Upasana Ke Kshan #4

So whenever someone asks: 'What is life?' he is asking something like a blind man asking, what is light? Or a man asking, what is taste? Or a man asking, what is fragrance? If someone asks you, what is taste? what will you say? If he asks, what is fragrance? what will you say?

When someone asks, what is taste? at most you can say that it can be tasted, but it cannot be told. Taste can be savored, lived, known—but it cannot be said.

And taste is one experience of life; fragrance is another; love the third; pain the fourth; bliss the fifth. Life holds thousands upon thousands of experiences.

Not even a single experience can be put into words. And life is the total of all experiences. If even one experience cannot be said—what it is—then as for the total sum, there remains no way at all to say what it is.

That is why man keeps on asking, what is life? and thinks he is asking a perfectly right question. And no answer comes. For thousands of years man has asked, what is life? No one has given an answer yet. Nor will anyone ever give one.

People try to provide answers; they are even more uncomprehending than those who ask. Because the question is irrelevant, the question itself is incongruent. We never discriminate between what can be asked and what cannot be asked. We assume that whatever we can turn into a question, we can ask. Whatever can be given a question mark in language becomes a question. As far as language is concerned, it becomes one.

What is fragrance? Where is the mistake in this question? From the standpoint of language the question is complete. You are asking about fragrance, what is it? You are asking—and a question mark is attached. What is fragrance? An answer is demanded.

Questions that are consistent from the side of language can be inconsistent from the side of experience. Fragrance can be known; it cannot be said. And fragrance is only a tiny fragment among the thousands of experiences of life. Life means the sum total of all experiences.

Someone asks, what is life? The question appears perfectly right. A question is there. The so-called answerer also thinks there must be some answer—because a question has been asked. And the trouble begins, the mistake begins.

It is a linguistic blunder, an error of language—nothing else. And if this becomes visible to you, if it enters your understanding that there are things that cannot be asked—for merely asking does not resolve anything. There are things that cannot be asked. If even this much is understood, perhaps you will also understand that the way to know life will have to be something else. The way of asking does not remain.

So first, see the irrelevance of such a question—its inherent inconsistency.

Please understand my point first.

I do understand exactly what you mean.

Go back five thousand years—the seer of the Rig Veda is asking the same: “What is life?” Go back twenty-five hundred years—people are asking Buddha: “What is life?” You are asking me: “What is life?” A thousand years from now, even ten thousand years from now, someone will ask someone: “What is life?”

The question has been asked continuously; not a single answer has been given till today. Two things may follow from this. Either no one has known the answer so far—perhaps it will be known someday. Or it may be that the question itself is incoherent, and therefore there will never be an answer.

In my vision, such a question has no answer; such a question has to be experienced.

So don’t ask what life is; ask how life is to be known.

Life is. Whatever else—X, Y, Z—may be, life is. You, too, have life.

So many years of your life have passed—you have lived. A man may live seventy years—and after seventy years he will still ask, “What is life?” He lived, he went through life, he lived day after day—breath came, breath went; he slept, he woke; he suffered sorrow, he tasted happiness; he loved, he hated; he fought and quarreled, made friends—he lived all this, and in the end, after seventy years, he asks, “What is life?”

This can mean only two things. One: life passed by and he did not know it; he drifted along in life, but could not catch hold of it. Or life only brushed him on the surface; it never reached into his very life-breath... Those who are asking, “How to live totally?” ...he did not live totally.

Imagine I come to your house and rush straight through it. I run through and out—what pictures hung there, who was sitting, what was happening, who was singing—I know nothing; I rushed out. A snatch of a song echoes in my mind, the cry of a child is heard, the clatter of dishes, a fragment of conversation—rushing out, everything got jumbled. A snatch of song, the sound of dishes, a quarrel, conversation, the house, the pictures—everything became a hodgepodge. I ran out. Now when I look back, I cannot make out what that place was—was it a home, a madhouse, a music hall, a kitchen, a place of bickering, an office—what was it? Now I ask: What was that house? I passed through it, and now the question stands before me: What was that house? Many things remain on the mind—a fragment of song, the sound of quarrel, the dishes, the kitchen, the people of the house, the pictures, the wall—just a small mixture, an amalgam, a shadow on the mind. And I passed by that shadow so fast that even that shadow could not imprint itself fully on my consciousness—I was already gone.

