma our very life becomes tormented.

Lao Tzu speaks of going downward because without going down, no one ever goes up. Those who spoke of going up were speaking of the goal, the end. Lao Tzu, by speaking of going down, is speaking of the means. If you wish to go up, you will have to go down. It looks inverted. Nietzsche wrote somewhere that the tree that wants to reach to the heavens must send its roots down into the depths. The higher a tree wishes to rise into the sky, the deeper its roots must reach toward the underworld.

Now, with a tree we can say two things. We can say, “Since you want to go up, spread your roots downward!” Or we can say, “Just spread your roots downward, and the going up will happen.” But if a tree becomes obsessed only with going up and stops sending its roots down, it will never go up. There is no way to go up without going down.

Lao Tzu says: if you want to go up, you must arrange to go down. Forget the above; leave that to nature. You just send your roots down. Nature will make your flowers bloom in the sky. You need not even worry about that; in worrying, your roots will only grow weak. Pour all your concern into the roots; the flowers will blossom on their own. Where there are roots, flowers do bloom. The stronger the roots, the bigger the flowers.

Lao Tzu says: find the lowest place, as water finds the lowest place, and your summits will come to you. Become a lake, and you will find yourself become Gaurishankar—the highest peak. Drop the worry of becoming Gaurishankar. For the law is this: the one who wants to reach above is pushed below; the one who consents to reach below has no rival in height.

Understand the law. The difficulty is that paradoxical laws don’t enter our understanding because we have relied on straight-line logic. That is the masculine mind. We trust linear logic. But life does not obey linear logic; life obeys inverse logic. We move as if on a highway—a straight road. But life has no highways. Life is like mountain paths—circular, winding. Standing on a mountain path, it looks as if going straight ahead you will reach the moon—the moon is right in front. Two moments later you find the path has curved, and your back is toward the moon. Life’s ways are roundabout; nothing there is straight. And yet we are all linear.

For example: someone tells you, “I go for a walk every morning and it gives me great joy.” You say, “I also want joy; I’ll start walking tomorrow.” If you go walking in order to get joy, you will return only tired; joy won’t come. Because at every step you will be watching: “Has joy come yet? Not yet? When will it come? Two miles and still no joy!” Your attention will stay on getting joy, not on walking. Walking will be forced, and you’ll want the joy quickly so you can go home. If joy could be had sitting at home, you wouldn’t walk at all. You’ll come back saying, “They told me a lie; walking didn’t give me any joy. I wandered four miles and found no sign of joy.”

But the one who told you did not lie. Joy can come through walking—but only to one who has no concern for joy, whose attention is simply in walking, who forgets about joy. Joy is a by-product. When one becomes so absorbed in walking that the walker disappears and only walking remains, then the flower of joy blossoms.

Life is roundabout. If you think loving someone will give you joy, you will never get it—even though joy comes through love. It comes only to one who dives into love with no concern for joy. The one concerned about joy does love, but keeps his attention on joy: “I have even taken my beloved’s hand—yet joy has not come.” It will not come. And still, those who say joy comes through love are right. In truth, the relation between love and joy is not like heating water and having it turn to steam. It is not a causal link. If you heat water, it will become steam. The deeper you go into life, the less causality remains and the more dense and effortless the natural outcomes become. The deepest matters of life are all natural outcomes.

You go to listen to music. You sit bolt upright, posture fixed: “I must get joy.” You’ll only get tired; no joy will come.

Let yourself relax. Close your eyes. Drop the very thought of joy. Immerse yourself in the music. If you drown so deeply that you even forget joy, you will return home full of joy. The flower of joy does not bloom in your tension; it blooms in your relaxation. And those who are over-eager for the end never enter relaxation.

Therefore Lao Tzu says: drop your concern with the above; become like water. Flow downward. Fill the hollows. The summits will be realized anyway. He does not even talk about them. They happen; there is no need to discuss them.

But we are upside-down people. Even if we listen to Lao Tzu, we listen only because he says, “You will reach above if you go below.” We want a guarantee: “Is it certain, this arithmetic, that if we go down we must reach up?” So we go down with a guarantee—only to be deprived of reaching up. We go down “for sure,” expecting to go up. We may reach down, but we will not reach up. For that reaching up is not for those who proceed with guarantees. There is no guarantee for it. Where there is a guarantee, that event will not happen. We need to understand life’s inverse logic.

