Tao Upanishad #95

'He who knows does not speak; and he who speaks does not know.'

This is a great riddle. Because Lao Tzu speaks. The Upanishads say the same: he who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know. And the Upanishads also speak. Socrates says the same. I too say the same, and I go on speaking every day. Understand this riddle rightly; otherwise it is very easy to go astray.

What does it mean? Do the dumb know, because they do not speak? And do those who speak therefore not know, because Buddha speaks, Krishna speaks, Mohammed speaks, Jesus speaks? Then the mute must have gone ahead of them. And the irony is that all these speakers say it is the dumb man’s jaggery, the mute man’s syrup—whoever tastes it falls silent, smiles, does not speak. Then why do all these people keep on talking?

It appears utterly illogical. If what they say is true, they themselves cannot be right. If they are right, then what they say cannot be right. If we understand Lao Tzu to have attained, he should have fallen silent. If we take him to be speaking, it is evident he has not attained. If we accept Lao Tzu’s statement, then Lao Tzu becomes wrong. What are we to do?

No, we have not understood what Lao Tzu, the Upanishads and Socrates mean by speaking and not speaking. We do not know the silence toward which they point. We understand speaking and not speaking only in the way we have known them. You speak to the other—that much is right; without speaking, there is no way to connect with the other. Words are the bridge to the other, the path of dialogue—natural and necessary. If Lao Tzu too must say, 'He who knows does not speak,' he will have to say it in words; he will have to speak. He must be inconsistent—for nothing can be said without speaking. Even to speak against speaking, one must speak.

But then, why do you speak when you are alone? Words are a device to connect with the other, not to connect with yourself. Why does inner talking go on even when you are sitting by yourself?

That very talking stops for the knower. The one who knows becomes wordless within—within, remember. He does not talk inside. He does not talk to himself. What sense is there in talking to oneself? Speaking to the other has meaning; speaking to oneself is derangement, a symptom of madness. Yet you sit idle and keep chattering inside; you talk within. You split yourself into two; one speaks, one answers, one asks. All thinking is a kind of derangement.

'He who knows does not speak' means: he does not think. When he is alone, he is utterly alone. His aloneness is pristine, unalloyed. In that aloneness there is no one but he; no words either. There is supreme silence. When he is with another, if needed he speaks; when he is with himself, speaking is utterly unnecessary. With oneself there is never any need to speak. To whom would one speak? Who would listen? There is no duality there; you are alone.

But even there you have manufactured duality. You are split, fragmented. The fact that you speak within shows you are divided, broken. You are not one; you are many.

The knower becomes one. There is no inner multiplicity. With whom will he speak? There is supreme silence within. His solitude is full. In his solitude there is not a grain of space for any other. And because he is one within, he cannot split himself into two—speaker and listener, questioner and answerer. Those fragments are no longer there. Silence is his natural state when he is alone. When he is with the other, he speaks—if there is a need. Remember the condition: if there is a need. Otherwise, even with others he is quiet.

You speak even with others without any need. It seems speaking itself is your need. You do not speak for some need; speaking is your restlessness. Speaking is your catharsis, your purging. When you talk you feel busy. You talk for talking’s sake—not to say something, but just to go on speaking, so that through speech some connection with the other remains and you are not left alone. Because there is only one way to keep the link with the other: speak. If another person is present and you do not speak, you will become alone even in the other’s presence. You talk to escape this aloneness.

That is why you talk even in solitude—because there too there is only one way to escape being alone: keep talking. Split yourself into two halves. Stage a drama: you speak and you listen. There you are the actor, you are the director, you are the scriptwriter, you are the audience. You are all the characters, the maker and the watcher. Your inner being becomes a drama, an inner theater. And then you do not feel alone. You have created a falsehood, and through that falsehood you escape from yourself. Your talking is a device to escape yourself. Your talking has no meaningfulness; it is a sick symbol that you cannot be silent, therefore you speak. Not for any reason. Hence nothing substantial ever comes out of your talking; the other only gets bored and harassed.

You will ask: then why should he listen if he gets bored? Being bored is still better; being alone is even more difficult for him. He listens. Yet within, he is only waiting for you to fall silent so that he too may get his turn to talk. It is a partnership, a mutual arrangement to help each other’s purging.

Hence, if someone does not allow you to talk, you become very angry with him; you call him a bore, an uninteresting person. What does 'boring' mean? It only means he does not give you the chance. If you can bore him as much as he bores you—the deal is done, the account is settled. You will not be angry with him. And the man who quietly listens, who allows you to bore him as much as you wish—you say, 'What a wonderful man, so good, so gentle; it is rare to find such a person; there is great joy in conversation with him.' But you never allow him any conversation; you keep speaking. And you call this conversation.

Your talking is an inner disease. So many thoughts are moving within that unless you can throw them out you will go mad. You use the other as a dustbin. If that other is not available, you will split yourself and begin a play. Have you seen madmen? Sitting, they go on talking. You do it softly; they do it a little louder. You do it inside the lips; they do it aloud. Even your lips quiver a little; a keen observer can see whether you are talking within or not—your lips give a slight signal. The madman speaks out.

Between you and the madman there is only a difference of degree. You are at ninety-nine degrees, he at one-hundred and one—just over the limit. He has stopped worrying about the world. He lives entirely in his inner world. His friends, companions, lovers, beloveds, enemies—all are within. He creates them himself, talks to them at ease, and destroys them himself. That is what madness means: the objective outer world is forgotten, and a private inner world is erected, created by oneself. The madman is a great creator.

