Tao Upanishad #85

What Lao Tzu calls “non-ability” is the name of the deepest ability. It is not laziness; it is the ultimate state of rest. Nor is it tamas; it is a most incandescent state of energy.

Understand the difference clearly. The confusion is natural, because if someone is sitting inactive it appears to us that he is lazy. But all who sit inactive are not lazy. The one we call lazy does not truly sit empty; the work of the mind goes on. Perhaps the lazy man does nothing with his body, but with the mind he is fully busy. Where those who are bodily active are running, he too runs with his desires and cravings. In the mind there is no difference. He seems lazy to us because he is not running as we are. But he too is running.

If laziness becomes absolute—what Lao Tzu calls non-doing—then laziness itself turns into ability. But the non-doing must be total. Not only must the body stop; the mind must also stop. No activity whatsoever should remain. Then spiritual growth is not far away. The very word “laziness” triggers condemnation in our minds, because we all live by purpose, by activity, by action, by result. We have condemned the lazy utterly. He is our opposite, so we can scarcely imagine that there could be a state of laziness that becomes spirituality. The state of supreme laziness becomes spirituality—when not only the body stands still, the mind also comes to rest.

What we ordinarily call laziness is not freedom from the craving to act. The craving for action is fully present, but the body lacks the capacity to run with that craving. Our common laziness is like calling a eunuch a celibate. A eunuch is “celibate,” not because there is any lack of sexual urge, but because the body does not support it. Lao Tzu calls “non-ability” the person submerged in non-doing, in supreme rest—who has tremendous energy, more than you, because you are spending yours and he is not, whose body could be more dynamic than yours because all energy is gathered within—yet despite that energy, there is no urge in the mind to run. Therefore the body is still, the mind is still. This stillness of body and mind is called meditation.

To the people absorbed in work, meditators look lazy.

Ramana Maharshi sat on Arunachala for years. Lanza del Vasto, an Italian thinker and a devotee of Gandhi, came to Ramana’s ashram, seeking a master in India. He wrote in his memoirs that seeing Ramana he felt, “This is sheer laziness.” A devotee of Gandhi would feel so, for Gandhi’s whole emphasis is on karma, on service, on doing something. Lanza del Vasto wrote, “This may be spirituality, but not for us. It seems meaningless that someone just sits empty. What will come of sitting empty? There is so much suffering in the world—relieve it! People are hungry, poor, unhappy—serve them! Do something! Through doing, God can be found. What will a man get who just sits under a tree?” From Arunachala Lanza del Vasto went straight to Wardha. He noted in his diary, “On arriving in Wardha I felt this is something meaningful. Do something! Only through doing can anything be achieved.”

Gandhi and Ramana are exact opposites. Gandhi is engaged in work all the time. If even an inch of energy goes unused, Gandhi feels guilty. In the bathroom he is bathing while someone stands outside reading the newspaper aloud so that even that time is utilized. While he is being massaged he dictates replies to letters so that the time is used. He sleeps only out of compulsion; even that time seems wasted. Every single thing is valued by the criterion of action.

Ramana sits on the opposite shore. Ramana is thoroughly Taoist. Lao Tzu would be delighted to see Ramana. He sits empty; he does not do anything. His very being—pure being—being without any action is a great event. And the person who goes to him with the spirit of doing will return empty-handed, for he will not be able to connect. Only one who is ready to sit empty with him, to drown in supreme idleness, can relate to him—one who is ready to quiet not just the body but also the mind. Then very quickly a connection with Ramana happens. And then there is a revelation, a recognition of what a tremendous event this silent consciousness is.

Action is petty, however great; the falling away of action is a great event. But to see it you need actionless eyes; to recognize it you need an actionless heart. People like Ramana or Lao Tzu remain unrecognized by us; we cannot see them. For they speak of a different alchemy altogether, a key to life’s mystery from a wholly other dimension. Why then this emphasis on non-doing?

First, whenever you are active you go outside yourself. Action is the door that leads out, because action means being related to the other—to some object, to some person. Doing something means you are no longer alone; something else is attached. Non-action means you are alone—no person, no object, no event, nothing attached. Only in non-action does the sense of the Self arise. In action, attention must be on the other; action is relationship with the other. Therefore through action no one ever attains self-knowledge. This does not mean a self-knower will not act. Action can happen through a self-knower, but no one attains self-knowledge through action.

Second, remember: whenever we engage in action, no matter how much we claim to have no desire for results, if there were no desire for results we would not engage in action at all. That is precisely Arjuna’s difficulty with Krishna. Arjuna’s difficulty is every man’s difficulty. Krishna says, “Act, and do not desire the fruits.” To Arjuna it is clear that only two things are simple: either I do nothing—then there is no question of results; or if I do something, how can I do it without desiring results? Only if there is desire for results will I do anything.

The Gita has been much studied and read, but it has not descended into India’s life anywhere, because the statement is very subtle: do not desire the fruits, and act. This becomes possible only when someone has attained self-knowledge. Then action will happen without desire for results. But then action will be like play, like a performance, without any purpose—purposeless.

The moment one enters action, he enters it because of desire. And Lao Tzu says, when we wander in desire, we go far from ourselves. Drop all action and you will settle within yourself; there remains no avenue to go out—all doors close. And once this inner settling happens…

There are two kinds of people in the world, two types—what Jung called extrovert and introvert. Some are outward-turning, some inward-turning. These are the two basic types. If a person settles in the Self and is extrovert, then action will continue in his life, but without any desire for results. If he is introvert, then both the desire for results and action itself will fall away.