People come to me and say, “We want peace.” I tell them, “Forget peace; just meditate.” They ask, “If we meditate, will we get peace?” I say again, “Forget peace; just meditate.” They insist, “But if we meditate, will peace come?” I tell them, “Drop peace. You’ve tried to get it for so long and haven’t. Now drop it; just meditate.” They ask, “By dropping the idea of peace, will peace come?” And the matter remains stuck right there.

I have heard that when Mulla Nasruddin turned a hundred, the villagers suddenly saw that he had become so contented, so delighted, so at ease, that they were astonished. You could hardly find a more discontented man than he had been—always disturbed, always complaining. And now he was utterly joyous.

The villagers gathered. They said, “Nasruddin, this is a miracle! You—so peaceful! We could never have imagined it. What is the secret?”

Nasruddin said, “I wasted ninety-nine years trying to be peaceful. Today I decided to live with restlessness as it is. That’s the only secret. Today I decided I don’t want peace anymore; I’ll live with unrest. Enough—I tried for ninety-nine years. Peace didn’t come. Now I drop it. And truly, I’ve become utterly peaceful.”

For one who agrees to live with unrest, what could be lacking in his peace? For one who agrees to live with sorrow, who can rob him of his happiness? And the one who is ready to go down and remain in the lowest pit—no one has the power to rob him of his peak. The one who is willing to be a nobody becomes all. And the one who agrees to disappear—every treasure of the divine is his.

So Lao Tzu is speaking this sutra. It does not mean Lao Tzu says, “Become degenerate.” He says: there is only one way to ascend—be ready to stand last.

This is something worth understanding. There is a reason it is so. As I have told you, the relationship between the biological woman and man is mirrored in whatever is born in the world. When a child is conceived, the man’s role is accidental, incidental—his cooperation lasts only for a moment. Yet he is the one who begins it, initiates it, sets it in motion. His part is momentary, but from him the journey of the child’s birth begins. All the remaining work is done by the mother. She will carry the child for nine months, give it her blood, give it life, give it breath. And even at nine months it does not end. Then she will rear it, nourish it—she does all that.

Everything else that is born in this world comes about in the same way. You will be surprised to know that Mahavira may give birth to a religion, Jesus gives birth to a religion, Buddha... But no religion survives in this world without women. It is women who preserve it, raise it, and spread it. This may not have occurred to you; it may not have occurred to you. Go and peep into the temples, the mosques, the churches. Who is there? Men are largely absent. And if some man has turned up, he is present only out of fear of his wife. All these temples, all these churches, all these shrines are being run by women.

A man may give birth to a religion, but its care, its carrying in the womb and tending, its growing up—that is done by women. Psychologists say that no religion can survive in the world in which women are not initiated; that religion cannot survive, because it will not find a womb.

Do you know that when Mahavira initiated people, for every one man four women took initiation? And among Mahavira’s monks, sannyasins, ascetics, there were thirteen thousand men and forty thousand women. Men crucified Jesus; but the one who brought him down from the cross was a prostitute. When all of Jesus’ disciples—the male disciples—had run away into the crowd, even then three women stood by his body. Jesus breathed his last among women. And it was women who took him down from the cross. When the men had fled, the women were still there, ready—even at the risk of their own death.

Yes, men have done the begetting—because what is biological is also psychological. Men have given birth to the religions, but women have given them the womb. If this comes into your understanding, this complaint will not arise in you. And even today, if religion is alive on the earth, it is not because of men. They may do the begetting, but apart from women there is no way to keep it alive. A man can take the initiative to beget anything, but he cannot give it a womb. And by begetting alone a thing is not truly born; it is truly born only by being given a womb. For bone and flesh, blood and marrow—that is given by women. That is why it does not occur to you. That is why it does not occur to you. Protection, expansion, preservation—these are the realm of the feminine consciousness. Initiative, beginning—these belong to the masculine consciousness. But once the man has initiated, he gets bored and moves on to something else.

If Mahavira were to be born again, one thing is certain: he would no longer speak of Jainism. He would give birth to some other religion. Man is eager every day to beget the new; woman is ardent to care for the old. In a certain sense, nature stabilizes life through both. For merely giving birth to the new is not enough; caring for what already exists is just as essential. Otherwise the very act of giving birth would have no meaning.

