Upasana Ke Kshan #3

No.

A means to what?

This notion we have—actually, methods exist only for knowing things that are other than us, that are distant from us; there can be means to reach them. For example, when I came from Jabalpur to Hyderabad, I had to cross the distance in between. But between man and the Divine there is no distance; therefore there can be no method.

No.

There is no gap. In this whole matter, wherever there is a distance between things, there will be paths between them.

No, no, no. There is no distance at all between you and the Divine.

Call it the soul—it doesn't make any difference.

Then there is no distance at all. Then it is That.

On this, what I am saying is: then there is a distance between the word “soul” and you. The word “soul”... the soul has not been seen, not known; only a word has been heard.

And what more is there to know?

Even that thought—how is it yours? From where? We think only about that which we have not experienced. About that which we have experienced, we do not think at all.

Let me speak of that separately. If you jump like this, it will create difficulty. What I am saying is: the separation and distance seem to us to exist because we have clung to certain words—someone born into a particular tradition has learned the word “God,” someone else “soul,” someone else another word. It appears as if there is a gap between these words and us. But if there is even the slightest experience of the soul, you will see there is no distance at all, because you yourself are the soul. And I am saying: until there is experience, as long as your grip on the word remains, the experience will not happen.

What happens is, we cling to words in relation to things. For example, suppose I come here, and before I arrive someone tells me you are a very good man, or someone else says you are very bad, and I make a picture about you. That picture is utterly false. I do not know you. Good or bad—it's only an idea I have made. Then when I am introduced to you, I will not actually be able to meet you. Between you and me a picture stands, which I brought with me of your being good or bad. Then through that picture I am looking at you.

We keep putting something in between ourselves and everything. Even with regard to God or the soul, we put something in the middle. And what we construct does not become a means of knowing; it becomes a wall, it stands between.

A Jain sets up one kind of words, a Muslim another, a Hindu another, a Buddhist another—words are erected in between. Through these words one then tries to see beyond. But these words, their interpretations, and all the thinking around them stand like a wall in the middle.

About anything whose complete truth we wish to know, we should have no preconception, no prejudice, no partiality, no fixed notion—nothing at all. We should approach that truth so impartial, so quiet, so wordless that we do not project anything of our own onto it, do not impose anything. So that we can see it directly, just as it is.

Thus words and scriptures become your imagination, a barrier in between. Then you don’t even know whether these words are true or the scripture is true—you don’t know that either. How do you know it’s true? Only because tradition says so; nothing else. And tradition is just long-running propaganda.

Hitler wrote in his autobiography that there is no untruth which cannot be made into truth with a little propaganda. He wrote, “I say from my own experience that I told great untruths and they all became truths. And hundreds of millions believed in them.”

You were born in a Hindu home, or I was born in a Muslim home—what proof do I have that the book I call true is actually true, other than that it was propagated into my mind since childhood that it is true? What more proof is there? It was propagated into my father’s mind as well. And through traditions, for thousands of years, something has been propagated as truth. In your mind, a different book is truth. In a third person’s mind, yet another book is truth. All this is propaganda. And if I fill my mind with this propaganda and then set out to search with it, my search becomes impossible. I am already bound. And a bound mind cannot inquire.

For inquiry a totally open mind is needed—one with no bias, no words, no scripture. Only a quest, a thirst. With such seeking and thirst, it will begin to be seen that words are becoming a barrier. Who taught you these words? It was purely accidental that you were placed in one home; had you been placed in another, different words could have been taught to you without any difficulty.

A boy born in a Jain household never gets the idea of a God, a creator—because in that home it is not taught that someone created existence. Right next door, in a Hindu family, a boy is learning that God is the creator of the universe, that he made the world. And both are growing up with what they have learned. Over in Soviet Russia another boy is being taught by the state that there is no God, no soul; man is only a body. That child is growing up with that learning.

