Tao Upanishad #87

Knowing is not a closed occurrence like a pond. Knowing is fluid—flowing like a river. Therefore knowing cannot have fixed, bound beliefs. Knowing has no belief, no ideology at all. If there is ideology, there will be partiality. Knowing is impartial.

We light a lamp. Whoever is in the room, however they are, the light simply reveals them. Light has no side of its own. Light does not say: I shall reveal the beautiful and cover the ugly; I shall illumine the auspicious and throw the inauspicious into darkness. Light is impartial; whatever stands before it, it reveals. Wherever light falls, revelation is its very nature. If light had any doctrine of its own, it would cease to be impartial.

Knowing is like light. Knowing is a mirror; whatever comes before it is reflected. Knowing is not a photograph. Knowing carries no picture of its own. Knowing is an emptiness. Before that emptiness, whatsoever stands, is shown just as it is. Understand this first. Because ordinarily the people we call knowledgeable are those who are brimming with bias. One is a Hindu, another a Muslim. One holds the Gita, another the Quran. They have their own notions. When they approach truth, they carry their notions with them; they want to see truth in accord with their notions.

Truth does not walk behind anyone as a shadow. And if truth can be cast into someone’s notions, it is no longer truth. Only those can reach truth who have no notions, in whose minds there is no image; who have not pre-conceived a form or color of truth; whose Paramatma has no figure, no shape. And whatever the form and figure of that Paramatma turns out to be, they will let it show just that way in the mirror of their hearts. They will not quibble at all. They will not say, “You do not seem to fit our belief.”

Your belief is nothing but the ego.

You will want even knowing to follow behind you. You will want truth to become your follower. You will want Paramatma to tally with your convictions. Only then will you accept.

Existence has not paused for your approval. Existence harbors no desire for your approval. Without your approval, existence is complete. Who are you? In what delusion do you live that truth should match your belief? Have you ever examined your own mind to see what you call truth?

People come to me and say, “What you said felt right, it is absolutely true.” I ask them, “How did you know it is true? By what measure did you measure it? Do you already know truth? Only then could you test it.” “Yes,” they say, “we know truth. You said precisely what was hidden in our minds too. You said exactly what we have always believed.”

People’s definition of truth is this: if it accords with their belief. As if you were truth—the touchstone itself. Then the rest is simple: whatever matches you must be true.

Some say, “What you said doesn’t appeal, it doesn’t please the mind; it doesn’t seem true. Maybe it stands in logic; when you explain, it even begins to seem right; but it is not right—the inner voice does not agree.”

And what is your inner voice? Your beliefs. What you have been taught since childhood. What has been poured into your blood. With the mother’s milk you also drank the mother’s religion. With your father’s hand in yours, your father’s beliefs entered your life. What you have been conditioned into—that is your inner voice! You test by that—if it matches, it is true; if it does not, it is false. So the touchstone is you. And whoever has assumed, “I am the touchstone of truth,” will wander forever. Knowing has no touchstone; knowing is pristine. Knowing has no feeling of its own; knowing is without preferences. Knowing is simply like a clean mirror; it reveals what is, without commentary, without inserting itself, without adding itself. Knowing is impartial.

Kabir has said: “Pakhapakhi ke pekhane sab jagat bhulana”—the whole world is lost in the upheaval of taking sides and opposing sides. Knowing has neither a side nor an opposite side. Knowing has no ideology, no party. Knowing is pure seeing. Knowing is not a thought at all; it is the no-thought capacity to reflect—the capacity to reflect. You bring a mirror home. If the mirror is already filled with a picture, it will be of no use to you. And the mirror tells you...

It so happened that Mulla Nasruddin was passing through a forest and found a mirror fallen by some traveler. He had never seen a mirror before. He looked into it; the face seemed familiar—resembling his father’s. He had never seen his own face, never seen a mirror. He had seen his father’s face. He looked, and it resembled his father. Nasruddin said, “Ah, big man, I never knew you had your photo taken! Good that no one else picked it up. Where did this photo of yours come from?” His father had died. Taking it for his father’s photo, he brought it home carefully. Many times on the way he looked—and always it was the same photo. He kept it for remembrance, and hid it on the roof where he kept his secret things. Every morning he went and bowed to it.

