Tao Upanishad #57

First thing: it is by the result of faith that it is decided whether faith is faith or blind belief. You place faith in someone. The person may be wrong. He may not be worthy of faith. If you trust such a person, people will say it is blind faith—you are blind, you cannot see he is wrong. If you have faith in a doctrine for which there is no scientific proof, people will say this is blind faith.

My definition is different. Whether a doctrine is scientific or not is not very important. If, by trusting that doctrine, your life becomes more scientific, if through that faith you are transformed, if that faith sets you in motion toward the good and the true, then it is faith. And however scientific the doctrine may be, if trusting it makes your life more putrid, drags you downward, then it is blind belief.

Whether the person you trust is right or wrong is irrelevant. He may even be wrong, and yet faith in him may make you right—if that faith fills your life with joy, with music, with beauty—then I will call it faith. And a person may be perfectly right, but if your faith in him pulls you down into sorrow, into pain, into hell, or blocks your movement so that you stop growing, then I will call it blind faith.

This means the quality of faith depends on the one who has it. Faith is not objective; it is subjective.

You have faith in a stone idol. If that faith helps new flowers to bloom within you, I will call it right faith. And even if God himself stands before you and you have faith in him, but it leads you toward darkness, I will call it superstition.

Understand my distinction. What you put your trust in is not important, not decisive. What your trust does for you—that alone is important and decisive. Then everyone can weigh whether his faith is faith or superstition. If your beliefs take you nowhere and you go on rotting where you are, they are superstitions. Because faith is fire. It will burn you and transform you.

We put gold into the fire; the dross is burned away, the gold remains. What question can the gold ask about whether the fire is true or false? The gold has only to see: did the dross within me burn away, did I come out purified as gold? Then the fire was true. What other way does gold have to know fire? And if all the dross remains clinging, the fire was false.

Do not worry about what you place your faith in; worry whether the faith you have is fire or not—whether it changes you or not.

This is a very delightful point. And that is why it often happens that the one in whom you have faith may not be worthy—yet you become worthy because of your faith. And it happens every day that the one in whom you have faith is fully worthy—but nothing in your life changes, no revolution happens. You remain unworthy. Yet we all keep thinking whether the object of our faith is right or not. Think from the other end: whether the one who is having the faith is right or not. If your faith frightens you, it is superstition; if your faith makes you fearless, it is faith. If your faith fills you with hatred, anger, enmity, it is superstition. If your faith becomes compassion, it is faith. Weigh it within yourself. There is no other way. Whoever goes on measuring by others’ standards will never find a worthy person on whom to place faith—never. And whoever begins to look from within will find the worthy everywhere, upon whom faith can be placed. It is faith itself that accomplishes. In whom it is placed is not important; that it is, is why revolution happens.

I have heard: Saint Francis was a supremely faithful man and would trust anyone. His disciple was Leo. They were traveling. Whoever came along, Francis would take him along. Often someone would stay for a night and then steal their belongings and go. He would stay one night, and by morning their bedding, their bag—the few things they had—would be gone. Leo, his disciple, was very troubled. He said that at least some checking should be done. You take anyone along and then suffer. Give up this trust in people. So many have deceived you, and still your trust in people does not leave you.

Saint Francis said, they are all testing my faith. There are two ways. A man stays the night and leaves stealing. One way is: the things are gone anyway—which are of little value—and along with them let faith also go, which is of great value. Saint Francis said to Leo, Leo, those people are harming you more. The things are not of much value, but your faith is being destroyed.

And Saint Francis said, if people who are good were to stay with me, there would be no touchstone for my faith. I would go on trusting people without any test. Because the issue is not the person; the issue is my trust. The issue is not that I should have faith in a person; the issue is that I should have faith. And if I cannot trust a person, then I will not be able to trust anyone at all.

Seen this way, the whole outlook changes. Faith is valuable. Whether it is on a stone or on God is secondary. It can be on a stone—and then even the stone begins to do the work of the divine.

Superstition is impotent faith. Nothing happens through it. We keep it stored in a corner of the mind. It is of no use. So many people say they trust in God. That trust must be false. Because if so many truly trusted in God, the world could not be as ugly as it is. If so many truly trusted in God, the fragrance that should arise in their lives would be evident—but there is no sign of it; only stench comes forth. That trust is false. It is superficial. It is for show. That I call superstition.

What brings revolution into your life is faith. And what fixes your life in stagnation, creating a stagnant pond in which you rot in the same place, is superstition. Nations that are superstitious rot in closed puddles. Faith is a flow, a swift current. To be a man of faith is not easy, because faith means a readiness to change oneself.

Many people come to Buddha. They come to Buddha and say, “Buddham sharanam gacchami! I go to the refuge of the Buddha.” A young man came to Buddha in Vaishali and said, I come to your refuge. Buddha asked, do you come to my refuge to evade your responsibility? Is it that from now on you think: if by your grace something happens, good? If coming into refuge is only to throw off responsibility, then you are not coming into refuge—you are falling upon my head. And only if coming into refuge is the beginning of an inner revolution is it meaningful.

People come to me too. They come and say, we are weak, nothing can be done by us; now you take care. A gentleman just came. He has known me for ten years; I have also known him for ten years. Beyond this knowing there is no other relationship. He came and said, ten years have passed, and still nothing has happened. I asked, I don’t understand. He said, I have known you for ten years, and still nothing has happened. Do something and show! The culprit is me. And he has done quite a lot—that he has known me for ten years. He too can say he has faith in me. That is not faith; that is superstition. And that superstition is suicidal. Because there is no loss to me in it. If he sits with the trust that I will do something and it will happen, it will never happen. He himself will have to do something.