Therefore poets and philosophers often go mad. They too are creators—of words, of thoughts, of theories, of webs of imagination. In weaving they reach a point where their own web begins to feel real. Then you become pale, distant, false to them. You appear untrue. The net of words becomes so dense, and fed by their very life-breath, their words and fantasies become very real. Then they live in their own reality. They have a private truth; they do not believe in any public truth. You cannot see to whom they are speaking, but they see him. You do not matter. If you cannot see, you must be in error. They have made their own private truth.

Understand this well: truth is universal, never private. Whenever you have the delusion that it is private, know that madness is close. Dreams are private; truth is universal. Truth belongs to all. Only dreams are private.

Therefore, in your dream no one else has any part. Your dream is entirely your own. You cannot show your dream to another. You cannot even invite your beloved, your wife, your husband, your closest friend into your dream: 'Come tonight—such a beautiful dream I am going to see; let us share it. It is so lovely that to enjoy it alone feels criminal.' No, you cannot invite anyone. There is no way. The dream is entirely private.

What is the mark of the madman? His whole world is private. He has turned the world into a dream. Now he dreams with open eyes. He talks merrily, as he pleases. If he wishes, he declares himself an emperor; and the servants of his dream are ready at once to become slaves. It is his dream; there is no obstruction. So the madman thinks himself an emperor. Even if he is a beggar, you cannot convince him that he is a beggar—he will find some way to convince himself otherwise.

The dream is private; truth is universal. These are the touchstones. The closer you are to truth, the more you can make others partakers. That is why Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Lao Tzu can make thousands share it—bring thousands close to that which is visible to them—and thousands too begin to see it. If it were a dream, there could be no sharer.

Therefore you have never seen followers of poets; poets cannot have disciples. How could they? Because the poet’s 'truth' is dreamlike. What the poet has known is his imagination. He cannot call you and say, 'Come, see!' The poet is helpless in that regard.

This is the difference between the poet and the rishi. The rishi speaks of that which is, which he has known by putting aside all his imaginations. Hence, the seeker’s entire effort is to set aside imagination and allow that which is to be revealed—to know what is in itself, not because of my notions; to set aside my beliefs, my concepts, my thoughts, so that the pure truth may dawn—the universal truth.

You go on talking—whether you are alone or not. The wise one does not do so. In his aloneness he does not speak at all. In his solitude he is like an empty temple—where there is a deep hush, a dense silence; where not a ripple of thought comes; the lake utterly still; not a word arises, not a sound stirs. In his aloneness speaking is utterly purposeless. So the wise man is silent in his solitude. And when he speaks to the other his speaking is not a purging; it is not a disease. He is skilled in silence. Speaking is not his necessity. If he does not speak for two or four years, nothing will be amiss. He will be just as he was when he spoke. Perhaps speaking brings a slight difficulty; in silence there is none. Speaking is difficult, for he must find words for truths that have no words. He must give form and shape to experiences that are formless. His task is very arduous. And even after all is done, he finds he has not said what he wanted to say. However much a master of words he may be, however rich in language and clear in thought, when he speaks truth he finds it becomes dim; it does not quite come through. That is why he says it again and again.

You ask why I go on speaking to you every day! Precisely for this reason—I try from this corner, then from that. Failing in one direction, I search for another. And until you give up, I am not going to give up. Wherever you open a way, from there I shall enter.

It is a matter that cannot be said—and yet it is a matter that cannot be left unsaid. It cannot be said, because its very nature is such. It is available only in silence, experienced in the supreme shunya. It is witnessed where not a single thought bears witness. And then you must bring in the mind as witness—a mind that was not present there. You can imagine the difficulty. The mind must be brought in, though the happening is beyond it. The poor mind says, 'What can I do? I know nothing of it.' The one who knows cannot speak; and the mind, which did not know, must speak. One has to coax the mind to utter. Failure is inevitable each time. Therefore, though the conceptions of the wise may differ—though they have expressed themselves in very different ways, even opposite devices—the last testimony of every sage is: 'Even after saying, it cannot be said.'

Buddha spoke for forty years—continuously. And in the end he said: 'Be a lamp unto yourselves. You will know only when you know; nothing will be achieved by another’s telling.'

So, first, the nature of truth is such that it is found in shunya where no shadow of mind can reach. And what is the fault of the poor mind, which did not know? I knew; I ask you to testify. You had remained at the door; you know nothing of what happened inside. I come back to the door and tell you, 'Say that it was known thus-and-thus.' The mind hesitates.

Hence the knower always hesitates. The ignorant speak without hesitation, shout from the rooftops. The knower hesitates, is shy; he places each step carefully. He knows with certainty that even with all care words go astray. Words cannot carry it.

Therefore, it cannot be said—and it cannot be left unsaid. For in the very experience of what is known, the urge to share is hidden. Bliss has the nature of sharing; sorrow has the nature of contraction. When you are unhappy you shut doors and windows, hide under the quilt, disappear, wish that no one come to meet you. Even if someone comes you say, 'Come some other time; I cannot meet now.' You do not wish to say anything even to your dearest one. Sorrow contracts.

Hence, in the last extremity of sorrow people commit suicide. Suicide means total contraction—to cut all relationships. Not even the minimal relation with life is to be kept. If you live, some relation remains; if breath goes on, some relation remains. Suicide means sorrow has become so dense that a man says, 'I contract utterly; I bid farewell to life. I want to be lost in great darkness; I do not wish to stand in the light.' Because in light there will be sharing; some relationship will remain.

