Upasana Ke Kshan #2

It is very important to ask this, because sooner or later, everyone who takes up the practice of bliss will face this very question.

Bliss becomes available like a glimpse—a brief flash, as if someone opened a door and shut it again. We hardly see beyond it before it opens and closes. So instead of giving joy, that very glimpse starts becoming a cause of pain. What is seen attracts us, but the door closes; desire around it grows more dense. And then the door does not open; in fact, the more we begin to crave it, the more we are deprived of it...

These are things that cannot be demanded. If I ask someone who has given me much love to give me more love, the more I demand, the more I will find that love stops flowing from them. These things cannot be snatched. They cannot be forcibly possessed. The less one desires them, the more one is quiet, the more they become available.

There is a very old story. I even told you last time. It is a Hindu parable, a fanciful tale. Narada was passing near a village. An old monk said to him, “When you go to God, please ask: how long until my liberation? When will I be freed? It has been a very long time that I have been practicing!”

Narada said, “I will certainly ask.”

He went on, and under a nearby banyan tree a brand-new fakir—who had become a renunciate that very day—was dancing with his tambura. So Narada teasingly asked him, Narada himself asked, “Shall I ask God for you too—how long until your liberation?” He said nothing.

When Narada returned, he went to the old fakir and said, “I asked. God said it will still take three more births.”

The old man was turning his rosary; in anger he threw it down. He said, “Three more births? That is great injustice! This is too much!”

Narada went on. The young fakir was still dancing beneath the tree. Narada said, “Listen, I asked about you as well. But it is a sad thing: He said that as many births as there are leaves on the tree under which you dance, that many births it will take.”

The fakir said, “Then I have attained!” and went back to dancing. He said, “Then I have attained! Just look how many leaves lie on the ground! So many leaves, so many births—then I have already won! I have attained!” And the story says: in that very moment he became liberated—then and there!

This non-tense, relaxed mind that says, “I have already attained”—that is not disturbed even by the prospect of so many births and takes even that as the Lord’s grace, His prasad, saying, “So soon!”—such a one attains all in that very instant.

The mind has two states. One is a tense state, when we want to get something. The other is a non-tense state, when we quietly receive whatever is given and do not grab. The tense state is aggressive; it snatches. The non-tense state is receptive; it does not seize, it silently accepts.

Meditation is not aggression; it is receptivity. It is not an assault; it is an invitation. It does not pounce on anything; it accepts whatever comes.

So do not try to grab or possess moments of bliss and peace. They are not things that can be possessed. It is not furniture you can pick up and place in your room by force. It is like light: if we open the door and the sun rises outside, the light comes in by itself. We do not have to bind light and bring it inside; we only have to open the door and wait. It will come. In the same way, by quieting the mind, we wait silently, give thanks for what comes, and do not brood over what does not. Then you will find that day by day bliss keeps increasing. Without asking, something keeps coming; without asking, something keeps deepening. But if you start demanding, if you begin to want forcibly, you will find that even what used to come will stop.

For all seekers who walk in search of inner bliss, the greatest danger arrives when a little bliss begins to come. Very often they stop right there. As soon as it comes, their mind says, “Let more come.” And the moment the mind wants more, becomes aggressive to get, even the door through which something was coming begins to close.

So remember this much: give thanks to God for whatever comes, and do not worry about what does not; remain engaged in the effort to become quiet within. Drop the concern with what is received. Care about what you are becoming—how you are becoming silent. To the extent that you become silent, to that extent bliss becomes inevitable. Drop the concern for it—drop completely the concern with what is gained—for whatever capacity you create within yourself to receive, you will deserve, and it will certainly come to you.

In this context you have asked: when we do bad deeds people say bad results will come; if we do good deeds, good results will come.

This way of thinking—“will come,” in the language of the future—is wrong. If we have done something bad, in that very moment something bad has happened within. Nothing further will come. In that very moment something bad has happened inside us. If we have done something good, in that very moment something good has happened within. We are constantly creating ourselves. Every act is making us—not “will make,” but is making us now. What we call life is not merely life; it is also a self-creation. Through whatever we do, we are becoming. Something is taking shape within; something is thickening. We are building our own consciousness within. So whatever we do, something corresponding to it is being formed inside us.

People say you will go to hell, or you will go to heaven. They speak as if hell and heaven were somewhere in geography. I do not speak like that. Hell and heaven are not in geography; they are in psychology. They are not geographical notions, but mental ones. When you do something evil, you go to hell in that very moment. This is my view I am telling you. When I become angry, I grow fevered and enter the flames of fire in that very instant.

So it is not that someday you will go to hell, or someday you will go to heaven. In twenty-four hours you are many times in hell and many times in heaven. Whenever you are filled with anger, with the burning heat of intense lust, you invite hell within you. People say you will go to hell or you will go to heaven; my view is that hell and heaven come into you many times. It is a mental event. You will not find hell by breaking open the earth, nor will you find heaven by searching the sky.

And you will be surprised that people’s ideas of heaven and hell across the world are very different. Because it is psychological. In Tibet, their concept of hell is of a very cold place, because in Tibet cold is most painful. There is nothing more tormenting there than cold. So their idea is that sinners will go to a place so cold that they will be in deep trouble—there is no trouble greater than cold.

In our land, our idea of hell is of flames of fire. There is no cold there. Otherwise for us that would be a hill station! We imagine that in hell flames are burning and people are thrown into cauldrons of boiling oil. These are our imaginings—since heat torments us, we imagine a hot place to torment the sinner. Tibet has cold, India has heat. So such a hell cannot exist—or have separate sections, one cold and one hot!

In truth these are our images of suffering, projected into environments we can imagine. Suffering is a mental event, not a geographical one. Even now, when you do wrong, extremely painful states are created within you. If you do wrong occasionally, it occurs occasionally; if you do it continuously, it becomes continuous; and a time can come when you are in hell twenty-four hours a day.

So an ordinary person is sometimes in hell, sometimes in heaven. A very bad person mostly lives in hell. The utterly bad person lives in hell all the time. A good person begins to live in heaven. A very good person lives more and more in heaven. The utterly good person lives wholly in heaven. One who is free of both good and bad begins to live in liberation. To live in liberation means: it is not a place. You will not find it in space by searching: “Here is heaven, here is hell.” These are divisions of the mental world—of the psychology of man.