Yes, if someone is ready to act, this whole existence is ready to support him. If someone is ready to sit, this whole existence is ready to make him sit. Existence is cooperative. If you are going to hell, existence will take you toward hell. If you are going to heaven, existence will take you toward heaven. But the one who goes is always you. The decision is yours, the responsibility is yours.

Let your faith become the alchemy that transforms you; then know that it is right faith.

Understand the reason for this difference. The fruit is indeed immediate, and yet differences appear. They appear because the accumulated sum of those immediately received fruits is what you are. That sum is not in the hands of some God; the sum is you. Whatever you do in one life, you are its result.

You were angry a thousand times in one life; you cannot be the same as someone who was not angry even once. A thousand times you were angry, a thousand times you received the fruit. The one who never got angry never received that fruit even once. You carry a thousand blows from anger and from receiving its fruit. Your personality has become filled with a thousand wounds. Granted, those wounds have dried; but their marks will remain. Those marks are called samskaras. We act, and the fruit is received immediately. But the samskara remains.

It is necessary to understand samskara; it is a little subtle.

In this room, if we tip over a glass of water, the water will flow. In the morning the sun will come, the water will evaporate. But a dry line will remain in the room. Is that dry line water? There is no water left at all, so it does not seem right to call it water, because not a drop remains; it has all evaporated. To call that dry line water would not be proper. And yet it is of the water—because it was made by the water flowing over the room’s dust. That is a samskara. Everything has dried; no water remains—still the line remains. Now if you pour water again, there is every likelihood the water will catch that dry line and flow along it. Samskara means tendency. Now it will be the tendency of that dry line that, if water is supplied, it will flow along it—because of least resistance. If the water has to flow elsewhere, a path will have to be made anew; the dust will have to be cut. Water too does not want that much trouble. Where the dust is already cut and a path is made, it flows that way.

The person who was angry all day yesterday will wake up this morning with that dry line of anger. It is only a tendency. The fruit was received yesterday itself; when he was angry, he received the fruit then and there. But because he was angry and received its fruit, a dry line of anger formed in his personality. When he gets up this morning, that dry line is ready. At the slightest opportunity, when any current arises, that dry line will carry it along itself; anger will manifest again.

When we are born after one life, we are born carrying samskaras—the impressions. What we did in the past life, and in lives upon lives, that alone is our personality. We are born carrying all those dry lines. Therefore there is a difference between two children. Not because the fruits of their past actions are yet to be endured; the fruits have been endured. But even after the fruit has been experienced, the tendencies that remained, the influence of those tendencies that remained, the lined traces of whatever they did, the habits that remained—carrying those, the child is born. Hence two children are different.

The accounting is certainly settled. But each person has settled their accounting in a different way. And different events have occurred in each person’s accounts. And each person has accumulated different samskaras. It is with those samskaras that one is born.

It’s a little complex. And it has become even more complex in this century. It wasn’t so complex before, because poverty and wealth were very straightforward matters. It was clear: the poor are poor because of their karma, the rich are rich because of their karma. There is truth in this.

There is truth in it, because we also acquire the conditioning of being poor. But the conditioning of poverty is a big thing; it is not related only to money, it is connected to many things. The complexity arises because, until now, when we thought about a poor person, in the past “poor” simply meant one who had no money—just that one meaning. But now science has created a great deal of wealth on the earth. In a hundred or a hundred and fifty years there will be no one economically destitute on this planet. Then new meanings of “poor” will begin. Poverty will not disappear; only its linkage with money will disappear. New meanings will arise. Someone will be poor in intelligence, someone poor in health, someone poor in beauty.

Remember, wealth—being the outcome of humanity’s long labor—will become available to all. But then the subtlest poverties will begin to appear. When gross poverties disappear, subtle poverties begin. When everyone has equal wealth, money is no longer the issue; then the poverty of intelligence, of talent, of qualities starts to hurt. Poverty is a big word; it can have many expressions. Until now its greatest expression was money; in the future its main expression will be qualities. But it will continue, because through different actions we acquire different conditionings.

Some are born with the habit of poverty; some are born with the habit of abundance. Those born with the habit of abundance—make them beggars and stand them on the street, yet there will be an imperial grace in their gait. Those born with the habit of poverty—watch them: even seated in great palaces you will hardly find anyone more impoverished. A miser is one who is born with the habit of poverty. Even if money comes to him, he cannot spend it. Money may come through social arrangements, but the habit of spending it, the habit of enjoying it, is a very deep conditioning.

You can make a man rich, and you will suddenly find he was not as poor before as he has now become. Often the poor are not misers—when there is nothing to save, what is there to save? Give a poor man a little money, and there is something we have long known in India; we have called it “the ninety-nine trap.” Give a man ninety-nine rupees; he will have only one desire: how to make it a hundred. This desire is very natural. And for the one rupee he may get today, he would rather go hungry and make it a hundred. But once the mind acquires the taste of turning ninety-nine into a hundred, then from a hundred to a hundred and one, and from one to two—the taste keeps growing.

There is an old story in the Panchatantra. A king would always ask his barber, “How is it that you are so cheerful? You have nothing.” The barber would say, “What you give me is more than enough. Evening passes, the day passes; the next morning I come to serve you—massage you, trim your hair; whatever I get is enough for the day.”