Krishna, Mahavira, or Buddha, even after enlightenment, were absorbed in one or another form of action. Krishna was absorbed in vast action; Mahavira and Buddha in smaller, lesser action. But Lao Tzu or Ramana remained utterly without action. Their personality structure is thoroughly introvert. When their inner consciousness awakens, they become a silent lake. If anyone wants to benefit from them he will have to come to them. If no one comes, they will not go out to invite.

Buddha and Mahavira will walk, will travel to reach others. They want to share what they have found. In their personality there is a flow outward. Buddha and Mahavira are like a river that flows. Ramana and Lao Tzu are like a lake that has come to rest. The water is the same. The river may flow past your village so that you may bathe and quench your thirst. But the lake will remain resting on its mountain. You will have to travel to the lake; the lake will not send you an invitation.

These are two kinds of people. They are two kinds in ignorance as well, and two kinds in enlightenment. If an ignorant person is introvert, he becomes lazy. Understand this rightly. If a wise person is introvert, he becomes non-active. If an ignorant person is extrovert, he becomes a mischief-maker; his action becomes a disturbance. He will do something; he cannot remain without doing. Even if doing harm, no matter—he will do.

The entire human history is largely the creation of such extrovert ignoramuses. They keep doing something; they cannot stop. Doing is their disease. Politicians, social reformers, revolutionaries—they are all a fraternity of troublemakers. They are extrovert ignorants. They do not know what they are doing; they have no awareness of what will result. They cannot refrain; they must do something. The consequences of their doing are disastrous—wars, revolutions. Great upheavals come through them, and man sinks day by day into the abyss of suffering.

If an extrovert becomes wise, action will flow from him—as it flows from Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira. That action will be for the welfare of many, for the happiness of many. But this distinction remains.

This distinction is not of the soul; it is of the mental structure surrounding the soul. Over many lifetimes a person gathers introversion or extroversion; we are born with it. Even when a child is born there is a difference in introversion and extroversion. Psychologists—especially Jean Piaget, who studied children lifelong—say that even on the first day a child reveals personality differences. An introvert child will mostly lie with eyes closed, hardly moving. Only when hungry or thirsty will he open his eyes and make a little noise. An extrovert child from the first day starts looking around, stretches hands and feet, tries to grasp things. Piaget even says that in the mother’s womb the difference between introvert and extrovert appears. The extrovert kicks in the womb; he begins his mischief there—he is a revolutionary even there. The introvert lies quietly in the womb—as if he is or is not, no difference. These are the molds of our personality.

Laziness is the introversion of the ignorant. Non-doing, actionlessness, is the introversion of the wise. Action, action filled with disturbance, is the extroversion of the ignorant. Service—entering action for the welfare of others—is the extroversion of the wise. But remember, whether action or non-action, the primary condition is to settle in oneself. Only then is anything auspicious. Before that, whether you sit idle or you act, both are inauspicious.

Even so, note this: the lazy carry far less responsibility for inauspiciousness. The lazy have not done much harm. It is strange that we condemn the lazy without realizing that history bears no great stain upon them. Set Hitler, Napoleon, Mussolini, Timur, Nadir on one side—and try to name even five lazy men who caused comparable harm. You will not find the names of lazy people in history, for they never created any disturbance. History records only the troublemakers. The lazy have never done evil, because even to do evil one must do. They do not. Certainly, they have not done good either, because doing holds no charm for them.

If you consider only the final account of life, the lazy are preferable. They did no good; they did no evil either. And the industrious have done little good and much harm. Even if a lazy man does something bad, it is a passive badness. If someone’s house is on fire, he will sit and watch. He will not go to set it on fire; he will also not go to put it out. If you can blame him, it is only this: you sat and watched—why did you not put the fire out? If someone is being robbed he will not protect; if a woman’s honor is being violated he will sit with eyes closed. If there is any bad act in him it is only the badness of non-participation—he stands at a distance, he does not get entangled in the disturbance. But the lazy man has never actively perpetrated evil.

Yet we condemn him, because our entire education is of ambition. We sow in every child the feeling—do something, because by doing you will reach somewhere. In the West a new reflection has begun, and in the coming century it would be no surprise if we must revise the entire evaluation of history thus far. That is why I say Lao Tzu has a great future—even for the ignorant. Western thinkers are continually reflecting; hundreds of books have been published on this theme: man’s capacity for work is passing into the hands of machines. By the close of this century, automated machines will do all of man’s work. So the education that has trained man for work will have to be changed, because we will not be able to give people work. Until now we taught that the worker is superior and the lazy are bad—because the world needed work. Soon machines will do the work.

Marshall McLuhan—one of this century’s great thinkers—has said: by the end of this century we will have to teach in every school that laziness is a supreme virtue. Because only those who can be lazy will be able to sit peacefully; otherwise they will demand work. And we will have no work. Machines will do it—and do it better than man. Man cannot compete with machines.

So either we will have to give people useless work—like the old stories where someone awakens a spirit, a genie, and the genie says, “I have only one condition: I will serve you, but I must have work every moment.” The man who awakened him was overjoyed—what a boon, a servant who wants work every minute! He did not know the danger. Within an hour or two all his tasks were finished. He could scarcely utter a job before the spirit returned, “Done. What next?” By evening the man panicked. All the work was over and the spirit stood over his head, “Work?” Because the spirit had said that if there was no work he would wring his neck. The man ran to a fakir and said, “I am in great trouble; only you can tell me what to do. Otherwise this spirit will kill me.” The fakir said, “Do one thing. Set a ladder against your house and tell him to climb up to the top and then come down, and then go up again, and then down again. Whenever there is no work, point him to the ladder so that he goes up and down.”

