Tao Upanishad #67

Where to search for God? Where is His temple? Where should one look for Truth, and in which direction?

For thousands of years man has been asking, seeking, thinking. Many directions were fixed; many places determined; countless temples and countless pilgrimage sites were raised. There has even been conflict over where and how to search for God. Lao Tzu’s answer is utterly unique.

Lao Tzu says: the one who searches for Truth in any direction will never attain it. Because Truth is in no direction; on the contrary, all directions are in Truth.

So the one who seeks Truth in a particular direction will go astray. And the very choice of a single direction will deliver him to untruth, not to Truth. The one who sees Paramatma in the temple as against the mosque, or in the mosque as against the church, will have no connection with Paramatma. Because Paramatma is not in any temple, any mosque, any church; rather, all temples, all churches, all gurudwaras, all mosques are in Paramatma.

Understand this distinction well and entry into this sutra will become easy.

To ask, ‘Where is God?’ is itself wrong. The question itself is wrong. And whoever answers it knows nothing. Any answer given will be wrong; a wrong question can only receive a wrong answer. It is futile to ask where God is; because all is in God. ‘Where’ can be asked only of that which does not envelop all. That which is the sum of all cannot be pointed out with a finger as ‘there’. If one has to indicate God, one could do it with a closed fist; not with a pointing finger. Because He is everywhere. The very name of the totality of existence is God.

That is why Lao Tzu does not even use the word ‘God’. The moment you use the word ‘God’, an idol gets made, a personality arises; and God begins to descend in our minds as a person. But a person cannot be everywhere; a person must be somewhere, at some location. Therefore Lao Tzu does not like to use the word ‘God’. He says Tao, or Dharma. And Lao Tzu’s sense of Dharma is like the sky. You cannot ask, ‘Where is the sky?’ Or can you? Better would be to ask, ‘Where is the sky not?’ Wherever you look, there is sky. You too are standing in the sky. Your very breath moves in the sky. Therefore, to point somewhere and say ‘Here is the sky’ would be an error. Sky is everywhere; everything is in the sky. And the sky is not inside anything.

Tao, or Dharma, is the name of that which encompasses all.

But there is a difficulty. The difficulty is—especially for theologians—that if God is everywhere, then condemning becomes very difficult, and raising conflicts becomes very difficult. If everything is God, then what is evil? Then nothing remains evil. Hence, however much the theologian may say that He is present in every particle, there is no honesty in it. For still he goes on saying: this is wrong, this is evil, drop it, turn away from it, go beyond it.

If God is everywhere, then what is there to drop? For one to whom it is revealed that God is everywhere, nothing remains to discard—because whatever you discard will also be God. Nothing remains to attain either, for something is to be gained only when there is something to be dropped. For him nothing is superior and nothing inferior. For him nothing is auspicious and nothing inauspicious. For him the whole of life becomes a single, even acceptance.

Out of fear—because we are afraid to accept life in its totality—we cut God to pieces. We separate what we do not like. We divide existence into two. Some divide existence into two halves: this is the world, that is moksha; and then they set the world and moksha into mutual antagonism. Life’s only quest then becomes: how to get rid of the world and how to attain moksha. From this splitting of existence, desire is born; desire is not destroyed. A new desire is born—how to escape the world and how to realize moksha. And as long as there is desire, there can be no attainment of moksha. For moksha means desirelessness; moksha means that no wanting remains. Therefore, even the desire for moksha is a barrier to moksha.

Before entering Lao Tzu’s vision, all these points must be kept in mind. Whenever we divide the world, desire is born. Only in the undivided world does desire fail to arise. Either we say ‘world and moksha’, or we say ‘devil and God’. Then we say the devil is bad and God is good. All the badness we perceive in the world we load upon the devil. And all that we deem good we project upon God. Then one must avoid the devil and attain God. But desire will arise. Where there is choice, how can desire fall away? Only in choicelessness can desire drop; not before that.

If Lao Tzu’s point is understood rightly, desire need not be renounced; its very arising becomes impossible. And that desire which you have to renounce will not be renounced—because in trying to renounce one desire, you will take support of another desire. Whenever you drop one desire, you will drop it by leaning on another. One will be dropped, another will be grasped. Then the cure proves worse than the disease. One illness hardly departs before the medicine itself becomes the disease and seizes you.

Therefore, the sannyasin who runs away from the world—his sannyas too is a malady. It must be so. His renunciation lacks totality. It is a fragment; broken off, protected, saved by force; with walls raised all around to safeguard it. And that sannyas which has to be protected cannot bring freedom. Any sannyas which stands opposed to something remains tied to its opposite; it is part of that opposition. Its very life-breath is in its opposite. The sannyas that is formed in opposition to the world will be sannyas in name only; it will be a new style of worldliness. The form will change, the arrangement will change; but the root malady will remain in place.

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was undergoing psychotherapy. After years, a friend asked, ‘It seems your therapy is complete now, for you’re no longer seen going to the therapist. What benefit did you get?’

Nasruddin said, ‘My disease was this: I used to be frightened by every little thing—not that something had actually happened, even the possibility that something might happen would frighten me. For example, my condition before therapy was such that if a telephone lay there, I would tremble and panic lest the bell ring and I be forced to speak with someone. And if the bell did ring, I would be so panic-stricken I could not even get up from my seat.’

His friend asked, ‘So now you are cured—what is it like now?’