Then one day the king suddenly noticed that the barber was sad, very restless, as if he hadn’t slept all night. The king asked, “Today there seems to be no strength in your hands, and it looks as if you haven’t slept; there is sleep in your eyes. Have you also fallen into the ninety-nine trap?” The barber asked, “How did you know?” The king said, “Fool, don’t get into this mess—it is my minister’s mischief. Yesterday I had an argument with him. I said the barber is a very calm, self-possessed man. He said, ‘That’s nothing; it’s only that he doesn’t have ninety-nine.’ So he told me, ‘Tonight I will go and throw a pouch of ninety-nine at his house; see in the morning.’ You have fallen into the tangle. What were you thinking the whole night?” He said, “All night I kept thinking how to make it a hundred. I could not sleep the first night. Earlier I had nothing and slept happily. These ninety-nine have given me the idea of the hundred. It is like when a tooth breaks and the tongue keeps going there—the hundred is a hollow cavity, and the tongue keeps going there. I couldn’t sleep all night.” The king said, “If you understand, throw away that pouch of ninety-nine; otherwise you will die in misery. Look at us—we are already dying. Nothing will happen by reaching a hundred. Ninety-nine is the danger. Reaching a hundred will do nothing. Once the journey begins, you will be in trouble.” But the barber said, “Your Majesty, once in a lifetime I have got the chance—let me at least make it a hundred.”

But from that day the barber could never be happy. No one can.

What happens is this: people are born with habits. Circumstances become the opportunity either for those habits to be expressed or to be held back. Until now, money was scarce in the circumstances, so some were poor and some were rich—in terms of money. And because of that, other poverties were not even visible. Now the world will be in difficulty, because monetary poverty is disappearing through circumstances—it will vanish. And then, for the first time, you will see there are other poverties far deeper than money.

Scientists say that only five percent of people are truly gifted—only five percent. This has been tested in thousands of ways, and the percentage never goes beyond five. Understand this a little: it is not limited to human beings. Among animals too, five percent are skilful compared to the remaining ninety-five. The pigeons that can carry messages are the five percent; ninety-five percent cannot. And through many experiments it has been astonishing to find that this five percent seems to be a kind of scientific law in nature. Just as water boils at a hundred degrees, so there is five percent talent.

In recent years in China they carried out many experiments in mind-washing, brainwashing—to change people’s minds. After the Korean War, the American soldiers who fell into Chinese hands later reported this too. They said the Chinese first took the trouble to identify who among us were gifted. Then they separated out the five percent. If they had a hundred prisoners, they first separated the five talented ones. And the Chinese say: isolate the five talented ones, and there is no difficulty in changing the ninety-five. Separate the five, and the ninety-five never create trouble—no disturbance, no revolt, no escapes, nothing. Separate the five, and you don’t even need guards over the ninety-five. Those five are the real troublemakers. If the five remain, the tangles continue—there will be attempts to escape, rebellion, some upheaval. And if those five are present, they are leaders; leadership is with them, and in their presence you cannot change the rest either—the others will always follow them. Separate out their five percent, and the ninety-five percent are utterly empty; put anyone in their place, they will accept his leadership.

If this occurred only in humans, we could think it is the result of human social arrangements. Scientists have experimented with mice, with rabbits, with sheep: the same five percent. You have heard that sheep walk in line, but they follow someone. Five percent of the sheep also walk in front. Not all sheep follow; five percent lead. Separate those five percent, and the remaining flock becomes utterly chaotic; they have no idea what to do.

Those who work in the great zoos—London or Moscow—know that whenever new monkeys arrive, five percent must immediately be separated. They are the leaders, the politicians. They have to be isolated; otherwise they will create chaos. Once they are separated, the rest are docile, completely obedient.

An even more amusing finding is this: in the prisons, the criminals; in the capitals, the politicians; in the temples, churches, cathedrals, the priests; in the universities and colleges, the pundits—taken together, these are the five percent.

This is a bit subtle. In a London zoo an experiment was being done: if monkeys are given proper food and facilities, no obstacles, enough space, then the five percent of talented ones help to keep the remaining monkeys disciplined—they don’t let things get out of hand; the five percent assume leadership. But if hardship is given—less food, fewer facilities, obstacles—then that five percent becomes criminal; they turn into offenders. And that five percent will incite the rest into disturbances, strikes, something or other.

Scientists say that the criminal and the politician are two sides of the same coin. So you can observe: as long as a politician is not in power, he organizes strikes; when he comes to power, he breaks strikes. It is very amusing. It is the same monkey rule—no difference. When the politician is out of power, he calls every disturbance a revolution; when he is in power, he calls every revolution a disturbance. In power he says those who create disorder are criminals; out of power he says they are rebels, revolutionaries. His language changes. The moment he comes to power, he talks of discipline: “If there is discipline, there will be peace and prosperity.” Put him out of power, and he says, “We need rebellion, we need revolution; without revolution nothing can happen—only through revolution will happiness come.”

But whether criminals or politicians, it is this five percent that humanity has.

Leave humans aside, leave animals aside: those who have spent their lives experimenting with plants say that even in African forests, the trees that manage to overcome all difficulties and struggles and rise above the jungle to reach the sun are five percent. If there is a pond of water with fish and you put in poison, only five percent of the fish try to escape the poison; the rest consent to it.

When a disease enters your body, even among your body’s cells only five percent resist it, fight it. If those five percent are removed, your body has no resistance left—then any disease can enter.

To eradicate poverty is very difficult. That five percent will be rich in some sense or other. The meaning can change: sometimes their wealth will be houses, sometimes power, sometimes knowledge, sometimes poetry or art—but one portion will be rich and one portion poor.

If this context of poverty and wealth is kept in mind, then socialism or communism makes no difference to the principles of conditioning and karma. We can change, we can change circumstances; but the capacities within the individual are not easy to change. They can change only when the individual himself wishes to change.

You are the accounting. Aside from you, nowhere is it kept. There is no need. You are the doer, you are the experiencer, you yourself are the accounting. You are your entire ledger.