Therefore if a man is truly of the masculine consciousness, he is always progressive—yes, if he is truly of the masculine consciousness, he is always progressive. If a woman is truly of the feminine consciousness, she is always traditional. Tradition means only this: what has been born has to be cared for. And progressiveness means only this: what has not yet been born has to be brought into being. But what will you do by giving birth if no one is available to care for it? Then there will only be miscarriages—abortions and nothing else. If a thing remains only in the hands of men, there will be abortion, nothing else. His enthusiasm lasts only until he has set the process of birth in motion. Once the process has begun, he moves on to initiating another birth. But it is from there that the real story of life begins—and from there the woman takes it in hand.

The masculine and feminine consciousness are two wheels of the same cart. Therefore women may not have given birth to a religion; but it is women who have preserved all the religions.

It will, inevitably. But by “feminine” it doesn’t mean they become women. By “feminine” I mean their consciousness shifts from aggression to receptivity, from being aggressive to being receptive. Only when this receptivity arises can one open the inner doors to the divine.

Certainly he would. But do you know what was written on Muhammad’s sword? On Muhammad’s sword it was inscribed: “This sword will be raised nowhere except for peace.” It was engraved on the blade. And do you know, the very word Islam means peace! If Muhammad has to lift the sword, it is not because of Muhammad—it is because of the surrounding circumstances. And even toward those on whom he raises the sword, there is no anger, no aggression, no violence; there is compassion for them too.

Muhammad has been very little understood. Among those who have been greatly wronged in this world, Muhammad is one. And much wrongdoing has been done because of his sword. But I want to say that Muhammad’s sword is surgical—just like a scalpel in a surgeon’s hand. And sometimes the need becomes so clear that even a person in whose hand we can hardly imagine a sword may have to take it up. There is no need to imagine a sword in Muhammad’s hand. What Muhammad has is an exceedingly tender heart. But given the situation around him, if this tender heart is to do anything at all, it will have to take the sword in hand.

But there is a harmful side effect. It does not come from Muhammad taking up the sword; it comes afterward. Because then many people line up behind Muhammad whose only delight is in holding a sword. They create trouble. They defamed Muhammad. They distorted Islam too.

Muhammad takes up the sword because it is needed. Krishna stands in support of war—he even brings about war—because it is needed. In truth, if you understand one thing about choice in this world, it will become clear: we split everything into two—dark and white, black and white. Whereas in actuality nothing is simply black or white; everything is grey—degrees, degrees of grey. A little more white and a little less white; a little more black and a little less black. Whenever we say “this is right, this is wrong,” we forget that we are not speaking about life.

Muhammad takes up the sword because his not taking it up would be worse. Understand this clearly. The lesser evil is that Muhammad should pick up the sword—because a sword will be picked up anyway. And if Muhammad does not take it, then whoever does will be the greater evil. In the situation he is in, it appears to him that the right thing is that he himself should take up the sword.

Krishna says to Arjuna, “Fight!”—not because Krishna has any eagerness to fight. To find a man more feminine-hearted than Krishna would be very difficult. That is why we have painted his image almost like that of a woman. No one else have we depicted in so feminine a way. Not even Buddha or Mahavira, not even Lao Tzu. Krishna we have made entirely feminine. All his adornments are like a woman’s; his clothes are like a woman’s; his whole manner is like a woman’s. His dance, his song—everything is like that. And this man, whom we have depicted as so feminine, becomes the one who inspires Arjuna—a very brave man, who was turning away from the battle—to fight. Why does Krishna have to press and press and press so much that Arjuna should fight?

The need is there because one thing is clear to Krishna: even if Arjuna does not fight, the evil that is brewing will still happen—but through much worse hands. Arjuna is better than all of them. And because Arjuna wants to run away from war, it becomes even clearer to Krishna that this man is good—absolutely good. Therefore it is right that war be conducted through him. War will happen anyway. The war-mongers will do it. Sometimes I think that if, in place of Arjuna, Krishna had been seated on Bhima’s chariot, perhaps the Gita would not have been born—because Bhima would be so eager: “Quick, move forward!” It might even be that Krishna himself would say, “Forgive me, this war is not right.” Arjuna is effective here precisely because he wanted to run away. He proved at least one thing: he is a good man, a truly good man. Krishna became certain that a sword can be placed in the hand of this good man.