A friend of mine returned from Russia and told me he asked a small child, “What is your idea about God?” The child said, “There used to be a God; now there isn’t. There used to be—now there isn’t. Formerly people were ignorant and believed in God. Now people have understood; here nobody believes in God.”

That child is being taught this. You are teaching your child something else; a third person is teaching a third thing. Knowledge born of such instruction is utterly false.

My point is not which of these is right. My point is that whenever we learn such things and then make them the basis on which we begin our search, that search is wrong. It is crippled from the very start; its legs have already been cut off. For the search for truth, an impartial mind is needed.

Purity is needed—certainly needed, certainly needed.
The purer and more impartial, the more innocent the mind is, the more swiftly the search will move.

Two things.

First: even if a person is left entirely to himself from childhood—left entirely to himself—the possibility of a search for truth will still be greater than in the situation where we start teaching him things. Why will it be greater? Because curiosity never has to be taught to a child; it is already there. Curiosity has to be killed, not taught. Even a small child asks, “What is this? What is all this?” Questions arise in him. But we suppress those questions. What we teach is: “This is nature created by God.” The child asks, “Where did it come from?” We say, “God made it.”

We are saying something false, something we ourselves do not know. And the child is so small that he thinks, “Father must be very wise, so it must be right.” Father says it, the schoolteacher says it, the monk says it, the pundit says it, the people around say it. The child thinks: so many big people, people of power, intelligent people—if they say it, it must be true. The child grabs whatever you say.

What is the result?
You are not giving him knowledge; you are giving him a word, a doctrine. And you are destroying something very important that was within him—the inquiry. Because as soon as he clings to that, the inquiry ends. And if the boy keeps inquiring, you say, “Don’t talk big with a small mouth.” If the boy keeps saying, “No, I doubt; who made God?” then you say, “Look, these are not questions for you now, wait till you grow up.” And you yourself know in your heart that you too don’t know. But before the child you posture as a knower.

In fact everyone gets great pleasure out of being a knower—the father too, the guru too. There is great pleasure in being a preacher, a knower, a guru. And before the small one the pleasure is even greater. He is just a little child; his… and you are murdering his curiosity. If he keeps on with his questions you will abuse him—call him an atheist, a troublemaker, this and that. By applying all kinds of pressure, slowly, slowly, slowly his curiosity will be finished and he will start repeating your sayings: “God created the world, the soul is immortal,” this and that, all those statements. Just as you repeat them like a parrot, he too will repeat them like a parrot. And you call this sending him in the direction of truth? You have committed a murder. It is inquiry that would have taken him toward truth. I am not saying leave him completely to himself; I am saying: become a companion to the curiosity that is within him, not its enemy.

So the first thing I say is: if our only options were either to teach the child that God is, the soul is, this and that, or to leave him completely, I would still say that leaving him completely is better. More children would move into the search for truth than are moving now. One thing.

But this is not my real point. My point is: become a companion to the child’s curiosity. Strengthen his inquiry. Say to him, “You have asked a most wonderful question. I am asking it too; I have not known it yet. Let us ask together. Our whole family will ask together; we will search, we will reflect. These are the answers people have given, but I am not yet satisfied, because I have not known. These are the answers people give—that God created. But there are also people who say the opposite—that God did not create, that there is no God.”

Open everything before the child. Let his inquiry grow, let his curiosity grow. Do not give him knowledge; increase his curiosity. If you can make his curiosity so strong that he will not be ready to believe anything until he knows for himself, then no better father could that child have. He will not be ready to believe until he stands facing the direction of knowing for himself. Until some experience begins to happen to him, he will not agree to believe. This does not mean you are teaching irreverence. This does not mean you are teaching irreverence! Because irreverence too is a kind of teaching, just as reverence is a kind of teaching. You are not to teach that there is no God. One teaching says God is; another teaching says God is not. Both are teachings. Do not even teach that God is not—how do you know that? Tell the child, “I do not know. Some people say God is; some people say God is not. I too am searching. I have not yet known. You also search. You also search!”

