Upasana Ke Kshan #10

Conflict. Conflict. Yes, conflict indeed. That is, all evolution happens through opposition.

It happens through opposition. It happens only through opposition. Everything happens through opposition.

Yes, yes—of course it will continue; there is no question of whether it can be managed.

In fact, in fact, when someone has taken two thousand rupees from you, the hurt is not about the two thousand going; because sometimes you even donate two thousand, and then there is no hurt.

The thief isn’t as clever; the sannyasin is—that’s the only difference. The thief, poor fellow, slips in at night, takes from the house, and causes you distress. Another man comes—a sevak, a sannyasin, a mahatma, so-and-so, this-and-that—and he says… and he takes from you by gratifying your ego. He too is taking from you, but he leaves your ego satisfied. He leaves behind a fragrance: “Yes, I gave.” The pain isn’t that someone took two thousand from you. The two thousand isn’t the pain; the pain is something else.

So what I am saying is: a person who lives naturally—whether someone takes from him as a donation or takes by stealing—will simply say, “Two thousand were with me, and now they aren’t.” He will neither puff himself up over the donation nor be plunged into sorrow over the theft. He will just say, “There were two thousand, and now there aren’t.” His understanding will be that factual. And what is the point of saying that someone took it, or someone talked me into it, or someone forced it out? There’s no use in any of that. The life of such a person—that is religious living.

That is to say, when we say “it is difficult,” what we mean is that a particular way of living is difficult. It may be that I do not have a very large house—yes, that may be. But who has said that living without a house is difficult? It may be that I do not have a very big car—yes, that may be. But who has said that if you do not have a big car, living becomes difficult? No—when we say “living is difficult,” we already carry a certain definition of living and a blueprint for how it should be; living like that will indeed become difficult.
But the question to ask is: in living like that, is there happiness? Or even if that way of life becomes difficult, can there still be happiness? What is to be asked is one thing; what is to be known is another.

No, no. The moment you tell yourself, “I should forget,” you won’t be able to forget. No—that’s not what I’m saying. I am not saying that. I only need to know that it happened. It happened!

Tomorrow I will die; tomorrow I will grow old—then what will I say, to whom will I say, “Who cheated me?” Tomorrow I will be old and youth will be gone—who cheated me? No, but somewhere old people carry a suspicion that those who are now young have cheated them; so the old are angry with the young. A mother is angry with her young daughter; deep down she feels some cheating has happened—that this girl has become young and I have become old. Though no one says this plainly anywhere. No one says it plainly. You understand my meaning, don’t you? But who is cheating whom? Who is cheating whom? And since in the end everything is snatched away—whether you cheat or are cheated. This is a very amusing thing.

Recently I stayed in a house. When I returned from a meeting at night, the children there were playing Monopoly—the business game. There was a great commotion. Someone was shouting, “He cheated me,” and “He did this.” And they were utterly serious. Utterly serious. Business was in full swing; they were completely serious. Completely serious and fighting hard, in a full-blown quarrel. As I was passing that room, I stopped there and asked, “Who has cheated whom?” They said, “You settle it for us. He has cheated like this; he made a wrong move against us.”

I asked them, “How much longer is this game going to go on?”
They said, “It’s already midnight; it’s about to end now.”
I said, “After it ends, what difference will there be between the one who cheated and the one who was cheated?”
They said, “There will be no difference.”
Then suddenly it dawned on the children, and they all began to laugh. They said, “Then there will be no difference.”
When in the final reckoning there remains no difference...

And my understanding is this: if eight or ten children were playing, then by twelve o’clock the game is over; they’ve shut up all their shops and gone. But the one who thinks, “I was cheated,” his night will be different; his sleep will be affected. The one who thinks, “I cheated,” his sleep too will be troubled. That is to say, it was all just play, wasn’t it? So the real question now is: while we were in the play, were we happy then? If we were happy then, even after the play a stream of joy will keep flowing.
In this entire life, that we construct such-and-such a life—this is not what is valuable. What is valuable is that life be such that it leaves you in bliss, and that is what I am speaking of. It will always be non-dialectical. There will be no duality in it, no opposition. In it, things are as they are.
Now someone comes and says to me, “Ishwar Babu was speaking against you.” I say, “He must have been saying so.” He is Ishwar Babu; whatever seems right to him, he will say. Someone says, “So-and-so takes you to be God.” I say, “That is his understanding; he may believe so.” Someone says, “A certain person doesn’t consider you a saint—he thinks you are a devil.” I say, “That would be his understanding.” Where do I come into it?

Yes. Where do I come into this? I have heard it. And I said: you, too, made an effort and conveyed the news—grace. There is nothing more to it than that.