Bliss is just the opposite. When you are full of bliss you want to share. You want to invite. You want to celebrate. You want those with whom you lived, grew, played—those still wandering in darkness—to be informed that you have found. You want to awaken the whole world. You are filled with a profound compassion that what you have found may come to all.

The nature of bliss is expansion, sharing. Therefore we have called Brahman satchidananda—Truth, Consciousness, Bliss. We have taken ananda as an indispensable limb of Brahman. Why? And we have called it Brahman. The word 'Brahman' means that which goes on expanding and expanding; whose expansion knows no end, whose boundary never arrives.

Now even the scientists have come upon this truth—that existence is expanding, an expanding universe. Earlier in the West it was thought that existence had a boundary. Now it is known that it is expanding. But Hindus have said this for centuries. It is hidden in the very word 'Brahman'—from the same verbal root as 'expansion.' Brahman means: that which goes on spreading; whose expansion has no limit, which never stops—only expands. Its essential limb is bliss. Sat, chit and ananda—these three are expanding elements. Therefore we have called them the nature of Brahman. And when a person descends into his inner depth and opens the door that was hidden within himself—when he goes beyond mind, thoughts fall far away, as though no longer his, and he touches his center—in that very instant he becomes one with that great vastness. Then he too wishes to expand. Then he too wishes to share.

Life’s nature is expansion. You sow a tiny seed, and a vast tree arises. How much it spread! That is what we call Brahman. You sow one seed, a great tree grows, and on the tree there are countless seeds. Sow each seed and there will be countless trees, and on each tree, countless seeds. Scientists say a single seed can green the whole earth, can cover it with forests. So much power in a single seed! This is the mark of existence: an ever-expanding unfolding. Where will this seed stop? Nowhere. There is no stopping.

Bliss is life’s ultimate seed—beyond it, nothing; past it, nothing. Its spreading never ends. Therefore those who have known cannot speak—and they cannot remain without speaking. This is the riddle. They will speak—and in speaking, again and again, they will say that he who knows cannot speak, cannot say. They will also add the rider lest you catch hold of their words. For if you catch the words, you miss. What I am telling you is not in my words. What I want to say will not reach you through my words. If you catch my words and stop there, you will not know what I meant. Words were only pointers, gestures. You must go beyond them. Listen to my words, but do not stop on them. Words are not truth. Hear the word and look beyond it. Understand the word and rise beyond the word. Hear what I say—and see what I am. Ultimately, only seeing will help; hearing will not. Hearing is only to make you worthy of seeing. By listening, become capable of the art of seeing.

Therefore we call the knower a drashta—a seer—not a listener. No one becomes a knower by listening; one becomes a knower by seeing. That is why we call it darshan—the quest of seeing. By listening, let your capacity to see arise. As in the body the eye and the ear are connected—hence one physician treats eye, ear and nose; their centers are one—so too in consciousness they are connected. We strike upon the ear so that the eye may open. If someone is sleeping, what do you do? Do you open his eyelids? You strike the ear: 'Wake up!' Have you ever had to pry open someone’s lids to awaken him? You strike upon the ear; the lids open. Exactly this does the knower. He strikes upon the ear so that the eyelids may open. You are asleep; he awakens. To open lids directly would be aggressive; pry open a sleeping man’s lids and he will be angry, ready to fight: 'What are you doing!' By striking the ear, slowly the eyes feel the impact and open sweetly. That is why the knower must speak. And the knower well knows that by speaking there is no way to say. Speaking is a device. Truth will not be obtained from it. Truth will be seen by the eye—known in your own experience.

Therefore the condition is repeated: he who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know. The pundit only speaks—he fills your ears. The seer, even when he speaks, speaks only to open your eyes. The goals are different. The pundit speaks to increase your knowledge; the seer speaks to expand your being—not your knowledge. Knowledge is rubbish, leftovers, stale. Paramatma is forever fresh. You will never find it as stale leftovers; you will always find it as a fresh experience.

When you find it you will know that whatever the knowers said, it had no connection with This. But only when you know! Then you will find that the knower was lisping and could not say what he wished to say. All knowers lisp. And in one sense this is right: 'knower' means one who is newly born. Like small children, they lisp. They want to say one thing, another comes out—and you cannot understand what they say. Even if they say enough, nothing is caught.

Then what do you do? What does a mother do with a small child? When he says some bits and pieces, she does not worry about the exact words; she tries to understand the indication—hungry? thirsty? She tries to read the gesture. He cannot say 'water'; he says 'wawa.' He cannot yet say 'I am thirsty.' But the mother understands what he is saying. She does not understand from what he says; she understands from what his state expresses. Gradually words are no longer needed; gradually the mother understands his gestures.

Knowers have become children again. They speak of a different thirst, a different water, a different Paramatma. They have begun to lisp again. And the first childhood’s lisping passes, for that childhood comes and goes. This childhood, the second, never passes; it will remain forever. There is no way of going beyond it. Knowers will go on lisping. Whatever they say will remain only a gesture; it cannot be more. For the knower has found that innocent childhood which is eternal. There is no going beyond this lisping.

So understand the knower’s gesture. Worry less about what the knower says; be more concerned with what the knower is. That is why shraddha—trust—has such value. Without listening in trust you will say, 'All this is nonsense,' because you will understand nothing. What is not understood you call nonsense. A child’s mother understands, but if you sit a stranger with that child, he will be irritated and say, 'Remove this nuisance! What babble is this?' He has no love; he will say, 'If you have something to say, speak properly; if you cannot, sit quietly.'