Through discernment. Not by means. Discernment is the search itself. In truth, it is the child's discernment that should grow.

There are many paths to it, aren’t there?

You didn’t understand what I meant! There are paths to awaken discernment. There are no paths to attain the Divine.

No. Understand this. What would the difference be? For example, if this room were full of darkness, I would tell you: there are ways to kindle light; there are no ways to remove darkness.
Do you get what I mean?
I would say there are ways to light a lamp; there are no ways to separate or throw out the darkness. Yes, once the light is lit, darkness departs. But if we start looking for some method to remove darkness—come, bundle it up and throw it out; bring a sword to drive it away; friends, gather together, tie it with ropes, drag the darkness outside—we will go mad.
There is no way to take darkness out. There is a way to light a lamp. And the delightful thing is that when the light is lit, darkness cannot be found at all. The distinction I am making is: there is no path to attain God. I mean that neither by worship, nor by turning the rosary, nor by cramming scriptures, nor by chanting “Ram, Ram,” is there any direct path to meet God. If you ask directly, “I want to attain God—what should I do?” there is no way.
No—but there is a path to awaken awareness. And when awareness awakens, God is already attained. When awareness awakens, it doesn’t feel as though I have attained God; it feels, “How mad I was! God—who was already present; the soul—already within me—was not visible to me.” That is, God...

This whole experiment is precisely for that right intelligence. And these—these are the paths that block discernment—scriptures, words, and memory; all of them are paths that obstruct discernment. Because from them discernment does not arise; what arises is a grip, a clinging; faith arises. Inquiry does not arise, curiosity does not arise. The difficulty—the very road that blocks discernment—is this: that you accept. This is dangerous. You must search. But we tell the child to accept. “Accept because we say so, because our fathers say so, because the sages say so, because people have said it for thousands of years—accept.”

This business of accepting, of taking it on faith, is anti-discernment. Discernment will not be born. The world’s undoing has happened right here. The basic reason for so much unreason in the world today is the religious people, who have taught unreason—taught it in the name of belief, in the name of reverence, in the name of faith. Unreason—there is unreason all over the world. And when this unreason stands before us, we panic: “What is happening? What is happening?” Now just look at this...

Absolutely not.

Discernment, as such—discernment—gets stifled whenever we set an ideal before it. As when we tell a child, “Become like Gandhi.”

So I am not presenting this as an ideal. I am not holding them up as ideals.

Because whenever we tell someone, “Become like that person,” hypocrisy begins right there. In truth, this child can only become himself; he can never become someone else. No child has ever been able to become somebody else. A Gandhi is born, a Ramakrishna, a Vivekananda—no child is born as someone’s copy; nor can it be so. Nor should it be so. The world has no need for two identical people. But the moment we say, “Become like him,” a false endeavor starts up in the child’s mind.

You too in that way... After all, the question is—the question is really, the real question is: who became what, and by which way? If you go exactly by that same way, you will end up standing there as a counterfeit person. The real person will not be born within you. The real person will never be born within you. Because each person is so unique, so singular, that the path of each person’s life is also unique and different. Otherwise there would be no need for me to be, or for you to be. I would be enough, or you would be enough. So many of us are sitting here; if we all get up and leave from here, all our paths are going to be different. Because we are all sitting in different places. We will all walk from our own place. We will all walk from our own place!

Up to now the fundamental dignity of individuality has not been accepted—still not. We still say: make someone an ideal, make a type, and become like that. The result is that no one becomes a Ram; they become only the Ram of the Ramlila—after going round and round, that’s all that happens. And because of that the world has gradually become false. This hypocrisy—and in those countries where there is more religious education, there is more hypocrisy—its basic cause is simply this: religious education says, “Be like this person, walk by this path!”

No, my point is: do not worry about the path. Care about discernment (vivek), which finds the path.