Suppose, in my mind, I take it that Ishwar Babu should go out into the world and declare that I am God, and then Mahipalji brings the news that he has been saying you are nothing at all. Then the trouble begins. The cause of the trouble is not Ishwar Babu. The cause of the trouble is me. Because I was assuming that this should be done; it was not done, in fact the opposite was being done—so I became miserable. But I have never held such a thing. I have never believed that. I am what I am. I have never kept accounts of who says what, nor have I desired to. So then, what suffering can be created by who is saying what? None at all.

It is our expectations that cause our suffering, not the behavior of others.

For example, I come here, and if I have come assuming that when I enter you should stand up and greet me, and no greeting happens and you all remain seated, then I can be unhappy. Not because you did not greet me—but because on the stairs I had been preparing myself for you to greet me. Suddenly there is frustration: what I had pictured did not happen. But if, as I climbed the stairs, I had not come thinking that you must greet me, then I would accept the room as it is—because what does it matter? I had no expectation. If people were sitting, I would accept it; if they were standing, I would accept it. If they greeted, I would accept it; if they did not, I would accept it. Because I had not come having decided how this room should behave.

So in life, those who move by calculation go on becoming miserable—because all their accounts are fixed in advance: what should happen, what should not happen, what should not happen.

Our trouble is this: we are proceeding on the assumption that success will happen—therefore we fear failure. What I am saying is that we are taking it for granted that success must be. And we never ask how success could exist without failure. Success and failure are the two legs of the same mind. The person who succeeds will also fail—daily. Today he’ll win an election; tomorrow he’ll lose. Today people will praise; tomorrow they’ll condemn. Today he’ll be up; tomorrow down.

Lao Tzu used to say: never climb to a place from which you will have to fall. But our desire is to climb precisely to the place from which all have fallen and we alone will not; to climb where no one has ever managed to climb. Our desire is to reach the very place where whoever climbed fell—and there I should not fall: that is what we call success. That’s all success means.

Where no one has ever climbed, we think others failed out of weakness. But the truth is: the very nature of that place is that it cannot be climbed—it’s the place’s own “virtue,” not anyone’s weakness.

Humans have been around for millions of years; everyone has tried to climb there. The point we want to reach is like the tip of a needle—one cannot stand on it. With a leap you can catch a tiny taste of it before you fall, but you cannot stand there. When you jump off the ground, you can come into the air, but you cannot stay; you return to the ground. Yet an illusion arises: “If I could stay for a moment, why not a little longer? The mind says: I did stay a little; if I jump better, I can stay longer. If I muster more strength, I can stay even longer.”

But the very nature of jumping is such that it’s only an illusion; there isn’t the slightest gap between your going up and your coming down. You don’t pause even for a second. When you spring from the ground—between going up and beginning to come down—you do not stop for even a moment. You are either going or returning; you never stop in between at a point you could call “success.” Between the old failure and the new failure, leaps keep happening. That is what I’m saying: you keep leaping from one failure to the next. And the little illusion that “I had succeeded” arises because it slipped from your hands—hence the need for the next leap.

And what is success, anyway? What does “success” mean?

Here I use a different word: I call it sufalata—not safalata; su-falata. That is: it’s not enough merely to be fruitful; it is necessary to bear good fruit. If fruit appears but is bitter, what is the point? It is not enough to be successful; it is enough to be sufal—well-fruited. And sufal is a much greater thing.

I hold that sufal ripens only when one does not strive to be successful and does not fret about failure—then, sufal happens in life. When there is no striving for success, no fear of failure, then the possibility of sufal arises.

And when we say, “This can’t be done,” our only reason is that we are presupposing that a certain structure we have built up must be achieved. “This won’t be possible; that won’t be possible”—we keep saying it. And what are you assuming—that by doing what you’re doing you will accomplish it? I am saying—I understand: if you accept what I say, perhaps that will not be possible. But do you think that by doing what you are doing you will make it happen? That too will not be possible. In truth, it is simply not going to happen. The only difference will be this: in one case the illusion remains that “we tried”; in the other, that “we didn’t even try.” That’s all the difference. This “success” is not going to happen.

The whole reason, the whole reason is only this—the whole reason is this: generally the unintelligent have courage, and the intelligent do not. That is the trouble. This too is one of life’s paradoxes. The unintelligent have courage; the intelligent lack it. So the unintelligent keep pouring their energy into unintelligent things; they go on doing in a kind of fervor. And the intelligent understand a great deal, but they cannot do; they cannot put in the energy.

Understanding needs great courage.

And courage is such a matter that someone may think, “Only when I have courage will I act.” Courage is not like that. Courage is such a thing that only if you act will courage happen. This is the difficulty. A man says, “I will enter the river when I have learned to swim.” Fine—then it is never going to happen. The first time, you have to step into the river without knowing how to swim. And the very panic that arises from entering the river without knowing how to swim—out of that, swimming is born. Out of that, swimming is born.