Nasruddin said, ‘Now I am so cured that even if the bell does not ring, I answer the phone twenty times a day. Earlier, even if the bell rang I could not get up; now, even if it doesn’t, no worry—I pick up and answer anyway.’

It is very easy to move from one illness to another. To move to the opposite illness is the easiest of all. But the fundamental disease stands untouched. Wherever we erect opposites, disturbance follows.

Lao Tzu says: this entire world, this entire existence, is the current of Tao, the flow of Dharma.

Here there are not two—maya and Brahman. What appears as maya is also the flow of Brahman. It is not right to say that God is in every particle; every particle is God. To say ‘God is in every particle’ is also mistaken, for then we have separated the particle and put God into it as if placing something inside a box. In Lao Tzu’s vision, it is not right to say ‘God is in every particle’; every particle itself is God. Here there is nothing besides God.

But then difficulty arises. For with whom will we fight? And without fighting the ego cannot stand. Whom will we conquer, whom will we suppress, whom will we annihilate? Without fighting, the ego finds no joy. If all is God, we will become utterly empty. Our entire battle is lost. Nothing remains to fight with. And we want something to fight, because only in fighting do we feel that we are. The more we fight, the more we feel our being. When you have nothing to do, you feel as if you have vanished.

Psychologists say that as soon as people retire from their work, ten years are cut off their life; because nothing remains to fight. You will be surprised to know that bachelors live less than married men—because they have nothing to fight! In the West, when such statistics were being gathered, they were amazed. They had thought the bachelor should live longer: no quarrels, no hassles, no troubles of wife and children. But they die earlier. Because those quarrels keep one alive; from them one feels, ‘I too am.’ Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; but the stakes keep moving. And a man stays established. If you have nothing to fight, you feel lost. It was as if the battle supplied fuel.

Unmarried people are more disturbed than married people. It should not be so. It is a wonder how the married man saves himself from insanity! Yet the unmarried are more mentally ill than the married. What could be the reason?

Psychologists say: that very conflict keeps their ego strong. Fighting daily, they sharpen themselves; they remain fresh. When there is nothing to fight, a man goes limp, sluggish.

You can see: when war comes, how a country is filled with vitality! How everyone begins to walk faster, and a glitter appears in each eye. People die, and yet a wave of briskness runs through the land. Why? Conflict informs you that you are alive; that you too can do something. When there is no conflict, a man becomes empty. He cannot tell whether he is or is not. His identity, his sense of ‘I am’, becomes hard to find. Hence the whole world engages in competition. If not a true competition, we create a false one.

Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography Mein Kampf: even if war is not happening, if a nation wants to remain youthful, it must keep alive the expectation that war is about to happen, that war is coming. This apprehension must be maintained if the nation is to stay young. If real war cannot be maintained, then the wind of a fake war. That is why the cold war continues: war cannot always be kept going, but a cold war can. It makes people feel alive.

You too search for competition in your life. If the marketplace does not suffice, you spread cards on the table and sit down. The fight begins—above the cards. You bring out the chessboard. To take real horses and elephants to battle is a little difficult, so you begin to move wooden horses and elephants. And the full taste of war! You were tired from the day, and that tiredness vanishes at once. The moment the chessboard is laid out, the fatigue disappears. Now you can stay up all night. What gives you this energy? From where does it come?

This energy comes from the ego’s struggle. That is why you see a certain glow on the faces of fighting sannyasins—not from tapascharya. They are engaged in such a battle where the ego finds great nourishment. Your battles are petty; whenever you go to them, they say, ‘What are you doing? What are you gathering—perishable wealth? What is there in this life? Come to us. We are seeking the eternal life; the treasure that never perishes.’ He is fighting a big battle. In that big battle there is a glow, a freshness; he remains steady. But that battle is constructing the ego. And remember, the ego’s glow is diseased, and the ego’s glow is poisonous.

Lao Tzu says: Tao is the flow of all things; like a flood, Tao is streaming in every direction.

Everything is to be accepted; there is nothing here to be rejected. Because whatever you reject is also God. But for such acceptance, a vast heart is needed. For rejection, a petty heart is enough. Therefore the smaller the heart, the more it rejects, the more it negates. ‘This is not right, that is not right’—it goes on denying. A narrow, cramped heart.

Only if you can say Yes to the whole of existence will the perception of God begin. He is not hidden somewhere else; He is revealed here. He is revealed everywhere. All forms are His; all expressions are His. He is hidden in all events. What we call evil is our interpretation; what we call good is our interpretation. But God is in both the evil and the good. For our interpretations do not determine God.

Enter the sutra.

‘The great Tao flows everywhere.’

It flows everywhere. Two points are here. First: everywhere, all-pervading. Second: it flows. In Lao Tzu’s mind, God is not a static concept; He is a flowing process.

This too is to be understood. Whenever we speak of God, we imagine something still, unmoving—something in which no change occurs, something in which change is impossible. For to our minds, perfection means that in which no change is.

Understand a little. Lao Tzu’s meaning is very different. In our minds, if we say that God too is evolving, then it would mean He is incomplete. Evolution happens only in that which lacks something. A child evolves; he is not yet complete. A sprout grows; it was small. All things evolve, transform in development. But how will God evolve? He is perfect. In Him there can be no movement, no flow.