Or imagine I run through this room with a camera, the eye of the camera open, and later I develop the film and see that everything is jumbled; nothing is clear. Running with a camera, a picture will form—but many pictures will form, superimposed upon one another. Then on opening it, it is hard to recognize whether it is a person, a chair, a building—what is what. Then a man starts asking, “What is this picture?” He is asking the right question—for he cannot make sense of it. He asks, “What is this picture?” But only one thing is proven: the picture was taken while running—the camera trembled, shook; the person was not still, not at rest.

We pass through life running, rushing, with eyes closed, glancing here and there. Afterwards we begin to ask, “What is life?” That this question arises is proof that life is being lived in a wrong way. It signals that we are not living with the totality, the completeness, with which it should be lived. We live extremely partially, extremely shallowly.

You came to me. You came, you offered namaskar and sat down. Can you imagine that even in such a small act as a namaskar there can be many layers of intensity, many depths?

One man offers namaskar and goes away. He neither saw me, nor did he knowingly raise his hands—a mechanical act: you see someone, you fold your hands, you pass on. Ask him whom he greeted—by evening he may not even remember: “I don’t recall; I greet twenty-five people a day; whoever comes along, I say namaskar.”

There is no feeling behind this namaskar. A formality, and it is done; a ritual completed.

Another man greets someone, and his whole being can be behind it—his whole being. This namaskar need not be merely the joining of hands; it can be the joining of one’s entire life-energy. This namaskar need not be a formal act; it can be a heartfelt event. And it may be that one never forgets it for the rest of one’s life; it settles so deeply somewhere in the consciousness; it becomes a living experience.

We live like those who are running—always running—who never stop even for a moment. We look ahead; what is close by escapes our gaze; or we brood over what has passed. But what has passed is no longer. What is yet to come is not yet. What is—the moment, this very moment—we do not live it wholly, in its full totality, so that we have squeezed all the juice out of it, drawn out all its essence, absorbed it entirely. We do not live like that. There is no intensity, no fierceness.

Two young men once came to Akbar’s court—both Rajputs. They stood there with swords and said to Akbar, “We are two brave youths and want to enlist in the army.”

Akbar asked simply, “You say you are brave—have you brought any certificate, any proof of bravery? How am I to know you are brave?” No sooner had Akbar said this than their swords flashed out of their sheaths. Akbar was startled for a moment! And in a single second those swords were thrust into each other’s chests. Both fell; fountains of blood burst forth.

Akbar cried, “Fools! What have you done?”

There was a Rajput in Akbar’s court—Man Singh, his commander. He came. Akbar said, “What madness is this? These two Rajput boys have stabbed themselves. They are real brothers—twins.”

Man Singh said, “To ask a Rajput for proof of bravery is absurd. Is there any certificate of bravery? There can be only a living example. And there is only one proof of bravery: that a man holds death as worth two pennies. There is no other proof. Those boys showed it—this is bravery: that death for us, whether now or later, makes no difference. For cause or no cause, meaningful or meaningless—we can die. But what certificate shall we produce? Shall we bring someone’s letter? What proof can there be? Only one: that we demonstrate what we say we can do.”

Man Singh said, “Never again, by mistake, ask a Rajput for a certificate of bravery. The very idea is absurd. The question does not arise.”

Akbar has recorded in his memoirs: for the first time I saw people who could stake their whole life on a small act. On a small act! Something partial, a tiny thing—but in that moment, the whole, the total! This is what I would call intensity.

Had we been in their place, we would have said, “All right, sir, we’ll get a letter. From the collector? From an MP? Whose will do? We’ll bring it—we’ll bring a certificate.”