Just now when I came, a friend was with me—a millionaire. He said to me, “Your words make sense, but I have a big difficulty. You say all human beings should be loved. And whenever I look at any person, I feel he has come only to pull money out of me. So how can I love? I just cannot love. I cannot love.”

What I have said to you, I said to him. I asked, “How much money can anyone take from you? No millionaire comes to you to siphon off your money. A poor person comes—a schoolteacher, a student, someone whose wife is ill, someone or other comes to you. How much can he take from you? Even a poor man’s courage to take is poor. He isn’t going to walk away with a crore from you. Even if you offered it, he would panic and drop dead right there—he couldn’t take it away. He can take ten or fifty rupees from you.”

So I said to him, “Do an experiment.”

He asked, “What?”

I said, “For seven days, whoever comes to you—if he asks for twenty-five, give him fifty. And watch what happens.”

He said, “How much of a loss will that be?”

I said, “No special loss. Try it for seven days.”

After seven days he came to me and said, “I was astonished—the way I used to get into a tangle, that man got into a tangle! He asked for twenty-five with great courage; I gave him fifty. I said, ‘Take this, and come again if you need more.’ He was in immediate difficulty. He said, ‘No, what are you saying? No-no, not fifty—I just need twenty-five.’ I said, ‘You take fifty.’ And for the first time I could see: in what way had he cheated me? The usual trouble—that I might shave something off his twenty-five—wasn’t there. I had given him fifty. That trouble was gone.” And he said, “I laughed so much afterward, watching his predicament—how he kept getting into difficulty. He kept turning back at the door to look at me carefully, as if to say, ‘What is this? I came to ask for twenty-five; how did this man give me fifty!’”

He said, “I slept so peacefully that night, as I have never slept. And again and again I laughed at the whole thing… Then it occurred to me: when someone comes to ask me for twenty-five, and somehow I give him ten or five, or nothing, or even twenty-five, the kind of satisfied sleep he gets—while I am left so dissatisfied—today the situation has reversed. Today that man won’t be able to sleep the whole night, because he will keep thinking, ‘What is the catch? How did he give me fifty!’ And if that man comes again, I will tell you.” Six months passed. He said, “That man has not come again. He has not come again.”

What I am saying is: we simply do not experiment in life. And we are afraid to experiment. What is there to be afraid of—what do we have to lose? The greatest difficulty is to determine once and for all: what is there that we have, that could be lost? And what is there that, by saving, will actually be saved in the end? Nothing is going to be saved; only the foolish keep trying to save.

I ask you to imagine: a flood has come and the whole village is drowning, and some people, with their household goods on their heads, are trying to swim through the flood. They say, “We will save something.” If I am swimming without carrying anything, they say to me, “You are a fool, you are utterly mad. Save something—the flood has come.” And I say to them, “When it is certain we are headed toward the ocean, when there is water everywhere and the land is submerged, why carry the burden any longer? At least I am enjoying being light—you are not even able to enjoy that. When it is certain that this river is going to fall into the ocean, and you and your belongings are both going to fall in—then in the end, who was mad is hard to decide. But since most people are busy saving their stuff, I alone will look mad. I alone will look mad. Where life is anyway going to end in death…”

Hmm, hmm.

No harm in that. No harm in that.

No, no, no. This very idea of ours is mistaken.

We never really understand. Our whole trouble is this—our whole trouble is that we never even think that when we arrive on earth without a single coin, whatever we give and take; and when we have to depart without a single coin, whatever we take and give is nothing more than a play. Within that play, who cheated whom, who made more money, who gathered more notes, who fell short—so long as you look from inside the game, it all seems very meaningful; but if you look from just a little above the game, it becomes laughable. And because we try to see its significance while standing inside the game, we suffer.

Think of a few people playing football or volleyball, throwing the ball from here to there and from there to here. They are terribly serious, staking their very lives. The crowd stands tense—if one side loses, a shot might be fired, sticks might fly, even a murder could happen. Anything could happen. Such seriousness! Whoever is caught inside the game is that serious and that excited. But if someone stands outside and watches, he’ll be amazed: why are they taking so much interest in tossing a ball back and forth? Inside the game it is meaningful—there is winning and losing. And winning or losing depends on whether the ball goes this side or that side. But if someone stands outside for just a moment, he will feel it is utter madness. It looks very crazy.

No—the players are not really throwing the ball; the ego is traveling with the ball. The ball is only a pretext, a device. From the outside you see only the ball moving to and fro, but the ego is attached to it. The ball merely announces whose ego has won and whose has lost. But if someone stands outside even the “ball of the ego”—and sees: suppose I lose and you win, then what?—things will appear very absurd indeed. Utterly absurd. The point is like this…

I keep quoting Lao Tzu. He says a man came to defeat him. Lao Tzu quickly lay down flat on his back and said, “Shall I lie down? Come, sit on my chest!” The man got a bit flustered. Lao Tzu said, “Sit quickly and enjoy your victory, so I can get back to my work.”