We are sitting here: one way is to be told, “The road is ahead; go out from there.” And another way is to be given eyes and told, “You have eyes—find your way.”

So my point is: give the child eyes, give discernment. Give support so that within them the intelligence arises to search, to think, to inquire—so that in life they find their own path. Do not give the path. Giving a path is easy; giving eyes is difficult.

Yes, discernment is within, asleep. If we give it a little support, it will awaken. Like a seed: we put it in the garden—water it, add fertilizer; we don’t draw the sprout out from anywhere, the sprout is within. We simply arrange the conditions.

Yes.

Help him, help him, assist him.

No, no—without any belief. A child is born with an inquiry, with no belief. Belief is given.

These are just beliefs. These are just beliefs. Who told you this? Who told you this? How did you come to believe it? This is propaganda. You were born in a Hindu home, brought up within a Hindu propaganda, and you began to repeat things. It is absolutely mechanical. These notions we accept—these are beliefs. And from them, discernment does not arise.

There will be pain. There will be pain! Pain is necessary. There will be pain because we—our whole mind, our whole mind—are built on beliefs. So if we say that all beliefs are false, there will be panic.

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

No, no, no. I’m not asking you to believe. I don’t say that you should believe me. “All beliefs are false”—I am not asking you to believe that. I am saying: consider it. Think it over. And if it appears that a belief is wrong...

No, it is not inborn; it is cultivated.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
No, no, I understand your point. Call it inborn; it makes no difference. When we say it is inborn—the inborn is not imitation, the inborn is ego.

When we tell a child, “Become a Gandhi—look how great a mahatma Gandhi is!” the child also thinks, “If I become a great mahatma, I too will be honored.” So that ego is inborn—and we are exploiting that ego. You are saying: Become a Gandhi, become a Ram, become a Krishna, become a judge, become a thief, become a bandit, become a leader. You are telling him something or the other. You are exploiting him—his ego. You are telling him, “Become this, and you too will receive the same honor—people will bow to you, touch your feet, seat you on a high chair; you too will be honored.” The desire for honor is inborn, and you are exploiting it. And you set the ego onto ambition.

If there were a different kind of education, a different kind of culture, we would put this ego to some other use, not to this. From this, a dangerous world has been created.

When we say, “Become like this one,” a competitive world is created. Every person is busy trying to become like someone else. The results are before us. In ten years there will be a great war. It has become inevitable, because one person is trying to become like another person; one nation is trying to become like another nation. Everyone is engaged in this effort. A conflict and a struggle have arisen; a violence has arisen.

But could it not be that this effort of ours—“Become like this one”—be taken onto an entirely different path? My idea is: every child should be told, “Do not try to become like anyone else, because you yourself were born to become something of your own.”

That is exactly what you are not allowing. You are not allowing it. You are not allowing it.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

I understand, I understand your point. Whenever you say, “Be like Gandhi,” it may be that you do not mean “Copy Gandhi”—that may not be what you want to say—but you are creating an ideal in the child’s mind, a concept that one should become such-and-such a person: one should be like Gandhi, or like Rama. You create a concept. The child is one thing; you are creating a concept that is another. There is a distance between the two. To attain that concept the child will try to become that way: “Gandhi acted in a particular way in a particular situation; I too should act like that. Gandhi kept simplicity in his life; I too should become simple. Gandhi is non-violent; then I should become non-violent.” You are creating a concept, a pattern, into which the child will begin to mold himself.

Understand this difference.

In one case there is a pattern before the child, and he begins to mold himself into it—that is one kind of situation. And I am saying: let there be no pattern before the child; the child has his own qualities, his own capacities, his own abilities, his own possibilities, his own seeds. There is no pattern ahead. We give support to these to grow. Without any pattern ahead we support their growth. Then the child will come to that state where he ought to come, where his own inner soul will become available to him. But when we give a pattern, there will be trimming, cutting, choosing. The child will drop one thing, pick up another, hold on to yet another. There will be choice, will there not? There will be a pattern, a framework. The child will stand within a frame. It may happen that after ten, fifteen, twenty years of continuous effort the child becomes somewhat like a Gandhi-type person. Then that man will be false. And with such a personality the child will never find peace. Because he will have suppressed a great deal within, discarded much, managed much. It will be a matter of choice; it will not be growth.