Scientists are saying that a similar trouble is coming for man—we will have to give him ladder-climbing kinds of work, because there will be no real work left for us. Perhaps only then will Lao Tzu become understandable for the first time. Supreme laziness will turn into a supreme virtue.

Even today people look forward to the holiday, but on holidays they are restless—what to do? The habit of doing is so strong; there is no practice of sitting empty. So even on the holiday people do a lot. American statistics say people tire more on holidays than on workdays. They rush to the ocean, to the mountains, drive hundreds of miles. On Monday the offices are full of tired people. It should not be so—the holiday was for rest. On holidays there are the most accidents, most deaths—suicides and murders. The holiday is dangerous—just one day a week. Imagine when the whole week is holiday, and machines do all the work for the whole year and the whole life—and you are left empty. Then you will realize that what we have taught for three, four, five thousand years—“Do work; work is God; to sit idle is sin”—will sit on our chest and clutch our throat.

This entire education will have to be changed. We taught people to work because life demanded it—there was no food, no clothing. That condition will change. Laziness will not remain as bad in the coming century as it was in the past.

And when Lao Tzu speaks of supreme non-ability he is not talking merely of outer laziness; he is speaking of inner laziness too: when not even the urge to do arises, when no desire to go anywhere is born; when even if death comes this very moment there is no sense of anything left incomplete. He calls this state supreme non-doing. One who enters this supreme non-doing attains the deepest secret of life. He enters that temple which we call the divine.

What is Buddha doing sitting under the Bodhi tree? He is sunk in supreme laziness. He is doing nothing; he has dropped doing. What have renunciates done for centuries? They have dropped doing. Sannyas itself means: one has left behind the whole world of doing, the world of commotion; one has sat down empty. The East understood this, and the East has given great respect even to its idlers.

You may not realize it: the word we have, buddhu (blockhead), comes from Buddha. If someone is sitting idle at home, we say to him, “Why are you sitting like a buddhu?” That carries the old memory that we know Buddha once sat empty under the Bodhi tree for years. Even today we say, “Why are you sitting like a buddhu! Get up, do something.” We have forgotten that this word came from Buddha. But the feeling hidden behind the word shows what must have arisen in our minds even on seeing Buddha. We gave respect because the glory manifested. We gave respect because the light manifested. But we knew: this man is sitting empty; he is not doing anything. In the language of doing, what did Buddha do? For twelve years in the forests, what was Mahavira doing? Standing empty. Sitting empty. Trying only to empty out, so that nothing remains, only a void remains.

But we are clever. We stick labels even on these people sitting in empty voidness so that the sense of “doing” remains. We say, “Mahavira is practicing austerities.” That is our deftness and our language: we say, “Mahavira is doing sadhana.” Buddha is sitting empty; we say, “Buddha is meditating.” By saying “meditating,” it sounds as if he is doing something. And Buddha kept explaining all his life that as long as you are doing, meditation will not be; meditation cannot be done. When you are not doing anything at all, the state that remains—its name is meditation. But we too have our trouble. All our words are tied to action. And when we change the words, the entire feeling changes. When we say, “Mahavira is doing sadhana in the forest,” a notion arises in our minds that some great work is happening. Mahavira is not doing anything; he is dropping work.

Words are great deceivers. In 1952 there was a question in Parliament. The nilgai is found in the Himalayas. It was creating a lot of disturbance. Its numbers had increased; it was damaging fields. But it could not be shot, because the word gai—cow—was attached to it. Because of the term nilgai, it could not be shot, could not be poisoned; and it was damaging the fields. You will be surprised to know that Parliament decided to change its name—replace “blue cow” with “blue horse,” nilghoda. After that they shot them, and there was no uproar in India.

Who cares if a blue horse is killed? But had they killed a blue cow, the Jan Sangh would have... It’s the same animal, but the name! You will read in the newspapers too: “Blue horses have increased; they were culled”—nobody cares. But “blue cow”! Even you would feel offended, as if India’s religion has been wounded. In America and Europe it was also ridiculed when its name was changed. And changing the name solved the problem.

In many areas of life we are doing exactly this. You ask, “When did lazy people ever become spiritual?” I ask you: Apart from the lazy, when did anyone ever become spiritual? If you change the language a little, it will become clear to you. In place of sadhana, put emptiness; in place of meditation, put non-doing—and then you will see that all of these are supreme idlers. And until you understand this directly and stop wandering in your own words, no understanding can arise that will be of any use.

But even if you say this to Buddhists—that Buddha is supremely lazy—they too get upset. A Buddhist monk came to see me. I told him: Don’t use words like sadhana and tapascharya (austerities), because then the industrious man thinks they must have been people of his own category. He is doing work in the world; these people are doing work toward liberation—but still, they are doing. Better to say: Buddha is supremely lazy, doing nothing at all. And until you too come to a state of doing nothing, no relationship with truth, with the very center of life, will be established. That Buddhist monk said, “Supreme laziness? To call Buddha lazy! That will deeply hurt Buddhists.”

It will hurt, because we value action and do not value laziness. Laziness too has value. If action has value in this world, laziness has value in the other world. Its rules are exactly the opposite.

Whatever I know, I should know clearly that I know it. And whatever I do not know, I should know clearly that I do not know it. If such clarity is there, the seeker of truth is walking on the right path.

But ordinarily there is no such clarity. About that of which you have not the faintest idea, you still think you know. The theist thinks he knows that God is; the atheist thinks he knows that God is not. But both claim to know.