If that man actually sat on Lao Tzu, he must have looked like a fool. Who was mad there? That is the question—who was mad? Perhaps he went out and told people, “Nothing much—I’ve just pinned him down.” But who was really mad?

And if there is a final reckoning in this world, on that day Lao Tzu will be seen laughing and that man will be seen weeping. Because in that final reckoning, it will be clear that the other man acted foolishly, and Lao Tzu was a man of astonishing understanding. He is saying, “Do it quickly, otherwise it will take time. Needlessly you will try, I will resist, and it will all drag on—time will be wasted, and my work will be held up. So I’ll lie down right away; you sit on me and announce you’ve pinned me.”

But then even the victor loses his fun, because this man himself is getting pinned. The fun was in doing the pinning—the pleasure was in saying, “See, I did it!” The joy was in sitting on top. But when the other one seats you himself, everything becomes meaningless.

What I am saying, certainly, is ultimately sheer madness—from the standpoint of this world, which has been made by madmen, along with their games and their rules.

I was just reading a story—I’ve told it before. A madman is sitting by the roadside. He’s tied a string to a stick and is “fishing” on the road. There’s no water anywhere. Whoever passes thinks he’s crazy. “What are you doing?” He says, “Catching fish.” The passerby laughs: “How many have you caught so far?” He replies, “You’re the mad one! Can fish be caught on a road?” That man has been at this since morning. In the evening he says, “I’ve been checking whether even one sensible person passes here who doesn’t ask anything. Not a single one. Everyone who comes asks, ‘What are you doing?’ I say, ‘Catching fish.’ ‘How many have you caught so far?’ Because he wants to prove me mad. Then he says, ‘You’re crazy—who catches fish on a road!’ And off he goes, dejected.”

There are rules inside the game—and there is the capacity to stand outside the game.

I call that person religious, a sannyasin, who can stand outside the game and see it once—just once—from beyond. If even once that outside viewpoint dawns on you, you are a different person. Whether you then keep playing or not is another matter; it doesn’t matter. You have become a different person.

The difficulty you feel arises because one part of your mind understands this is right, while another part still believes the rules of the game are right—otherwise everything will fall apart. The mind splits in two; hence the mess.

But I think that if someone ever dares to try it, such joy is experienced that it defies all accounting. There is no accounting for it—because, after all, what will you take with you?

Recently, something amusing happened. I was in Khandwa; there was a strike. A small train goes to Indore. I boarded it; it was to leave in about an hour. A man came. I was alone. He came to the window and said, “I am in great trouble.” I said, “Don’t tell me your trouble; tell me what I can do.” He looked at me carefully. For narrating the trouble is the key thing—that’s how you get entangled. He starts telling you his wife is ill, and then you can’t refuse even four annas. Once you listen to his story, you are caught; you’ve entered the game. If you hear him out—“my wife is sick, my child is starving, I am in great distress”—then either you say, “All this is a lie,” which feels very harsh to say to a suffering man; or, if you accept it as true, you feel obliged to give something.

I said, “Don’t tell your trouble; tell me what I can do.” He looked at me closely. He said, “Even after I tell my trouble, hardly anyone does anything. You, without even hearing it?” I said, “Just say what I can do.” He mustered courage and said, “Give me one rupee.” I said, “Your courage is very weak. Is your trouble so small it will be solved by one rupee?” He said, “No, no—the trouble is very big.” “Then why ask for one rupee? Ask properly.” He looked at me—he thought perhaps I was joking. One rupee was a lot; what more could a poor beggar ask?

With great effort he gathered his last bit of courage and said, “All right, if you insist—give me two rupees.” I gave him two rupees. He left, somewhat agitated.

Five or seven minutes later he came back. He had taken off his coat and left his cap. I thought, “Strange fellow—he’s back. Changed his coat and cap!” He must have put them down somewhere. He said, “I am in great trouble.” I said, “Don’t talk about your trouble. Just tell me what I can do for you.” This time he looked at me as if I were stark mad—this was too much. “What kind of man are you? Are you mad?” Meaning: I’ve just taken two rupees from you. “Tell me what I can do for you?”

He said, “Give me five rupees.” He had come with much-inflated courage. I gave him five and said, “Go.” Now he was in real difficulty. It wasn’t so easy to leave me quickly, and it was also becoming hard for him to go.

He came yet again—this time he had set aside his yellow turban. He said, “I’ve lost my ticket.” I said, “Don’t talk about tickets.” He said, “I have to go.” I said, “That’s not the point. Tell me what I can do for you.”

He asked, “Are you even a man? Are you mad? Don’t you recognize me?” I said, “I was worried that it seems you’re not recognizing me—you keep coming back, as if to a different person each time. Still, what can I do for you?” He said, “I don’t want you to do anything; I don’t want anything.” “Anything else?” “I don’t want anything.”