His wife began to suspect—why does he go up daily? And he tells nothing. One day, when Mulla was out, she went up, looked—and found her own face in the mirror. She was furious. “So you are crazy over this old hag!” She thought he kept a lover’s picture. She saw her own image—never having seen a mirror. She thought, “Ah, so you are going mad after this witch!”

In a mirror, only you will appear. The mirror has no notion of its own. And if you want the ultimate seeing of life, you must become such a mirror—free of notions. Only then whatever flows through you is truth. What passes through your molds and beliefs becomes untrue—untrue because of you. It becomes counterfeit; it is no longer authentic. You have given it a framework. And through your framework, its vastness, its infinitude, its formlessness—all is lost. Now it becomes a petty thing.

When truth is bound in beliefs and imprisoned in scriptures, then it lies in chains. It has neither life nor wings with which to soar into the sky. When truth descends into no-belief, it becomes free. No chains bind it, no walls confine it. It is not locked in any prison—it is like the open sky. Knowing is the open sky, not the courtyard of a prison.

All the beliefs in your mind are courtyards of prisons. Names differ: a Hindu prison, a Muslim prison, a Christian prison, a Jaina prison. But all beliefs are prisons. And whoever steps outside all beliefs—that one is the knower.

The knower has no thought of his own. He lives like a lamp; whatever comes, becomes visible. And the knower has no private feeling by which he calls someone bad and someone good. In his mind there is neither condemnation nor praise. He does not call a thief a thief nor a monk a monk. For him the whole world of duality has disappeared; for him there is no twoness. For him there is only One. And that One is supremely auspicious. The very being of that One is the only auspiciousness, the only benediction.

Therefore you cannot deceive the knower. It is not that you cannot attempt to deceive him—you can. But you will not be able to deceive the knower, because the knower does not accept deception. He trusts you. However much you cheat him, he will again and again trust you. His trust has no end. You will not be able to exhaust his trust; you will get exhausted—you will be defeated. There is no way to defeat a knower; sooner or later you will have to lose.

A famous story: a Zen mystic stood in a river while a scorpion was drowning. He picked it up in his hand and set it on the bank. By the time he lifted and placed it down, the scorpion stung him half a dozen times. It is the scorpion’s nature; he is not at fault. Nothing extraordinary in it. Again the scorpion went back into the water. The mystic again saved it and placed it on the bank.

As you may have noticed, there is a kind of deep obstinacy in animality. Animality is stubbornness. All animals are Hatha-yogis. Remove an ant, it will run back to where it was. It becomes a challenge. Shoo a fly away, it will sit again exactly where it sat before. Until you leave it alone, it will wrestle with the challenge. Its ego is hurt too. Who are you to remove it? You think this nose is yours on which a fly sits. For the fly it is just a place to rest after flying. Who are you to interfere? Cut off the nose and still the fly will land there!

As the mystic lifted the scorpion out, it kept rushing back to the water. A man standing on the bank said, “Have you gone mad? Your whole hand has turned blue—let the scorpion die; what is it to you? And it is stinging you!”

The Zen mystic said, “When the scorpion does not leave its nature, how can I leave mine? If the scorpion does not heed, keeps stinging, keeps returning to water, how can I heed? As the scorpion’s nature is to sting, so the sage’s nature is to save. I am not ‘doing’ anything; I am simply acting according to my nature. The scorpion acts according to his nature. Let us see who wins: the scorpion, or the sage.”

You cannot defeat the knower. You could, had he any boundary, any side. But he is impartial. He has no personal feeling. You may pick his pocket, but you cannot shake his trust. You can deceive him. And it is not that deception is not visible to him. Because he is like a spotless mirror—whatever you do is seen. But beyond the deception, you yourself are also seen by him. And your glory is infinite. Deception is nothing. The act of deception has no value. What is valuable is that majestic being hidden within you. His trust is in you, not in your acts. What you do makes no difference to your being. How you are, what your conduct is—this does not alter your inner image. And the knower is seeing that inner image where Paramatma dwells. So your behavior makes no difference. He has no private feeling about what you do. He grants you complete freedom.

Understand this a little. If you carry any feeling or belief, you cannot give freedom even to those you love. Because you will want them to align with your feelings. And you will want it “for their good,” that they align with your feelings. This is not the mark of a knower. This is the mark of the unknowing.

The unknowing raises prisons even through love. He wants his children to become a certain way. No one can even blame him—for he wants to make them good. But even the effort to make them good is a rejection of the Paramatma hidden in the children. Because in that effort you are becoming the owner. You have snatched away their own ownership.