Thus the mental world has three divisions: hell, heaven, and liberation. Hell is what I called sorrow this morning; heaven, pleasure; and by liberation I mean: neither pleasure nor pain—that which is bliss.

So do not think that someday, later, we will get the fruit—that if we do bad we will get a bad fruit later, if we do good we will get a good fruit later. Whatever we are doing is simultaneous, in that very moment. It cannot be that I get angry now and receive its fruit in the next birth—this would be too delayed, a meaningless proposition. Why would it take so long? I get angry now and the fruit comes in the next birth? This is futile. Why such delay?

When I am angry, in the very act of anger I am undergoing its fruit. Outside of anger there is no fruit of anger. Anger itself gives me the pain that is its fruit. And when I am in non-anger, I receive the fruit in that very instant, because the joy of non-anger is itself its fruit. When I go to kill someone, in the very act of killing I am suffering the anguish inherent in it. And when I save someone’s life, in that saving I receive the happiness hidden within it.

Are you understanding what I am saying?

Action itself is the fruit. Action does not have a fruit later, never in the future. Each action is itself its own fruit.

So I do not call that action bad whose bad fruit will come afterwards. I call that action bad whose bad fruit you are receiving in that very moment. By tasting that fruit, verify and know whether the action is bad or good. The action that gives suffering within its very process—that alone is bad action.

(The audio recording of the question is unclear.)
Yes, let me tell you my view...

Yes?

It is happening in that very moment. The only difference is...

The great suffering is that they have been deprived of all moments of happiness and peace. Because one who is inwardly angry twenty-four hours a day will never experience a moment of peace, never a moment of love, never a moment of joy. All those doors he has shut with his anger. That continuous tension of anger running day and night has closed off all the essential moments. That itself is the great punishment. And then the fire of anger gives its own heat besides—it torments the body, torments the mind, and will keep dragging one downward.

There are two kinds of emotions: negative and positive. Some emotions, like anger and hatred, harm you instantly. Not sometime later—right then you lose something; you become fragmented; you go lower. Just observe: after anger, pause for a moment and see what happened. You will find you were on a higher plane and came down. You were in some peace; that peace is gone; you have fallen into great unrest. If there was any freshness within, it has vanished and everything has gone stale. If you felt any strength within, that strength has left; you feel utterly tired.

Whatever movements of the mind bring you fatigue, pain, sadness, a sense of having descended, restlessness—all these are negative. There are positives too: after which you feel fresher; after which you feel more strength; after which you feel peace has deepened; after which you feel you have climbed two steps in your inner life. You can experience this continually. You are doing both kinds of acts, and everyone has experience of both.

So my understanding is: no action yields its fruit in the future. The action itself is the fruit, in that very moment! For who is going to keep the accounts—and to what end? It is a futile, insane notion that someone will keep ledgers and then send you to hell or to heaven.

There is no accounting anywhere... Let me tell you my understanding. Every single act we do, in the very doing of it we have already experienced it. So a bad act will not take you to hell; the bad act is hell. A good act will not take you to heaven; the good act is heaven. And the third state I spoke of, which is outside karma—that is bliss, that is liberation. There are no auspicious or inauspicious actions there. There is no anger there, nor is there the forgiving of anger. None of that exists there.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Yes, none of that is there. Those two things are absent. There is supreme peace.

So when you ask, “What should we do with that anger that arises in us, that grows dense in us—what should we do with it?”

We do only two things. When anger arises, we do two things:
1) As soon as anger arises, we pick a target and throw it out. Anger arises in me, so I make someone the target and vent it. That’s one.
2) Or, when anger arises, I don’t make someone else the target; I make myself the target and push it down. In short, either I express it or I suppress it.

In both cases a great mistake is made. When I vent it on someone, when I discharge that surge onto another, I develop the habit of venting. Which means tomorrow I will vent it even faster; the day after, faster still. A day will come when I will start venting it without any cause. A day will come when it won’t matter to me whether there was any connection at all—I will just vent.

We, angry twenty-four hours, often rage at those who had nothing to do with it. Frequently the anger meant for those involved gets poured onto those who had no connection. Perhaps you were angered by someone at the shop and couldn’t express it there; you come home and vent it on the child, on the wife. Then anger starts coming out anywhere. Gradually it becomes completely irrational; it won’t even care whether the person did anything or not.

You will be surprised—we even vent anger on things. The door doesn’t open, so you shove it hard and even abuse it. And sometimes one wonders what intelligence there is in abusing a door or shoving a door! I see people: the pen doesn’t release ink, they curse it and fling it down. I am astonished—their anger is coming out on a pen! The poor thing has nothing to do with anger. So if a man vents his anger on a pen, why be alarmed by his anger? It means he will vent it on you the same way; it doesn’t matter to him. He just needs an excuse—he will let it out anywhere. Anywhere!

In Japan there was a monk whom a German thinker once visited. When he arrived, the monk was telling a man, “Go and ask forgiveness from your shoes. You took them off in anger.” The German thinker was astonished—what madness is this! Telling someone to apologize to his shoes. And the fellow, like a madman, actually went. The thinker was amazed—what is he doing! The man went and apologized to the shoes: “Honorable sir, forgive me!”

So the thinker asked the monk, “This madness—we had heard Eastern monks are quite mad. What is this insanity? Making someone apologize to shoes?”

The monk said, “This man removed his shoes in anger. If you consider a shoe worthy of receiving your anger, then you should also consider it worthy of receiving your apology. He took them off as if he were angry at them.”

The man said, “Yes, I was angry. I was angry about something else; the shoes took a bit longer to come off, so I yanked them off in anger. So the monk had me ask their forgiveness: go apologize, then come inside—otherwise what is the point of your coming in?”

If we observe, we will find that anger seeks an outlet. Whoever gets into the constant habit of venting it will keep venting it, and the more he vents, the more his inner strength will be depleted. So the route of expression is wrong, because it only makes anger denser.