But then that old man said, “Now I will not be able to deceive anyone—because I myself have been deceived.” He said, “I won’t be able to cheat anyone again; I myself got cheated.”

And what is made or marred, after all? The man took seven rupees—what was made or spoiled by that? Had that money remained with me, what good of the world would have been achieved? And now that it’s with him, what harm is happening? In the end, what really is going on?

Yes. So that pain—that pain—that pain: it is life itself that is making a fool of you; you haven’t noticed. Birth is given; no one asks you. Death comes; no one asks you. Life itself is making a fool of you. And if it’s being done, then it is God who is making you a fool. Where nothing is known, there the fool is us. And if, on top of that, one or two people also lend a little helping hand, what’s the harm? Here, where we know nothing at all, to talk of being wise is itself madness.

Who is digesting the food in your belly? Who is making blood? Why is it being made, for what? You know nothing. Why is there sky? Why the moon and stars? Why the earth? Why do the rivers flow and then become clouds? None of this is known.

Where nothing is known, if one person also deceives me a little and takes two rupees, why should I make that a cause of distress? Meaning: I am the fool. Because here nothing is known—where is wisdom?

No, but the real reason is that we try to be clever in small matters in order to create the belief that we are intelligent. And the big questions stand all around us, for which there is no answer; we don’t even raise our eyes toward them. We manufacture answers within petty games and then assume we are intelligent.

In truth, because we are fools, we are afraid, twenty‑four hours a day, that the fact of our foolishness might be exposed. That is the point. That is the reality. Because we are ignorant—that is the reality. So if someone even prods it a little, uproots it, we get upset and pounce on him, saying, “He has messed everything up.” Though the poor fellow is doing nothing. He is merely lifting your garment and saying, “There is skin underneath.” He is doing nothing else. The skin is there whether he lifts the cloth or not.

The day it dawns on us that, where even the ABC of life is unknown, what else is there to insist upon? That is to say: because there is no acceptance in our mind that we are ignorant, therefore if someone proves us ignorant, we feel hurt. But if there is acceptance of ignorance, then what pain is there? We would only say, “Brother, you did right. We were ignorant; you told us further that we are ignorant. Great kindness of yours—you made it evident that we are ignorant.”

Such a realization and such acceptance become the birth of a religious person. Otherwise, a person cannot become religious.

Then how long will you live? Even like this, how long will you live? Even like this, how long will you live? Even if you don’t become religious, how long will you live anyway?

Yes, yes, they'll count you, they'll count you. And who can say whether the one whom everyone counts a fool—who lets himself be counted a fool—is wise or not? Who can say? Who can say?

You should not feel hurt.

It is your ego that gets hurt. Calling me bad has nothing to do with you.

But you do get hurt. And you start trying to prove. And in that proving, just as he will hurl big abuses at me, you will heap equally big praises on me. You will even invent those praises, because for the one you have worshipped you will have to invent praise.

All gods are made by devotees, because without making a god the devotee would be in great difficulty. He has to prove, “Yes, our guru is absolutely God. He is a great soul, a supreme great soul—this, that.” The poor fellow has to prove it, because if he is not, then what about all those times he touched his feet? He has to rationalize it. And the more he does, he doesn’t realize that the harder he tries to prove someone is God, the more the one who does not accept him as God will dig up faults.

And in the god you have set up, faults will be found very quickly, because that god is of your own making. There will be plenty of faults to find. You went so far as to say, “Our god doesn’t even sweat.” Now the heat comes, and sweat appears, and the opponent sees it and walks away: “It’s all rumor; he’s no god—I’ve seen him sweat.” Case closed. And you yourself had said, “How can sweat come from a god’s body?” From Mahavira’s body, sweat does not come—no matter how fierce the sun, no sweat comes. Because it is not an ordinary body that sweat would come out of!

Even this thought—that no mistake should happen—is an expectation of our ego. Mistakes will happen. Acceptance does not mean that no mistake occurs. If it did, what kind of acceptance would that be? If you strain to ensure no mistake happens, how will surrender be possible? Only one who says, “I don’t even know what is a mistake and what is right—I don’t know anything,” can surrender.

He says, “These feet felt dear to me, so I placed my head upon them. Now whether they truly are or not—I don’t know.” They seemed dear to me; they may not seem dear to you—end of the matter. It may have felt right to you to hit him on the head with a stick, and you did. That was your feeling; this was mine. And we do not know whether you are right or I am right. Do you understand my point? If we knew this for certain, then some decision would be possible. That decision does not happen.

Christians believe Jesus is the son of God. Jews believe he is a libertine, a vagabond; there is no way to reform him except the cross. But that is the Christians’ belief, and that is the Jews’ belief. And there is no knowing who Jesus is. No knowing. It cannot be known; there can be no definitive label for him.