Khalil Gibran has said: give your children love, but not your conduct; give them love, but not your knowledge. Give them love—and through your love give them freedom, so that they can become that which they were born to be. Do not stand in the way of their destiny.

But it is very difficult that a father not obstruct the son’s destiny; that a mother not obstruct the child’s destiny; that a teacher not obstruct the disciple’s destiny. They will obstruct, and “for your good” they will obstruct.

The sage is an open sky. He will not obstruct you at all. Even if he shows you a path, he will not insist that you walk it. He himself is the path—open. If you wish to walk, walk; if you don’t, don’t; if you wish to turn back, turn back. There will be no insistence. Not even the insistence of truth. The sage is non-insistent.

There are three kinds of people: those insistent on untruth, those insistent on truth, and the non-insistent. The sage belongs to the third category: the non-insistent. He has no satyagraha that he will sit on a fast and say, “If you do not walk according to me, I will die.”

Your truth cannot be another’s truth. To force what is true for you to become true for another—that very attempt is insistence. In the first place, it is not even certain that what you call truth is truly yours! And even if it becomes certain that your truth is your truth, how can you determine that it will be the other’s too! For each person has his own destiny, his own freedom, his own path of journeying. From birth after birth each person is on a unique walk, a unique pilgrimage.

Keep these things in mind; then try to understand these wondrous words of Lao Tzu.

“The sage has no fixed views and feelings of his own; he makes the views and feelings of the people his own.”

Fixed opinions are ordinarily esteemed as very valuable. We think that the man with settled opinions is strong and firm. And the man with no settled opinions is suspect, caught in doubt.

We value the deciders. We disrespect those who are in doubt. We say, “Why do you linger in doubt? Decide! Live decisively. Where are you taking life? What is the direction? Fix everything and walk.”

But the sage is neither a doubter nor does he have any fixed doctrines. The sage flows moment to moment. And whatever happens between the reality of the moment and the consciousness of the sage—he allows it to happen. He lives with the suchness of the moment. Who knows the coming moment? How can a decision be taken now?

In the life of a Hasidic mystic it is recorded: one morning he stood outside his hut and the first man who passed on the path, he invited him inside. He said, “My dear, answer a small question and then go. If after walking ten steps you find a bag full of thousands of gold coins lying on the road, would you find the owner and return it?” The man said, “Certainly, at once! As soon as I find it, I will search out the man and return it.” The mystic laughed. He said to his disciples seated near him, “This man is a fool.”

The man was disturbed; for he had spoken plainly and rightly. What kind of mystic is this! Until then he had thought this mystic to be a sage. “And this man turns out to be so wrong. I am saying I will return the bag—that is the essence of all religions, not to take what belongs to another. And he calls me a fool!”

The mystic said to him, “Go, the matter is finished.” Then he stood outside again. When a second man came by, he brought him in and asked, “If a bag full of thousands of gold coins lay on the road ten steps ahead, would you search for the owner and return it?” He said, “Do you take me for a fool? A fool that big? If I get lakhs of gold coins, I should return them? What do you think of me? I will run away from this town entirely so the owner never finds me.” The mystic said to his disciples, “This man is a devil.”

Now even the disciples were puzzled. If the first was a fool, then by simple arithmetic this man must be wise. And if this man is a devil, then the first must be a saint. The arithmetic did not tally. But they kept quiet, for the mystic had gone out again.

He brought a third man and asked the same question: “If you find coins worth lakhs lying ten steps away, will you return them to the owner?” The man said, “Hard to say. Who can trust the mind? The moment is not fixed. If grace of God is with me, I will return them. But the mind is very cunning; it will produce many excitements: don’t return! If my good fortune and His grace help, I will return; if my bad luck and His grace are absent, I may pick them and run. Just now I cannot say; when the moment comes, then I’ll know.” The mystic said to his disciples, “This man is a true saint.”

What does this mean?

The first mark of the sage is that he will live with the moment. You cannot decide for tomorrow. Who knows tomorrow? Who knows if we will even be there tomorrow? And in the circumstances of tomorrow, what will be appropriate—who can decide that today and how? Tomorrow is unknown; how will you decide for the unknown?