Who knows? Does this theist really know that God is? Looking at the theist, it does not seem that he has come to know of God’s being. For the fact of God becomes known only when a person has become almost God; before that, it does not. We can only know that which we have become. The only way to know God is to become God. Without becoming divine, how will you know the divine?

So the theist does not know, because he himself says, “I am searching for God, I am trying to attain God, I am practicing, doing austerities, going on pilgrimages.” He has not yet found God, has not known; he merely believes that God is. And he mistakes this belief for knowing. This is dishonesty. His claim is false. And no journey begun in falsehood can end in truth. If you start with a lie, how will the end be truth? From a lie only greater lies will arise.

Opposite him stands the atheist. He says, “There is no God.” But his claim is no different; he too says, “I know.” How can you know that there is no God? Have you searched every corner of existence and not found him? Even science cannot say it has scoured every corner of existence. Much remains to be known. God could be hidden in that remainder. As long as even an inch remains unknown, no honest man can deny the possibility of God; he cannot say, “He is not.” Only when we know the whole, when nothing remains to be known, when every grain has been sifted and all mystery has disappeared, can someone say there is no God. Before that there is no way. Therefore atheism is the ultimate falsehood.

Theism is a lie, because it too says, “We have known the mystery.” And the atheist also says, “We have known: it is not.” Their difference is only of yes and no, but in their claim there is no difference. Their stupidity is equal, and they are equally dishonest.

Agnostic means—acknowledging the unknowable, being a mystic—saying, “I do not know; God may be, may not be. I do not know.” Therefore I cannot stand in any doctrine, any camp, until I know—until my experience, my own experience, makes it clear to me. On the strength of someone else, on the authority of any scripture—Veda, Quran, Bible—or of any Buddha or Mahavira, on the basis that someone else has known—on that basis your knowing has no value. Agnostic means: I do not know, and until I know I will refrain from making a judgment.

This does not mean I will stop seeking. In fact, only as long as you do not decide can you seek. Once you decide, the search stops. If you say, “It is!” the door closes. What is there then to search? If you say, “It is not!” nothing remains to be searched; the door is closed. Only the mystic keeps the door open. He says, “I will keep the door open, I will go on searching until it becomes my experience, until I know for myself what is; until then I will make no declaration.”

This undecided search, this groping in mystery, is such a daring undertaking that very few people perform this act of honesty. It takes great courage. Because it means I stand in the dark. It means I do not know whether there is ground under my feet or not. It means the direction I am going may or may not be the destination. It means the path may be only circular, leading nowhere, only making me wander. It even means there may be no such thing as truth at all. Great courage is needed—to refrain from decision, to avoid doctrines, sides, and biases—because then there will be no security.

The theist is secure; the atheist is also secure. Both have scriptures, doctrines. Both stand stiff-backed supported by their theories. The agnostic will wobble; his legs will tremble. He has no support, no ground, no prop. There is insecurity, deep darkness. And in that deep darkness he knows he does not yet have light—and he is not willing to close his eyes and pretend a false light.

It is a great discipline to accept the mystery as mystery. And remember, this is the mark of a person of integrity: he will say yes only to the extent he knows; beyond that he will say neither yes nor no. He will hold back from decision. The mind will urge, “Decide!” Because the moment you decide, the hassle is over; the search ends; you can rest. You feel reassured. Hence the mind says, decide quickly. The weaker the mind, the quicker it decides. That is why there are so many theists in the world. And there is not the slightest difficulty in turning these theists into atheists.

A revolution took place in Russia. Two hundred million people were theists; after the revolution, two hundred million became atheists. Russia was among the most deeply theistic lands on this earth. The Christianity there—the Orthodox—was very ancient, traditional, very religious. But great religion proved a deception. Even the communists were astonished. They had not expected that so swiftly such a vast society of two hundred million, such an old tradition, so much religion, so many churches—after the revolution, with a mere gesture everything would change and people would become atheists. They too were surprised. They had thought there would be a great struggle, that it would take hundreds of years before people could be shifted from theism to atheism.

They were mistaken, because they did not see a basic sameness between theism and atheism: dishonesty. People were theists because theism provided support. Now they became atheists because atheism provides support. Yesterday the government was in theists’ hands; now it is in atheists’ hands. Yesterday the gun was in the theists’ hands; now it is in the atheists’. People go wherever security lies. They are seeking security, not truth. That is why two hundred million became atheists at once.

Today China has seven to eight hundred million people. There is a very ancient tradition of the Buddhists; of Lao Tzu, of Confucius—very ancient traditions. The oldest religious currents in the world are in China. The very seeds of the Lao Tzu of whom we speak are there. But a revolution happened and the whole country—the whole country—forgot Lao Tzu, forgot Confucius, forgot Buddha. Chairman Mao Tse-tung remained the sole authority on truth. Where people once took the name of God, people now take only the name of Chairman Mao Tse-tung.

How does this happen? Such a vast nation—the largest on earth, with the greatest numbers, with an ancient heritage—suddenly drops the whole tradition. The issue is only this: wherever there is security. Yesterday there was security in the church and temple; today there is security in the office of the Communist Party. The statues of Buddha have been removed; the portraits of Mao Tse-tung have been hung. Little children, who once would have said, “God gives us bread,” now in China say, “Mao Tse-tung gives us bread.” Mao has been seated exactly in the place of God.

Man changes so quickly because man is dishonest; he is concerned with self-protection. So wherever he finds armor, he hides there. There is no difficulty in turning this world theistic or atheistic. But to change an agnostic is very difficult. You can make a theist into an atheist, an atheist into a theist; to change an agnostic is very difficult. Because he says, “Until I know, I will make no decision. I will remain undecided. I will endure the pain of indecision, but I will not decide—not hastily.”