Unless a relationship of love arises with the Master—unless a bond of heart is formed, a keenness to understand is born—only then will you understand. Otherwise it will look like babble. Many clever men have left buddhas calling them babblers—because it seems they only talk; what do they mean? Even to themselves it seems unclear—because they say, 'The knower does not speak.'

I call this lisping—the mark of the eternal childhood, the innocence that comes to the knower. It is a rebirth. Listen with shraddha—listen with the heart. Do not lay too much stress on words; they have little value. Not with logic and thought, but with an affection, with the feeling 'perhaps…'; with the readiness of a seeker. When you are linked to the knower in trust, then you will understand a little. And then you will also understand his difficulty: he wants to say something that cannot be said. You will understand his compassion, that because of compassion he cannot refrain—he cannot remain without speaking.

'He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.'

There is another meaning—remember that too. One more nuance. That which is known—the truth, the experience, the realization—cannot be said; but how it is known, the way of realization, that can be said. Therefore the knowers speak of methods. They do not speak of the goal, they speak of the path. They do not talk of the end, but of the means. And the pundit always talks of the goal. Thus you can know the difference. The pundit discusses Brahman; the sage discusses dhyana. The pundit marshals arguments to prove there is God, why you should believe. The seer will not pile up arguments, nor talk much of God. Where relevant, yes; otherwise he has nothing to do with God. He will speak of the method—how God is known, by which path a glimpse comes, by what door realization happens; how you should lift your foot so you reach. The pundit gives arguments and proofs; the seer gives the method—no argument, no proof. And through the method, experience will happen.

Buddha said, 'I am like a physician. I give you medicine so your disease disappears. How shall I define health? I give the medicine; I will remove the disease. You will know health.' If you ask today what health will be like, how can I explain? Health has no definition.

All definitions are of disease. Sorrow can be defined; bliss cannot. Because sorrow has boundaries; bliss has none. Sorrow is small, petty; it fits into a definition. Bliss is vast, expansive; all definitions are too small—it flows beyond them. A definition means tying with the thread of a word.

So Buddha says, 'I will not talk of health—and you should not ask me of health. I am a physician; I will diagnose the disease and arrange the medicine. You show the readiness to take the medicine—that is enough. When disease disappears, what remains is health. When you disappear, what remains is Paramatma.' Where can there be a proof?

And you who ask for proof—you are the obstacle, the nuisance, because of which the realization of Paramatma does not happen. You seek Paramatma—and you are the obstruction. You ask for logic and proof, 'Then I will move.' There is no need for you to move at all. All arguments and proofs will only nourish your ego. And without losing the ego, who has ever known Him?

The knower does not give arguments, does not offer proofs; the knower is contagious. He has caught health as you have caught disease. The knower is infectious—he gives health. But there is no other way to give health. Cut disease, remove it, erase it—and health remains.

That which remains always when all else is removed, that is Paramatma. When you are not, when there is no thought, no mind, no feeling; when shunya is formed—no one within; a deep hush—then what remains, what always remains, is Paramatma. What always remains is truth; because it cannot be erased. Whatever can be erased, cut, remove it. When you come to the moment where there is nothing left to remove—the house utterly empty—there is no furniture to take out, no clutter to throw out; only emptiness remains—at once there is an explosion. Suddenly you find: emptiness? I am mad—this is full! You had been fixated on the furniture; hence the sense of emptiness, because the furniture is gone. Let the eyes adjust; let the breath settle into rhythm; let the recognition of this newness sink deeper. Suddenly you find: emptiness? No—it is full! That with which you find it overflowing after all is removed—that is Paramatma. Call it shunya if you think in terms of furniture; call it purna, fullness, if you think of what fills that shunya.

But the medicine is dharma; the guru is the physician. He is not a commentator; he gives a method.

Now it becomes difficult. You say, 'If we have no firm trust in Paramatma, what will we do with a method to find Him?'

Therefore the supreme knower does not even give you a method to find Paramatma. He says, 'Do not bring Paramatma in at all. Tell me what your trouble is.' Are you restless? There is a method to cut restlessness. Are you unhappy? There is a method to cut sorrow. Are you anxious? There is a method to cut anxiety. Do not bring Paramatma in between. Your Paramatma is of no use; the search for Him is pointless. What is your trouble? Cut that. The day you arrive at a moment where there is no trouble, no anxiety, no affliction—where suddenly you find yourself contented—in that very moment the meeting with Paramatma happens. Your contentment is the door to truth. So talk only of how you can be content.

People come to me and say, 'We are atheists. Can we also meditate?' I say, 'Live happily so. Where is the problem? Without knowing, how can you be a theist? I am surprised only at those who are theists without knowing. They are the strange ones. Those who have no inkling of Paramatma are sitting as believers—you will not find bigger deceivers.'

Hence, the more a nation is theist, the more it is deceptive. India is the proof. Here you will find more deception than in atheistic lands like Russia. Here deceit is in the blood. Because the biggest deceit you play is that of being theist. You have no knowledge whatsoever; in the darkness where you stand no ray has ever shone—and you are a believer. You are ready to kill and be killed if someone says there is no God. You are clever in quarrel and wrangle—ready to raise swords. And your theism is utterly hollow, without breath—dead.

There is nothing surprising in this; it is natural. When someone says he is an atheist and asks, 'Can I meditate?' I say, 'Where is the hindrance? Even theists are meditating—then you, an atheist, are perfectly placed. Natural. For what greater deceit than to claim belief without knowing?' The atheist is at least honest; at least he feels, 'I do not know—how can I believe?' At least he is clean, not caught in a delusion.

Theism or atheism—dharma has nothing to do with them. Dharma is related to the therapy of your life. You are theist or atheist—what difference does it make?