My point is: if we accept our ignorance, then we naturally accept that mistakes can happen. There is no difficulty in this; mistakes can happen through us. And the person who accepts that mistakes can happen does not get into quarrels. He says, “Perhaps it happened; it could be.” Then a simplicity begins to arise. And that simplicity does not create conflict; it does not produce duality. Without a mind free of inner conflict, there is no peace.

Now let me ask: aren’t you already facing difficulties?

Otherwise the question would be this: if it were not happening now—if it were not happening now, if there were absolutely no difficulty—then there would be no question at all. The difficulty is there. And that other experiment has never been tried. Those who have tried it say it doesn’t happen. As I say: there has been no difficulty.

No, you haven’t understood what I mean. What I am saying is: there is a difficulty in what you are doing. If there isn’t, then the question doesn’t arise at all—the matter ends there. Then there is no question of asking me anything.

I was in a job. The day I left it, I sent word home that I had quit. The family got very upset. They said, What are you doing—you’ll end up out on the street! I said, even when I had a job I was still out on the street. You’ll die of hunger! I said, one has to die anyway. And after death, who can tell whether one died hungry or after eating? So if I die, it’s nothing to worry about. All right. I said: I’ve left it. I told them there was no other way.

They were very anxious, very disturbed—What arrangements should we make, what not? I said: you make your own arrangements, that’s fine. Why worry about me? Now I want to try living without arrangements.

And I’ve been amazed that as long as I had a job and was arranging things, there were a thousand things that could not be arranged. And since I dropped that, I dropped arrangement itself. So whatever happens is my arrangement; what doesn’t happen raises no question for me.

Recently a woman met me and said, I want to ask something personal—please don’t be angry. I said: ask. She said, many times it seems to me that many of your needs must be going unmet; perhaps I could do something. I said: I come to know it was a need only when it gets fulfilled—because I have no means to fulfill it. When a need gets fulfilled, then I realize, Ah, that was a need! This room should have had a chair, too. When a chair arrives, only then do I realize it. And when it doesn’t, I take it that there is no chair. So I live in a chairless room; if a chair comes, I live in a room with a chair. If there is a room, I’ll live in the room; if there is no room, I’ll live outside.

My point is: once this idea arises, the difficulty is not only here—everywhere else is difficulty. And truly, if ever the world is to become good and live in real joy, it will have to live somewhat like this.

A friend once gave me a book on Ikvan. It’s a very wonderful book. If you can get it, you should read it. The experiment of Ikvan is very meaningful—exactly how a sannyasin should be.

Here is a man who is an Ikvani. He has left everything; he keeps no money, nothing. He walks along the road; if your shoes are dirty, he says, Please stop, let me clean your shoes. And he doesn’t take money. He does not take money! If a shoe is dirty, I clean it. And I am free. I have no work. If you don’t mind, give me a minute—I’ll clean your shoe.

That Ikvani cleans your shoe. Now you grow restless. You say to him, At least have some tea. He says, I’ve already had tea. I’ve already cleaned two more pairs of shoes. Now what can I do for you? He says, There’s nothing to do. If ever your shoe is dirty, I’m available around here; I’ll clean it.

He spends the whole day cleaning shoes. He’ll sweep the trash in front of someone’s house. If he gets tired somewhere, he asks someone, May I lie down here? May I sleep here at night? Someone invites him to eat, someone gives him clothes. He neither hoards clothes nor stores food.

And today in Japan there are many such Ikvan communities. In every village there are ten or twenty-five Ikvani who do just this. You send them word that a wedding party is coming to your house; they say, We’ll come. We have plenty of time; we have no work. They come, work the whole day; as evening falls and they are leaving, you say, At least have a meal. They say, It is your kindness. They eat, thank you, and go. They don’t ask; they quietly leave, thanking you for giving them work—your great kindness. We were sitting idle. We are absolutely good-for-nothing fellows.

Even the sons of the biggest households have gone to experiment with it and have been astonished that life still goes on—and in a completely unique way, with no calculation, no knowing what will be needed tomorrow morning. Whatever is called for, the man will do.

There is no difficulty, no difficulty—except that we have no idea that this too is possible.

Yes, yes.

About this—about this point, you see—if someone tells him, “Go bring someone’s wife,” or someone tells him, “Go steal from such-and-such a house,” the meaning of ikvani is not that he is saying, “Whatever you tell me, I’ll do.” He is saying, “I am free right now and can do this work; if you get it done through me—fine, thank you.” He is not your servant. You cannot claim any ownership over him, because he takes nothing from you.

But you cannot make a man of equanimity steal, because he says, “I have nothing to take from you.” It is simply my joy that I polished your shoes. And I thank you, because you were kind enough to pause for a couple of moments and give a good-for-nothing fellow like me a little work. And I enjoyed it very much. The shoes are nicely shined now; you may go.