The essential point is this: a sword can only be entrusted to a good man. Yet the sword is most often in the hands of a bad man. The good man drops the sword, and the bad man picks it up. Therefore the good man becomes the cause through which evil gets done. In this world, when we must choose, the alternatives are not “this is good and this is bad.” The choice is “this is less bad, that is more bad.” All choices in life are like this. Here it is not that this is nectar and that is poison; it is that this is a milder poison and that is a stronger poison. One has to choose the milder poison—that is what the choice of nectar is.

Muhammad and Krishna choose that milder poison. Their situations are different.

Consider this a bit: if Krishna had died before the Mahabharata war, it would never even occur to us that Krishna could bring about a war. Would it? Never. Or think this way: if Buddha had lived another twenty years and a Mahabharata-like situation had arisen, it would never occur to us that even Buddha could say yes to war. Our perspective is limited. We see only what has happened; we do not see what could have happened. If Krishna had died ten years before the Mahabharata, we would never even imagine that this man—who played the flute, who sang songs of love, who was so full of sweetness—could give a message like the Gita in favor of war!

In my view there is no religious book in the world that inspires to war more than the Gita. But the reason is not that they are masculine-minded. The reason is precisely that their hearts are entirely feminine—highly receptive, deeply open. And yet, standing where they stand, their receptive hearts, having wholly received the divine, become engaged in doing exactly what that dictates.

This sword of Muhammad is a sword raised for God. Muhammad is not aggressive at all—he is not an aggressor. But this does not mean that aggressive people did not gather behind him. The responsibility for those who gather afterward does not belong to Muhammad—nor to any master.

It is as hard to find a man of courage as great as Mahavira’s. But no one could have imagined that the weak and the cowardly would gather behind Mahavira. Yet they did—because they found a cover. Life is very strange. Mahavira spoke of nonviolence, and he said that only one whose heart is utterly free of fear can attain to nonviolence. But the frightened man thought, “Ah, nonviolence is a good religion—no one hits or kills anyone. We won’t hit anyone, and no one will hit us.” To the fearful man, nonviolence seemed the supreme religion—not because it is the supreme religion, but because his fear thought, “If the whole world accepts nonviolence, we can live in great safety.” So all the frightened people gathered behind Mahavira.

Hence it is no accident that the class that gathered behind Mahavira became absolutely impotent, thoroughly emasculated. They shrank from life on all sides. For twenty-five hundred years they have lived by clinging only to the trader’s occupation. Why? They could not understand any other vocation—every other trade seemed dangerous. Only one business seemed safe: minimal hassle, no quarrels. And they produce nothing, they go nowhere; they act as middlemen—doing the work of a broker. Who could ever imagine that behind so courageous a man as Mahavira such un-courageous people would gather—who can do nothing except brokerage? Is brokerage even a vocation? Can any inner potential—the powers hidden within—awaken through brokerage? But to the fearful man this seemed the most convenient. Strange indeed—that behind Mahavira the cowards gathered.

Muhammad is an extremely compassionate person. And it is precisely out of compassion that he took up the sword. Had his compassion been even a little less, he would not have taken it up. But behind him gathered ferocious and wild people. Because they saw the sword, they said, “What a joy—religion and the sword together; fragrance added to gold!” Now no one can even tell us, “You are killing.” Now we will kill and cut in the name of religion. So all the barbarian tribes of Central Asia—Tatars, Huns, Turks—entered Islam. Because, for the first time, the sword was removed from the status of criminality and given the prestige of the temple. They all stood behind it, sword in hand. They trampled the whole world. The present influence of Islam in the world—the great numbers—is not because of Muhammad; it is because of those wicked ones who gathered behind. They trampled the whole world. But they killed Islam. The religion of peace became the most unpeaceful.

But Muhammad is not responsible. What can Muhammad do? What can Mahavira do? Mahavira could not even imagine that a line of merchants would stand behind him. He could not even conceive it. But life’s logic is very strange—very strange indeed. Nothing can be said in advance. And there is a logic—useful also in understanding Lao Tzu—that often one is influenced by one’s opposite: the opposite. As it happens in sex, so it happens in everything. We are influenced by what is opposite to us. This is dangerous—but it happens. Mahavira is brave beyond compare; that is why he is called Mahavira—“great hero.” That is not his name; his name is Vardhaman. He was called Mahavira because his courage has no equal—truly, it does not. That cowards would be influenced by Mahavira could not even be imagined.