When you go to a doctor, does he ask first whether you are theist or atheist before treating your cold? What has theism to do with it? He has to treat the cold. Hindu, Muslim, Christian or Jaina—does he ask? What difference does it make! Cold does not know Hindu, Jaina, Muslim or Christian. Cold happens to all by the same law; it recognizes no religious distinctions. He gives medicine; the same medicine works on the Muslim, on the Hindu, on the Christian. The right medicine is that which is universal. If some medicine works only if you first become a Hindu, it is not medicine—it is fraud, a talisman—not truth-based but illusion-based.

What has meditation to do with who you are—black or white, woman or man, child or old? Nothing. Meditation relates directly to your disease. And disease is everyone’s. The Muslim is restless; the Hindu is restless; the Jaina is restless. There is not a bit of difference in their restlessness. The law of restlessness is one; the law of peace is one. Now Lao Tzu speaks of this law. First he says: 'He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know'—for regarding truth, nothing can be said. But regarding the method, certainly it can be said. Now he speaks of method:

'Fill up the apertures, close the doors; blunt the edges, untie the knots; dim the light, hush the clamor—this is the mysterious unity.'

This is the supreme state of meditation. Each sentence is to be understood. Each is a medicine bringing health nearer, each drops one disease and grows the capacity for health.

'Fill up the apertures.'

The senses are apertures through which your life-energy flows out. Through the eyes you not only see, your capacity to see flows out. Hence, if you look for long, you feel very tired. Your energy of seeing is going out each moment. Do not think the eye is only a window; it is an active organ. When you see, thousands of nerves are under tension. Behind each eye there are millions of nerves—a very subtle net. Nothing is subtler in the body. The organ of sight is the subtlest. Behind the eye is your delicate network of fibers, your whole brain. When you see, light enters the eye, images and reflections of outer objects enter—and from the eye something goes out too: your energy of seeing. Therefore if for centuries the wise have meditated with closed eyes, they were not mad. If you are to see Paramatma, then gather the energy of seeing. Accumulate the capacity to see. How will you see? And the vaster the seeing you seek, the greater the energy needed.

Buddha used to tell his monks: while sitting, do not look at all; there is no need to open the eyes. While walking, see only four steps ahead—keep the eyes half-open, not fully—and walk seeing four steps. That is enough. If you see four steps, you will walk four steps; then the next four steps will appear. Seeing four steps at a time you can travel thousands of miles. There is no need to see more. The more you see, the more you spend the capacity to see. And you long to see Paramatma; you have resolved to see truth; you want to know the supreme mystery of life. Then gather the capacity to see. You will need eyes that can see.

Your tired eyes will not be able to see. And where do you tire them? You have not noticed: reading rubbish on the walls—'Hamdard Clinic'—again and again. The same wall you pass, the same words you read. Trash. Newspapers—trash—you read every day. Whatever the prime minister utters, you read without even asking whether ever a prime minister has been an intelligent man, whether any prime minister has ever said anything with substance. You imbibe it as if it were the Veda. From morning people are restless for the newspaper; a little delay and panic arises.

What are you reading? Reading is not trivial—your energy is being spent. The eye is being exhausted. What are you seeing? Anything whatsoever. A juggler on the roadside beats his drum, makes a monkey dance—you stand there. How will these eyes that watch a monkey’s dance be able to behold Paramatma? This intelligence is still at a low level; it has not had the chance to rise above curiosity. Jugglers know—just beat the drum, make a monkey dance, and the monkeys will collect. Why should a man collect? What is there to see in a monkey’s dance?

The whole world is full of monkeys; all are dancing. Everywhere there are jugglers; different drums are being beaten. Crowds gather there. People leave a thousand tasks and stand to watch. Somewhere a quarrel is happening; two men abuse each other; you stand with great eagerness. You were going to buy medicine for your wife—that becomes secondary. Milk for the child can wait a little. But this is worth seeing. And if it so happens the two nearly come to blows and then separate, you return disappointed—'Nothing happened; we stood for nothing.' If blood flows, heads split, there is a taste. Your inner violence feels a little satisfied. What you wanted to do, others have done for you; you feel a little pleasure; you return home light, humming some film song. Life seems to have flavor.

What is your flavor? What do you see? What do you hear? In all this your life-energy is flowing away. Nothing is free here. You pay for everything. Even if you purchase trash, you pay—life-energy goes, time goes. Each moment the water of life falls out of your palm. Soon the fist will be empty. Then you will repent. But what is the use of repenting when the birds have eaten the field? While life is still in your hand, save a little. If you use the eyes only as much as necessary, you will find that within you the third eye has begun to be born.

People ask me how to open the third eye. I tell them: first close the two a little. What hurry is there to open the third eye? Want to see more mischief? Are two not enough?

Use these two less; the third opens by itself. When the energy of seeing grows intense within you, by the very impact of that intensity the third eye opens. There is no other way. If you squander these two, the third will never open. There is a subtle economy in life. The one who attains Brahmacharya finds his energy moving upward of its own accord. Energy accumulates; where will it go? The downward flow has stopped. It begins to rise. New chakras open within, new doors of experience. You want to open chakras, but the energy is not there. You press the button; the light does not come on. Electricity must be there; it must flow in the inner wiring. If there is no current, what will happen? As these two eyes grow quiet, quiet…

Try a small experiment. Whenever you are sitting without purpose, keep your eyes closed. And you will find a new power is being born within. Soon you will feel a new capacity gathering inside you. You will begin to see sharply, deeply. What yesterday looked superficial from the surface, you will now see in depth. After that, when you listen to me, you will find you are seeing in what I say something you had never seen before. My words are the same; I am the same; but your capacity to see has deepened. Greater the energy, deeper it goes.