But remember: if there is no movement and no flow in God, then God will be dead. In Lao Tzu’s vision such a perfection is synonymous with death. Man stops growing only when he dies. Anything comes to rest only when life has left it. Life is a process; life is a flow. Life is not a still thing; it is like a river.

But to call God a flow scares us. Is He too developing? Is He moving? Is something new happening in Him? In our minds, God is like stone—dead, still. Movement is in the world; in God there is none. The world flows; God is absolutely static.

To Lao Tzu, our conception is of a dead God. And he asks: how can such a static God be related to a flowing world? How can a dead God be parent to this living dynamism? Lao Tzu does not split them. He says: this very flow is God. Then his sense of perfection changes entirely. Lao Tzu is not fond of the word ‘perfection’; he uses ‘wholeness’.

These two words are marvelous. Perfection; wholeness. Perfection means: now there is no possibility of further movement; all is finished. Wholeness means fullness, totality: this moment it is whole, next moment too it will be whole. But there is a flow.

Understand it so. You saw the river, the Ganga at Gangotri. Very small, a thin stream; yet even there her beauty is whole. Then she advances, crosses mountains; thousands of streams join. In the plains her vast form appears. There too her beauty is whole. Then she falls into the ocean and is lost. There also her beauty is whole. You saw her at three places—at Gangotri, in the plains, and merging into the sea. The Ganga you saw at Gangotri has not become ‘more perfect’ at the sea. There too she was whole; in her smallness there was wholeness.

A seed is whole, and a tree is whole; yet between the wholeness of seed and tree there is flow. Lao Tzu will not say the tree is perfect and the seed was imperfect. He will say: the seed was whole, the tree is whole. The wholeness of the seed has flowed into the wholeness of the tree. And precisely because of that, the tree will again become seed. Otherwise how would the ‘perfect’ become ‘imperfect’? From seed the tree is born, and in the tree millions of seeds are born again. Then trees; then seeds. And one wholeness keeps transforming. Yet at each moment all is whole.

A child is whole, with his own beauty. A youth is whole, with his own beauty. It is one thing to say the youth is ‘more perfect’ than the child. The child’s perfection is of one kind; the youth’s of another. They are not comparable. The old man’s wholeness is of a third kind. No comparison. Yet each is whole in his own state.

Thus Lao Tzu does not say the child should strive to become a youth; he says the child’s childhood should be whole. From that wholeness another wholeness will arise. Youth should not strive to become old; youth should strive to be whole. Perfection here is not a summit; here it is becoming all that can be. Whatever youth can be, he should be wholly that. From that fullness will come the fullness of old age. And when life is whole, then a whole death is born from it. When life is whole, death too becomes whole. Understand the difference well.

Consider a flower. If we are perfectionists, our worry will be that this flower should become the most beautiful of all flowers, the largest of all.

In my garden there was a gardener whose flowers would win first prize every year. I asked him, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘I allow only one flower to blossom on a plant; I cut off the rest. When others are cut, the restless current of life that would have expressed itself through them is forced to flow toward one, and that one becomes large.’ But that largeness is diseased. It is not its own; it is exploitative. It will win the competition; but it is not whole. It lives on others; it is big only in comparison.

Wholeness of the flower is another matter. There is no need to conform to any ideal. Whatever the flower could be, whatever is hidden within, let all of it unfold; let nothing be suppressed. This is wholeness. No eye toward anyone else, no comparison and no ideal of ‘the most perfect’. If you strive to be ‘perfect’, you will always think, ‘I should become like Buddha, like Mahavira, like Krishna.’ If you strive to be whole, Buddha, Mahavira all disappear; then your only urge is: whatever I can be, let me become it totally; let nothing within remain unflowered. At death I should not feel that some limb remained lame; that some flower could have bloomed but did not; some seed could have sprouted but remained a seed. Let me depart with the feeling that whatever could happen within me, whatever my destiny was, has come to fulfillment. There is no comparison with Buddha. Buddha has his destiny; he fulfilled it in his way. You have your destiny; you will be fulfilled in yours.

Lao Tzu does not accept a goal of perfection—because goals of perfection are dangerous. They necessitate suppression, cutting, violence. And with a perfection-goal there is competition with others, quarrel and conflict. Wholeness means: nothing within me should remain unblossomed.

So Lao Tzu conceives God as a flow—the flow of wholeness. There can be a thousand sorts of wholeness. When a flower blossoms, God is whole in the flower. When a river flows, God is whole in the river. When a Buddha’s being comes to its fullness—when the full moon of Buddha’s being arises—God is whole in Buddha. He is whole in a bird, whole in a stone. Infinite wholenesses. Because the world is a flow. Here there is not just one perfection. And each wholeness is unique; there is no question of comparison.

Lao Tzu says: life is a flow. To think of this flow in solidified channels, in frozen words, is wrong.

Therefore, when we think of God we imagine that one day we will attain Him and possess Him. You will not possess Lao Tzu’s God. The God of your conceptions can be possessed—Krishna playing the flute, Rama with the bow—some form you fancy, you imagine you can hold it, capture it. But you will never possess Lao Tzu’s God. He will possess you. You will drown in Him. You cannot take Him in your fist.

Therefore Lao Tzu says: God, Truth, Tao—we can never grasp them in the fist; we can only dissolve ourselves in them. That is the only attainment.