But it always happens so. Cowards are influenced by courage; the courageous are not. Why should the courageous be influenced? “If you are courageous, fine—be courageous at home.” But the coward is immediately influenced: “Here is Mahavira! Lay your head at his feet! This is the real man!” Why? Because the coward too has been thinking, “If only I could become like this.” He cannot. This is the ideal. But at least he can place his head at the ideal’s feet. He can sing his praises. He can shout his victory slogans. He makes him his ideal—because within him is hidden the opposite of this. They gather—and they become an obstacle.

It always happens that we are attracted to our opposite. And that creates great difficulty. What attracts us to someone is what we ourselves lack. And then these attracted ones are the very people who will later form the sect, run the institution, build the organization. The sect will be in their hands. Then they will alter all the interpretation—re-interpret—and everything becomes something else entirely. Everything becomes something else.

If we can grasp this pattern of history, perhaps in the future we can make people aware: think a little, be mindful... Even now psychologists say that whenever a man is attracted to a woman, he is attracted to qualities he does not possess; and a woman is attracted to qualities she does not possess. We are attracted by what we lack; we are never attracted by what we already have—because we already have it, there is no reason to be attracted. Because people are attracted to opposite qualities, the greater the opposites, the greater the thrill, the romance, the love. But then in marriage those very opposite qualities become the cause of conflict. Now there is trouble.

Therefore psychologists say: the greater the love with which a marriage is made, the greater the risk it carries. Because love means there was a very strong pull of opposites. The very hard man will be attracted to the delicate woman. But when they live together, there will be no harmony between delicacy and hardness—there will be daily friction. If a man is very intellectual, very intelligent, he will not be attracted to an intelligent woman—never. He will seek a woman in whom intelligence is barely present. She will attract him. But then trouble will come. When they live together, he will find, “What blockhead have I gotten involved with!”

No one is to blame in this. It is simply the logic of the opposite that creates the difficulty. We are attracted by the opposite, but we cannot live with the opposite. Hence our final predicament is that we cannot live with the one we are attracted to; and the one we can live with never attracts us.

Therefore the ancients were wiser—or say, more cunning. They said, marry one person and love another; never do both with the same person. Marry the one you can live with. Love the one who attracts you. And never mix the two; never bring them together.

Right now America’s foremost thinkers say that if America is to be saved, we will have to bring back this old cunning—because America made a mistake—now it seems a mistake—in saying: marry the one you love. It is a marvelous idea, but it does not work. Because love happens with the opposite. Then living with the opposite becomes a problem. The very things that attracted you become the causes of conflict—because you cannot harmonize with them.

Exactly what happens between husband and wife happens between guru and disciple. There is a great romance in the guru–disciple relationship! People come drawn by the opposite; then living together becomes difficult. That is why living with a living master is very hard; there is no problem with a dead master—because the other is not present; you can believe whatever you like.

Now Jesus said: if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other cheek toward him. And Christianity has carried out so many killings that it is hard to reckon. How is this? How did such people gather around a man like Jesus? The wicked class was influenced at once. They said, “This is the truth! We cannot do it—never mind. At least we can shout ‘Glory to Jesus!’ We can sing praises.” They gathered. And to explain the teaching that “if someone slaps you on one cheek, turn the other,” they cut off the heads of millions—because it is absolutely necessary to teach this doctrine; without it, the world will not be benefited.

Such opposites happen. Therefore Muhammad is not aggressive, nor is Krishna aggressive. And as soon as the ocean of realization opens in men like them, the doors of the feminine-heart open. By feminine-hearted I mean only this: in that moment a person is not aggressive toward life but receptive to life’s currents. He becomes a womb and is ready to receive life within himself. He begins to accept, and stops rejecting. His state becomes one of total acceptability—of tathata, suchness. He consents. This consenting, complete consenting, is the mark of the feminine-heart.

From his question it sounds as if, poor fellow, how could an ordinary person ever get it? Whereas the truth is: for the extraordinary it is very difficult. Because “extraordinary” itself means egoistic. It can be attained only by the ordinary. But not by the merely ordinary—by the extraordinarily ordinary, one who is ordinary in an extraordinary way.