Now your capacity to see is like a needle; if you gather it, it becomes like a sword. Its stroke then goes to great depth. Then you will see some things just by seeing, which earlier you could not reach by a thousand attempts at thinking. It is not a matter of thinking; it is of seeing—vision must be sharp. It sharpens as you conserve, as you accumulate. When you are idle—sitting in a car, on a train, in a bus—what need is there for your eyes? The driver is doing that work. Needlessly you torture your eyes peering out the window—at faces on the road you have no purpose in seeing. Close your eyes. Do not look. Just rest silently.

And remember a small ancient Tibetan method—it is of great use. Whenever you have to open your eyes, open them very slowly, as if a curtain is being raised—very slowly. When you blink, let the lids close just as slowly, as if a curtain is being dropped. You will feel a deep peace, because the quicker your eyelids open and shut, the more strain there is on the brain. You will always find: the more peaceful a person, the more gently his lids drop and rise; the restless man’s eyes move very fast. If you look at a very nervous person even in sleep you will see the lids are moving; tension remains, the tremor continues.

The senses are apertures—close them. There is only one way to close them: do not waste their energy; the same energy will fill them.

'Close the doors.'

The desires that arise in the mind are the doors. The moment a desire arises, become aware; do not support it even for a moment. For the longer you support it, the deeper its roots spread. You are passing a grand mansion; a desire arises—'I too should have such a house.' If you keep thinking about it, that desire will put down roots. And when a desire takes root, the senses follow. They must, for the body follows the mind.

First the door of desire opens; then the apertures of the senses fly open. If in your mind a desire for a house has arisen, then wherever houses appear, you will look intently. If you give room to any desire, all your senses will run in that direction. If you give space to food, or to form, your senses will rush that way.

'Close the doors.'

Remember: when the first glimpse of desire arises within, break your cooperation right then. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes. Why waste time—first letting it take root, then trying to uproot it? Do not let it sprout. There is no substance in that crop. No one has ever harvested any essence from it. And once a desire grabs you, its unfulfillment will bring frustration, discontent, restlessness, tension, anxiety. Then you will not be able to sleep, or to sit in meditation; the desire will haunt you everywhere and disturb you.

Desire is a fever—the fever of consciousness. The temperature of consciousness rises. An agitation enters and remains. And the difficulty is, even if for years you remain agitated and finally fulfill the desire—still nothing is solved. On fulfillment you find: we were unnecessarily so harassed. Before it is attained you run after it; when it is attained it has no substance. What will you do even with a great palace? Nothing in reality is as beautiful as it appears in dreams. But you will know only after obtaining it. By then life is gone.

And the mind has this trick: it gives you new hopes and assurances. 'In this house the taste did not come, the bliss did not come—but there are bigger houses. Do not give up yet. With this much wealth, of course, no contentment came; who does get content with so little? There is a vast range of wealth ahead; more can be had. Treasures are still intact. Life is still left. Why tire, why surrender?' The mind urges: 'Go on, go on!' Till the last moment, when death knocks at your door, it goes on saying: 'Still something can happen.' You will not find a bigger promiser than the mind. And you will not find a bigger fool than the one who believes it. It has never fulfilled any promise in the past—yet you go on believing. Awake a little!

'Close the doors; blunt the edges.'

What are the edges? The senses are apertures; desires in the mind are doors. The edges are your negative emotions—anger, hatred, enmity, jealousy, malice. These are your sharp edges. Whoever comes near you will be pricked. Your anger is a thorn to others; your hatred is poison to others—whoever comes to you is hurt. Even if in love you embrace someone, your thorns will prick him too.

'Blunt the edges.'

Grind down these sharpnesses around you. Neither will anger give joy to others, nor to you. Neither will hatred bring heaven to others, nor to you. And as long as you go on creating hell for others, remember—you are creating hell for yourself. No one digs pits for others in this world. You may dig for others, but you will fall into them. Others have their own pits; they fall into those dug by their own acts. You need not labor; they will fall on their own. But you dig for others—and one day you find you have fallen. You sow a crop for others and end up reaping it yourself. What you sow, you alone will reap—today or tomorrow. Perhaps by the time of reaping you will have forgotten you had sown it. But reap you will. This is the eternal law of life.

In the end your thorns prick you. And if you watch carefully, even today they prick you. Your anger need not necessarily hurt the one you aim it at. If he is foolish, it will; his pain is because of his foolishness, not because of your anger. You, having become angry, will certainly suffer. It is not easy to become angry—you must prepare it; you must manufacture it. You brew the poison in your own laboratory first—and there you become poisonous.

'Blunt the edges; untie the knots.'

What are the knots? Where are the tangles within you? Many. According to Lao Tzu a knot is created when one sense gets entwined with another—just as a thread knotted into another makes a knot. All your senses are entangled among themselves.

Each sense has a rightful function. This is very mysterious—understand it well. Sex is the function of the generative organ. The mind need not be involved. That function is not of the mind. Sexuality is the function of the generative organ and should remain limited to it. To carry it to the mind means mind and genitals have become entwined.

Gurdjieff worked deeply on this in this century. He used to start by untangling the knots of his disciples. He said, 'Until your knots are undone, nothing can happen. If sex is in the organ, something can be done; but if sex has reached the skull—what can be done? The skull has no organ for sex. If disease is at the right place, it can be cured. If the disease is at a place where it does not belong, it is very difficult to cure. First, put each thing where it belongs.' So Gurdjieff would say, 'Bring sex back to the organ.'