We would bring a certificate; but think a little: only a coward can bring a certificate of bravery. The brave cannot bring one. A certificate of morality can be brought only by one whose life has no morality. One who has even a little morality cannot bring a certificate—he can live it.

This is what I call totality! I am not saying, “Go die or stab someone.” I am saying: let every act of life be so total that your whole life is concentrated there, your whole being gathered and immersed in that moment.

Can you imagine what those brave ones must have known in that instant? You will not know it even living a whole lifetime. You will not know in seventy years what, in that one moment—seventy years concentrated, the entire extract of seventy years! Can you imagine that instant when the swords flashed out? A decisive moment! With no before and after!

In that one instant—can you imagine what happened within them? You cannot. You cannot! You will only think, “They were great fools, died for nothing.” At the most you will manage just that: great fools, died needlessly. Is that any way to die? And with what “wisdom” will you die? What will you do? But in that one moment, the one who staked his entire life—so intensely, so concentrated—what revelation must have happened then?

Sunrays are falling, scattered; bring a small focusing glass, the rays gather and fall on a single point, and fire flares up. A single ray, scattered, can do nothing. Gather those rays through a glass onto a sheet of paper, and the flame leaps up. Each separate ray knows nothing of this experience—of fire bursting forth. But the concentrated rays know.

We live seventy years, but not for a single moment do we live in such a way that the whole life is at stake. When I say, “Live in totality,” I mean: let each moment take the whole of life as the stake, as a challenge—each moment. It is not even a question of which moment; every moment regards the entire life as the challenge, places the whole life on the wager.

There was a Japanese film actor, Nikajo. He earned about one crore rupees in America. He had gone to America in childhood. Earned a crore. And when he began to grow old, he took the money, toured the world, and started back to Japan. On the way he came to Paris. He had one crore rupees with him—the earnings of a lifetime. He was returning, planning to live in some village, build a small hut. He stayed in Paris. Many friends were there; they came to meet him and said, “Since you’ve come to Paris, you must see Monte Carlo. That’s where the gambling dens are. Whoever comes to Paris and doesn’t gamble in Monte Carlo hasn’t really come to Paris. That’s the fun there.”

He said, “All right.” He went there with the one crore rupees. One crore.

His friends said, “Place just one bet; what’s the point of staking a rupee at a time?” Then they cried, “Have you gone mad!” He said, “I’ve always been mad. But if you’re going to bet, bet the whole. Otherwise what kind of gambling is a one-rupee bet? A man who has one crore rupees—by staking a single rupee, can he have any experience of gambling? He is the madman. That one rupee means nothing. If a man with a crore stakes a rupee, he’s cheating the wager—he isn’t wagering at all. He already knows: so what if it goes? It makes no difference.”

He went and placed the entire one crore on a single throw. In Monte Carlo such a large stake had never been placed. It is the greatest gambling den; in one night five or ten crores change hands. But a single bet of one crore! The king of Sweden, the king of Denmark were present. People had gathered to see, because never before had a one-crore stake been placed in Monte Carlo. Even the king was stunned. It was beyond his courage too: a one-crore stake! One single bet!

Imagine that man. I am saying: how can a gambler live? He can live by staking one rupee at a time—that I call partial living. Or he can stake all—total—that I call whole. Now imagine the moment of that man; what must have happened within him? Silence will descend.

Complete silence will come. Complete surrender is taking place. This is not the kind of matter where you play a bit and then go home and sleep. This is the final affair now.

The next day the newspapers even printed the news that he had committed suicide. Someone else had committed suicide. But the paper ran it: he has killed himself—because what else would he do?

In the morning, when he woke at nine, he read the paper. Someone has committed suicide, and people suspected it must have been Nikajo. Because he would do it. What else would he do now?

He began to laugh heartily. He said, What has this to do with suicide? What has this to do with suicide!

He turned back—he did not come to Japan; he returned to America. There people asked, What did you do? He said, What I have come to know is something hardly anyone ever comes to know. What I saw in that one instant—everything became clear to me in that moment. I have lived.