Whom do I call “ordinary-ordinary”? I call him ordinary-ordinary whom everyone else calls ordinary, but who himself does not accept he is ordinary. And whom do I call extraordinarily ordinary? The one whom the world may call extraordinary, yet he knows himself to be ordinary.

For twelve years I traveled across the country. I met hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds came to me and said, “What you say—how will it ever be understood by the ordinary man?”
I asked them, “Do you understand it?”
They said, “I do understand; but how will the ordinary man understand?”
I said, “I have been traveling for twelve years, I have seen hundreds of thousands of people; hundreds have asked me this question. I have yet to meet the ‘ordinary man’ who says, ‘I am an ordinary man—how will I understand this?’ So tell me, where is this ordinary man? Introduce me to him—just once it would be worth having his darshan.”

No one considers himself ordinary. Everyone considers himself extraordinary. That is the ego. And if a person comes to know and accept himself as ordinary, the ego departs. And everyone is ordinary. Everyone is ordinary. There is no one extraordinary. Only one person may be called extraordinary—the one who realizes this ordinariness; that’s all. No one else can be called extraordinary.

Our mind refuses to accept, “I am ordinary!” In so many ways we convince ourselves that never before has there been a person like me, and never will there be. Though we never really examine why we say such a thing. What special quality? What excellence? None whatsoever. Still the mind won’t accept that I am ordinary—because the moment we accept ordinariness, the climb upward stops.

In fact, there is a reason we assume we are extraordinary. When I believe I am extraordinary, wherever I am no longer feels worthy of me. My rightful place is always above, where I am not. The world doesn’t recognize me, the world puts up obstacles; otherwise I would reach my proper station. And once I reached it, I would remain there. But my “proper place” is always above me. Wherever I arrive becomes unworthy of me; the moment I get there it becomes ordinary, and my extraordinary place moves farther up. The ego can climb upward only by believing, “Up there is my place; down here is not.” This is the alchemy—the chemistry—of the ego’s race.

Lao Tzu says: If you come to know that you are ordinary—a nobody, a nothing—then you will no longer be able to climb upward. At the very thought of ordinariness you will feel, “Perhaps even the place I am standing is not rightfully mine.” You will step back. One day you will step back to where there is nowhere left to retreat. One day you will stand where no one is willing to step back. One day you will stand where there is no competition pushing you away. Lao Tzu says: that very day you will attain an extraordinary life. For if one so humble does not find the divine, then all talk of God is nonsense. If one so empty does not realize the Fullness, then perhaps the Fullness is never realized at all.

Do not think, “How will the ordinary man do this?” Every person is ordinary, and everyone can do it. But everyone is under the illusion that he is extraordinary. That illusion must be broken.

Lao Tzu does not say, “You must break it.” He says, “If you don’t break it, you will suffer.” And you do not wish to suffer. Yet you carry with care precisely what causes suffering. It is almost as if we carefully guard our illnesses lest they slip away—and then we suffer. And we keep raising a clamor: “So much suffering, so much suffering!” But we do not want to drop what brings the suffering. The knot of ego is the root of all our misery. And to know yourself as ordinary is the medicine for all suffering.

Try an experiment for twenty-four hours—no need to worry about more—be ordinary for twenty-four hours. Keep one remembrance for twenty-four hours: “I am an ordinary person, a nobody.” After twenty-four hours you will never again be able to be extraordinary, nor will you want to be. Because in being ordinary you will have a glimpse of such joy as you cannot even imagine.

But that glimpse never comes because you are so stiff in your extraordinariness—how can the glimpse enter? You sit with doors and windows shut in your extraordinariness. Step down from your throne. The secret of life is not found on the ego’s golden thrones. What you will find by sitting even on the humble, dust-laden paths of modesty is not found by sitting on the ego’s gold-embellished peaks.

That’s all. No one should leave. Today is the last day, so for ten minutes be totally immersed in kirtan. Perhaps kirtan will make you ordinary. But even there you sit stiff, lest someone see that such an extraordinary man is clapping! Those who feel like dancing, come stand in the middle. Even if the thought to dance arises halfway through, come out. Be absolutely ordinary. For fifteen minutes at least, be ordinary. And see that anyone can be ordinary.