And the other route is to suppress anger. Those who want to avoid anger then use this second route: when anger arises, keep a smile on the surface and push the anger inside. Most of us do this, for many reasons. Some for religious reasons—anger is bad, it will take you to hell. Some out of etiquette—how can one be angry? Some because of social relationships—how can one be angry? Some because how can a servant be angry with his master? So we push ourselves down; we repress.

When you suppress anger, you still harm yourself. For where will the suppressed anger go? It will revolve within. If it is pushed down from the conscious mind, it will revolve in the unconscious. You will have dreams in which you have murdered someone. Inwardly you will imagine setting their house on fire, or beating them with shoes, or doing something. Now it will all go on in the mind. It will sink inside you and distort your psyche from within, eating it away like worms.

Such a person is very dangerous. One day he will explode in a rage so perilous that the first type can never manage. That is why sometimes very simple, mild-looking people commit murder. Generally, very hot-tempered people do not kill, because their anger is released day by day. But the one who goes on suppressing anger—many times people say, “He was so simple; how did he do this?” He suppressed it for a long time. The surge accumulated. Then something provoked him, he became enraged, and the whole force burst out together. And then he can do something very dangerous. This surge can erupt someday. Such a person can go mad. If it is suppressed so much that it has no outlet, the mind will be deranged.

Any craving, any impulse—if indulged, it becomes a habit; if suppressed, it can make you neurotic. So the second path is no path.

I neither tell you to express it nor to suppress it; I say a third thing: dissolve it. One is to indulge anger, one is to suppress anger, and one is to dissolve anger. “To dissolve it” must be understood.

When anger arises, do not express it on anyone, because no one else is responsible for anger arising in you; you are responsible. Remember this. We usually shift the burden onto others: “I got angry because that man abused me.” But no one’s abuse can raise anger in me if anger is not in me. Only what is already within me can anyone stir in me.

If we open a curtain here and so many people seated become visible, the one who opens the curtain is not creating these people; he is only drawing the curtain. The people you see are here already. When someone abuses you, he does not create anger in you; he opens the curtain within you. The anger is present within. If anger were not present there, abuse could not bring anger.

You understand what I am saying, don’t you?
Anger is present there; therefore an insult brings anger. Pride is present there; therefore respect brings pleasure.

A man greatly honors you and you become very happy. You think he gave you happiness! Pride was present there; by honoring you he merely opened the curtain. Now it feels very good there. He abuses you, there is insult; pride was present there, and you became angry.

The things are present within you; people outside can only become the occasion for what is present to be revealed. No one can create anything inside you.

Remember: one person cannot create anything in another. He can only reveal what is already there. So never take the other as the cause of your anger—that he made you angry. Therefore, thinking about the other does not even arise.

And as I told you the night before last: whenever you start thinking about him, you will not be able to see your anger. You begin to look at the one who abused you. I begin to think about him. In that very interval anger will seize me and churn me; in that interval I will descend into hell. So when he abuses you, drop concern with him; close your eyes and look at your anger.

So one way was to express it—this is of no use.
The second way was to suppress it—this too is of no use.
The third way is: neither express nor suppress. Close your eyes. Confront the anger. Be its witness. Look at it—just look. Let it rise fully. Say to it, “Rise, and we will watch you—what are you!” We will neither express you nor suppress you; we will watch you.

Shut yourself in a secluded corner; it is a marvelous moment for practice. When anger grips you, consider it a wonderful moment for meditation. You will not gain as much by going to a temple as you can by entering into your anger. Close the door. Sit quietly alone. Close your eyes. And feel gratitude to the person who gave you the opportunity to see this anger that was within you—who gave you the chance to see this hell. Close your eyes; now let the whole of it rise and silently watch it. Do nothing to it; do not meddle with it. Create just a bare awareness about it—that we are watching it. Let it arise; let it spread in its full form; silently keep watching. Do not try to vent it on anyone right now, nor to suppress it.

No, no—I am not talking about suppression. I am not saying suppression.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Find solitude—close the door somewhere, sit quietly—and watch whatever arises. Just watch; do not do anything. It will arise for a moment—watch exactly that. No worry. You are mistaken in thinking anger arises for only a moment; its surge lingers for a long time. The flare-up may be a moment, but its trailing line of smoke can go on and on. No worry if you cannot see it in its full youth; even if it appears in its old age, there is no harm. Even if only its final streak is visible, there is no harm. Begin the experiment of seeing. As the practice of seeing grows dense, one day it will be caught right at its birth. For now, it will be like this—that you will see its last fading line.

For now it will be that, even if you sit in solitary observation, because of old habits of anger, you will only see its last departing streak. No harm in that. It is a good beginning. At least something is seen. Then more will be seen, and more will be seen. Someday the whole of anger will be seen.

And then a very wondrous experience will occur. When this practice deepens a little and you become capable of seeing anger, you will see that anger is neither going out toward anyone nor being suppressed; it is being released, it is evaporating. It is not going toward any person, it is no longer about anyone, nor is it being repressed within. It rises like steam and disperses, it lifts and passes out. You will sense anger arising and dissolving—not toward any person—dissolving, vaporizing.

And with its vaporizing there will be an experience of supreme peace that you cannot imagine. The very anger that would have taken you to hell will take you to heaven. Suppress it and you go to hell; express it on someone and you go to hell. Do nothing—neither suppress nor express; become a witness to it, observe it. See it for what it is—a surge.

And what I am saying about anger is true of everything: sex, greed, anything else. Whatever surge seizes the mind, become its observer. Begin a self-observation of them.

Understand the difference between observation and thinking.
I am not asking you to think about anger—what anger is, what the old scriptures say about anger. I am not saying that; in that case you will not be able to observe. I am not asking you to think about anger; I am asking you to see anger.

Do not think, “Anger is a bad thing, and so-and-so has said one should not be angry.” I am not asking that of you—that would be thinking. I am asking you to see anger. Become an inner seer; look at it. Fix your gaze upon it and know what it is. Do not make any judgment.

This is what I was saying the day before yesterday: do not decide about it whether it is good or bad. Know only this much—that something is there; let us see what it is.

You will be amazed—if you observe in this way, then even in the very first experience of observation you will discover something wondrous: the portion of anger you observe will dissolve. It will not slide around within you. Once it has been seen and has dissolved, it will not pursue you, as it does now.