This is what I call total living. I am not saying that anyone should start gambling. This trouble crops up around my words every day. Then here and there people write that I said, Go gamble. That I said, Plunge a knife into your chest. And such meanings can be extracted from my words.

But what I am saying—only this—is what I mean by “total living.”

So, in any moment—if I even take your hand with love—that hand should be my stake of total living. When I take the hand, I take it as though everything for me—my whole life—has gathered into that hand, has come into my fingers. Then the impact is of another order. Then when that hand touches you, that touch is of a different kind. That is another kind of secret, another kind of mystery.

You touch hands, and he touches a hand. But if someone has drawn someone to the heart in love—then in that moment everything is complete: that is the full stake! There, all the love I have, I have put on the line—whether anything remains afterward is not the question. Then that touching, that contact, is of a different order.

A man yearns his whole life for just this: that someone, in a perfect moment, draws him to the heart. But neither is the one who would embrace there in a perfect moment, nor do we have the courage to be ready to be embraced. So our whole life we stake it bit by bit, a rupee at a time. In seventy years we do gamble, but only in one-rupee bets. We never even taste the thrill of the stake. We gamble, and life is spoiled as well. All in! Then you will come to know what life is. Otherwise you will never know. You will never know by asking.

No description has been made.

Absolutely not.

Absolutely not. Color is not an inherent property of anything.

No, no — not even now; it never happens.

Yes, why it looks brown, I will tell you. I will tell you. You are students of science, more or less.

You have done a little. Color is not a property of anything. If we walk out of this room, nothing in this room will remain colored. Color is an event that happens between the eye and the object. Without the eye, there is no color anywhere. Understand this a little. You may be thinking: if we leave the room, the chair here that is red will remain red—do not stay in that illusion. Outside the room and inside the room—both—the chair will have no color; the chair will be colorless. Because color arises from the conjunction of the eye and the chair.

Now, the whole arrangement of color is this: a sunray has seven parts. You do know that, don’t you? There are seven colors.

So the red color is not a property of the dhoti. Red is an experience arising between the eye, the dhoti, and the ray. Experience is nobody’s property. The eye alone cannot see red; the dhoti alone is not red; in the ray alone there is no color. Experience! When you eat something and it tastes sour to you, you think the lemon is sour. You are crazy. The lemon is not (intrinsically) sour. It is the particular way your tongue experiences. That same lemon will not be sour on another animal’s tongue; on a third animal’s tongue it will bring another taste; on a fourth… a fifth… And even among all of us sitting here, it will not bring the same experience of sourness on every tongue. A man with a fever will have a different taste. A healthy man will have another taste. A man with a cold will have a third taste. This experience of taste that is happening to you is not the lemon’s, nor is it your tongue’s; it is the event that occurs between the lemon and the tongue…

So when someone asks, What is taste? Even if you say it is an experience that happens among three things, still nothing is known from the word experience. We will ask, What is that experience? In the end you will have to reduce it to this: experience has to be lived; it cannot be said. I mean, however many circles we make with explanation, in the end we will have to say, Look, this—this you have to taste for yourself. And even then it is not necessary that what I tasted, you will taste. Because my tongue is mine and your tongue is yours; the difference between them is beyond reckoning. Therefore I say, it is an experience—and a personal experience. So the kind of experience of life that happened to Mahavira, I do not say it will happen to you.

So when we ask: What is life? even then we are asking a very mixed-up question. We can ask—what is Rama’s life? what is Buddha’s life? what is A’s life? what is B’s life?

What is life? Life has no such general meaning. Because what life is is always an individual experience.

So my point is: do not ask this, because behind such a question is the notion that things can be explained, that there can be a definition.

In my understanding, nothing can truly be defined. All definitions are makeshift, hollow. They work for a bit, then the definition has to be questioned again, and again another definition is needed. In the end, what comes into our grasp is the indefinable. In the end it is always that which admits of no explanation. And there we just stand. There we just stand!