And then there is another child for whom there is total freedom—no pattern ahead, no idea—with certain qualities within. There is love. We say: let love grow, develop it. We do not say: love like Gandhi. Because loving like Gandhi is a choice, and Gandhi is a limited choice; a man can love in a thousand ways. There is no need to love as Gandhi loved. In fact, I say that except for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi himself, no other person can act in that way—because neither the same situation, nor the same time, nor the same personality, nor the same qualities can be there. No other person can act that way. And whenever someone tries to act that way, he will, inevitably, force himself. He will break himself, hammer himself, erase parts, and try to make himself. And even if he somehow succeeds, a false man will be standing there—whether you intended that or not. But you planted an idea in his mind: “Become like that!”

My point is: do not create ideas. The child’s inborn qualities—there are some, as you say; every child has them. See which qualities fill life with joy, which qualities fill life with peace, which qualities fill it with discernment, and support the child in that direction. Do not erect a concept in front of him, do not set up an ideology. Give support. Give support to love. It will be understandable to him that his love should develop. It may be that a love greater than Gandhi’s arises in him. And one thing is certain: whatever form his love takes, it will not be like anyone else’s; it will be utterly his own kind.

And this uniqueness of each individual, this dignity—when it comes close to fulfillment, the peace that begins to happen is the real peace.

There is a jasmine flower and there is a rose. If we tell the jasmine, “Become like the rose,” and it tries hard to become a rose, one thing is certain: even if somehow it manages to become a rose, it will have neither the fragrance of a rose, nor its glow, nor its majesty—things it has in being jasmine. And secondly, it will not be able to become it anyway. And in the very attempt one thing is certain: in trying to become a rose, the jasmine will fail to be jasmine, and it will not become a rose either. A completely crippled... This crippled kind of human being that is being produced in our whole world has one basic cause: these ideas, these concepts, ideologies, and ideals—“Become like this, become like that!”

Look: in five or six thousand years of human history you can barely find a hundred people whom you would call “ideal.” What happened to all the rest? Where did all those people go? And let me also tell you: these very few are the ones who never accepted anyone as an ideal. This is the striking thing. These hundred are precisely those whose growth was completely independent.

Take Gandhi: if Gandhi had made any Indian sannyasin his ideal, Gandhi would never have been born. Had he made Ramakrishna, or Vivekananda, or Shankaracharya, or Buddha, or Mahavira his ideal—Gandhi would not have happened. This Gandhi is a complete misfit, if you take these as ideals. If he had taken Buddha as ideal, or Mahavira as ideal... Mahavira abandons the kingdom and escapes; this Gandhi stands in politics without any fear. He feels no nervousness here; he stands right in the midst of life. Your whole line of sannyasins runs away from the world; he stood in the world. If he had made anyone his ideal, this man could not be Gandhi. He would have become—like the many sannyasins wandering all over the land—one more among them. He has no pattern; he has growth. And a completely unknown growth. That is why Gandhi says, “I am experimenting. I do; this seems right, that seems right. I do and watch. If it does not seem right, I drop it. What seems right, I do again.” It is growth.

So in Gandhi there is growth. And where there is growth, there is life. Where there is pattern, there is no life.

You can cast machines into patterns. When you begin to cast a man, you are making a mistake. Keep a difference: a man is not a pattern. Do not mold him into any framework.