First, He is everywhere. With the arising of this sense, condemnation disappears. With this sense, opposition drops. With this sense, all your interpretations become futile. And if this sense becomes deep, you will suddenly find that where yesterday you saw evil, now you do not.

Understand! Just now I was looking at a scientist’s lifelong research. He worked his whole life on sorrow, pain, suffering. Whenever you feel pain you think God cannot exist—for why so much pain? Hence, in all our notions of moksha, we give no place to pain. Impossible! If there is pain even in moksha, what sort of moksha is that? Pain is here. In hell there is only pain. In moksha there is none at all. We are in between. Here there is both pain and joy, and we sway between. Wherever we see pain, we think, ‘How can there be God?’ The atheists’ argument against God includes this: if God exists and is compassionate, and as Jesus says God is love, then why so much suffering?

This scientist sought all his life, ‘What is pain? And what is its utility in life?’ Because if it exists there must be utility. He arrived at a unique conclusion. Some children are born, very rarely, in whom there is no sensation of pain; certain nerves are damaged and they do not experience pain. In your body there are nerves that carry the message of pain; if they do not function, no news of pain arrives. But such children do not survive; they die. If their hand catches fire they will not pull it away. They feel no pain.

With such children there is another amazing fact: they chew their tongue along with the food, because they feel no pain. They cut their tongue and eat it; they do not know. You come to know of the tongue not by the tongue itself, but by the pain in it. If there is no pain in the tongue, you will bite it along with food; you will not know. Such children cannot survive, for they have no means of protection. There is no pain, so any mischief is possible. If the house catches fire and the child is sleeping, he will not run out; he will keep sleeping. He will not know when he is burned.

Thus the scientist concluded: pain is a great protection for life’s survival. Then the interpretation changes: life cannot exist without pain. Pain is not evil; it is the very ground of life; pain becomes auspicious—because on its soil the flower of life blooms. It is life’s safeguard. Therefore the more sensitive a being is, the more alive he is. This is a difficult point. The more sensitive, the one who feels even the smallest pain, the more intelligent, the more conscious, the more alive he will be.

You can try to escape pain; you can destroy the nerves. You see fakirs lying on a bed of nails. With practice it happens: the nerves that carry the message of pain stop carrying it. But in equal measure that fakir becomes dead. To the extent pain stops reaching him, to that extent he is a corpse. You are impressed: what a miracle—lying on nails. But the miracle is only that he has numbed his nerves. And with those nerves numb, to that extent the flame of his life has dimmed. Therefore in the eyes of the fakir lying on nails you will not see life. You look at the nails and the fakir and go back; look also into his eyes. There you will see deadness, a lifelessness; everything is dead. He is a corpse.

The more you begin to see life as a whole, the more your interpretations change.

With the one you love, quarrels also happen. We all think: there should be no quarrel where there is love. How can there be? If there is love, there should be no conflict. Quarrel is evil; it belongs to hate; how can it be of love? But psychologists say—and rightly—that quarrel between two lovers is very necessary. As you inhale and then exhale—exhalation is needed to inhale again—similarly, you cannot inhale for twenty-four hours; you will not survive. You must exhale to inhale again; you must empty.

Love cannot be done twenty-four hours; it too would become poison. It too must be let go. It is like breath; like day and night; like the breath going out and coming in. Two lovers quarrel and move apart. That distance creates a way to come close again. If they remain constantly close, they will be bored, and closeness will become dangerous. Then they will want to run away, to escape. Distance is needed. Distance creates the attraction to come near. Then proximity becomes sweet again. Often, the love that happens after a quarrel is very fresh. If they keep loving without fighting, it goes stale. Distance is needed for the freshness of nearness.

Then it means: quarrel too has meaning; there is no need to be inimical to it. With such understanding, even quarrel becomes sweet. With such understanding, moving apart also becomes meaningful. We will be grateful even for that.

As you begin to see life with the vision that God is everywhere, nothing can be inauspicious. If it seems so, the error is ours. Let us search deeper, enter further; we will find where our mistake lay. The mistake will drop. And we will recognize the celebration of indivisible life.

‘The great Tao flows everywhere; like a flood it goes left and right.’

It has no direction.

‘The ten thousand things derive life from it, and it does not reject them.’

This must be understood. I have heard: a Sufi fakir prayed to God one night, ‘Next door to me is a man who creates obstacles in my worship, in my prayer. Troublemaker, wicked—utterly satanic. Please reform him; for with him around, worship and prayer are impossible.’

In his dream he heard a voice: ‘That man I have accepted for thirty years, and you have been here only three months. One whom I have accepted—why should you reject? If he disturbs your worship, your prayer, do not attend to him. Your worship and prayer are weak—attend to that. Know that I sent you to that neighborhood precisely so that you might know how deep your worship is. And that man is very useful; he is engaged in My own work.’

The fakir was very surprised. On waking he faced a great difficulty. The point seemed right. For whatever happens in the world—if it were unacceptable to God, it could not happen at all. Either it is acceptable to Him, or else there can be things in the world that are against Him. And if things can happen against Him, He has no power; He is useless. If the contrary of Him can happen, of what use is such an impotent God? If the opposite can also be, you can be dragged back from moksha as well.

Nothing can be contrary to God. Therefore what appears evil to you also happens by His will. And the moment you see that His will is the ground of existence, what appears evil will not appear evil. It appears evil because you reject it. But when He accepts it, what meaning has your rejection? Drop your rejection.