So when someone asks, the questioner may ask and the answerer may also reply that life is this-and-that, such-and-such. All of it is empty and hollow. What needs to be understood is that life can be known—and how? For that “how,” which she is asking about, I have said this: Live in such a way that the stake is total. Live so that in each moment the full power of your life-energy is gathered. Live so that nothing is left behind. Become wholly present.

We always live withheld—something held back, something left over. Even if I have loved someone, still I am holding something back. This love of mine is not total. I am still withholding a good part: who knows whether this will prove right or not, whether this love will continue or not, whether this person is right or not? I am loving with one part, keeping the rest back so that tomorrow, if needed, I can pull it back too.

Just the day before yesterday, what happened: a sister came to meet me. She met me and was about to leave—she must be going to Krishnamurti. I had to go to the bathroom, so I also stood up. She said, “If I wish to embrace you, may I?” I said, “You certainly may.” So she embraced me; she is embracing me, but she was looking out of the window to see whether anyone was watching. Now, she embraced me, but since the window was open, she kept looking... She embraced me, yet looked outside the window. So I asked her, “Whom did you embrace—me, or the window, or the people outside the window?” Because the point is... This is what I call utterly non-intense living. And then, what is the point of embracing? What is the meaning of such an embrace? So she both embraced and did not embrace. She could think to herself, “I did embrace.” And I know that no communion of embrace happened at all; because she was looking out of the window to see whether anyone was watching.

This is what I am saying, this is what I am saying... In any given moment—any moment; I am not even saying which moment—but if nothing is withheld behind us, if we bring to bear the entire focus of our life, then the experience of life can happen. Otherwise it cannot. It can be any moment; that is not the issue. Even in eating, if I bring my whole life to it, then I will know taste. In listening to music, if I put my whole being into it and I become only ears—everything contracting into ear, and within me there is nothing else, I am only ear—then the experience of music will happen. While eating, if I become only the tongue and nothing else—everything else lost, my whole personality becoming the tongue—then I will experience taste. While loving, if I become only the heart. While thinking, if I become only the intellect, and nothing else is there with me, no other matter at all—I am only intelligence—then I will have the experience of intelligence. Every single thing has its own experiences.

I call sin, I call evil that which, through its total experience, one becomes free of. And I call virtue, I call dharma that which, through its total experience, comes to abide within.

If the complete experience of something frees us from it, understand that it was futile; we were needlessly bothered with it. And if the complete experience of something makes us wholly one with ourselves, understand that it was meaningful; outside of it we were living in vain.

You cannot yet know whether love will remain or anger; whatever remains, I call that virtue—through total living. As when we put gold into fire: the gold remains, the dross burns away. What remains is gold; what burns is rubbish.

So into the fire of intense living—the blaze of whole, integral living—throw yourself in: what remains is dharma; what burns away is adharma. And it will burn away, because in such intense living, what is futile cannot survive; it will burn. It survives only because—now this is the amusing part—there are two consequences. Because we live in fragments, what is useless remains. The fire is smoldering; in it even trash does not burn. Thrown into ash, even then the trash does not burn. So the futile survives—because of fragmentary living; and the meaningful does not get refined—because of fragmentary living. Life remains a heap of debris. In one who lives totally, the vain burns away; the meaningful remains.

That is why you will be surprised that the great conversions in the world happened to those people… like Valmiki or Angulimala. These conversions came from their total living. When they stole, it was utterly whole. When Valmiki was stealing, it was total. If he was a thief, he was entirely a thief. Angulimala was a murderer—and wholly so. Murder was his life. When he was killing, he was nothing but a killer. From such total living, revolution arises.

And this mediocre man, who never lives anything completely—never completes love, never completes hate; never completes anger, never completes forgiveness; never becomes wholly a friend, never wholly an enemy—such a man does not come to know life. So he goes around asking in temples and mosques, of gurus and saints: “What is life?” Who can tell what life is! What can anyone truly say! And you will find tellers aplenty, because they too have not lived life; they have made up definitions—this and that—they will recite them.

So I do not say what life is. I say how life can be known. And one should gather the courage for that. Gather it while you are young, because if the young cannot stake themselves, how will the old? Then it becomes very difficult.