Only people of such courage ultimately become capable of knowing the truth.

Therefore I have said: there is only one honesty, and that is to make a clear division within yourself between what I know and what I do not know—and regarding what I do not know, not to accept any opinion at any price. Then the search will continue. There is a deep thirst for truth in man’s heart. But you grab at false truths, borrowed truths. Because of those borrowed truths the search ceases. You are thirsty, and someone gives you false water; you drink and begin to think your thirst is quenched. The thirst is not quenched, the suffering continues; but the search for water stops, because whenever you begin to search, the thought arises: we have already drunk, we already have water.

Everyone has religion, and no one has religion. Everyone has God, and no one has God. From “God” and “religion” as you hold them, nothing is gained; you remain as you are. The thirst continues, the suffering continues, but the search stops. These are substitutes—dangerous ones.

A real seeker should not be in a hurry to decide. One should pause, gather oneself, and continue the search. The day the search brings you to where the mystery of life is revealed, decide then. But even that day you will not call yourself a theist or an atheist. That day these words will seem paltry. That day yes and no will have no meaning. That day you will laugh at the whole debate. That day you will say, those who say yes are just as unknowing as those who say no. That day you will say that the divine contains both—yes and no; theism and atheism both merge into it. That day you will say that even these two are incomplete; only when you put them together can God be complete. For God is so vast that he contains all his contradictions. That day you will not belong to any such party-line. Whoever has known has absorbed all opposites.

A shortcut is absolutely not possible. And understand another thing carefully: the journey will not be long. In fact, there will be no journey at all.

It is almost like this: a man is standing with his back to the sun and keeps walking. He has already walked a thousand miles. We tell him today: you have walked a thousand miles with your back to the sun—that is why you are lost in darkness and are seeking light. He asks, “Then to face the sun must I walk another thousand miles?” We say, no, you don’t have to walk a thousand miles. He asks, “Is there some shortcut—two, four, five miles?” We say, even that is not needed; simply change your direction. You are keeping your back to the sun—turn your face to it. Because the sun is not tied to any one spot. And even when you were walking with your back to the sun, the sun was right behind you all along.

If the divine were fixed in one place, or if your nature were imprisoned somewhere, we could have gone far from it. We cannot go far; we can only turn our back. So even if someone has kept his back to his nature for lifetimes, it makes no difference. If today he agrees to turn around, he will enter his nature.

Therefore I neither say you must walk back as far as you walked away, nor do I say a shortcut is possible. There is simply no need for a shortcut—because there is no walking to do, only a change of orientation.

Consider this: darkness has filled this room for thousands of years, and we say, “Light a lamp.” Someone asks, “Will we have to keep the lamp burning for thousands of years for the darkness to end? This darkness is so ancient—how can it vanish at once? Is there some quick way?” We would say, there is neither delay nor the question of haste. Light the lamp and darkness is gone. Darkness has no antiquity; ignorance has no antiquity. However long it has been there, it does not form layers that must be cut through. A single ray of knowing—and darkness is dispelled, ignorance drops.

Nor is this true of only one person, that he has gone far from his nature; all have gone far. But going “far” only means they have been walking with their back turned. In truth, no one can go far from his nature. How could you? Nature means that which you are. Who would go far? If nature and you were two, you could have left nature and run away. Nature means you. So how will you go far? There is no way. In truth, understand the definition of nature. Nature is that which cannot be left. Whatever can be left is otherness; it is not your nature. Nature means that which cannot be separated from you. Try a thousand devices—you still cannot become other than your nature. So first, you cannot go far from your nature, you cannot abandon it, you cannot become its opposite.

Then the question arises: why does Lao Tzu keep saying, “Dive into your nature! Enter your nature! Be established in your nature!” If we cannot lose it, must his words be wrong? They are not wrong either. We can become unconscious of our nature; we can be inattentive to it; we can drop our attention to it. We can lose the remembrance of our nature, not the nature itself. Like a diamond in your pocket—you may forget it is there, but the diamond is not lost. Whether you remember it or not, the diamond is in the pocket. Your nature is within you. When you wander in objects, desires, cravings, forgetfulness happens. Therefore the sages of India have said: God is not to be attained; only remembrance of the Lord. Just remembrance, not attainment. Because only that which has been lost needs to be attained. God cannot be lost—only remembered.

But we manage to extract futility out of everything. So there are people “remembering God,” chanting “Ram-Ram, Ram-Ram.” They have turned their shawl into a “Ram shawl,” covered with Ram-Ram. Remembrance of the Lord means that what is hidden within me becomes evident to me. By repeating Ram-Ram awareness will not arise. Let my eyes, which have been wandering outward, turn within; let my ears, which listen outside, begin to listen within; let my mind, which thinks about the external, turn inward—let its lamp, its light, fall inside.

This very moment you can be established in your nature, because in truth you already are. No one has ever been able to dislodge you from there, nor ever will. That is why, even after wandering for thousands of births, you never truly wander away. Your capacity to reclaim it is, at every instant, exactly what it has always been; not the slightest decrease. If you wish, right now, you can turn around. If there is any obstacle, it is the obstacle of habit—not of distance from your nature. If there is an obstacle, it is that you have been looking in one direction so long that your neck has become stiff. You have stood at the window for a year without once looking back; the neck has stiffened. The house is behind, the room is behind where you can rest. But you say, “It’s very difficult; it seems I have gone very far.” You haven’t gone far—only a kind of paralysis has set into the neck.