Lao Tzu says, ‘The ten thousand things derive life from it.’

All derive life from it—poison and nectar alike. In both is His life, His power, His energy. In the saint and the sinner, in the murderer and the lover, in the compassionate and the harsh—He flows.

‘And it does not reject them.’

Existence rejects no one. It contains all.

If a seeker lets this thought arise—that I too become like existence and contain everything; that enmity and opposition fall from me; that I do not say ‘this is evil’ and I do not say ‘this is good’; that I say only: ‘It is His will’—then, knowing that it is the will of existence, he allows it. And when it is His will, there must be some reason, some profound reason. What we call good cannot exist without the bad; the bad is necessary for it. The bad becomes the background. What we call beauty cannot be without ugliness. It is the lightning of beauty that shines amidst ugly clouds.

Wherever there is duality, there is an inevitability. If you accept beauty, do not reject the unbeautiful—for beauty cannot be born without it. If you regard life as a benediction, do not regard death as sorrow—for life is born in death. Death stands at both ends; between them a small wave of life rises. That wave rises only because of the pressure of death on both sides. If you are opposed to death, you are accepting one half and rejecting the other. Those two halves are halves only in your vision; in themselves they are joined and one. Life flows into death; death flows into birth. The wave that is life here becomes the wave of death there.

Here everything is together; nothing is truly divided. Ram and Ravan are not separate in existence. In the Ramayana they are separate; in existence they are one—two poles of the same reality, facing each other. If one steps aside, the other will fall; he cannot stand. You cannot even conceive of Ram without Ravan. Remove Ravan from the story of Ram and nothing remains worth seeing, hearing, reading. Strangely, the moment Ravan disappears, Ram’s entire glory disappears; as if his entire glory was granted by Ravan. And the converse is also true: remove Ram, Ravan loses all value. All juice flows into Ravan from Ram. Outwardly they appear enemies; inwardly a deep friendship flows. Wherever there is polarity in existence, dig a little and you will find a deep intimacy within.

Lao Tzu says: this world of innumerable expressions—it does not reject them. But note the delicious precision! Lao Tzu does not say: ‘It accepts them.’ He says: ‘It does not reject them.’ This is a very carefully chosen statement. If He accepted in the positive sense, then you would have no way to change. Then life’s revolution, life’s ascent would be lost.

No, He does not reject you; but until you transform your life, you will remain far by your own hand. If He accepted you positively, you would have nothing to do. He merely does not reject. He does not erase you, does not remove you, does not break you, does not say ‘become such-and-such’. As you are, He does not reject. This is negative.

But He does not accept you either. Acceptance comes when you change and draw near; when you are transformed and move into proximity. And the alchemy of transformation is this: as you begin to accept the whole of existence, He begins to accept you. But acceptance is a positive thing. Hence His non-rejection gives you existence, gives you life; but the day He accepts you, that day the Great Life!

Jesus has said: the life you know is life, but the life to which I lead you is the abundant life—the supreme, the divine life, call it amrit or mukti as you will.

He does not reject you—still you live. In His rejection you could not live. Because He does not reject, you live. But if we accept the world, He accepts us. In that acceptance the Great Life is attained. That spark within becomes a great sun. That little drop of consciousness becomes an ocean.

Do not think: because God does not reject you, you are accepted. To be accepted, you must become worthy. The first step in that worthiness is to stop rejecting.

Jesus has a lovely saying: ‘Judge ye not, so that ye be not judged.’

Do not judge others; do not form opinions about others; do not become others’ judge—so that you too be not judged. If you say ‘this is bad’, ‘this is wrong’, ‘this man is not fit to live’; if you denounce, hate, reject—then what you are doing to another you are doing before existence for yourself. Do not judge; do not be the judge.

But we are all judges. Sitting, standing, walking—we go on judging. We do not even see completely and the judgment is already formed. No sooner do we see a man than we think, ‘bad’. No sooner do we see than we conclude. We judge swiftly, as if judgments were made for us. We do not need to see men at all; we already ‘know’ men are wrong. We only need a little support, an excuse; the peg is ready, let it be found and we will hang our judgment upon it. Our judgments are manufactured in advance; we keep hanging them on people.

The day a man stops rejecting and accepts life’s mystery—knowing that what I do not understand is still understood by existence; what seems bad to me does not seem bad to life, hence it is; what I do not accept is accepted by life—then, knowing that life is bigger than I am, I set aside my refusal, my negation. I do not judge and I become utterly impartial; I take no sides. Such a person passes through a revolution. The moment you stop taking sides and forming opinions…

A thief seems bad to you. But he does not seem bad because theft is bad; he seems bad because your property is dear to you. You do not see the element that makes him bad in your eyes. Property is dear. Therefore the thief must be opposed. You say: if all is fine, what if someone carries off your thing tomorrow? You know: if someone takes my thing, I feel bad. Still, the existence of the thief is, and this feeling bad is my judgment. That judgment can change. If there were no private property, theft would cease to be bad.

Among the Eskimos in Siberia there is a custom. If you go into an Eskimo’s house—though they own very little, barely enough to live with great difficulty—if you like any object, the custom is that if someone says, ‘Your coat is very nice,’ immediately the coat must be gifted. In Eskimo society there is no theft. The device is simple. Things are few, life is hard and poor. But this rule has cut the root of theft. If in anyone’s house someone says, ‘This chair pleases me, this cot is lovely, this cloth is beautiful, this utensil is wonderful,’ then the meaning is: desire has arisen in that man; not to give it now would be to turn him into a thief—so give it at once. The result is: there can be no theft in Eskimo society. There is no way to steal.