So do not hang a picture before the child and say, “This is your mold; become like this.” Harm has come from this. By hanging Christ’s mold, how many priests go about with faces like Christ and crosses hanging on them—yet not one Christ is born! And the Christ who was born was entirely outside the mold. He did not fit the mold of his time; that is why people crucified him. Otherwise why would they crucify him? If he had been an ideal, a model? This man was not an ideal at all. By the standards of his time, those among whom he lived felt, “This is a troublemaker. He should be killed; it is not good to keep him alive.”

So the ones we have made into ideals—have you ever thought that when they were alive, they were seen as troublesome people? There was nothing “ideal” about them. A mere hundred, hundred and fifty such people have been in the world who reached some heights in living life. And the rest are imitating. If they succeed in imitation, even then, I say, they are wasted; if they fail, they are also wasted. In both conditions they fail—because what was meant to be born within them never gets born.

So there is no acceptance in our religions, our thinking, our understanding of the individual excellence of each person, of his unique individuality.

My statement is: each person is as himself. Therefore do not tell him to become like someone else. Tell him: whatever is within you, whatever potential is within you—let it expand, let it develop. We will become his support. We will not give him a mold; we will be his companions. We will not give him an ideal; we will give him support.

When we plant a seed in the ground, we do not give it an ideal: “Become like this.” We only provide manure, water; we give company, we put up a fence so that the goats do not graze it. Then it grows.

This “orderly growth,” you know—this “orderly”...

Yes, yes. I understand. I understand. We jump to conclusions too quickly. Don’t conclude so fast.

In fact, this very worry about an “orderly society”—you are right to point to it—its outcome, slowly, is that one day the world will be so orderly that there will be no individuals left. Our obsession with bringing everything into order means this: you will fall into order only when you have no mind at all. If you have no intelligence, you will fit perfectly into order.

Chairs remain exactly where you place them. Switch on a fan and it keeps running; it never says midway, “Now we refuse to run; we won’t run.” The human being has a small “flaw”: he has a mind. So a human being can never be completely orderly. And the day he becomes so, there will be no greater misfortune. Could there be any day more unfortunate than the day man becomes totally orderly?

But society wants total order; the politician wants total order. Because where there is order there is no rebellion, no revolt, no breaking of patterns. All the dictators of the world want people to be in order—perfectly in order. We say “left,” you turn left; we say “right,” you turn right; we say “stand up,” you stand up. They want to militarize people all over the world.

And the best way to do that is to finish off whatever little intelligence we have within. There are many tricks to destroy it—create belief and it wanes; hand them scriptures and it wanes; label them Hindu, label them Muslim, and it wanes; give them mosque and temple, and it wanes. Hand them some ready-made things, hand them a belief. Give them discernment, and there is danger. Discernment is rebellious.

But my point is: if there were abundant discernment in the whole world, discernment too has its own order. Let me tell you—understand this a little. Right now discernment is rebellious because the world built on belief is wrong. Therefore, discernment has to rebel.

Here we are so many people sitting together. If we all were in India during those two hundred years of slavery, we were very orderly people—we did nothing against slavery. Then ten or twenty-five “troublesome” people arose; they began to say, “We want freedom.” These are dangerous people; they started thinking, saying, “We want to be free; we want change; the whole arrangement must change—this setup is not right.” Had even those few not had discernment, all would have been fine—we would have gone on living comfortably, moving along in our ease.

As yet, the order of discernment has not arisen in the world. The order that exists is of non-discernment—an order of ignorance. Until an order of knowledge comes into being, there will be rebellion. And I say: there should be; otherwise it is very dangerous if it does not happen.

The condition of our country is this... We have been enduring poverty for four thousand, three thousand years! But we say it is the fruit of our karma. We did bad deeds in a past life; we are reaping their fruits, therefore we are poor. We have been repeating this for three thousand years.

We could have eliminated poverty in our land long ago, but we have not been able to—and we will not be able to, so long as we keep repeating this. “There is order. There is no question of disturbing it.” We go on tolerating everything. We say, “This is order.”