Therefore all the methods are to remove this paralysis. There is no method to attain God; God is already attained. Only your neck has stiffened from looking outside; it has forgotten how to turn back. You just have to teach it to turn back. All yoga, all techniques, are like a massage to loosen the nerves of your neck a little. Let the neck loosen, the tight muscles relax, the neck turn—and you will find that which you have never lost. Whatever can be lost is not your nature; it can only be forgotten.

Therefore the whole matter rests on two words: remembrance and forgetfulness. Gurdjieff called his entire discipline “self-remembering,” atma-smaran. Let the remembrance of yourself arise. You are; the power of awareness is; but the link between the two is missing. It is almost as if a vina rests in your house—music is entirely hidden there, strings ready for the lightest touch to bring a resonance. You too are standing there; your fingers are alive. Only the touch of the fingers on the strings is needed, and the hidden music will manifest. But you don’t remember that you have fingers. Or you see the vina but not your fingers; or you see both but the thought to pluck does not arise. Everything is present. Nothing new has to be brought. Within what already is, only a new coordination, a new arrangement, is needed. That new arrangement is called yoga; that new arrangement is called sadhana.

No, the benefit of activity is never the same as that of inactivity. But from the state you are in, becoming inactive is impossible. First you have to be made totally active. A few things need to be understood.

First, a leap happens only from an extreme. If you want to jump out of this room, you cannot jump while standing in the middle; you must go to the edge. Either go to this extreme, one pole, or to the other extreme, the other pole. The leap is taken from the extreme, not from the middle. And you are in the middle. Neither is your activity complete enough to be at an extreme, nor is your inactivity complete enough to be at an extreme. If someone tells you to sit inactive, you cannot sit inactive—activity continues. If someone tells you to be totally active, even then the mind keeps thinking, “Why this useless running around? Let’s calm down, sit quietly.” When you are active, inactivity tempts you; when you are inactive, activity calls you. You are half-and-half.

Active meditation methods first make you fully active. They bring you to the place from which the leap can happen: where we get tired of activity, where your whole mind and life-energy begin to say—Now stop! I want to take you to that limit where all your energy says, Stop! No more! In that moment the leap can happen and you can become inactive. Before that you will not become inactive. Before you can be quiet, you must throw out all the madness within you. That is the purpose of activity: to bring out the hidden madness inside you. If it remains hidden, it remains with you; if it remains hidden it will go on creating inner obstacles. If it comes out, you become light. When the storm passes, you are silent.

I myself reached that space through inactivity. So in the beginning I told people also to be inactive, as Lao Tzu says. But I found it does not get understood; if I tell a hundred people, perhaps one person understands what it means to be inactive. That was my own experience. But there was a mistake in it. I was trying to make my experience everyone’s experience.

So earlier when my emphasis was to enter directly into inactivity, it was because of me. There was an error in it. The error was that I thought that just as it happened to me, exactly so it would happen to others. By continuously trying to make people inactive I realized it is difficult. These people have not yet been fully active, so they cannot become inactive. So it is not straightforward, not easy to make them inactive. First it is necessary to take them into activity. My water must have been at ninety‑nine degrees, so at one hundred it boiled. It must have come to ninety‑nine degrees over many lifetimes of activity. So it seemed to me that it was only a matter of one degree; standing at the edge, the jump would happen. Because of that I began speaking to you about inactivity.

The same is what Lao Tzu is doing—because of his own case. Therefore Lao Tzu’s words could not be of much use to many. The statement is absolutely right, but he is speaking with himself in view.

Then the more I experimented with people, I saw that someone is at fifty degrees, someone at forty. From one extra degree he cannot make the jump. And even if by effort he adds one degree, the one at fifty reaches fifty‑one—nothing much changes; he says, “Nothing is happening.” The one at ninety‑nine says, “Everything has happened,” because he turns into steam. My impression that one degree does everything was because of my own situation. Then I saw in many people that even if ten degrees are added, nothing happens. Then it became clear that whoever is not at ninety‑nine degrees cannot jump.

So now I am teaching you to go mad so that you heat up to ninety‑nine degrees. And then I tell you to stop when I see that you are boiling, that you have no way to go any further; now the leap can happen. If you stop, in this very moment the leap will happen.

Activity is the means to take you into inactivity. The goal is inactivity. All actions are to bring you to the point where you are utterly actionless. All doing is to reach that place where nothing remains to be done and supreme rest happens.

There is no reason for despair. The past is long; the load feels heavy. But the burden is not because of the past; it is because you are holding on to it. If the burden were inherently due to the past, despair would indeed be natural. Then I would not even tell you to drop it—because with such an endless past it would be impossible. If the task were to unload the past itself, it couldn’t be done. But the burden is not holding you—you are holding the burden.

The wonder is precisely this: because you are clutching it, it appears to weigh upon you. Let go; letting go can happen in a single instant. It took billions of years to accumulate, but dropping can be instantaneous. A man may gather wealth all his life; giving it away can happen in a moment. He will not say, “It took me fifty years to collect this, so it will take at least fifty years to donate it.”

A man once brought a thousand gold coins to Ramakrishna as an offering. Ramakrishna said, “What will I do with these? Go and throw them into the Ganges.” The man went—and did not return for a long time. Ramakrishna asked a monk to see what was happening. Of course, the man was counting—throwing one coin at a time, ringing each coin on a stone to hear the sound, and a crowd had gathered. One… two… each one thrown only after the metallic clink satisfied him. When the monk reported this, Ramakrishna said, “Fool! You needed time to collect, and collecting demands counting. Throwing does not. You should have tossed the whole bundle at once. When you are throwing, what need is there to keep accounts? And why the ringing?”