Change the society, change the notion, and theft… Theft runs under a particular arrangement. Do not impose your personal notion upon existence. Merely know: I do not like anyone taking my thing; therefore theft is bad—to me. But what is bad in existence? Theft came with man; among animals there is no theft, for there is no private property. Wherever private property appears, theft appears. Hence Proudhon’s famous dictum: ‘Property is theft.’ All wealth is theft; wealth as such is theft. For ‘my wealth’ means I have possessed, and anyone’s desire may arise for it. And no one has ownership over desire.

Do you have ownership over desire? You see a house; what is your power to stop desire within? It arises: if only that house were mine! Theft begins. You may be too timid to act; afraid of society, court, consequences, morality, hell, God’s punishment. You may not act. But theft has begun within. You have begun to claim ownership over another’s thing. You want; you cannot do—another matter.

There are two kinds of thieves: those who do it inside, and those who do it outside. Those who do it outside have more courage, more foolishness, less understanding. They cannot calculate far; cannot count the consequences. The cleverer—calculating, cunning—do it within; never let it appear outside.

But there is no right to judge. Granted, a man is a thief and I do not like theft, even so there is no need to form the opinion that the thief is bad. I do not like it; hence it appears bad to me—but existence accepts him. God gives him breath; does not obstruct it. The sun does not withhold light; the wind does not withhold prana. Life accepts him. One whom life accepts, let me too not reject.

If such an attitude grows, a unique event happens: all tensions within you subside. For tensions are of opinions; the restlessness within is due to these judgments. It dwindles; you begin to enter a quiet silence.

In that entry you come into touch with the Tao that flows everywhere.

‘When its work is accomplished, it does not possess them.’

This Tao does not reject anyone. And when some life among the ten thousand reaches its summit and its wholeness opens and manifests, even then Tao lays no claim upon it.

Understand. Buddha or Mahavira attained fullness. God does not reject the thief—and He does not then announce: ‘I accept Buddha.’ God makes no proclamation that Buddha is now mine. He does not declare ownership. The work is accomplished; Buddha has come to where his consciousness could finally arrive. That which could happen has happened; the peak is touched. Still, no claim of possession. And the delightful thing is that Buddha says there is no God. Even in that situation, God makes no declaration, ‘I am; now you are mine; now I own you.’ The lowly are not rejected; the highest are not claimed. God is like emptiness. God is supreme freedom, in which you may become whatever you choose. He neither stops you, nor pushes you.

Understand religion in this language: religion is your supreme freedom. You may become whatever you choose. Even if you wish to go contrary to God, you may; His support will still be there. He will not reject you. If you wish to come into accord with Him, you may; He will not claim you. From His side there is never any claim; existence is claimless. This is very blissful, a unique event—no comparable event is seen in life.

Understand: a friend of mine—his son died. The boy was a minister; my friend thought soon he would be chief minister. He hoped one day he might be the prime minister of India. The boy died; he was in deep grief. He attempted suicide two or three times. The attempts were certainly half-hearted; otherwise why two or three times? Perhaps even that was a show. He is a politician; of a politician’s ways one can never be sure. He wept copiously.

I asked, ‘Why so disturbed? You have another son.’ He does. I asked, ‘If this second son had died, would you be so grieved? Answer honestly.’ He said, ‘I would not be so grieved if the second son died. Because I never wanted him. He was never accepted by me.’ He is, in his language, ordinary.

A father should not have an ‘ordinary’ son. But who is a father a father? An extraordinary son is the one who has become a minister; this one is ordinary—he runs a shop, does business; ordinary. From this second son there is no gratification of ego—so ordinary. From the other son, the ego was gratified. He was the father’s ambition. The father was trying to advance by placing his gun on the son’s shoulder. He wanted to be prime minister himself; could not. Now he was trying through the son.

He said to me, ‘If the second son had died, I would not be so sad. He was not accepted. Truth is, I did not even want people to know that he is my son.’ Until the first son died, people did not even know there was a second. He spoke only of one.

God is not against the most base; He does not claim the most high. Because existence has no ambition. It is not that He is on the side of Ram and against Ravan. Since both arise from Him, He does not reject Ravan; nor does He find pride in Ram. No claim there either.

It means: God, Tao, Dharma is supreme freedom. In it you may become whatever you choose. The entire responsibility is yours.

If you move contrary to God, you will suffer. And because of this a great confusion has arisen. Since if you move contrary you suffer, and if you move in accord you enjoy—many scriptures have misled the world by explaining it thus: whoever goes against Him, He punishes; whoever conforms, He rewards.

This is entirely wrong. If God punishes the contrary and rewards the compliant, then God’s mind is of a very ordinary sort—no greater than the human. Whoever praises and flatters, He lifts to the skies; whoever denies, sits in the tavern and not in the temple, He throws into hell. Christianity, Judaism, Islam—these three have distorted a natural phenomenon with human interpretations.

When you are not in accord with Him, He does not give you suffering—you suffer. Understand the difference. He does not give you anything. Like when you put your hand in fire, you are burned. Do not say ‘fire burns me’. If you take your hand away, you feel cool; if you bring it close, you feel heat. Fire goes on in its own nature. It is not eager to burn you or not to burn you. Fire has nothing to do with you. It burns; that is its nature. If you come close or go far, heat or coolness increases.