I can see you’re still stuck there. Are you listening to what I’m saying fully and intensely?

Where... that is exactly why I am saying you are stuck right there.

Yes—then you will just stop right there, won’t you! And then you are not able to hear what I have been saying all along.

How will you listen to it?

What did you understand from that?

What do you understand by that? Have you ever really lived?

Have you ever done any practice?

Which practice have you done?

Then everyone is living that.

Intensely.

I can’t provide Osho’s exact words without the source text; here is a neutral response on living with intensity:

1) Be totally present: Do one thing at a time, with your whole attention. Half-heartedness dilutes energy. 2) Breathe and feel: Let the breath be deep and unhurried; stay in the body. Sensation anchors intensity without strain. 3) Speak cleanly: Say yes when it’s yes, no when it’s no. Clarity concentrates energy. 4) Take small risks daily: Tell a simple truth, try a new action, show a real feeling. Risk keeps the flame alive. 5) Cut distractions: When engaged, silence the unnecessary—notifications, background noise, idle chatter. 6) Care for your energy: Sleep, move, eat simply. A clear system can sustain a bright flame. 7) Practice witnessing: Sit 20 minutes daily; notice breath, sensations, thoughts—without pushing or holding. Awareness sharpens without tension. 8) Create and love: Channel intensity into art, service, relationship. Passion becomes luminous when it flows outward. 9) Pulse effort with rest: Engage fully, then let go fully. Intensity grows in this rhythm of action and surrender. 10) Remember impermanence: Life is brief. The awareness of time’s fragility focuses the heart.

Intensity is not hardness; it is aliveness. Let each moment be complete—then the whole life gathers into a single, bright thread.

When did I say that? I spoke neither of “use” nor of “ras.”

I am not talking about using it.

That's good.

That is exactly what has to be known. That is exactly what has to be known.

How will that help you to know life? This is exactly what I’m saying: you’re stuck right there! This is exactly what I’m saying: you’re stuck right there! The trouble is, we get stuck on pointless things. It has nothing to do with anything. What I am doing...

What you mean behind it, I understand.

Now, that is sheer foolishness.

That’s quite amusing! This is exactly what I said earlier: put all your questions on the table. And now this has become an entirely different question; it has no connection with the earlier one.

What was behind it for you? I had already asked you. So I’ve just been laboring in vain all this while.

Do you know anything?

This—this is the whole business: to you it seems you know about the soul and life, this and that; all of it appears known.

It seems you know all this—about the soul and so on.

Unfortunate indeed. That’s the fact. That’s the fact! It seems all the unfortunates have gathered right here in this Arya land.

I am not concerned with your intention. I am concerned only with what you ask. And therefore I can speak to that directly. If I start talking about the soul right now, immediately a second intention will appear—one you yourself don’t yet know is there. We keep shifting. Even in our questions our whole life-breath is rarely present. Day after day I am exasperated to find that someone asks a question and even that is not what he is really concerned with. After a little while, while I am discussing that question, I find he is thinking of something else. Soon he starts saying, “What I mean is this,” then again, “No, what I mean is this.” He means nothing at all. Useless words have piled up in his head, and the words have begun to form questions. And there is no real meaning in it.

Oh, are life and the soul separate things that there could be any give-and-take between them?

It has nothing to do with the soul at all, right? Life is enough.

The great joy is that life is sufficient; the very existence of life is enough. What need is there to give it yet another name?

Who knows that it cannot understand? Did the stone tell you? Or did you ask the stone? And that you can understand—who told you that? If you had understood, the matter would have been finished.

Perhaps this stone has understood more, because it is silent.

You are not silent; understanding you is very difficult. This is exactly how… the way man has gotten into trouble—these are the very paths to getting into trouble. You have no concern with life, no concern with living. You’re concerned with a few hackneyed words that have been repeated for thousands of years. “Aryan land,” “soul,” and blah-blah—these are what matter. What has a living person to do with these? What has one who is alive to do with them? What have words to do with it? This—what I told you—about life… “soul” and the rest are just words, definitions.