I have seen this too. There are people whom anger from twenty years ago is still pursuing. There are even those whose fathers were angered by someone, and that anger has been following them since birth—hereditary enmity continues: “Our father had a quarrel with them,” and it still goes on. That anger still pursues them. It is strange! And anger pursues you too, for years. You see that person and you flare up again. It has been stored inside. Two years ago he made you angry; one day he shows up before you and you find something has stirred again inside—some snake has raised its hood within and is troubling you.

So, the more you observe, the more you step out of it. It will not pursue you. The day you become capable of observing the entire event of anger, you will find anger is gone. After a few days of observation, anger dissolves. Thereafter it becomes difficult for anger to arise. When observation becomes complete, anger finds it hard to come—because before it can arise, you begin to observe.

I said just now that, at first, only the last part—its going—will be visible to you. With continuous practice, the event of seeing will begin before it arises. Someone abuses you; while he is abusing, you start looking within: Where is it? Is it arising or not? And you will be amazed: if the capacity for prior observation has arrived, it will not arise at all; it will not be born.

Observation is the death of anger. Pre-observation means anger does not take birth. Its birth does not happen. And then, through that observation, when anger does not arise, the state of your mind is called non-anger. It does not come by suppressing anger, nor by expressing anger; it comes through the dissolution of anger.

No, it has nothing to do with it.

What?

I abused you in anger, and then I went and apologized to you. My anger does not disappear by apologizing. The abuse I hurled at you in anger had a harmful impact on you; that will be reduced a little. If I apologize very deeply, it will be reduced further. If I actually catch hold of their feet and enough… that is, whatever I did in anger, I do precisely the opposite. What did I do in anger? I hurt their ego. And in apologizing, what will I do? I will coax their ego and flatter it.
What is an apology? It is flattery. What is an apology? After all, yesterday you abused me, and today you come, take hold of my feet, and ask me to forgive you. Then the abuse you gave me yesterday wounded my ego, my ego was hurt. Today, when you come and hold my feet, my ego is gratified. If you gratify my ego in the same measure as it was hurt, then the effect on me will disappear. Understand? But as for you—nothing much is going to happen.

No, no, I would tell you...

Whatever loss has happened to you has no compensation. And this that you are thinking—that when we got angry and abused someone our ego was nourished, and now that we are asking for forgiveness our ego has been dissolved—do not fall into this mistake. Perhaps now the ego has been nourished even more. Then you were angry; now you have gone home as “forgiving” as well.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Yes, then the pleasure you took in ego was through anger: you abused me, so I will hurl at you an insult twice as weighty. Now you are going home thinking, “How forgiving a being I am, how magnanimously forgiving I am, that I asked them for forgiveness...” Then the conceit was what you might call very natural; now it is very sophisticated. That is the difference. That was a simple, straightforward conceit: you abused me, I abused you. Now the conceit is a highly evolved conceit. That one could be spotted; this one will be difficult to detect.

Let me tell you, I am not calling that bad; I am not calling it bad. To apologize is not a bad thing. But whether the apology was genuine—the sign of that is not whether it was calculated or spontaneous. The sign is this: if it was genuine, anger should not arise again. The question is, if it was genuine, then again… If the same kind of anger arises again and the same kind of apology is offered again, what does it mean? It means that anger is a mechanical reaction, and the apology is also a mechanical reaction. Anger erupts, then we apologize. Anger erupts, then we repent. Our whole life runs in this loop. We do the same act and then feel sorry for it. Then we do it again, feel sorry again, and again…

If someone were to look at your whole life, they would be amazed: you’re doing the same things—what are you actually doing? What is your work? Are you going in circles, thinking you’re moving? The same act, then the same apology; the same act, then the same apology. Then repentance, then sorrow, then repentance. In our lives certain things are fixed almost like day and night—sheer routine—and we keep repeating them.

My point is: break this routine. To break the routine means that if you go to apologize, go with the resolve that there will be no more anger; otherwise, don’t apologize. What is the use of apologizing if tomorrow you will get angry again? If not at this person, then at someone else. So what is the use of apologizing? Don’t repent if tomorrow you’re going to be angry again. Then decide you will not repent, because tomorrow you are bound to be angry again. If this realization arises in you—that you will not repent, will not ask forgiveness—then tell the person plainly: “I will not ask forgiveness, because it is of no use. If tomorrow you do the same to me again, I will be angry again. So why should I ask your forgiveness? I will not ask forgiveness.”

No, I am not speaking about the whole world at all.

If what I am saying is understood, then I will take up such questions.

I have said: neither repression nor indulgence—the way is dissolution. Anger can be dissolved through observation, through witnessing. The more calmly you observe any passion, the more it will melt. The more agitated you are, and instead of observing the passion you swoon under it and observe outside causes, the more that passion will deepen.

Unconsciousness is the life-breath of anger; observation is its death.

There are ways and tricks of unconsciousness. The trick is: when anger arises, we will not observe the anger; we will observe the one who “made” us angry. We think it is that person’s fault—he abused me, so I got angry; otherwise why would I be angry? If no one abuses me, why would I be angry? That man made me angry. If everyone were such that nobody abused me, I wouldn’t be angry. So there is no question about me. Why did he abuse? Why did he harass me? Why did he insult me? In that moment we don’t look at anger; we look at the person who “gave” us the anger. And so our gaze and our observation settle on him.

In precisely that state—when we are observing the other—we are unconscious within. Attention is there, and here there is inattentiveness. In that swoon, anger takes hold of our life.

When we have finished being angry and our energy has been spent in the anger, a jolt comes; suddenly attention slips off the person we were angry at and returns to ourselves. Because of the loss of energy, because of the pain, attention returns to oneself. Then we repent: I shouldn’t have done this, it was senseless; what was the use?

When unconsciousness breaks, repentance happens. But by then anger is gone. There is nothing left to observe. The storm has passed; now only broken things lie scattered—observe them, feel miserable, and decide that next time you will not be angry. When anger returns, you will again not be present to observe; you will have gone outwards. Again everything will be shattered, again you will look back, and again there will be repentance. Thus runs the circle of anger and repentance.