Everything you do is changing you each moment. Every act is your transformation; every act is your birth. With every act you are creating a new person within. That is the accounting. There is no need to store it separately; there is no purpose either. By knowing you, your entire account can be known. Each act of yours tells what your habits are, what your deep samskaras—your conditionings—are.

As I mentioned about Saint Francis: this man says, “Even if someone deceives me, I will still trust.” This tells of a deep samskara. He has cultivated the samskara of trust. No one can break it so easily by cheating him. It is very difficult to break such conditioning. And when deception does not break it, it becomes even stronger. Everything is strengthened by repetition.

Even if no one deceives you, let someone simply walk into your room—your first thought is not of trust. He has done nothing yet: he has not squeezed your throat, he has not run off with your things. Yet the first thought that arises in you is, “Call the police; what should I do?” He has done nothing yet; no decision about him is proper at this point. But you have already decided deep within. Somehow when we feel someone is bad we do not need evidence; our samskaras already supply the news. When someone is good, we demand proof. Distrust is our habit; trust is our compulsion. No one believes, and we are treated in such a way that we are forced to trust—but distrust is our habit.

You think you get angry only sometimes. That is your mistake. Anger is your habit; only sometimes it happens that you are not in anger. But it happens so seldom that you do not even notice. So you think sometimes you are angry. Your anger is such that sometimes it is boiling at a hundred degrees, and sometimes it is lukewarm, tepid. The tepid anger you do not notice, because it is your habit; that is how you are with life. Only when even that tepid anger is not there in you do you get, for a moment, a glimpse of love—otherwise you do not. Then the difficulty is: the stronger your samskara of anger, the more you are angry; the more you are angry, the stronger the samskara grows. We go on locking ourselves into our own prisons. Somewhere it has to be broken.

Keep two things in mind. One: if I were to say you are suffering the fruits of your karma, then there would be no way to break it. Understand the difference. If I have done some act and because of it I am angry today, then I must be angry—there would be no way out. But I say: the fruit of karma is received immediately; only the samskara remains. Samskara means merely a tendency to act in a certain way—not a compulsion. Therefore, if you wish, you can change yourself instantly. If you wish, you can change at once, because it is only a habit.

Have you noticed that some things you do only out of habit—only out of habit—without any other reason? Habit is hard to break, but not impossible. And sometimes a small thing breaks a habit—a very small thing.

Right now some psychologists in America, proponents of “real therapy,” a therapy grounded in reality, are doing very unusual and very useful experiments. They say: you can tell a man all his life, “Don’t smoke, don’t smoke.” He quits twenty-five times, then starts again. He drinks, quits, then starts again. No method seems to work. They say: your therapy is not real, because alcohol is a reality and your preaching is only words. Alcohol is a reality; words are only theories. These will not break it. So they say something else must be done. What do they do? They have devised an injection. The alcoholic is given it at night without even knowing; or they have made pills which are administered to him. After those pills, whenever he drinks, nausea arises; great restlessness, vomiting; the whole body trembles, and every pore is filled with such pain that hell is present. This is the result of the meeting of the injection and the alcohol. That man cannot take alcohol in his hand again. As soon as he takes it, everything that happened comes back to him. And what thousands of times of preaching could not do, one injection does. What happened? It was only a habit. But now, standing against that habit, a great suffering has appeared. The habit is not so great that despite this suffering...

We ordinarily think people drink despite suffering. We are mistaken. People say: a man is drinking, his wife is in misery, his children are in misery, yet he keeps on drinking—so much suffering, yet still! You are mistaken. It may well be that causing this suffering is also part of the drinking. Perhaps he cannot cause suffering in any other way, or is not so aggressive; by this subtle device he can also cause suffering. He forgets his own pain and gives pain to others—he accomplishes both.

No, that will make no difference. In fact, it could even happen that the wife does not appear distressed, the children look delighted, and everyone says, “Father, drink to your heart’s content; drink twenty-four hours a day,” and then he may be startled: What is the matter? No one is suffering, and I go on drinking! Perhaps the very flavor of alcohol will vanish. Life is very complex.

But these “real therapy” people say that if you want to break any habit, it is necessary to link that habit with such a great suffering that the old drift—by which, merely out of tendency, the person used to be swept along—is blocked by that suffering; and then he has to choose: if I go into the habit, I will have to endure this suffering. Strangely, habits change easily.

Pavlov, Salter—the scientists of the West, especially of Russia—say that only reconditioning is needed; they say only re-conditioning is needed. It is only conditioning that binds; connect it to a new conditioning and the journey changes.

I accept there is some truth in what they say. No one is suffering the fruits of his deeds; he is living bound by the samskaras created by the fruits of those deeds. The samskara is strong if you flow with it; it is weak if you decide and stop. Therefore there is no act you cannot halt. And if you are doing it, you are responsible. Do not soothe your mind by saying, “What can I do? It is the fruit of deeds from many births; I must suffer it.” That too is cleverness, only the intention to go on doing what you want to do—nothing else. That too is justification; you are making yourself appear right. It is very amusing that the doctrine of karma was a limb of religion, and we have found in it support for all our irreligion—What can we do? It is beyond our hands. What has been done has been done; it will have to be suffered.

What has been done—you have already suffered it. If you are repeating it again, it is only a repeatedly repeated habit, not the fruit of some karma. Each time you repeat it, you reap the fruit, and each time the habit grows stronger. Slowly, slowly, a man becomes nothing but a bundle of habits.

We are all bundles of habits. If you want to change these habits, resolve is needed. And the beginning of resolve is this: that it dawns on you that they can be changed. If you think they cannot be changed, your resolve will die completely.