Let tomorrow come. Life is not a play for which you can rehearse today and act tomorrow. In life there is no rehearsal. That is why it is easy to succeed in theater, very difficult to succeed in life. There is no way to prepare. Life arrives unannounced. Whenever life knocks at the door, it brings a new picture. By the time you recognize the old, it has changed. Life is new every moment. The old never repeats itself. Every sun is new. And Heraclitus is right: you cannot step into the same river twice. Therefore prior preparations are of no use. In life there can be no prior acting; you can never be ready for life. This is the essence of saintliness.

Then the only way is to drop preparing. Because your preparation will prove a burden. Life is ever new; preparation is always old. You will never meet. Life and you will not meet. This is how you have been deprived; this is how you have wasted; readying and readying, you have lost.

Unprepared—this is the saint’s trust: that he will accept the moment without preparation. And whatever reflects in his consciousness at that moment, he will act accordingly. But the action will be freshly bathed, new, alive. Not stale.

What is born of a decision taken yesterday is stale. You do not eat stale food, yet you live a stale life. You won’t eat yesterday’s bread today, yet you live today by yesterday’s decision. Your whole life has become stale. It emits stench; not the fragrance of new blossoms. It reeks like refuse; the new dawn and new rays of life are not seen there. Dust has gathered on your life. For who knows for when the decision was taken that you are now executing. That time has passed; that river has flowed. The ghats are gone, those people are gone—you are not the same either. And still you execute those decisions! How long will you live stale?

The sage lives fresh. Fresh means only this: living without preparation.

But why do you prepare? Because you do not trust yourself. A man prepares only when there is no trust. You are going for a job interview. You go fully prepared—what you will ask, what I will answer. If you ask this, I will say that. You go rehearsed—because you have no trust in yourself. But you will be there—then let whatever is asked evoke the answer from your presence. But no—you go prepared. Your preparation can land you in trouble.

Perhaps in the interview you may succeed with preparation; because you are stale and the interviewers are stale. But the challenge of life comes from a fresh God; there stale answers are never accepted. Memorize the Gita, remember the Quran, keep the Vedas on your tongue; yet existence will not ask you questions whose answers are in the Vedas. It never repeats old questions.

Life is new every day. In those new circumstances, your old answers become obstacles. You cannot even see the circumstance, because your belief blinds you. Belief produces great delusions.

A psychologist conducted a small experiment—how beliefs produce illusions. He went to Kashi’s Vishwanath temple and placed his hat near Shankar’s image, near the Shiva-lingam. He went to the gate and asked a stranger entering, “Wait—can you tell what is kept near Shankar’s image?” No one can imagine a hat near Shankar’s image! The man looked carefully and said, “Someone has removed the bell and kept it there.”

Near Shankar’s image, a bell is congruent; a hat is not. Shankarji never wears a hat. You could not even think it; your belief does not allow entry.

You go out at night in the dark and ghosts begin to appear. These are your beliefs. A wooden post stands and you see a ghost. You add hands and feet. Slowly even eyes and face take shape. You are erecting it from your belief.

You can pass a cremation ground daily if you do not know it is a cremation ground. Once you come to know, then ghosts will appear. Before, they did not; you passed there. Because there was no belief. Now belief creates shape. What you see—remember, it is not necessary that it is there. You see what sits in your belief. You hear what sits in your belief.

And when you go to life too prepared, there is no opening within you through which life can enter. Your preparation stands like a hard stone wall. Life asks something, you say something else. Life demands something, you give something else. You do not meet. Hence your restlessness. What is man’s anguish? That he is alive and yet not alive; that even while living he lives half-dead. His life is not a reality, but a dream. This dream we have called maya.

The world as such is true; but the world you see is not true. The world you see is constructed by your belief, filled with your imagination. Try to observe this in your life: many times, due to your own beliefs, you take one thing to be altogether another.

There was a Hasidic mystic, Zussia. He was passing a village. Two disciples were with him. Suddenly a woman came running and struck Zussia with a stick. He fell. She raised the stick again. The disciples said, “What are you doing?” The woman was startled. She looked carefully—blood flowed from his head. Twenty years earlier her husband had run away. Zussia resembled her husband. Seeing him, she lost her senses; anger flared. Zussia rose, wiped the blood. The woman began to apologize, to clasp his feet. He said, “Stop. You have not struck me; you have struck your husband. If you ever meet him, ask his forgiveness. Do not ask mine. Who am I to forgive? You did not strike me; you struck him. If you ever meet him, ask forgiveness. You and I have nothing between us.”