And these notions of ours—“one has to do it,” “anger has to be done, due to circumstances, due to society”—these are all justifications that we continually invent for our mistakes.

Understand me. Society will never be the way we want it to be. Never! You will be gone, and society will remain as it is. If Mahavira or Buddha had thought, “When society becomes good, only then will we become peaceful,” they would never have become peaceful.

On the level of society, a state will never arise where everyone is so peaceful that they give you no occasion to be angry. And I would say that even if such a state ever did arise, it would belong to the utterly dead—corpses—who never do anything that could stir anger in you. It is impossible.

In this world it is impossible that outer conditions… As I told you, you get angry if the pen runs out of ink. Your slipper breaks on the road and you get angry. Is it possible to persuade slippers never to break as one walks? Is it possible to instruct pens: if someone is writing an important letter, don’t stop the ink just then? That is impossible. Even if you could coax human beings somehow, still it would be impossible—because there is so much else in the world. How will you negotiate with heat when the fan stops in the middle of a hot spell, and explain: now is not the time, we will get angry, we will be infuriated?

The world will never be such that the causes of anger vanish. But the person can become such that, while causes remain, the energy to be angry dissolves.

There are only two possibilities: either the causes of anger vanish and we become non-angry, or the capacity within us to be angry vanishes and we become non-angry.

One path says: let the outside become perfect, then we won’t be angry. This is impossible. It will never happen. It cannot happen.

Recently I was traveling. In my compartment there was a gentleman with whom I was discussing anger. He said what you have asked: “Things outside are such—what can we do? People mess everything up.”

I said to him: Even if the world had only people, still it would be hard—explain, persuade… That, too, is not easy: there are three billion people on earth. I speak to one, he says: “Leave me; the other three billion are the problem.” I speak to the second, he says: “The others are at fault. Until they change, how can I?” If everyone says, “Until the others change, how can we change?” then there is no way to change. Because for all to change in a single instant is impossible. And then there are things, too.

What happened next was that the train stopped between stations. It stood there for two hours. His anger knew no bounds. He looked out, came back in—“My case is going to be ruined. I have to be there by such time. I must reach on time.” He became very heated. I said to him: Look, now the train has stopped. It is very difficult to guarantee that trains will never stop when someone is going to a court case. The train neither knows nor cares about your case. It neither knows nor cares.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

Yes. Now this man says: “If trains never stop, we won’t get angry.” That is impossible. It won’t happen.

The issue is not the world at all; the issue is solely the individual. And we invoke the world’s name to hide our weakness. We hide our weakness, console ourselves that it isn’t our fault.

The person who finds a justification for his mistakes will never be transformed, because justifications are endless.

Do not seek explanations, justifications, or rationalizations for your errors. Recognize your fault as your fault. Don’t shift it onto another. For by shifting it, it will never leave you. Shifting is the trick by which we set ourselves free—“It isn’t mine; what can I do?”

All of us—and all our vices—go on surviving because we never own them as ours. What you do not own, you cannot be free of. The first step to freedom from a vice is to hold yourself wholly responsible for it. First, experience fully: the responsibility is mine. That is the first thing. And second: do not abuse the vice—observe it. Then, slowly, because you have taken responsibility, efforts begin to arise to put the vice aside.

The greatest difficulty in the world is this: everyone holds someone else responsible for his own vices. Everyone. No one holds himself responsible. And if you don’t, why would you make efforts to remove it? The question doesn’t arise: you aren’t responsible!

So the first step of inner discipline is to admit: for all the vices within you, you are responsible. Don’t throw the burden on another; don’t take shelter in excuses. This needs courage—because we all have an image of ourselves in our eyes, very beautiful. It is hard to accept that there are stains on us too. Each of us carries a picture of himself in his heart, an imagination we maintain—that we are such-and-such. To accept that we get angry shatters that picture. It breaks the fantasy. It feels very bad.

The one who wants to enter the inner life must shatter his picture completely. He must dare to know himself as he is—not as he wants to be or wants to appear.

Inside we carry three kinds of persons. One: what we actually are—which we do not even know. Two: what we want to appear as—which we maintain every day. Three: what we appear as to others. There are three layers. We also worry about how we appear to others. We keep track—do they think well of us or not? Who laughs at us, who reacts how—we keep accounts of all that. We maintain a picture: what people think of us. And we maintain another picture in the heart: how we want people to think of us.

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Yes. You say: “Some people go and confess their sins, and they think their sins are forgiven.”

If they truly confessed and their sins were forgiven, then those same sins should not reappear the next day. But when they leave the church the next morning and are seen committing the same sins, then confession has been turned into a trick. It becomes a convenience. An old trick existed here in India as well: people thought a dip in the Ganges frees one from sin. They would return from the Ganges to the same sins. And the convenience grew: when the mood arises, we’ll go bathe again.

Someone asked Ramakrishna Paramhansa: people say bathing in the Ganges wipes out sin—what do you say?

He was very simple. He didn’t even want to say that the Ganges does not remove sin. He said: sins are indeed wiped out instantly, but the trees on the riverbank—when you dip into the water, the sins climb up and sit on the trees. You come out, and they mount you again. The Ganges can remove them, the Ganges can; but how long will you remain submerged? You must come out. They will climb back on. So there is no essence in going to the Ganges.

Leo Tolstoy has written an incident: One morning at dawn I went to church. A very wealthy, famous man was confessing there, in solitude at four or five in the morning, about his sins. It was dark. I stood in a corner and listened. I was astonished. I had thought him a good man. He was saying, “I am a sinner; I am depraved; I am this and that.” He wept and cried, “Oh Lord, forgive me my sins!”

Tolstoy writes: I used to think he was a good man. That day I realized—ah, he is wicked, very depraved.

The man came out; he didn’t know anyone else was there. When he saw me he panicked. I followed him. At the crossroads I said to someone, “Listen! These gentlemen whom we have thought decent—he is a confirmed sinner. I just heard his whole confession.”

The man glared at Tolstoy in anger and said: Look, that was a matter for the temple. I didn’t know you were present. That is not for the marketplace. If you tell anyone, I will sue you for defamation. I didn’t know you were there. And besides, I didn’t even tell you—the matter is between God and me.