So order should not be a dead order.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
No, no. These are consolations we use to persuade our minds. A Hindu says Hinduism is very good. A Muslim says Islam is good. A Christian says Christianity is good.

Look, that is not the question. That is not the question. The question is not whether you have a written constitution or not. The question is: whatever it is—written or unwritten—do you take it on faith, or do you examine it? That is the question. Do you believe, or do you inquire? That is the question. It is not a matter of written or unwritten. If you accept it simply out of belief—if you believe the Vedas are a book written by God—then you are saying exactly what the Christian says: he says the Bible is a book written by the son of God; and the Quran is the book of the prophet sent by God.

Understand: an intellectual, if truly an intellectual, cannot be a Hindu or a Muslim. To be a Hindu or a Muslim is the affair of the non-intellectual. That is to say, if you are an intellectual, you cannot be a Hindu, nor can you be a Muslim.

Yes, yes.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Yes, yes. Look, what you want is to treat a human being the way you treat a plant. That is your mistake. I plant a sapling; if I don’t take care of it, a jungle will grow—because a plant cannot be given discernment. A plant cannot be given discernment. But a human being can be given discernment. And who are you to take on the responsibility that you will not let a human be wild and will instead make a garden out of him? Who are you? You are also a human being, aren’t you? From where do you get this right?

If I am the father of a child, does that give me the right to make the child into whatever I want? And what kind of man am I myself—what have I attained, what have I known in life—that I should try to shape the child? At the most I will produce another copy of myself—while I myself was a burden and a nuisance on the earth. Then this child will also become a burden and a nuisance.

My point is: for six, seven thousand or even ten thousand years we have been trying to cast human beings into molds—and this is the world that has resulted! You say, “This will create anarchy.” Could there be a world worse than the one that exists?

No harm in that.

If I say to you… let us reflect on this a little: if my belief and your belief are different, a dangerous world will be created; because belief makes people fight. Discernment does not lead to conflict—for one thing. The first condition that comes with discernment is a willingness to give the other person a chance. With dogma, with belief, this is not the case. I say, “My belief is right, yours is wrong.”

Belief is dangerous, because I call your belief wrong—and I am not willing to consider it. I say, wrong is wrong, and mine is right, period. And if things get more tangled, we let the sword decide who is right and who is wrong. This is what the Hindu and the Muslim have been doing: decide to draw the sword, and then we will decide who is right.

Belief affords no opportunity to think; it affords the chance to wield the sword. So the sword has been at work for five thousand years. But, unlike belief, the way of discernment is this: if what you say seems wrong to me, I will explain; and if what I say seems wrong to you, you will explain.

Quarrel begins exactly where belief enters and discernment ends—there the quarrel begins. And if we keep following discernment to the very end, there is no room for conflict. A point will come where your discernment and mine create a harmony. From belief, harmony can never arise, because there is no way, no bridge, between you and me. You are a Hindu, I am a Muslim—there is simply no bridge in between.

It is, isn't it.

I belong to religion and to no sect.

We’ll have to talk. In fact, in fact...

I have to say this. But I would say that a world brimming with awareness—even if chaotic—is preferable to a world that is perfectly in order yet devoid of awareness. That is, a death that comes through awareness is better than the life that comes through belief. That is not life at all; it is deadness. It is deadness! There is peace in a graveyard; if that kind of peace prevails in our homes, it has no meaning. It has no meaning! It has no meaning!

It can be told.

Only two things need to become possible in a human life: discernment in the mind and love in the heart—then everything is complete. And there is no need to do anything else.

Yes, that too can be asked. We cannot drop them because we—you and I,...

Yes, yes. I understand your point.

No, you cannot present something wrong by calling it “vivek.”
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
No, no. You did not understand me. You did not understand me. You did not understand me. As long as you don’t hand over a belief, there is no danger. Vivek is not a concept to be handed down.
Just as with a child: we have him do exercises and he attains health. Health is a solid, substantial thing. In exactly the same way, if we teach him to doubt, he begins to gain vivek. Teach him to doubt. The method to bring about vivek is right doubt. Teach him to doubt, and vivek arises. And when I teach him to doubt, I also teach him to doubt me.