But his habit of accumulation had slipped into the act of renunciation. He knew nothing else. This is the obstacle. You have amassed for millions of years; you can leave in a single moment. You are holding on; the past is not holding you. The past is dead—how can it hold you? It is ash, dust upon you; you can brush it off.

So there is no need to be discouraged. And if you are not able to put it down, do not think it is because the load is too great. Your grip is deep; identification is strong; there is attachment. Our difficulty is that we wish to drop what we are still inwardly attached to. When we hear talk of renunciation and imagine supreme bliss will follow, we resolve to drop. But our inner attachments promise some taste, some pleasure; because of that expectation we keep holding on.

In this regard, become very clear. Whatever you intend to drop, be fully explicit with yourself: Do I have any investment in this? Do I still hope to get something from it? If hope remains, how will you let go? This is our hitch: we cling because we hope to gain from what we cling to. And when we hear the saints, greed arises for what they speak of as well. That too is greed, not understanding. “So much bliss!” Kabir says, “Amrit is raining.” Kabir says, “Kabir dances while nectar showers from the sky.” The greedy listen, and their tongues water: “May that nectar rain on us too.” Then they think, “Kabir says: drop all desires and nectar will rain—let’s drop desires,” but for the sake of that nectar. Greed again.

Meanwhile every worldly desire has its own greed tied to it. If I leave this desire, what of the pleasure from my wife? If I let go of wealth, what of that pleasure? If I renounce position, what of that taste? For us, both spirituality and the world are forms of greed; hence our great dilemma.

There is an old Panchatantra tale. A “wise” man placed two haystacks at equal distance from a donkey. The donkey kept thinking, “Shall I go left?” The left looked inviting. Then, “But the right is just as close; perhaps I should go right.” If he moved right, the left would be lost; if he moved left, the right would be lost. They say the donkey died hungry, immersed in contemplation between the two.

Donkeys are great contemplatives! They look so pensive standing around—always thinking. That famous sculpture, The Thinker, by Rodin—very highly regarded in the West. But stand beside a donkey and see: even Rodin could not sculpt a thinker like the donkey appears, standing there and thinking.

The donkey thought and thought. Hunger grew, but he could not decide: left or right? Because one had to be left. He was unwilling to leave even one; he wanted both. In trying to gain both, he lost both. There is a saying: “Accomplish one rightly and all is accomplished.” The donkey knew nothing of it. He could only go to one heap.

This is the state of everyone’s mind. What appears in the world seems worth gaining. And what the saints say also seems worth gaining. The mind gets stuck between two greeds. Sometimes you think, “I will drop everything.” Immediately you see: the pleasures you get by holding on will be lost. So you keep holding. Yet the saints’ call also pulls you—you want that as well.

Then you invent strategies: “How can I drop? This is the burden of many births. It’s not so easy. I’ll do it tomorrow, the day after, gradually.” You postpone—out of greed, not because the load is heavy. “Let me enjoy one more day. If I must leave the wife tomorrow, one more day of love! If I must leave this mansion, I can stay till tomorrow. What’s the hurry?”

And what the saints say never becomes fully trustworthy for you. What the non-saints do seems reliable—there are big crowds. What the non-saints do is visible; what the saints say is invisible. Kabir may be seeing nectar shower, but we see nothing. We see Kabir; we do not see the nectar; no rain anywhere. From Kabir we get a glimmer—surely he has found something, otherwise how could he dance like this? We too want that. But it is not clearly visible.

In this world everything is visible; in that realm everything is invisible. Hence the wise have said: half a loaf in hand is better than a whole loaf far away. Who knows whether the distant loaf will still be there when you arrive—or is it just a mirage? So, enjoy what is in hand. And if a trick could be found to keep enjoying this while also getting that which is far, we try exactly that. We don’t want to let go of what we have, and we also want what we don’t have.

But remember: your hands are full of the world; until your hands are empty, the Divine cannot descend. The throne must be vacant for That.

Therefore, in my view, rather than dying hungry between two haystacks, it is better to go—left or right, but go. If you want the world, then gain it wholly. Then don’t say, “It is a burden, I want to be free.” Say, “It has relish, it has pleasure; I am going.” Enter honestly. Your honesty will save you. For if you honestly say, “There is pleasure in the world,” you will find there is suffering. And one who honestly believed there was pleasure—when he discovers suffering—will have the courage to say, “There is suffering; I was mistaken.”

Your trouble is that you say, “The world is suffering,” and you know there is pleasure. The saints have made you wobble; their words entangled you. They didn’t wish to entangle—they wished to untangle. But you are skilled—your art of getting tangled is profound. Whatever they said only increased the tangle. You too began to say, “The world is suffering,” while inwardly you know pleasure.

If truly the world were suffering for you, would you ask, “How to drop it?” Who asks suffering how to leave it? If your house is on fire, do you ask, “How should I get out?” You leap out. You don’t say, “This house took fifty years to build—how can I jump out in a moment?” When there is fire, you don’t ask—you jump.

The saints say, “Your house is on fire.” You nod insincerely, because you also cannot say outright, “You are wrong,” yet you know there is no fire; all is comfortable; outside are the hassles; fire might be out there—better to stay home. Hence the confusion. Clarity is essential. If pleasure appears to you, admit it and seek it—and don’t listen to the saints. Tell them, “Your path is not ours. You too did not listen to us; you reached where you are by your own experience, seeing suffering there. Let us also reach by our own experience.”