For now, life itself is enough, isn’t it? Why bring that in between? Isn’t life enough?

Then talking about life is enough. Besides life, what else could there be?

Oh!

Have you ever seen someone die?

Have you ever seen anyone die, until now?

Dying?

No. Dying, brother? Have you ever seen anyone die?

Nothing is evident, nothing. Nothing can be known about whether he has died or not. Only this much is noticed: a man who used to speak no longer speaks. Hey, don’t say “he is dead.” About “has died,” nothing is known. Till today, in my reckoning, no one has died. And those who know say: no one ever dies.

Is this the truth?

You do know something, brother.

Then what are you asking? You already know all the facets. What are you seeking?

What will you do with my intention? What concern do you have with me? If you know, the matter is finished.

Oh!

Why? How did you come to know? Who told you, and from where did you learn it?

Why did you believe them?

So then?

Then... but it seems as though I have already believed.

So you’ll take the opinions of five or ten?

There are thirty million people in the world.

How will you recognize the wise?

How to recognize a wise one?

So that makes them wise! Then it’s a very simple matter. Then it’s a very simple matter.

You’ve made a mistake—absolutely.

That too would be a mistake.

How can you understand me? I’m not telling you to take me as ignorant, nor as wise... How can you understand me? You don’t even understand yourself—how will you undertake the job of understanding me?

No. Our whole difficulty is that all our talk is utterly circular and mad—everyone’s. Now a man says, “I’m going to ask a wise man.” How do you decide? You’re already so sure that you can determine who is wise. And if you can determine who is wise, then you’re lacking no knowledge. You even decide who is wise and who is ignorant. When I decide that such-and-such a person is wise—well, I’m deciding that. If I can go so far as to decide who is wise, then I must already know what wisdom is; only then can I decide who is wise. I also decide that so-and-so is ignorant. Then I must also know what it is the absence of which is called ignorance. So I must have attained knowledge first—only then do I judge. And then I even decide that the person who speaks is the wise one.

Oh, there is no question of any certainty-uncertainty attitude. Your knowledge is what is troubling you. Because of it, you are not able to listen. What certainty—and what of it? Who are you to decide, and how will you decide?

Yes, but it is only people who say so, isn’t it? Think about that a little.

Suppose I were to say that the Maharaj sitting there is enlightened; then the issue shifts to this: why do you believe what I say?

Oh, what is the weight of “many people”? The whole world used to say that the earth doesn’t revolve.

I am telling you exactly this: truth is not decided by anyone’s opinion.

Truth has nothing to do with it.

Know it. Truth is not settled.

Truth is not decided. Truth is not decided! Do you understand? Truth is not decided. All over the world there were so many people; they all believed that the sun goes around the earth. The numbers were on the believers’ side. The man who, for the first time, said, “No, that’s not how it is,” was alone. But he turned out to be right, and all the people of the world turned out to be wrong.

Then opinion is not truth. Truth is not some political affair to be settled by votes—that you have taken votes, that so many people say it is true, twenty-five people say so. And then the great joke is, the great joke is that whenever someone goes to ask somebody... My whole point is: stop asking, start living. From the experience of living it will begin to be seen to you—and that will be the truth. By asking you will get only words. And you will collect words. And you will juggle and patch them together. And you will make a philosophy. That philosophy is utterly bogus, false. It has no value.

If you ask me that, you have already started seeking opinions. You have not understood what I am saying. The moment you ask me, we are back to the same old thing. What I am saying is: know this—truth cannot be found by knowing opinions. Whether to ask or not to ask—why should I decide that for you? If you ask, still know that nothing will come of it; if you don’t ask, still know that nothing will come of it. What will happen will happen through living, through your own experience.

You accept so quickly—and then you start asking questions!

On its own.

They started taking opinions.

So you’ve started taking opinions, then?

There is no need at all.

There is no need.

No need.

There is no need. There is no need.

And then you begin to ask me! You start asking me again, don’t you! Once you’ve decided, admitted that there is no need, what room is left now to ask me anything?