What do you think?

Yes, yes—doubt indeed. Teach the child to doubt. Nothing is better than doubt.

Do not accept. Do not accept. And do not try to make anyone else accept it either; don’t even make that attempt.

I understand. I understand.

No—if the father has properly taught him doubt, he will not agree. If the father has not taught doubt, then he may agree. You are not understanding what I am saying. If the father has taught him to doubt, then if a Muslim tells him that Islam is good, he will doubt it. A child who has been taught to doubt cannot be converted by anyone. He will be one of his own kind in the world; you can never make him a Christian or a Muslim in that way; you can do nothing—you cannot make him a Hindu, you cannot make him a Jain. And if such a child has learned to doubt...

I do not believe in anything; what I know, I know. What I do not know, I do not know.

No—I know; I don’t believe.

No, no. I don't believe; I know.

No.

I know.

No, I am not evading. If someone were to ask me, “Do you believe in love or not?” I would say: I know love—why should I believe? I love.

Yes, yes.

No, no. You believe only in what you do not know. Belief belongs to ignorance.

“God exists” is what the believer says. I know: God itself is existence. The one who believes says, “God exists.” The one who knows says, “Existence is God.”

Existence is God. There is no I, no thou. As long as there is I and thou, you do not even know what God is. Even if someone says, “I know God,” that too is a misunderstanding—because the “I” does not remain. The “I” does not remain. There is a knowing—and no I in the knowing. There is a knowing.

Yes.

Yes, I have...

That is a belief. That is not knowing. A belief is ignorance.

When I say, “I believe,” it means I have pushed my doubt down inside. Otherwise, why would I need to say that I believe? To believe means there is doubt within. I have suppressed the doubt and grabbed hold of a tradition, and then I say, “I believe.” The more loudly you say, “I believe,” the bigger the doubt you are repressing inside. One in whom there is no doubt has no belief either; he knows.

For example, if someone asks me, “Do you believe that that is a door? Do you believe in the door?” I would say, “What question of belief is there? I know that is a door.” Where does belief come in?

If you go on seeking support for your belief, you will go wrong. When we say, “There is a God,” as I know it, that is a belief. What I have been able to experience—what I know—appears to be: that which is, you may call it God. That which is, you may call it God. That which exists, you may call it God. Whatever is—and that is.

Life itself is God.

Life is any form—choicelessly, in any form. All that is. So there is not a God and a creation, a creator and a creation. Creativity itself is God. They are not two things—a being, a creator, and a creation. The whole creativity is God. And that cannot be believed; it can be experienced.

You believe in a being.

Absolutely.

No, no, no. Yours is a theory; mine is not a theory. Yours is a belief; mine is not a belief. That is the difference. A blind man believes in light; a man with eyes knows. The blind man believes that there is light—what is the meaning of his belief? It has no meaning at all. If you have eyes, you see that there is light.

So the blind man will say, “Our statements are exactly the same, because I—‘I believe in light’—and you know light; both are the same.”

They are not the same at all.

This is precisely my point: this thing called belief is dangerous. It has to be realized; only then can knowledge arise. And as long as there is belief, knowledge can never come.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
No, no. I don’t have even the slightest such idea. Because what could be worse than going to enlighten someone? Going to enlighten someone is not a good thing. In that, you’ve already assumed the other is a poor fellow who doesn’t know. So it’s not good. I have no thought of enlightening anyone; I simply see certain things, I find them beautiful, so I want to share them with you—not to enlighten you. Just to share with you.

There is a difference...

No, no!

I don't talk about individuals. Nothing whatsoever in common.

No—as for me, I want neither to teach you nor to awaken you.

He is a teacher; I am not a teacher.

Awakener—he is an awakener.

No.