A German Jew, Frankl, during the last world war was imprisoned in a great camp. He has written—he has written very astonishing things—in his memoirs. Because he is a psychologist, he kept observing what was happening. December was approaching; the festival days were near. All the prisoners hoped that at least around Christmas there would be release; that around Christmas Hitler would show mercy and people would be freed. Frankl writes: until Christmas, however many tortures the prisoners were given, no one died. People remained ill, but there was a hope—Christmas is approaching. With that hope, there was strength in their life-breath. He writes: the day Christmas passed, within fifteen days many people died—after Christmas. And he says the only reason those who died in those fifteen days died was that all hope broke. If even at Christmas there was no release, then there is no hope. When there is no hope, the energy of life dwindles.

In the prison where Frankl was held there was an atomic furnace, a crematory, in which thousands of prisoners could be gathered and turned to ash in a moment. Every day thousands of prisoners became ash. Every day smoke came out of the chimney of that furnace. Then they were moved to a different camp. About five hundred prisoners with Frankl were sent to another camp. They were made to walk for two days—cold nights, bare feet, without clothes, hungry and thirsty. Utterly exhausted, dead, they somehow arrived. When they arrived at midnight, it took the whole night to process them—to examine each person and admit him inside.

Frankl writes: such torture, such travel, such fatigue, hunger, distress—and at midnight as we stood lined up in the yard, hail began to fall, snow began to fall. Yet everyone was singing songs, humming, joking; people were laughing. And the only reason was that in that jail no chimney was visible. That chimney that was in the previous camp was not there. All sorrow was forgotten. This two days’ journey, these years of hardship, were all forgotten. That snow was falling—forgotten. People began to hum songs.

Frankl writes: for the first time I heard my fellow prisoners humming songs, repeating old jokes, telling stories to one another. I was very surprised—what is the matter? Then after a little while it became clear that no chimney was visible there. They were reassured: however much suffering there may be, death is not yet near.

If it happens that in the darkness of night the chimney is not visible and in the morning light it becomes visible, many will collapse right there. The two days’ fatigue, suddenly their legs will give way.

A man lives by his trusts, by his hopes, by his intentions. If you have the idea that you can change yourself, that very idea becomes the first foundation of transformation. If you think transformation cannot happen, your hands and feet go limp; you fall to the ground. Life’s energy rises and falls with your ideas.

I tell you: you do have samskaras, but samskaras are like the dry grooves that water has carved. If nothing is done to the water, it will flow along them. But if even a small effort is made, the water will make a new groove. The old groove is not some destiny that water must flow in it. If nothing is done—if the water is left passively—it will flow in the old channel. But if even a little effort is made, the old channel cannot compel the water to flow there. Exactly so is the samskara upon a man. We are bound by the past, but toward the future we are free.

Understand this a little rightly. We are bound by the past, but bound only by our own attitude. Toward the future we are free. And if we wish, in a single jolt we can break all the ropes of the past. Those ropes are not real; they are burnt ropes, ropes of ash. They look like ropes. Burn a rope: it becomes ash, yet it looks exactly like a rope, fiber by fiber. And if you do not touch it, it may even be that, tied to your hand, you think, “How can I run away?” Touch it a little; it is burnt. It can break—right now it can fall away.

Samskara means burnt ropes. But if you go on taking them to be ropes, you give them life. Man suffers the fruit of his actions and, at every moment, becomes free to do new actions. If out of habit he repeats the old, that is another matter. But repeating the old is not inevitable. Therefore, if a person is one of right resolve, in a single moment he can change his whole life—in a single moment! On this side, one life; on that side, another life can begin.

This transformation I call sannyas. This resolve I call sannyas: when someone decides, “I will no longer remain the old; I have decided to be new.” It can happen in a single moment; and even in lifetimes it may not happen—it depends on us.

It is a bit difficult to explain kirtan. Because that which is beyond explanation, beyond understanding, is what we call kirtan. And I insist on it because by the end of a discourse your understanding is tired; now let a little un-knowing do its work. What I speak strikes at your intellect. If you listen in such a way that the intellect is set aside, it reaches your heart. But listening like that is difficult. The intellect stands in between, stands at the gate. Before letting anything in it tests and examines—whether it agrees with one’s own views, whether it is in one’s scriptures, whether it is said in the Vedas or not—only then it allows it inside.

Scientists say that your senses and your intellect, which we generally think are the means to carry outer sensations within, are only partly that. It is true only to a small extent. Only two percent of things are allowed in; ninety-eight percent are stopped outside. This is necessary too. You are walking down the road. If one hundred percent of what is happening on the road entered within you, you would not reach home. You do reach home because your brain is continuously choosing—what to let in, what to keep out. If everything that is happening were to burst into your brain, you might not reach home at all; or you would arrive at someone else’s home; or even if you reached your own home, you would not recognize that it is yours. You would go mad. For this reason the intellect is constantly guarding, allowing entry only after thorough scrutiny.

You do not hear everything; you do not hear every sound. And you have the capacity to hear what you want to hear and not hear what you don’t want to. Even if a sound strikes the ear, your intellect can cut the connection. The ear may hear, but if the intellect decides not to, it will sever its inner link.

A scientist, Salter, was experimenting on a small cat. A loud sound was made near the cat’s ear. At the very sound the cat started—so loud was the noise. A graph is recorded on the instrument showing the impact in the ear, that a strong shock occurred and the cat’s entire neural system vibrated. Then, suddenly, a mouse is let in from the other corner. The cat sees the mouse, and her entire being, through her eyes, is riveted to the mouse. The sound is made again; the cat does not hear it. The graph that was made before is not made now. The sound is still happening, the blow still strikes the ear; but that graph, showing the neural system tingling, does not form at all. What happened? The cat severed the connection between intellect and ear. Now the intellect is running after the mouse.