How many times in life you strike one but intend to strike another. You were angry at your wife, you lash out at your son. You were enraged at the office, you break upon your wife. And you never even become aware of what you are doing. Because living in a stale way has become your habit. You are always full—and that fullness allows neither recognition nor seeing what life asks of you. And life demands freshness every moment. Only through fresh demand does it keep you fresh. Life keeps you young; preparation makes you old.

Avoid preparation, if you would move towards saintliness. There is no rehearsal for saintliness. And no moment repeats itself. Therefore there is no way to prepare. Each moment happens once and is gone.

You are all clever—when a moment passes, then you think what should have been done. Your cleverness arrives a little late. Someone says something, you answer something; a moment later you think, “Had I said that, it would have been right.” The mark of intelligence is that the answer arises at the very moment it is needed. Otherwise, fools too can find lofty answers after the fact. Genius has one mark: it does not repent. If you repent, there is no genius. Why does repentance arise? And why does genius not blossom?

Genius each is born with, but the dust of preparation settles upon it. You look through preparation. There you miss.

It happened that in Mulla Nasruddin’s village the emperor was to arrive. He was the oldest in the village. People said, “You be our representative.” The villagers were afraid, uneducated. Mulla alone could read and write. “So you handle it!”

The prime minister came ahead of the emperor. Because it was a rustic village and who knows what welcome they might offer, he arranged everything. He said to Mulla, “See, do not blurt nonsense. This concerns the emperor. A small mistake can cost your neck. And you are somewhat of a babbler—you say anything. Be careful here. Each word will cost. Better you prepare. And we will tell the emperor to ask only those questions which you have prepared. First he will ask, ‘How old are you?’ You say, ‘Seventy.’ Then he will ask, ‘How long have you lived in this village?’ You have lived thirty years, so say, ‘Thirty.’ They prepared five-seven questions and said, ‘Remember exactly; no mistake!’

Mulla memorized. He was fully ready.

The emperor came. He asked, “Since when have you lived in this village?” Mulla was in trouble. First the emperor should have asked, “How old are you?” But he asked, “How long have you lived here?” Mulla thought, “If the emperor makes a mistake, why should I?” He said, “Seventy.” The emperor was startled. “And how old are you?” Mulla said, “Thirty.” The emperor said, “Are you in your senses or mad?” Mulla said, “This is the limit! You are asking crooked questions; we are giving straight answers. Who is sane—you or we? We are answering exactly as prepared.”

Once a man placed Winston Churchill in a great fix. He must have been a Mulla-type. Politicians often use this trick: they plant their own people in the crowd to clap at the right moment, to stand and ask questions on cue—the very questions the politician can answer. And the crowd is impressed: see, he answered everything clearly. Churchill was fighting an election. A man stood and asked a tough question that made Churchill wipe his sweat. But he answered so brilliantly that the crowd applauded. A second man stood with an even tougher question—Churchill’s legs could have trembled. The crowd held its breath. Churchill again answered so that the man sat down defeated. Then a third man stood, put a hand into his coat pocket, then into his pants pocket, looked here and there, and said, “Sir, the slip with the question you had given me seems to be lost.”

It is said Churchill never suffered such a defeat. Now he had nothing to say. They were his own men, prepared.

Plays can run by preparation; life cannot. Leaders can run by preparation; a sage cannot. Because a leader is borrowed. Your leaders are like you—worse than you, only then do they become your leaders. To be the leader of thieves, one must be a great thief. To be the leader of the dishonest, one must be a great cheat. And you are shocked, you always ask, “Why are leaders corrupt?” They cannot be your leaders if they are not corrupt. If they are not thieves, they cannot be your leaders. And then you complain that they are thieves? They are liars? If they were not liars, who would want to be your leader? Politics is the theater of untruth, not religion.

Lao Tzu says, “The sage has no fixed opinions and feelings of his own.”

He lives empty like a void. No feeling, no decision. Wherever the moment places him, as it places him, whatever answer arises, that is the answer, that is his response. No prior preparation. Therefore the sage never repents. Because he had never fixed an answer on the basis of which he could think whether it was right or wrong. He never repents. When the moment has gone, he does not think about that moment; for the next moment has already arrived—who has the leisure?

You have leisure to think about the past; leisure to think about the future—the sage has not. For the sage the present is so intense, so deep, that there is no time to look back or ahead.