These notions of ours have no meaning. The original meaning of confession is something else. It is what I have said: if a person observes his sin, his whole evil, in full—if it is seen—then he will place it before God. He will submit: this and this is within me. Full observation will bring that submission. In observation itself the sin will die. The submission is merely formal; the death of the sin happens in observation. The formal submission is: this is what I see in me; I say it before God. The person is freed—he is being freed by observation. For without observation, he cannot truly confess.

So nations that believe in God will bring their sins and lay them before Him—but prior to confession, observation is needed; only then can they say what is there. Those who do not believe in God will be freed from sin by observation alone. They are not freed by the submission; they are freed by observing.

But confession alone—as it has become—a formality, as if one says to God and the matter is finished—this solves nothing. The next day the same acts are repeated. There is no pain about it, no sense that “what I did was bad.” It is only out of fear; it seems an easy path: go confess, and the matter is over. Then do again, and confess again. Too cheap.

I do not accept this. Life is not so cheap—that by bathing in the Ganges or by confessing in church one can be freed. No one can be freed by that alone. Not by that alone! For this, one must enter some inner discipline, a deeper observation—enter an inner witnessing. And if confession arises out of that, then fine. If one has that kind of devotion, let him go submit to God—he will be freed. But confession by itself cannot free. If confession alone could free, it would be very easy. People spend their whole lives thinking thus; it becomes a great relief for sinners: commit as many sins as you want, and tell God—everything is erased. It cannot be so.

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Have you understood what I was saying? The discussion I am having on anger—has it been understood? I insist because often I feel that as I am speaking about anger—if that is understood—something will come of it. Otherwise you put aside anger and ask: Is there rebirth or not? What is the soul? I will not be able to explain rebirth either, and perhaps you will ask what the soul is!

What happens is this: if you enter fully into the inner depth of even one question, all your questions will be resolved. Enter fully into one question, and all questions will be resolved. If you touch one and jump to another, no question will be resolved. None will be resolved.

Do you understand?

If you go fully, perfectly, to the root of any one question, perhaps you will reach the root of every question—because perhaps man has only one question; its forms are many. He talks of this and that, this and that—the question may be one. Reflect on this.

The reason I have spoken with such eagerness about anger is simply that what I am saying applies equally to everything. All our drives—whether of anxiety, or anger, or some other craving or desire—are of one kind. The person who succeeds in resolving anger has learned a complete technique, which will succeed when applied to any other drive as well. And then, in the motionless, desireless state of the mind, you will know: you are not of today only. In that quiet state you will experience your prior being too. You will taste that you are the owner of an infinite life. In that state of still, undivided consciousness you will experience: I am not the body.

And what I called self-observation—if you practice it, you will be amazed to discover that within you the memories of past lives exist; those memories are present. If you become capable of very deep observation, you can look back upon the memories of your previous births. But before that, for me to say “Rebirth happens” has no meaning.

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What of it? What would be solved? Even if the date were known—the date, the time, the cause—what would it do for you? What would it do—I ask? Nothing at all. You would say: fine. My emphasis is this: I am not a thinker at all. I have no interest in this theory versus that theory. I have nothing to do with that.

I stayed in a village recently. Two elderly men came and said: For twenty years there has been one quarrel between us. We are friends. One a Jain, the other a Brahmin. One tangle returns and brings argument. We heard you, liked your words, and came to ask if you might settle it in our old age. I asked: What is the issue that has troubled you for twenty years? They said: Whether God made the world, or not. The Brahmin says God made it; we say it is beginningless. On this point we quarrel, endlessly.

I asked them: If I were to decide absolutely—either that God made it or didn’t—what would you do? They said: What is there to do? It would just be decided.

Let us think a little: questions that have no relation to a transformation of our life—such questions are, as Biju Bhai said yesterday, prostitution of the mind. They are meaningless. We are doing foolishness with the intellect. No benefit, no meaning.

I am not a thinker. My perspective is not concerned with what is or isn’t. My perspective concerns only this: as you are in this moment, your moment is filled with suffering. If it is not, then there is no difficulty; you have no question.

There is an incident in Buddha’s life. A man named Malunkyaputta came and asked eleven questions. All philosophy revolves around those eleven: Why did the soul come into the world? Who created the world? and so on.

Buddha asked: Do you really want answers? He said: I do; that is why I ask. I have been asking for years. Buddha asked: Those to whom you asked—did they give answers? He said: They all did. Buddha asked: Then why did you not get the answer? Were their answers wrong? If they were wrong, do you know the right one? Only then could you call them wrong.

Buddha said extraordinary things. He said: Tell me—so many gave you answers, why did they not satisfy you? Were they wrong? If wrong, then you must already know the right. If you already know the right, why ask? If you do not, then how did you judge them wrong?

Buddha said: I can give you answers too, but you will go and ask someone else after that. So I will not give you answers. I will give you the method to know the answer.

Buddha said: I will not tell you what the soul is, when it came or not, whether there is a next birth or not, whether you will go to heaven or where. I will not give answers. Because the way you have treated others’ answers, you would treat mine as well. I will not give you answers.

Stay for six months. Do what I ask. Do not ask me in between. After six months, I myself will invite you to ask.

Buddha’s disciple Ananda said to Malunkyaputta: Don’t fall for this. I have been with him for ten or twelve years; he has fooled many like this. Whoever comes with questions, he says: Stay six months, a year, then I will answer. And then, who knows what happens—those people never ask again.

In Buddha’s assembly sat thousands of monks who never asked anything. King Prasenajit once asked Buddha: Who are those in front? They always sit here. They never ask, never nod, never say anything—sit silently, listen, and leave. It seems they may not even be listening. Neither questioning nor disputing—just sitting quietly.

Buddha said: These are advanced people. They rarely come to the front. As long as they keep asking, they remain at the back. As their questioning drops, they come forward. They are sifted ones. They do not ask because they have no questions. Their questions have fallen.

Ananda said to Malunkyaputta: If you stay six months, there’s little chance you will ask.

He stayed. He did what Buddha told him. After six months Buddha said in the great assembly: Malunkyaputta, you came with questions—ask. The man stood and said: I have no questions. In six months they evaporated. Buddha said: Ask me any answer you want. He said: I do not want to ask; it has been settled—my own answer has arisen. My own answer has arisen!