We are capable all the time of breaking and making our inner connections. Because this is an essential survival mechanism in man, the intellect has acquired the habit of letting things in very selectively. So even when you listen to me, the intellect uses that habit.

The one who listens after dropping that habit—we called him “disciple” yesterday. He is so ready to learn that he puts aside all the defense measures of the intellect, leaves the gate open.

This is the meaning of shraddha. Shraddha means: in the direction of our trust we drop all our security arrangements. Then what is being said will reach your heart; then the strings of your heart will also tingle. Then you will have no difficulty in understanding what kirtan is. You will yourself want to join it. Then what I am saying will not be food for your intellect; it will become juice for your heart. And that juice will want to express itself. That juice will want to be absorbed. That juice will want to drown.

So those who listen from the heart—their feet will begin to throb, their heads will begin to sway, their hands will start to dance of their own accord. They may hold themselves properly in the chair out of fear of the neighbors, but within, someone will begin to prepare to dance. If what is said touches the heart, you will certainly want to dance—because the heart only knows how to dance. When a blow falls deep on the heart and a seed sinks down into it, the heart knows only one way to express itself: every fiber of the body dances. Those in whom the message reaches the heart want to dance. And it is not without danger to turn them loose on the street without letting them dance. If they dance ten minutes, they will feel light. What condensed within will be expressed; the cloud that gathered in the sky will rain. They will go away lighter. And they will also carry away a connection—that intellect and heart are not opposed. The opposition is our own creation.

But those who did not understand, in whom understanding stood guard at the gate and did not allow anything to reach the heart—they will certainly ask: what need is there for kirtan? Not only will they ask, it will also seem that this is quite contrary. What I have said makes this kirtan look like its opposite. It looks childish, rustic, that people should sing and dance.

Remember, for me all opposites, as Lao Tzu has said, are complementary. When for an hour, an hour and a half, I speak to your intellect, your balance tilts to one side. It is necessary that we depart by doing something opposite to that. You will go away more balanced, more centered. Let us do something of the heart.

There are other reasons too. What I have said will go deeper into you if, after hearing it, you go away dancing. If you go away thinking, you will spoil it. I have said something; it is hovering over you, on your head; if you go away thinking, what will you do? By thinking you will distort it. It is best that for ten or fifteen minutes you get an empty gap, that you get no chance to do anything, and what is over you slowly, slowly turns into juice and flows within. For fifteen minutes it is necessary that you get no chance. If you get a chance, you will make a mess of it. Therefore if you go away after ten or fifteen minutes of dance—forgetting the intellect, living from the heart—you will not be able to distort what I have said. Before you could distort it, a few streams of it will already have reached your heart. Those streams are what truly matter.

And whatever I am saying, however intellectual it may seem, it is not intellectual. The saying, the expression, is intellectual. I try to explain it to you in such a way that your reason also understands. But what I am saying is not logical. Logic is only the medium. Words are only devices. What I am saying is utterly beyond logic. And what I am saying is beyond thought. If I were to leave you merely with the saying, you would very soon become parrots like pundits—or pundits like parrots. You would memorize everything and be able to repeat it to others. That is all that would happen. It would not mean much. I have no intention at all of turning you into parrots.

You may not realize it, but if you dance for ten minutes, sing, rejoice, you will not be able to become parrots. You become light. The burden that fell upon your intellect, the strain upon the mind, is eased. And now what is essential will remain within you; the words will recede. This is why kirtan—that the words of what I have said are forgotten and its truth remains with you. This is why kirtan—that you do not grab the medium, the container; the content, the essence, remains in you.

So I do not say to you: remember what I say. I say: kindly forget it; do not remember it. What is meaningful will remain within. It will manifest in your life here and there, now and then. What is not meaningful has to be kept in memory.

Emerson, defining education somewhere, said: education is what remains when, after leaving school, everything is forgotten; everything is forgotten, and yet a difference remains between an educated and an uneducated person.

What is that difference? What is that difference? If what was meaningful sank in, that very difference remains; that is the good imprint, the culture. Education itself is forgotten. How many theorems of geometry do you remember today?

The English writer Somerset Maugham has written—and I understand his difficulty, for I have suffered the same—that however much I try, I cannot recall the entire alphabet from A to Z. I too cannot; I have to count it again. When I look in a dictionary, I have to check again whether H comes before this or after that. Maugham wrote: however much I try, I cannot recall the alphabet. The alphabet is not meant to be remembered. It ought to be forgotten. Because those who remember only the alphabet will then remember nothing else. The alphabet is not a thing to be held onto; it is a thing to be forgotten. Its work remains, its use remains. Only the use.

The difficulty with scriptures, with doctrines, is this: the words are remembered; the use is completely forgotten. So what I say should not become a burden on your mind; you should go away light from that burden. Let it drop, let it descend. Then the essence, the seed, will remain within you. And some day suddenly you will find that it has sprouted, it has flowered. Those flowers will give you news of the truth of what I said. And if what I said is all you remember, only the words will go on repeating inside you, and you will be deprived of the truth.

For this reason too! And also because I hold that no one ever reaches the divine by means of intellect. No one ever reaches truth by thinking and thinking. By dancing, sometimes a few have reached; by calculation, no one ever. Some madmen, at times, have reached; but clever people do not reach. Their cleverness itself becomes the obstacle.

But there is a hitch. Those who talk of madness do not talk of cleverness. Therefore clever people never go near them. Those who talk of cleverness remain neat and clean, far away from madness. They treat madness as untouchable. Mad people do not come near them.

But remember, when a deep harmony between understanding and madness is created, the supreme revolution happens in life. If intelligence cannot laugh, it is a little less intelligence. If the intelligent cannot dance, he is a little less intelligent. If the intellect cannot grow light and fly, it is a stone.