You don’t understand—you don’t understand what I am saying. And you will not be able to understand. If you keep moving in this direction, a time will come when you won’t understand anything at all. Do you see? This whole direction is the direction of madness—the whole direction. With all these calculations of yours that have begun, in the end you can only become deranged, nothing else. You should understand the direction of silence.

Suppose I go and ask—a blind man—what light is like; then I ask another blind man, then a third, then twenty-five blind men, and collect all their opinions, and then add my own opinion to it. I myself am blind; otherwise I wouldn’t be going around asking about light. I myself am blind; otherwise why would I ask what light is? I would know. So the first basic fact is that I am blind. The second basic fact about a blind man is that he cannot tell who has eyes. One blind man’s opinion is madness in a single measure; fifty blind men’s opinions are madness fiftyfold! The only difference is that it acquires sanctity. You say, “All right, if fifty people say so, it must be true.” With the increase of numbers, with social approval, your blindness gains the strength to believe, “It must be right—so many are saying it.” But the basis remains: you went to ask because you did not know in the first place; and secondly, those you went to ask—you cannot determine whether they know or not.

So my point is this: the journey of asking is only philosophical. If you want to gather doctrines and the like—to become a pundit—then you should ask, try to understand, read, learn, hold on to it, and add your own little twists to it as well.

But if you want to know, then this basic thing must be understood: how will I recognize who is speaking truth and who is speaking untruth? How will I decide about what they have said—because I do not know the truth. If I knew, I would decide. If I could decide, there would be no need to know, no need to ask.

So this is man’s basic difficulty—his fundamental problem: he does not know. And he wants to find out by asking. But he cannot find out by asking—because whom will he ask?

So what am I saying? What can I do? What I am saying to you, to people, is only this: I can bring your basic difficulty into discussion—this is our basic situation. In this basic situation, consider what will truly help—will it be by asking, by collecting opinions, by reading books? You will certainly arrive at some decision. But that has nothing to do with truth. Your decision has no value—because you do not know. And the only difference will be this: if you think alone, you will feel, “I am alone.” If fifty people’s opinion lines up on your side, you will think, “Now it’s close to being right”—and you will become rigid, you will cling.

I want all this of yours to become fluid, for its very foundation to be uprooted—for this idea to be erased, that truth can be known in this way.

No—truth cannot be known in this way. But then, in what way can it be known?

We are living; so become utterly saturated with life, let your very life-breath be joined with it. And life is not something I can go somewhere and embrace; I am flowing in it twenty-four hours a day.

Right now I am speaking to you—that too is living. Now I can live in such a way that I put my whole life-breath at stake on you. Although there is no purpose in it—what have I to gain from you? But when I speak to you, I can speak with such intensity as if my whole stake is simply to tell you what I see as right.

I could also speak in such a way that, “All right, the man has come—say a few things and send him away.” And sending you away would be easy for me. I could just agree with you and be done with the bother. What have I to do with you? What purpose is there?

But no—I will grapple with you totally; I will stake myself on you, as if for me this were a matter of life and death. Then even in this speaking an intensity will arise, and my speaking will become a living experience. Do you understand what I mean?

Now you too can listen in such a way that listening itself becomes a stake for you; then it will become a living experience for you as well.

But for you it will not become a living experience—because you are not listening with your stake in it. You are listening with prejudice. You are holding back. You are thinking, “Yesterday I read this, the day before I heard that; I have already concluded—absolute, conduct, soul, this and that”—all these have a hold on you from behind. You have not leapt in with me wholly. You are standing back; your mind is stuck there, and from there you are thinking. When I am speaking, you are listening from there: “Well then, is this about the absolute or about conduct? What is he saying? With which religion does this fit? In which scripture is this found?”—you are entangled in that. Your listening cannot become total. It does not become total; and so a living experience is missed. You were with me for an hour; a living experience could have happened, but it was missed.

I’m not disclosing it at all.

I am saying exactly this: you are still standing right there, where you were when you asked an hour ago.