Concerning the truths of life, answers are not obtained from someone else. The answers are within. What can be given is a method to reach within.

I do not say what anger is. I do not say what non-anger is. I say only this: whatever anger is, observe it. Observation is the method. Through it, the nature of anger is known. Through it, non-anger is known. Observation is the method. Observe thought within; through it, thought is known; and through it, slowly, the thoughtless is known. Observation is the method. Observe the body; slowly the body is known.

What do you know of the body yet? You have seen it only from outside. You know only the outer surface. You have not yet seen the body as if sitting within it. You have seen from outside, like a man standing outside a house looks at it—and another sits inside the house and looks. You have not yet sat within and seen the body. Enter a little deeper into observation, and you will look from within. Then you will see: inside is a mass of light, and outside is an encasing shell. It will be clear.

You have not yet seen the mind. As you go within, you will see the mind: light inside, and around it the flies of thought buzzing; beyond that, the shell of skin and bone.

Observation will lead you gradually inward, into the interior. And then only that remains experienced which has been observing—the pure witness. And with that experience, all questions—all questions—are resolved.

So when I give you answers, I am always careful that nothing remains merely intellectual, as if I were answering cleverly. That has no meaning. My good or bad answers have no meaning. My entire effort is not to increase your academic knowledge a little—so that you know some more fine things. What do I care for that? My whole effort is that a direction open in which you can become quiet and know the truth.

So I do not say when the soul came or not; I say only this: there is something within you right now that is soul, and right now there is a way to descend into yourself. Do not fritter away time and life in futile questions.

I spoke of this earlier. A monk went to a sage in China. There the custom was: take three circumambulations, salute, then ask. He went straight, grabbed the master’s hands, and asked a question. The master said: You don’t even know the custom? First circumambulate properly, then bow, then sit, then ask! You grab me like we are quarreling… He shook him and asked.

And the man said: I can do three thousand rounds, but there is no guarantee of life. If I die within the three rounds, will you take responsibility? If in those three rounds I fall and die—after all, I will die one day—if I fall and die while bowing, whose responsibility will that be? I have no leisure. And he said something very strange, which I loved. The master asked: What do you want to ask? He said: I cannot even decide what to ask. I have come to ask you: what should one ask?

Rare! He said: I am sure to ask wrongly, because I am a wrong man, and I have no accounts. Tell me only this: what should I ask? I have no time; otherwise I could do three thousand rounds.

This man has no questions; he has thirst. We, generally, have questions—not thirst.

Condense thirst; do not spread out into questions. Questions are not deep; they are broad. Thirst is not broad; it is deep. Questions extend; thirst intensifies. One question, two, fifty, a hundred thousand may arise. Thirst is not in the thousands; thirst is one—and it grows deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

Do you understand? Questions grow longer, become many. Thirst is one; it deepens. At a certain point thirst becomes so dense that then you don’t want questions; you don’t want to “know” anything. Nothing can satisfy you by someone saying “it is like this, like that.”

From meeting people all over the country I have found that almost all questions are like school exam questions—academic, with no relation to life. Useless, meaningless. I have no interest in answering those. Whether there are past lives or not—I don’t care.

What matters is that right now you have one birth, one life in hand, one capacity. Within this capacity you are aware: there is suffering, restlessness, pain, trouble. Be concerned with the means to remove this. Ask only that. From every side, dig only there. Put all your consciousness, your total center, on that. And within yourself, whatever appears to be the principal cause of your suffering, begin to observe that.

For some it will be anger, for others greed. That particular characteristic around which your pain revolves—because of which you are restless—put observation on that. Concentrate wholly and work on it. From that very work answers will begin to come—and even those answers will come which seem unrelated to that work.

If you want answers, drop worrying about questions and commit yourself a little to a course of practice. If you don’t want answers, then there are many scriptures and many answer-givers—collect their answers. You will die a scholar, who knew many answers—but had no answer. Who knew much that was borrowed—but had nothing of his own.

There is no one poorer than the so-called learned and the pundit. These so-called thinkers—no one is more destitute and pitiable. They have no answer of their own. They are repeating what is heard and read—repeating, repeating. They are all dead. It has no meaning. No meaning.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

Yes, yes. I was saying: we carry within us a grand picture of ourselves. That grand picture deceives us all our life. Because of it we never accept any fault in ourselves, never see any mistake, any stain.

So shatter your imagination—throw away your grand picture. Stop worrying about what you ought to be; know what you are. We are all afflicted by ideals, and so we live in performance. Each of us has created an ideal image—“I am such-and-such.” That very imagination keeps deceiving us. Because of it, when any vice appears in us, we cannot accept it. We think it is there because of someone else.

I was talking with a professor. He said: Some angers are “righteous indignation.” Some angers are not anger at all; they are completely right. I said: No anger can be right. No word is more false than that. No anger can be right—just as no darkness can be called light. To say some blind men can see is nonsense. These are opposing words. “Righteous” and “indignation” are in opposition.

Yes, for every act of anger you take some basis to be true. And you take it as true because you are looking for a way to be angry. The mind’s trick is this: we want to be angry, and we also want to preserve the grand, divine image we have made of ourselves in imagination. So we declare that the basis is perfectly right, and that it befits us to be angry at this moment. To keep our “divinity” from being fractured by our anger, we claim that the reason for anger is right. It is here that the mistakes are hidden.

So I say: first shatter the statue you have erected of yourself within. Stop worrying about it; begin to know what you actually are. Then you will seem quite strange to yourself. You may think, “There is no husband as good as I.” Look carefully within and you will find: what sort of husband are you, and in what sense good? Perhaps you think, “No one is a better father than I.” Look carefully: what in you is fatherly, and what kind of madness are you caught in?

Push aside this illusion that “I am such-and-such.” Look at what you are, and you may find there is nothing of a father there, nothing of a husband there. Panic will arise because your picture will begin to break.

But a seeker has to pass through this. This is the austerity, the penance. This is the pain that must be endured. Smash your entire divine image and know yourself as you are—naked, amoral, as you are. When you know yourself as you are, changes will begin. The faults that now become visible will be hard to tolerate. Earlier you endured them because they were unseen; once seen, they become hard to bear.