A Jewish mystic, Baal Shem, was asked: “For years I have been practicing. In my youth I heard that if you scorn honor, if you stop wondering again and again whether respect is coming or not, you will surely receive respect, and in abundance. Do not desire worship and worship will come. But I have done tapasya for forty years and it has not happened yet. I have begun to doubt the saying.”

Baal Shem said, “The saying is perfectly right. You have not fulfilled it; you keep looking back to see whether respect is coming or not. You are scorning honor in order to get honor. This scorn is false. And this preparation—this very preparation—is the obstacle. Drop the worry. Whether it comes or not—what is it to you? Then it comes. But if you drop it in order to get it, you have not dropped it at all. And you will keep looking back: ‘Not yet, not yet; still no respect; still the world has not begun to worship me—and I have dropped the desire for thirty, forty years.’ This very looking back shows you have not dropped it.”

You look back because repentance is in your hand. You look ahead so that the mistake of the past is not repeated. Hence you arrange for the future. And because of arranging, the mistake happened in the past. You lost the past because you were prepared. You are preparing to lose the future too, because again you are preparing.

For the sage there is neither past nor future. For the sage, this moment—just this—is enough. This moment is the only moment. This moment is the whole of time. Beyond this moment there is neither ahead nor behind. And it is so intense that who has time? It is so blissful that who will look back? It is so deep that who will go forward? It is so full of nectar that just as the bumblebee closes within the lotus, so the sage closes within the moment—he sinks into it. Beyond the moment nothing remains. The moment itself is eternity.

The sage has neither decisions nor feelings of his own. He is like a mirror. He simply reveals the people’s feelings and the people’s decisions.

When you go to a sage, he reveals you. Do not think he is telling you his beliefs; do not think he is giving you his feelings. Whenever you go to a sage, remember: the sage is a mirror—he shows you your own face. Yes, if you go to a scholar he will give you his beliefs, his thoughts, his knowledge. If you go to a sage, he will reveal you to yourself. He will become a medium to place you face to face with yourself.

People come to me. Someone says, “I cannot renounce the world.” I look at him and say, “There is no need to renounce. Perhaps he will go and say, ‘He is against renouncing the world.’ I was only giving him his own picture, and trying that he recognize it. Because through that recognition he will cross, move on, evolve. To go beyond oneself is to meet Paramatma. So I say to him, ‘Do not worry unnecessarily; all right—what need to renounce? Remain in the world; meditation can be practiced there.’”

Then someone else comes and says, “I have renounced; I am a sannyasin. And what is this you tell people—that knowing can be attained while living in the world?” I say to him, “There is no need to be in the world. It is your supreme good fortune that the world has dropped. Now do not look back; what has dropped, has dropped. Now be utterly blissful and use this moment.”

He will go and say that I advise: leave everything!

I have not done anything; I have given no advice to anyone. I only held up the mirror.

And from where you are, you must cross. From where you are, you must begin your journey. Today’s worldly man cannot be a sannyasin. If it cannot be, why talk of it? One who has already become a sannyasin—why load him with the disturbance of becoming a householder again? I have no doctrine. From where you are, how can a path open for you to go beyond—that is all. If I force you on that path, it becomes violence. That too is your will. I can open the path, clear it. Then it is your joy: walk if you will, do not walk if you will.

People say to me, “Why don’t you give your sannyasins discipline—get up at such time, sleep at such time, eat this, do that, don’t do that!”

Who am I to give discipline to anyone? Let the lamp of meditation be lit in their lives—that will become their discipline. From that light they will walk; they will do what is right for them. What is right for one is not right for another. What is a path for one becomes a wrong path for another. What is medicine for one becomes poison for another. What is diet for one can be death for another. So who am I to give discipline? Any discipline imposed from outside becomes a prison. Discipline must arise from within, from your awareness, your understanding, your prajna. I can only point you toward prajna, not give you discipline.

A sage is a mirror. And when you go to a sage, go very carefully. Because he will tell you only yourself, and you will think it is his doctrine. He will reveal you. He will place you before yourself: here you are! Untie or tangle—whatever you wish. But he will open you up. If you are even a little intelligent, you will receive precious threads from that untying; your whole path will open. If you are utterly foolish, you will go to the sage and return more disturbed. Because what he showed as a mirror, you will take as a command.