God’s nature is freedom. When you go away from freedom, you enter bondage—and bondage brings suffering. When you come near, you open—and freedom brings joy. But this joy and suffering depend on your coming and going. God does nothing in it. On His side there is no motivation, no intent. God neither gives you joy nor suffering; He neither sends you to heaven nor to hell. You go yourself. These are your journeys. He has nothing to do with them. Yes: when you go to hell, He does not stop you; when you go to heaven, He does not drag you. Existence does not coerce you.

And remember, it is good that existence does not coerce. If it did, perhaps you would never be fine again. Because the moment coercion is used, the mind becomes eager to go the opposite way. Even if you were forced into heaven, you would try to escape. Heaven does not give bliss; coercion gives suffering. If you go to hell by your own joy, you will find a great peace even there. You yourself went. And whatever is forbidden—that very thing we want to do. Wherever we are forced to go, we want to leave.

You all know by experience: the most pleasant thing becomes unpleasant if forced; and the most unpleasant becomes pleasant if you choose it. Because bliss lies in freedom. Understand this rightly: you chose, therefore there is freedom; the other imposed, therefore there is dependence. In dependence there is sorrow; in freedom, joy. Why? Because the more free you are, the more you become like God. The more dependent, the more contrary.

God is the law of life—not a person who gives. You walk on the path. Walk crookedly—you fall, break your leg. You do not say: gravity broke my leg; the earth’s pull broke my leg. What has gravity to do with your leg? Gravity is not a person sitting somewhere saying, ‘Look! He is walking crookedly—break his leg! This man walks straight—give him a reward!’ No one is there. Gravity is a law.

Tao means law. You walk crookedly; by your own doing you fall. You walk straight; by your own doing you walk. Gravity flows below; it is always present.

God is the supreme law of life. When you move contrary, you produce suffering for yourself. When you move in accord, you produce joy for yourself. When joy comes, understand that in some way you are in accord; when suffering comes, understand you are contrary.

If a man becomes merely a lover of joy, he will reach God. But we are lovers of sorrow. If you begin to recognize your joy—when it comes, why it comes; what state within is there when joy visits; what happens inside that tunes you to joy—if even this much you understand, you need no scripture, no guru. Joy is the great guru. Holding the thread of joy alone, keep seeking: within a few days the key will be in your hand with which you will open God.

But you are attached to sorrow. You do not even notice when you are happy, why, from where; what mood is there when joy glimmers; how your heart beats; how your breath flows; in what posture you are when joy comes near, and in what posture when joy recedes.

If you only recognize your joy, the work is done. That very recognition will bring you closer—because the rule is only this: whenever you are in accord with Him—even for a moment—sometimes by accident you come into accord. Since as you are, you move contrary; sometimes by accident, by coincidence, even without intending, you come into accord—and the window opens; a breeze, cool and fresh, fills you. But your old habits grip you; you do not recognize, and, recovering from the accident, you return to your old path.

People say: joy is momentary. Not because joy is momentary; because your habits are of sorrow. And sorrow is long. Not because sorrow is long; you are skilled. You are so skilled at creating sorrow that even if joy arrives, you will manufacture sorrow from it.

I have heard: Mulla Nasruddin was very ill. His doctors sent him to the mountains. Within five or seven days a telegram arrived for his doctor: ‘I am feeling wonderful; why?’ He is asking: ‘I am feeling great—why?’

You cannot trust it when you are happy. You too ask: ‘Something is wrong—how come I am happy?’ It cannot be! In sorrow you feel satisfied. Sorrow feels just right—well-known road, familiar terrain. Here you travel easily. In happiness you are unbalanced; you cannot understand. Until you manufacture sorrow from it…

I have heard of a man constantly worried, anxious, entangled and sad. He sought advice from a psychologist: what should I do? The psychologist said: ‘You look at the wrong side of life; you see the dark. Look at the bright. Life is not only night; there is day too. Not only thorns; there are flowers. Turn your gaze to flowers. Drop your pessimism; become an optimist.’ The man said, ‘All right, I will try.’

He began to try. In all matters he began to spread optimism. If someone asked, ‘How is business?’ he would say, ‘Very good—and tomorrow it will be even better.’ ‘How is your wife?’ ‘Very good—and tomorrow even better.’ He spoke well of everything, and held hope. But all became worried: he seemed even more anxious than before.

At last they asked, ‘What is the matter? You talk so much of optimism, yet you look so troubled.’ The man said, ‘Now I am worried about my optimism—that all I say is not going to happen. Conditions are very bad!’

Man lives by habits. You have no habit of joy and a very strong habit of sorrow. Surrounded by that habit, even when you stand before happiness, it can do nothing; you are too rigid; it looks like sorrow to you as well—you extract sorrow from it; you find something to justify your familiar pain—and then you feel at ease again.

In Lao Tzu’s reckoning, whenever you move toward Tao, showers of joy begin. Heaven and earth begin to meet; a sweet drizzle of nectar moves over you.

Wherever you find joy, even if the gurus say it is low, I tell you: wherever you find joy—even if you are in hell—then know: for some reason you have become joined with God. Whatever you are doing—even if it be sheer sin—within that sin, for some reason, knowingly or unknowingly, you have been united with God. Joy always comes only from Him.