He is your master, not your servant. If he were your servant, then you could make him do things. He is nobody’s servant. You cannot even tell him, “Stay in this village tomorrow.” Who can stop him? If this evening he came to your house and set down bricks, worked on your building, spent the whole day stacking bricks and laboring, you still cannot say, “Come again tomorrow.” He will say, “We’ll see about tomorrow. If in the morning I’m idle, without any work, and the mood comes, I’ll come.”

Recently I was in Jalandhar, and a sannyasin came to me—a remarkable man. He had walked nearly a hundred miles to see me. He had no money at all. He said to me, “I’ve gotten into great trouble.” “What trouble?” I asked. He said, “I was in great joy, and the joy was this: I would beg, I would eat. I used to be a schoolmaster. So I would ask at some house, ‘Do you have children? I’ll teach them for an hour or two, since I’m free.’ In that way I would teach five or ten children in a village whenever the mood came. I didn’t take anything for it. I would simply beg in the village, and the whole village would give me alms wherever I went, because everyone would say, ‘Masterji has come.’ And I would beg.

“In another village there is a landlord. He said to me, ‘You’re old now. Why wander here and there? Teach my children and start living here.’ So I stayed at his house and taught his children. Then he started saying, ‘Go do this such-and-such job.’ I would do that too. Then one day he got into some quarrel, and he said to me, ‘Come to the court and give testimony.’ I said, ‘That I will not do.’ He said, ‘You are ungrateful!’ I said, ‘Man, you are crazy. I am ungrateful? I never took anything from you, and I kept doing all your work.’ He wanted to make me testify in his favor in a matter that wasn’t like that, to give a partisan statement. He said, ‘You are ungrateful.’

“I said, ‘You’re a mad fellow—how am I ungrateful? I never took anything from you. Yes, I did make one mistake: I began eating your bread on a permanent basis. Although I did far more work than that bread was worth—that was my mistake. So I’m leaving. And I’ll live just as I used to—begging at a different house each day, sleeping at a different house each night; otherwise I’ll sleep under a tree, as before.’”

He had come to ask me, “I’ve come away from there—now what do you think?” I said, “What you experienced is exactly right.” I asked, “What difference did you feel between the two conditions?” He said, “A year ago, the joy I had was of a different kind. From the time I started living in his house, troubles began, because gradually—taken for granted—that I would now do everything. Teach the children, fetch the water. Bit by bit he began to consider me a servant, because he was giving me food and a place to stay.”

So I said to him, “You had to leave that entirely—and you should leave it. Because this isn’t a matter of being someone’s servant.”

And such a life is possible. In fact, this is what sannyas meant. It meant nothing else. Sannyas meant living a life in which you do what you can, out of yourself. If you like it, you give him two chapatis, and the matter ends there. The real meaning of sannyas is a mind of no-establishment—he does not establish himself, does not make arrangements for tomorrow; he simply lives. And it is no wonder that a whole village could live this way—why shouldn’t it? After all, what are we doing even now?

Suppose there is a village of five hundred people. I clean your shoes, and you give me four annas. Someone washes my clothes, and I give him four annas. What are we doing—what are we doing even now? This is what we are already doing! Only we do it through many detours. It could be direct. In a village of five hundred people, they all need work and they all need food. One goes and works in the fields, someone works in the market, someone does this, someone does that. And from all this work, wealth is produced.

So these days another vision keeps growing in me, which I call “periodical sannyas”—that we take sannyas for a fixed term. However comfortable a man may be, let him become unestablished for three months. Take leave from home and wander for three months. Live for three months and see. Its thrill is of another order. And this is how I think...

The meaning of an ashram should be that there is a... We cannot yet imagine the joy of this—what its joy could be. To live in such a way that the question of security for tomorrow does not arise. Whatever happens tomorrow will happen; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. There is simply no knowing about tomorrow. We cannot even conceive what such living could mean, what its flowering is—we don’t know.

So when you say, “It’s difficult,” you are not aware; when you say, “It’s not possible,” you are not aware of what you are saying. It is absolutely possible—and not at all difficult. And we should try small experiments with it. What is there to gain or lose in it?

If you go away for three months and tell your people at home, “Don’t even keep track of where I’m going,” and live like that for three months and see—you will return so enriched that it cannot be measured. Because there are experiences that only the poor can have. Some experiences are only for the poor. Some experiences are available only to one who lives utterly in insecurity; they can never happen to the secure. And what we call freedom—swatantrata—is an experience that can happen only to the one who lives in insecurity. Only he can have even a small taste of the feeling of being free...

And if you do such an experiment once for three months and come back, you will be amazed that this can be done in life as well. Why do I insist so strongly? Because ultimately there is nothing to lose. So why such fear of losing? And since ultimately everything will be lost, why this madness about saving it? If anyone could truly save by saving, we might think there is something to it; but no one, by saving, ever manages to save.