In my vision, life is a confluence of these opposites. Think as much as you like, but do not stop at thinking. At some point, put thinking aside like clothes; become naked of thought; dance, leap, become like small children. If you can build a bridge between the little child and the wise one within you, you have built the golden bridge, the swarna-setu, over which everyone has to pass. If you cannot build it, you will remain incomplete. If you can only dance and jump, you are mad. If you can only think, you are a madman of another kind. If both are possible together within you, their union gives birth to a new element, which is called prajna, which is called wisdom. Therefore too!

Their thought is quite right. This disorder is intentional. You could say it is organized—this disorder is by design. It is not happening without reason. Because I hold that when someone dances by order, he may be a dancer, but it is not kirtan. Order is one thing. When someone sings by order, he may be a singer—that is another matter. But when one dances and sings from feeling, from the surge of the heart, in natural spontaneity, then kirtan is born. Kirtan can have no fixed order. Dance is one thing, and dancing in kirtan is quite another. It should be spontaneous—sahaj-sphurta. Whatever arises within, only that should happen. Then the hands and feet, whatever gestures they want to take, should have the freedom to be.

You may not know that when we give the body total freedom, and along with feeling we completely let the body go—if this letting go becomes total—you will get the first glimpse of samadhi from this very thing. Because when there is no bondage on the body... for rules are bondage; order is a bondage. And when you keep to order, you have to remain self-conscious the whole time, alert that nothing is going wrong—whether in rhythm, in step, somewhere no mistake is happening. Then the intellect keeps working. Order means: the intellect is present; the heart has had no chance. What is happening here is of the heart. So if here you are watching who is making what mistakes, you have come to the wrong place. You should go and watch a dancer. There will be no mistakes there. Here you should be seeing who has become how natural. And whether someone has become natural or not is very difficult to see from the outside; you understand it only when you become it yourself. So it is better that you become it and see. There is a naturalness in which we don’t stop anything: if the feet want to dance as they will, we let them dance. There is no rule, no discipline. If the mind wants to leap as it will, we let it leap.

For just ten minutes, leave this body of yours, this mind of yours, in its naturalness and see. The moment you sink into that naturalness, you will for the first time experience a freedom whose glimpse you perhaps once knew when you were a small child. But now it has been a long time since you forgot it. Whenever, as a little child, you ran near a flower to catch a butterfly, the kind of naturalness that was within you then—catch hold of that naturalness once again. The moment you catch it, all the obstacles in between fall away. And when someone once again becomes childlike in his very wisdom, the key to heaven is in his hand.
There are a few small questions.

Is there such a thing as a claim to be a disciple? And one could announce being a disciple only if one were the follower of some particular person. For me, my whole life is the guru. And one whose eyes are open cannot remain without learning even for a single moment. He will learn from the stones on the path, from the flowers, from the stars in the sky. He will learn from those who abuse him, and he will learn from those who offer flowers. If the art of learning has arrived, you are a disciple, and this whole universe is the guru. It is because the art of learning has not yet arisen that we make one or two people into gurus.

Understand it like this: you are hiding inside your house and you make a small hole, and through it you look at the sky. Another person is standing under the open sky; he has left the house altogether. When so much sky was visible through a tiny hole, he thought, “Then let me pull down all the walls and stand outside.” Naturally, from inside your house you will ask, “I am looking through hole number one; through which hole did you see the sky?” And what can the man who is standing under the open sky say to you? What claim can he make about through which hole he saw the sky? He will be in real trouble. He will say, “I don’t see any holes anywhere—only sky, nothing but sky.”

When the capacity to learn becomes complete, the guru is no longer seen anywhere; because the guru is simply the guru, as the sky is simply the sky. So I make no claim. And remember, there is no such thing as a claim to be a disciple. And a claim to be a guru is simply impossible. One who claims, “I am a guru,” has not learned even this much—that being a guru is no entrance into truth.

Therefore those who are claimants—“We are gurus”—know that they cannot be gurus. A guru is never a claimant. A disciple may claim, “So-and-so is my guru.” The guru cannot claim. And even the disciple can claim only until discipleship has not fully blossomed within him; once it blossoms, the whole existence becomes the guru, all directions become the guru. Discipleship means the capacity to learn—not the habit of clinging to a guru, but the capacity to learn.

A river flows—touching how many shores! Crossing how many mountains! If someone were to ask her, “To which riverbank do you lay claim?” the river would say, “There were many banks—banks upon banks. It is hard even to name them now.”

If you have lived rightly, lived awake, you have learned from everyone. It is impossible that you could pass anything by without learning. But we are blind people. That is why we even make gurus. To make a guru simply means that the art of being a disciple has not yet come to you. Otherwise, what is there to make a guru for? Become a disciple. Do not make a guru—become a disciple. But we make gurus to avoid learning from others. Our fear is that if we learn from everyone we will drown; better to latch on to one, take a firm support, and shut all the doors and windows around. We are such people that we think we will breathe standing at a single window and keep all the other windows closed. We will die.

Existence is giving from all sides. Why such miserliness in receiving it? Breathe from every side; become a disciple; drop worrying about the guru. And when you become a disciple, a guru will begin to be available at every step. When I say a guru will be available at every step, I do not mean that some one Buddha, or some one Mahavira, will catch hold of you and remain with you. Life is infinite.