Hunger should be in the belly, not in the skull. The skull’s hunger is different; the belly’s hunger is different. The belly’s hunger is real—it can be filled with food. That is not difficult. But if hunger enters the skull, there is no way to fill it. About Nero it is told he kept physicians who would make him vomit after eating so he could eat again. This cannot be the belly’s hunger. He ate twenty times; no one can eat twenty times—so only one device: eat and vomit, then eat again. This is a matter of the skull.

If sex is in the organ, it is real. If it enters the skull, it becomes difficult. All your senses are entangled with the skull.

Gurdjieff said: first set everything right; put each thing in its place. Then it is very easy. From the organ, Brahmacharya is simple, not difficult—straightforward, easy, ordinary. No hindrance. If the hunger is in the belly, there is no difficulty. Difficulty arises when hunger goes into places not meant for hunger. Then everything inside gets entangled. From the outside you appear neat, that your hands are hands, the eye is eye, the ear is ear. Inside, everything is a mess; tangled, knotted. These knots have to open. How?

Bring each knot back to its place. Hunger should be of the belly. It should not be according to the clock. Eat only when hungry. If one day there is no hunger, do not eat; there is no need. Even your fasting is of the mind and is false. The belly’s fast is when the belly says, 'I do not want to eat; I am not hungry.' Then: finished. Do not eat. When there is no hunger, food becomes poison. Then entanglement increases.

When there is no hunger and you eat, you must pay attention to flavor—which belongs to the mind, not the belly. What does the belly have to do with flavor? There is no instrument for taste in the belly; it cannot taste. Taste is of the mind. When the belly is not hungry, you must invoke taste to create a false hunger. Then you start eating things that have no value for the body. Ice-cream—of no value, harmful. But for the mind it has value. Sweets—no value for the body, harmful; but the mind enjoys the taste.

Remember, when you eat for taste you will overeat, because you do not listen to the body. The mind says, 'A little more; what is the harm? There is still a little space.' You never ask the belly. This is entanglement; this is a knot.

Then even if such a man fasts, he will do so by the mind. He says, 'It is Paryushana for the Jainas—now we must fast; it is Ramadaan for the Muslims—now we must fast.' Does the body have any Paryushana? Any Ramadaan? The body fasts when it feels ill, when there is no desire to eat. Then the body’s fast—that is pure, invaluable. From that fast you gain. That fast awakens real hunger. But the mind’s fast is false—'Because it is Paryushana or Ramadaan, we fast.' You harm the body. You harm it by eating; you harm it by fasting.

You have become so skillful in harming that whatever you do, you damage. Eat when hungry; sleep when sleep comes; drink when thirsty. But a Coca-Cola appears; you were not thirsty, and a certain false thirst is created. A moment earlier you had no notion of thirst. You saw Coca-Cola; what does the belly have to do with Coca-Cola? But the mind remembers—'We drank before; it was tasty.' Now a false juice arises. You are creating a knot.

The mind says, 'Yesterday we had intercourse; it was very pleasant—have sex again today.' That is not bodily hunger. The body’s hungers are distinct for each sense. If you listen to each sense’s hunger, you will eat rightly. And the one who eats rightly will have a place for fasting too. If you listen to the organ of sex, then sometimes there will be intercourse—and it will be precious. Its experience will be valuable. It will itself lead you towards Brahmacharya. Slowly, sex will depart. If the senses are disentangled, the goodbye to desire is easy. If they are tangled, it is impossible. Then you treat here while the disease is there; you operate here while the knot is elsewhere. Your operation only entangles more.

Lao Tzu says: 'Untie the knots.'

First untie them. The first task is to open them; put each thing in its right place.

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was ill and he was preparing something in the kitchen. He came running and said, 'I can’t find the salt.' She said, 'You have no sense. Right there, in the jar labeled cumin—that is where the salt is. It is right before your eyes and you cannot see!'

In the jar labeled 'cumin' the salt is kept! What is poor Nasruddin’s fault? He too sees the jar; but his wife has her own codes—as women do. Enter a woman’s kitchen and you cannot find what is what. Only she knows. And do not be misled by the labels; what is written there is not likely to be what is inside. The writing has nothing to do with it.

Your condition is the same. Where nature has written 'genitals,' genitals are not; where it has written 'belly,' belly is not. You are an anarchy. Everything within has become discordant, disordered.

So Lao Tzu says: 'Untie the knots; dim the light; hush the clamor.'

There is a light within which we call intellect, logic, thought. It is in excess. You are seeing everything in its light. That light has become the cause of your blindness. Lao Tzu says: dim this light. There is no need to think so much. And what have you found by thinking? Do not keep this lamp burning so high. Sometimes blow it out and plunge into deep darkness. Then a new light will dawn in your life—not of the intellect, but of the soul. A new light will come—not of argument, but of shraddha. A new light will come—not of dispute, but of communion. At first it will be dim. If you keep the intellect’s lamp aflame, you will not notice it. Remove it. First dim it, then blow it out completely.

'Hush the clamor.'

What you take to be thought is only clamor. What you consider thinking is only a bazaar. It is taking you nowhere. You have gathered trash from everywhere—some from scriptures, some from newspapers, some from radio, some from friends, some from enemies—and it all spins within you. There is a cacophony—and you trust it. That trust misleads you.

No-thought leads; thought distracts. No-thought has a music; thought has only noise.