The point is to stand outside the game and watch. And within the game, it’s fine. Within the game, it’s fine.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Don’t do anything about it. If sleep comes, accept sleep. Don’t reject it; accept it. Sleep too is very spiritual—just as wakefulness is spiritual. Sleep is not any less spiritual than wakefulness.

Yes. There is no sin in sleep. It is just as spiritual as awareness.

Why such concern even about awareness? There’s no need to be so concerned about awareness; otherwise it will turn into anxiety.

Yes. Then awareness will not remain; it will turn into worry. No—there is no need to be so concerned. If sleep comes, go into sleep. If the eyes open and wakefulness arises, go into wakefulness. Accept both aspects together.

Yes. Otherwise, if you fight with sleep, that stupor you’re talking about remains—it’s happening because you’re fighting sleep. Don’t fight with sleep, so the two don’t mix into each other. Let sleep remain sleep, and wakefulness remain wakefulness. If the two intrude into one another, a stupor will arise—in which nothing will be understood.

No—that’s just something you’ve heard. It’s not the mind; it’s conditioning. The books say, “Sleep is tamasic,” and so on. What could be more spiritual than sleep? That’s just what’s written in the books.

Then ignorance too is Brahman, and knowledge too is Brahman. Within That, what ignorance could come separately—where would it come from? Brahman itself is also the ignorant one.

It calls for that much acceptance. This is what I call trust. Sleep is sleep; waking is waking. If there is awareness, there is awareness; if not, then not. When you accept both states, the awareness that then dawns is of a wholly different order—you don’t yet know it. That awareness will remain in sleep as well as in waking. But it will come only with total acceptance. Sleep is accepted, sin is accepted, evil is accepted—everything is accepted; whatever is happening is happening. It is all Brahman doing it. How could you put a barrier in it? You cannot.

We have this notion that if there is Brahman, he must be awake twenty-four hours, never sleeping. By now he would be finished; his mind would go crazy if he did that. He too sleeps. He too will sleep. In that, sleep is rest. When you awaken, you will still have to sleep.

Yes, do not accept the half; accept the whole, as it is. Then an awareness will arise. And that awareness is very different. It is not something you have brought; it has come. And its worth is immense.

That’s just it: you are trying to bring it, so you ask, “When does it come?” That is exactly what I am saying—do not get into that effort.

Do not turn meditation into a worry. Meditation and worry can never go together. If you make even meditation into a worry, then meditation will never be available.

That's nothing but worry, isn't it!

Understand this: if meditation doesn’t come, whom will you catch hold of and say, “It didn’t come”? If it doesn’t come, it doesn’t come; if it comes, it comes. When you take it with such simplicity, it will come.

Yes. But in saying “like this,” the same fear is present, because you will say, “All right then, it will come; then we’ll do it like this.” But then you will be doing it only for the sake of making it come. Then anxiety will arise again. What I am saying is: don’t make this a worry, don’t make it a tension. When you say “like this,” it sounds as if, “All right, this device is good; by this it will come.” No, this is not a device to bring it. No, this is not a device to bring it. It may come if you don’t employ any device.

It will come only of itself; otherwise it won’t. And our mind is so clever that it wants to turn everything into a technique. It says, “All right, then we’ll do this. If you say this will bring it, we’ll do this”—but the bringing, we assume, is still up to us. And that is exactly where the trouble begins.

What need is there to bring anything? What’s the harm if it doesn’t come? What is being lost? Brahman seems to lack nothing if you are not going into meditation! Everything is fine. Why make a fuss? If the drop is not falling into the ocean, what difficulty is it for the ocean? Then don’t fall.

We immediately make a method out of everything, don’t we? That is the trouble. And in method lies all the mischief.

Ah, that is exactly the sickness he is talking about. That is the sickness. That is the sickness. That is the sickness he is naming.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
No, what I am saying is that when we accept everything, we naturally descend into depth. I am not telling you how to descend; I am saying it is a consequence. When we accept the whole, there remains no way to stay in the shallow. You will descend into the deep—what else will you do!

But someone says, “We want to go deep.” The moment he says “go deep,” he is saying, “we do not want to remain in the shallow.” He is not in acceptance; he is denying one half and affirming the other. And I am saying: only when he accepts the whole can he truly enter depth.

Therefore, the very desire to go deep will not take you deep; it too will seat you in the shallow. Yes, the person who says, “There is nowhere to go; what is, is—if we are in the shallow, what’s the harm? What is so bad about the shallow?” I ask: what is so bad about the shallow? And if there were no shallow, how would the deep be? The shallow is a part of the deep itself. And if the deep is Brahman, then what is the shallow? That too is Brahman. A little “upper” Brahman, a little “lower” Brahman—there is no such difference.

And when we accept both together, then a depth is found which is neither shallowness nor depth. That is altogether another matter. There are no words for it. There are no words for it.