It won’t take long. There is suffering in the world—the saints are not lying; they speak from knowing. But go through your own experience. When all your pleasures begin to reveal themselves as suffering, you will not ask, “How to drop?” You will set the load down. You will say, “All self-interest is finished, all greed is finished; there is no need to carry this burden.” That day, the memories of billions upon billions of years shatter in a moment. You separate from them.

You are holding on. The clutching is the issue. How will your grip loosen? Not by effort; by experience. My words may sound harsh, but if even in hell you see happiness, then go to hell—because for you there is no other remedy. You must pass through hell. You must taste its pain clearly to know it is hell—so you never fall into that delusion again. Wherever your imagined heaven is, the road there will pass through hell—because right now you are seeing heaven in what is in fact hell. First you must go there. You cannot avoid it. Let experience tell you it is hell.

Go where your mind leads you. It will lead you to the wrong places—that is certain. But do not make hasty, half-baked decisions; go! And let experience itself declare that your mind was wrong. Gradually your very experience will become the death of the mind. The more you truly know, the less you will listen to the mind. And the day you recognize every facet of life, you will drop the mind. There will be no reason to hold. One arrives at truth only through one’s own experience. You are trying to live by borrowed truths—that is the calamity.

First thing: an actor cannot be a saint precisely because his acting has a purpose. I am not saying actors are saints; I said saints are actors. All saints are actors; not all actors are saints. The actor acts as work. It isn’t play for him; it’s a profession. He wants to get something out of it. And whatever you want to get something from becomes work. Whatever you don’t want to get anything from—where the very being in it is enough—that becomes play.

Remember, work means the goal is outside you; play means the goal is inside you, intrinsic, hidden within it. We play for the joy of playing; we work to get something else. Play is complete in itself. Work is only a link in a chain; it leads further on. Work is a means toward an end elsewhere. Play is both means and end. Therefore, play is complete in itself.

The actor acts as work. The actor is not a saint. But the saint lives life as if each moment is complete in itself. The flavor is in living that moment, not beyond it. Whatever is before him, he plays it totally. And he is happy, delighted that another moment has been given—one more moment! Just to be is such a joy, to breathe is such a joy! You cannot make a saint unhappy, because for him even the smallest thing—breathing—is joy.

A Zen master, Lin-chi, was thrown into prison. Those who jailed him thought Lin-chi would become miserable. A seeker of liberation, a seeker of ultimate freedom—surely he would be even more miserable in prison than ordinary people. Ordinary people are prisoners anyway; whether at home or in jail, it’s not much different. At home the leash around the neck is a little longer—you can roam a bit farther; in jail it’s shorter—you circle closer by. But Lin-chi is a seeker of absolute freedom; he will be very unhappy. Yet nothing changed for Lin-chi. In jail he was as joyous as in his hut. In shackles he was just as blissful—sitting in meditation, smiling, singing as usual.

Finally the warden came and asked, What are you doing? Don’t you care at all for your liberation? Lin-chi said, I rejoice even in the minimum; that is my liberation. I am—is that too little? I am within chains—even that is no small thing! Breath flows—is that not enough? Being is so delightful; it suffices—there is no demand beyond it. And you will not be able to imprison me, because my being is within; your chains are without. What you have bound is my outer form; I have little to do with that. What you can never bind is the I within. There I am free; there I am flying; there my sky has no boundary.

For the one in whom the means and the end are present together each moment—he is in the act. Saints are actors. And there is no purpose.

But we are calculating people. We even ask, What is God’s intention? What is God’s intention in creating you? In making you work—say, clerking in an office all day—what intention could God possibly have in that? Our mind assumes that surely some great intention is being worked out through us. Our ego is gratified to think there must be a secret—a hidden purpose—that we too are part of some grand plan.

God is utterly without intention, because intention belongs to shopkeeping. God is no shopkeeper. At most this world is his play—his delight, his celebration. Like little children dancing, jumping, building and demolishing—making a sandcastle and, even before it’s complete, knocking it down. While building they are as delighted as while demolishing. They build with great relish, then with a leap and a shout they bring it down. In the bringing down, too, they taste the same relish. If you ask those children, What is your intention?—it is energy, energy expressing itself, rejoicing, dancing. Overflowing energy! The child has so much energy—what should he do? He builds, he destroys, and he savors it. In neither the making nor the unmaking is there any intention. There is energy. That energy is dancing. God is like children, not like shopkeepers.

Therefore children are closest to God. And whenever someone becomes childlike again, consciously, he enters into God. Jesus said, Those who are like children will enter the kingdom of my Father. Intentionless, purposeless. God has no intention.

To tell the truth, there is no person called God sitting somewhere. Our whole obstacle is language. The moment we hear “God,” we imagine someone up above, ledger open, writing down for each person who stole, who picked whose pocket. If any God were doing such foolishness, he would have gone mad long ago—your exploits are so numerous he’d have lost his mind keeping accounts! There is no person sitting there. By “God” we mean the total energy of existence, the all-comprising energy, the total energy. It is power. There is no “why.” It simply is. It has no cause behind it, no purpose ahead of it. And though that power has no goal, hidden within it is such a tremendous surge that it bursts forth as plant, as animal, as bird, as human, as thief, as saint. That power descends to depths and touches the sky as well—becoming abysses and peaks. Its entire tumultuous force expresses itself—manifesting, unmanifesting. It makes and it unmakes. There is no person hiding there. It is only the play of energy.

And the day you too understand life as nothing but the play of energy, that day your rhythm falls in tune with this vast play, your music comes into accord. The name of this state of attunement is samadhi.

That is all for today.