But people become addicted to noise. Those who sleep at the railway station can sleep only if trains keep coming and going; if one day trains stop, they cannot sleep. Those who travel a lot cannot sleep until there is daily change; back home, two or four days of peace and their sleep is lost. One can get used to noise.

Go to the mountains—you will feel restless; you will miss the marketplace. In a town where I lived, I stayed in a friend’s bungalow a little outside the town. The friend was eager for my coming, but the wife was strongly opposed. I asked why. She said, 'Here there is neither market nor clamor; even if you stand by the road, no one passes—nothing to see.'

She had lived all her life in the market; standing on the balcony she would watch the commotion below. Till midnight the noise would continue; at four or five in the morning it would start again. The quiet of that bungalow was hard on her. As soon as I left that town, they moved back to their city house. When they came to see me later, the wife said, 'Now everything is fine.'

Addiction to noise! Without it, it feels as if one has died—no life at all. People go to roam the bazaar; they seek disturbance. They have acquired a taste for uproar. When peace comes, they feel uneasy—that something is wrong. This intellectual clamor too has become your habit. Drop this habit.

'This is the mysterious unity.'

And then what happens? If the apertures close, the doors close, the edges are blunted, the knots are untied, the light of the intellect grows quiet, the inner bazaar shuts—what happens? Lao Tzu says: a mysterious unity is born. You become one. Your multiplicity ends. Your fragments settle as an indivisible whole. That alone is worth attaining. That alone is truth.

He who knows That—how can he speak of it? He who knows That—how can he remain without speaking? The very taste is such—cannot be said, cannot be left unsaid.

'Then love and hate cannot touch him.'

He who gains this mysterious unity goes beyond all dualities. The twoness loses meaning. Love and hate cannot touch him. He is established between both—where compassion dwells. Compassion is neither hatred nor love; or say, compassion has something of love and something of hate.

Understand this a little, for compassion is a very mysterious element that comes with the One. There is something like love in compassion—compassion will wish to transform you, to see you blissful, to help you towards the ultimate joy. Compassion will become shade when you return tired from the sun. In compassion there is something of love. But there is also something like hate—compassion will want to erase whatever is wrong within you, to destroy it. Compassion will not want to preserve you as you are; love wants to preserve you as you are; compassion wants to change you. Your anger, your edges—compassion will grind them down, will break them.

Compassion is your friend if your ultimate destiny is remembered; compassion is your enemy if only your present reality is considered. Compassion will kill you as you are and give birth to you as you should be. So compassion has the element of hate, the destructive, and the element of love, the creative. Compassion is like both and yet unlike both. Because if you do not listen to the compassionate one, he will not be anxious as love becomes. If you do not listen—it is your choice. You cannot disturb a compassionate man by your refusal. Compassion is also unlike hate, because if what we hate does not get erased, we become uneasy. But the compassionate one, if he cannot erase your evil or set you on the path—he is not worried. You cannot destroy his sleep. The compassionate one is cool like hate and warm like love—a cool love without heat, without fever. Compassion is very mysterious—because in it both opposites are dissolved.

'Then love and hate cannot touch him. Gain and loss stay far from him.'

Because there is nothing left to gain; all is attained—what gain? And what loss, then?

'Honor and dishonor cannot affect him.'

Because the gaze is now turned upon oneself. It is no longer on the other. What others say makes no difference. One’s own being has become so significant, so dignified, that whether you dishonor or honor—it makes no difference. By dishonoring you cannot take anything from me; by honoring you cannot give me anything. What, then, is the meaning of your honor and dishonor? For the first time a person becomes rich with that supreme wealth which can neither be reduced nor increased. This is self-dignity—what Lao Tzu calls nobility. Light arises from within. Your honor and dishonor add nothing. He is utterly free. No longer dependent on your opinions, on your judgments—this way or that, for or against. Even if the whole world is with him, his step is the same; if the whole world is against him, his step is the same. No difference occurs in his step.

'Honor and dishonor cannot affect him. Therefore he is always honored in the world.'

And therefore his honor is ultimate. You cannot dishonor him; his honor is final. Even if you honor him, you cannot add to his honor. His honor is inner; his prestige is intrinsic.

If one’s prestige depends on you, it depends on you. If you support him, he is an emperor; if you do not, he is a beggar in the street. If you praise, he is exalted; if you abuse, his glory falls into dust.

In the one who has attained self-prestige you can neither decrease nor increase anything. Your praise—he is a witness; your abuse—he is a witness. Your praise can benefit only you; your abuse can harm only you. Your insults return to you; your flowers fall back upon you.

Therefore, whatever you do—do it thoughtfully. There is a great danger with such a man: whatever you do will come back to you. He is like a valley in the mountains. On Matheran’s hills there is a place—Echo Point. Whatever you say returns as an echo. Bark like a dog, and the whole valley rains dog-barks upon you. Sing a song of love—the valley repeats it. Chant Om—the valley repeats it.

The one who has attained self-prestige, who has attained Tao, is like a hollow valley; whatever you bring returns. He is an echo. Therefore give carefully. Give what you want to receive. If you want abuse, then abuse; if you want respect, give respect. You cannot give him anything; through him, you give to yourself. Everything returns to you.

Think on this mysterious unity, understand it, take a few steps. Grind down the edges a little. Dim the light of the intellect a little. Sit in a little silence. Save the energy of the senses so the apertures may close. Become aware so that desires are cut at the first moment, before they sprout roots. And you will know. Then my words will become clear. For what I am saying cannot be said in words; and what you are hearing cannot be understood by hearing alone.

Therefore Lao Tzu says: 'He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.'

Enough for today.