If this remembrance stays with you, you have found the path from sin to virtue, the ray from sorrow to joy. If the ray is in your hand, the sun is not far. No matter how far the ray, the sun is not far. Hold the ray, and walking on the ray you will reach the sun one day.

‘And when its work is done, it does not claim ownership.’

It is supreme freedom.

‘It clothes and feeds the ten thousand things, yet claims no ownership over them.’

All life comes from it. Breath moves through it, prana beats because of it; yet it makes no claim.

‘Because it is without mind or desire, it is thought small or mean.’

This needs understanding. That Tao, that supreme Dharma of life—there is no vāsanā there, no chitta, no mind, no defilement, no thought. So people feel Tao is small and mean—because for us greatness lies in ego. We recognize only one greatness: that of the ego. Where the ego does not sit on a throne of glory, we feel all is petty. We worship only ego. God certainly cannot have an ego. If He had, against whom would it stand? God is supremely humble. Even to say ‘supremely humble’ is not right; we should only say there is no ego there. Ego stands against ‘the other’; for Him there is no other. So if we feel that there is no ambition, no desire, no mind, then we feel He is very small. For to us, the ambitious alone looks great.

If God stood among you, you would neither see nor recognize Him. He would simply stand. But you would not see, not recognize—because our difficulty is: we recognize only the one who proclaims and claims. Whether the claim be of wealth, of knowledge, of position—when someone announces, ‘I am something,’ then alone he appears great. But because God makes no announcement, Lao Tzu says: we might take Him to be small, mean.

‘Yet because He is the shelter of all things, without claiming them, He can also be called great.’

Someone may consider Him small, for there is no expansion of ambition. Another may call Him great, for all is His expanse—and yet, though the shelter of all, He makes no claim.

‘And since to the very end He does not claim greatness, His greatness is everlasting, His greatness abides.’

Claims can be shattered. In fact, only one who is afraid makes claims. Otherwise, what need to claim? Whatever you claim, notice: you are afraid, thus you claim. If you are in fear, you hide it behind your claim.

I have heard: in a noble family there was a banquet. The host seated a distinguished lady at his left hand during dinner. She felt a slight sting; in that country the right side is more honorable. She felt uneasy that she was placed on the left; she was not accorded the prestige she deserved. But how to say it? She found a way. She said to the host, ‘So many people have come, it must be troublesome for you to decide who sits where!’ The host replied—with a very valuable line—‘Those who matter, they don’t mind; and those who mind, they don’t matter.’ Those who are hurt have no value; those who have value do not even notice where they are seated.

You notice where you are seated only when there is fear within and you are not assured of your own dignity; you yourself do not trust your worth. Then you want to secure it. At the slightest thing you are disturbed. Someone laughs a little, and you are hurt—because you yourself know your condition is laughable. You know your state. You hide it, hold it together. Your personality is a pose; a contrived posture. Fear all around that someone may break it.

You have proclaimed your knowledge; you yourself are afraid—you know little. So if someone raises a small question, trouble begins. If someone offers a small refutation, you attack hard, to defend yourself, because you are afraid that if the attack grows, your defense line will break.

Therefore the truly wise do not argue with one another; they do not bring up matters that might create dispute. Everyone has found safe topics: ‘How is the weather? How are your children?’—things that cause no trouble. Say such things and escape. Anything that might break something, might cause opposition, is dangerous. You are not assured of yourself.

But what cause can God have to claim? He is assured.

At a crossroads in Rome, twelve beggars were sitting. All looked healthy—bodies still fit. A traveler thought: certainly lazy fellows, practicing the trade of begging. He stood and said, ‘This gold coin is for the one among you who is the laziest.’ Eleven jumped up and said, ‘I am the laziest!’ He said, ‘Wait. That man who is lying back there—this coin is for him.’ The eleven protested, ‘We are claiming, and you said: for the laziest! I say I am the laziest—and I can prove it!’ He said, ‘There is no question of proof. Only he claims who has no assurance within. That man is assuredly lazy—he did not even get up; did not come to take the coin; made no claim. What is there to claim? He is assured.’ And when he went to give him the coin, the man gestured: ‘Into my pocket!’

When you are assured, there is nothing to prove, nothing to claim. When you are not assured, you prove and claim. Thus a very amusing event has occurred: in the world only those have offered proofs of God who did not trust God. Those who have given arguments to prove God are not saints; they themselves do not know. They are not arguing with you; they are arguing with themselves.

When the Upanishads were first translated into Western languages, the thinkers there could not believe such books—what sort of books! Because there are no arguments. ‘God is’—the direct statement—but no argument to prove why He is. So they felt these books are more poetry than philosophy. For the books they knew had arguments: God is because of this, because of that. In the Upanishads there is no argument. And I say: therefore the Upanishads are religious books—because there is no question of giving arguments. The rishis of the Upanishads are assured: He is. The matter ends. There is no way to prove it; no need.

Whenever you set out to prove something, search within—and you will find your assurance is missing. The unbeliever tries to prove belief; the irreligious tries to prove religiosity. You try to prove only what you are not. What you are must be hidden; there is no need to prove it.

Lao Tzu says: He has no claim, no proclamation of greatness; therefore His greatness is established, ever-available.

Now pause five minutes, sing the kirtan, and then go.

That is all for today.