It was the last day of Buddha’s life. Ananda began beating his chest and weeping, and he said, “While you were here I did not attain enlightenment! And now you are going—what will become of me?” Buddha said, “Ananda, don’t be foolish. Before me there have been thousands of Buddhas; after me there will continue to be thousands of Buddhas. And if you are skillful in learning, you will find a Buddha at every step. And if you are not skillful in learning, you have been with me for forty years—what have you learned even from that? It is a strange thing: for forty years you were with me, and you say you did not awaken. And now, as I am dying, you cry, ‘When you are gone, how will enlightenment happen?’ If it has not happened in these forty years with me here, then what is the need to cry at my death? If it has not happened in forty years, it will not happen even in forty lifetimes.”

The last thing Buddha said to Ananda is very significant. Buddha said, “It may even be that because of me you became narrow; you clung to me, your capacity to learn withered. You thought, ‘I have found the guru; now what need is there of the capacity to learn? Once I have become a disciple, the matter is finished.’ Becoming a disciple is not something that gets finished. It only begins; it never ends. So when I die, perhaps your capacity to learn will again become unbound, you will open again.”

And that is exactly what happened: only after Buddha’s death could Ananda attain enlightenment.

You ask, “Why do you call yourself God?”
I have never said it. But now that you say it, I will say: I am God. And I say this because there is no way to be anything other than God. You are God too. In this whole existence there is nothing but God. So if someone claims, “I am God and you are not,” then that claim is criminal. I have never made any claim. I have never even said it. But I cannot say the opposite either—that I am not God—because that would be downright untrue. I can only say there is nothing but God. And what can I do, since there is nothing but God?

You too are God. It may be you don’t know it; it may be you do. One who doesn’t know should try to know. God means: existence—purest existence. That which we are in our intrinsic nature is what I call godliness.

But we carry all sorts of notions about God. That creates trouble. Someone thinks God is the one who created the world. Naturally, I did not create the world. So that hassle is not mine.
Someone thinks: if there is God—letters come to me saying, “If you are God—then I am poor, remove my poverty. If you are God, my eyes are bad, cure them.”
No, I have nothing to do with God in that sense either. Your eyes are bad—then the God within you is responsible. Make a little change there. You are poor—the God within you is responsible. Make a little change there. And don’t look toward some God outside. Because one who cannot see the God within will not be able to see any God outside. No, I am not a God who materializes amulets either. “Show a miracle if you are God”—in that case even street magicians would be gods; but God does not seem to take much interest in being a juggler.

By God I mean that which is your purest being. When all the rubbish, all that is futile and nonessential, has been set aside and you have seen yourself, then you are God. You don’t need to create a world to be God; otherwise you would never be God—understand this well. You don’t need to cure someone’s eyes to be God; otherwise you would never be God. Or else some doctor would be God. To be God means the realization of that nature hidden within us—the Tao—the existence within us: the recognition of it, the entry into it.

So let me remove this hassle for you too. Needlessly you feel: why did I call myself God? I hadn’t said it till now; today I will tell you: I am God. That will remove the snag; it will make things simpler. But don’t take it to mean that you are something else. You are the same. It may take time for you to recognize it, but if you make the effort you can recognize it.
Being God is not a claim; being God is our natural state.

The remaining questions are mere repetitions. Two things in the end.
Asking a question is not difficult; answering is not difficult either. Any question that can be asked can be answered. But truly, to ask the kind of questions that will be of use to you is very difficult. And answering such questions is not easy either. But you don’t ask such questions at all.

It seems you don’t have any question that is going to be of use in your life. Your questions seem to be useless. It seems there is a little itch in the intellect and from that your questions arise. No thirst in the soul, no call, no search—nothing like that. An itch! You scratch a little. Then if blood comes from scratching, I am not responsible. If there is pain afterward, I am not responsible. Perhaps our attention is not on ourselves. Perhaps we have no idea that we can be something other than what we are; that from where we stand, there may be somewhere else to reach. Our life too could become a journey—we have no inkling of that. We go on asking, out of curiosity, without caring what we are going to do if the answer is given.

For example, a friend has asked: why do you call yourself God, or have yourself called God? Whatever the answer, what will it do for that friend? Whatever the answer. Whether I say I am God or I say I am not—what will it do for that friend? What will any statement about me bring to that friend?
There is an itch. A little scratching and there will be pain. The friend who asked will go home troubled. If I don’t answer, he’ll think I lack courage. And if I do answer, his itch will bleed — that too I know. So he will return disturbed. His question is not going to bring him any solution, any relief. Then why was it asked at all? We have no idea why we are asking. That’s why we ask so many questions, gather so many answers, and we remain just as we were.
For the future I say to you: think a little before you ask. And keep one touchstone for your thinking — with the answer that comes, what will I be able to do?

I was in a village. Two old men came to me — one a Jain, the other a Hindu; neighbors. They said, “We have a fifty-year-old dispute. We studied together, grew up together, did business together. He is a Hindu; I am a Jain. I, being a Jain, hold that no God created the world. He, being a Hindu, holds that God created the world. We can never settle it; the quarrel goes on. Till now there has been no resolution. You have come — you settle it.”

I said to them, “Even if I settle it, what will you do then? If it is established that God created the world, what are your intentions? And if it is established that God did not create the world, what are your intentions?”

They said, “Intentions? No, there’s nothing to do — but at least let it be decided.”

If there is nothing to do with it, why decide it at all? Remember: whatever we have nothing to do with, we will never be able to decide. We decide only when we have something to do. To decide means life is at stake; therefore decide, and then do something. That which, once decided, leads to no action, never really gets decided.

So people argue their whole lives; and where the cradle found them, the grave finds them — not an inch farther. Don’t ask; such questions have no purpose. Ask the kind of question that changes your life, whose answer leads you into doing something, a question that becomes a revolution for you, a question that signals transformation.

That’s all for today. Stop now, sing kirtan for five minutes, and then go. And today, those who usually don’t dare to sing, they too should join the kirtan. Come.