To begin to see a flaw is to begin the path of being free of it. But we are always engaged in the reverse: forever busy proving that our idealized self-image is very true. Twenty-four hours we strive to prove it. If someone criticizes us, we oppose them. If someone abuses us, we counter them. If someone speaks against us, we resist—so that our image does not crack.

There was a monk staying outside a village. He was young and handsome. In the village a young woman became pregnant. Pressured and questioned, she said, “It is the monk’s child.” She bore the child, and the whole village was enraged. They went and dumped the baby on the monk. He asked, “What is the matter?” They said, “This is your child.” He said, “Is it so?” The baby began to cry, so he started caring for it. People hurled abuses, insulted him, and left.

In the afternoon he went begging with the child. Who would give him alms? Rumors spread; he was mocked everywhere. Wherever he passed, people gathered, staring and laughing: “This monk—and carrying his own baby!” He needed food, and the child needed milk. The baby was crying, and the poor fellow begged throughout the village. Who would give him alms?

No one did. He even went to the house of the girl whose baby it was. He called there as well: “Do not give me alms; just give alms to this child—if it can get some milk, that is enough!”

For the girl, it became unbearable. She told her father, “Forgive me, I lied. The monk has nothing to do with this. To protect the real father, I took the monk’s name. I thought you would chase him away and the matter would end. I never imagined this situation. This has become too much for the monk.”

The father said, “Oh! And he didn’t even say it wasn’t his child! That simpleton should at least have said that!” They all went to him and folded their hands in apology.

He said, “What is it?” When they began taking the child from him, he asked, “What is the matter?” They said, “This child is not yours.” He said, “Is it so? So that is the case—the child is not mine?” In the evening people asked him, “Are you mad? Why didn’t you say it in the morning?” He said, “When so many people say something, it must be right.”

In truth, he has no self-concept to defend, no image to protect. He carries no image like, “I am a celibate monk; how could this be mine?” He has no such image. If you say so, that is fine. If you are in error, you can correct your own error; how am I responsible to correct it? If you think me adulterous, immoral—that too is fine, because I have nothing to defend, not even that.

One who drops his own pictures and statues in this way—I call him a sadhu, a monk. Usually the monks we see maintain a big self-image. They are very concerned to be something. They labor day and night to prove they are something. The one who has dropped this effort to prove “I am something,” and agrees to be just as he is—him I call a sadhu. Whoever moves in that direction, in self-observation, will one day certainly come to know.

Do not erect false pride and a counterfeit personality within yourself. It creates great difficulty. Because of it, our questions cease to be genuine. Many times I notice: you want to ask one thing, but you ask something else—lest it be revealed that this issue too is in you.

I am quite amazed. I was speaking at a meeting in Calcutta. A gentleman had written a much-praised book on brahmacharya—celibacy. He presented it to me. I spoke about celibacy—my own understanding. He wanted to ask something, but was in great difficulty. He stood up and said, “I have a friend. He wants to practice brahmacharya, but he cannot manage. What should he do?”

I asked, “Is that friend of yours—or is it you? Let me first understand that.” He was very flustered. “No, a friend of mine,” he said. I said, “Forget the friend; bring that friend here. There is certainly a way—certainly a way—but bring the friend. If I explain to you and you explain to him, it will be a big mess. Bring the friend; I will explain directly.”

He became very restless. After I left, he wrote me: “Forgive me—it's my difficulty—but I could not gather the courage to ask.” I wrote back: “You could have had the courage—if you had not written that book on celibacy. There lies the problem. That book has become an image: ‘I am such a knower of brahmacharya.’ If you ask anyone, they will say, ‘Oh, you yourself still have trouble practicing it!’”

I meet monks who are themselves in difficulty. They do not want to speak to me in front of everyone. In a crowd they avoid meeting me. They want me to meet them alone, in private. Because their troubles are the same old ones—which they cannot state publicly. In private they ask me: “How can celibacy be mastered? The mind remains restless—how to…? Anger arises—what to do?” If they ask such things before all, the image they have built around themselves of being very serene will be shattered; people will think, “So he is not yet tranquil.”

If we cannot put the real person forward, how will we transform that real person? We keep a false person in front and want to attain the real one! We want to realize the soul while staging a copy, an acting, an entire performance all around us—this will not be possible.

In my view there is nothing here to be frightened of. People have stopped asking the straightforward questions of life. Someone will ask, “Is there a soul or not? Is there God or not?” As if these have anything to do with you. The questions that concern you are different—the ones that are tormenting and troubling your life, the ones because of which you are in difficulty. If you understood how to change those, there would be a revolution. But no one asks them—because how to ask? They would expose us, reveal us. We do not ask the real questions of life; we keep asking the fake ones.

My whole emphasis is: catch hold of the real questions of life. All this other talk is nonsense; it has no meaning. Catch the real questions. What is my trouble? What is my difficulty? Where am I entangled? Where am I disturbed? Where is my suffering? Focus on that; grasp it; think about it; understand the method regarding it; begin to experiment upon it.

And the very interesting thing is, one who engages in such experiments may not look religious at all—he does not talk of soul, or God, or rebirth. But the great secret is: whoever takes hold of life in this way and goes to work will one day reach the place where soul and God are all known.

Just last night I said this: Mahavira did not go and ask anyone whether there is a soul or not, whether there is rebirth or not. Sitting there in the forest, do you think he was pondering whether there is a soul? Have you ever thought what he might have thought? Do you think he sat thinking, “Is there a soul? Is there rebirth?” No—none of that. He was working on anger; he was working on sex. The work goes on these things. Work is not done on “soul-and-such.”

In those twelve years of austerity—on what was the work done? Was anyone working on the soul? Investigating past births? Tracking down nigod? Finding when the beginningless world came into being? Nothing of the sort. He was working on anger; working on sex; working on greed. The work happens there. Through that very work a day comes when all these dissolve. When all these dissolve, that which is the soul is experienced.

The talk may be of the soul; but the work is not to be done on the soul. The work has to be done on something else. Yet we keep asking about the soul. It has no meaning—none at all.