In the Jaina scriptures there is a wondrous statement: they say, the Tirthankara gives upadesh, not aadesh. That is the difference. Upadesh means: it is said—if you can accept, accept; if not, do not. It is shown—if you can walk, walk; if not, do not. Aadesh means: you must walk. Why did you ask if you were not to walk? Aadesh means: swear an oath, take a vow! Upadesh means: what arose within me upon seeing you, I have said—do not turn it into bondage. If you can walk with it, good; if you cannot, do not make it a worry, do not turn it into anxiety. It should not become a weight upon you. All commands become burdens; because commands are like stones. Upadesh is like flowers; they are not a burden.

Nanak halted near a village. The village was home to many mystics, many saints; it was a Sufi settlement. The head of the Sufis sent a bowl filled with milk. The bowl was full to the brim. Nanak sat outside the village on a well’s parapet. Mardana and Bala were singing. Nanak sat in morning meditation. The bowl came filled with milk; Bala and Mardana thought it was a welcome—milk for breakfast.

But Nanak plucked a flower from a nearby bush and placed it upon the milk. The bowl could not take one more drop; it was full. But the flower floated above. A small wild flower floated on top. Nanak said, “Take the bowl back.” Bala and Mardana said, “What have you done? It was milk for breakfast—we do not understand.” Nanak said, “Wait—you will understand by evening.”

By evening the Sufi head came to Nanak’s feet and said, “Welcome!” Then Bala and Mardana said, “Now reveal the meaning!” Nanak said, “This fakir had sent a full bowl of milk to say: there is no need for more fakirs here; the settlement is full. There are enough gurus; there is no need for another. Disciples are needed—gurus are many. If you come, there will be disturbance; nothing of value will happen. Go elsewhere.” So I sent back a flower, placed upon it, to say: I am like a flower—I will fill no space, I will simply float on your bowl.”

Command is like a stone; upadesh is like a flower. When a sage gives you upadesh he does not fill you—he floats above you like a flower. If you can follow his fragrance, your life too will become a flower. If not, the sage is not a burden on you. Commands are burdens.

Commands—in the military, fine; because there one must line up the blind, assemble the mindless. So a general gives orders—understandable; a sage giving orders makes no sense. A sage is not assembling soldiers. Soldiers and sages are diametric opposites. The soldier must be ordered. And if I am to lead you towards saintliness, upadesh is enough.

“He simply reflects people’s views and feelings.”

Says Lao Tzu: “To the good I am good; to the bad I am also good—virtue is virtue.”

Who is a devil? One who calls the inauspicious auspicious, calls the bad good, calls night day; who calls the auspicious inauspicious, calls day night, explains a flower as a thorn—that one is a devil.

Who is the ordinary person? The one between devil and saint. He calls the auspicious auspicious, the inauspicious inauspicious; day day, night night.

Who is a saint? The saint calls the auspicious auspicious—and he calls the inauspicious also auspicious. He calls day day—and he calls night also day. He calls a flower a flower—and he calls a thorn also a flower. Why? Because the moment saintliness happens, the inauspicious ceases to appear. He need not say it; it simply does not show. One who has seen the flower—will he see the thorn? Understand this arithmetic. And one who has seen only the thorn and been pricked—will a flower appear to him?

Have you ever seen? You go to a rose bush and a thorn pricks—you bleed, you feel pain. Will you then see the flower? You do not. You return filled with anger. And if your life is spent picking thorns, you will begin to say, “All flowers are lies—distant dreams, distant drums sound sweet; go near, there are only thorns; flowers appear at a distance, they are not—they are mirage.” One who has known only thorns—slowly the flower becomes false, fades. He cannot trust that in a world full of thorns a flower can be.

This has happened to you. You have counted rogues, known the bad, recognized the inauspicious; thieves, cheaters, robbers—you know them all, deep acquaintances. Therefore you cannot trust that a saint can exist. Even when you see a saint, you look with the notion: he will be a thief—sooner or later it will be revealed. Others were caught; he has not yet been. That’s the only difference. No greater difference is possible. Even when approaching a saint you guard your pocket—lest he cut it. You remain cautious. So much deception, so much duplicity—how to trust!

With the saint the opposite happens. He has known such a flower, such fragrance, that how can he believe there can be a thorn! And if there is, it must be for the flower’s protection. Indeed the thorns in the rose are for protecting the flower. They guard it, they stand as sentries. They are not enemies of the flower. They are not there to prick someone—they are there for defense, if someone tries to pluck the flower. They are the flower’s friends, companions, family. After all, the thorn too is made of the same sap as the flower. The same stream runs in both. They cannot be separate. One who truly knows the flower—the thornness in the thorn dissolves. And one who knows even a single saint—the whole world fills with saintliness. For that trust is so boundless, its majesty so infinite, that who will then believe a thief can exist! Where such a flower of saintliness blooms on earth and in the sky, how can a thief be!

Then your arithmetic will tell you: this too is a saint, not yet recognized. He is a saint, though his acts look otherwise. He may be doing such things that he seems not a saint, but he is. The inner saintliness hidden within will keep appearing to you. Then you will have two kinds of saints: some like glowing embers revealed, others as embers buried under ash. Ember, whether revealed or under ash, is of one nature. So some saints who blaze like embers, and some upon whom the ash of actions has gathered. It is only a difference of karma, not of essence.

Says Lao Tzu: “To the good I am good; to the bad I am also good—virtue is virtue.”

And until you can call both good, know that virtue has not descended. You have not known virtue yet.

A mystic was admitted to a hospital. The doctor was puzzled. Dressing a wound on his arm, he thought and thought. Finally he asked, “I am perplexed. This wound cannot be a horse bite—too small. Nor a dog bite—too large. What kind of animal made this wound?” The mystic laughed, “It is not from any animal. A gentleman bit me.”

But he said, “A gentleman.” Whoever bit is also a gentleman. The act has little value. What is within! What value the ash? What matters is the ember concealed within.

“I trust the honest, and I trust the liar as well—such is virtue’s trust.”

Do not call yourself faithful until you can trust not only the good. What worth has that faith? If I am good and therefore you trust me, what is the value of your trust? If you trust a saint, that is the saint’s quality—what about your faith?

The day you can trust the un-saint, that day your faith’s quality is revealed. That day saintliness and un-saintliness become secondary; your heart’s feeling becomes primary. And that very faith becomes your boat. That faith which knows no exceptions—which trusts the saint and also the non-saint, which is unconditional. Which does not say, “If you act thus, I will trust,” but says, “Whatever you do, trust is my nature. If you steal—I trust; if you give—I trust. Whatever you do, your doing will not shake my trust. Your doing and my trust are different matters. My trust is the health within me. It has nothing to do with you.” The day you can trust even a thief—who has deceived you many times, like the scorpion who has stung you many times—and still you trust, that trust becomes the boat. Only unconditional trust becomes a boat.

Even the impotent can trust saints. Those with no inner trust also manage—because they must, out of compulsion. But the day you trust the bad, that day the first flower of trust blooms within you. And now no storm can uproot it. Because now the storm too is a companion. You trust that too. Now nothing stands opposed to you. The world is empty of enemies; for even the enemy is within your trust. You have created around you a sky of trust without boundary.

Such trust alone carries one to Paramatma. With anything less the work has never been done, nor can it be.

“The sage lives in the world in peace, in harmony. Among the people—through such sages—the hearts are brought into a community. The people of the world are brought into a community of heart.”

The whole world becomes a communion of one heart—through such a sage who lives in inner peace and rhythm.

When within you there is trust and no distrust, rhythm arrives. When within you only love remains and hatred no more—because there is no one left to hate; when within you only trust remains and doubt no more—because there is no one left to doubt, you have trusted even the bad; then within you a supreme harmony and peace are born. The name of this great music is saintliness. And whenever in any one person such an event happens, that person becomes the heart of the world. Through that heart thousands of hearts move and pass—and from those thousands a community, a family is born.

Around Buddha such a family formed, around Lao Tzu, around Jesus. That very family, when corrupted, becomes a sect. A family arises from your trust; a sect from your birth. A sect you carry by blood; a family you must give your blood to create. For a family you must be sacrificed.

When you bring such trust to a sage—trust that does not leave even the un-saint outside, unconditional—only then do you pass through the sage’s heart. Otherwise you may wander at the periphery, touch his body, yet be deprived of his soul.

When you pass through his soul, the sage becomes the Sadguru. Around him a family of love forms. That family is the supremely great event on this earth. Nothing higher happens here.

And whoever passes through that event does not return to this earth again. Whoever settles once in a sage’s heart, only one more heart remains to settle in—that of Paramatma. From the sage’s door he dissolves into Paramatma.

Enough for today.