Utsav Amar Jati Anand Amar Gotar #3

Anand Maitreya, without the experience of the Divine, prayer is not possible. One who has no eyes—what conception of light can he have? Even if he wants to sing songs of light, how will he sing? And if he does sing, it will be false. And even if he sings, it will not be of light. That is impossible.

The experience of the Divine rises as prayer in every pore of your being. Prayer is not a method to attain the Divine; prayer is the expression of one who has attained. The Divine is fragrance. When your nostrils are filled with it, you will dance in rapture; that rapture is prayer.

The Divine is as when, in the month of Ashadha, clouds gather and the peacock dances. When the Divine’s clouds gather in the sky of your consciousness, the peacocks of your life-breath will dance; that dance is prayer. That very dance is bhajan.

Therefore it is not possible—by any means—that you can pray or sing a hymn without the experience of the Divine.

You will be surprised, even anxious: then how will the experience of the Divine happen?

Until the Divine is experienced, meditation is possible, not prayer. Meditation is method; prayer is result. Meditation has nothing to do with God. That is why those religions that made meditation the center did not even raise the topic of God. Jainism, Buddhism—there is no place for God in them. It is not that the Jinas did not know the Divine, or that the Buddhas did not know the Divine. They knew, certainly they knew, but there was no need to speak of it—their path was that of meditation.

Meditation relates to you; the Divine as yet has no relationship with you—so prayer can have no relationship with you either. Prayer relates to the Divine; meditation relates to oneself. Meditation means refine yourself. Meditation means become thought-free. Meditation means move into emptiness. Meditation means dissolve yourself, melt, let yourself flow away. Meditation means you are no more. And when you are no more, the Divine is realized. In that void the Whole descends.

And when the Divine arrives, prayer will arrive—surely it will. Prayer comes like its shadow. Prayer is the footfall of its steps. If you pray now, the prayer will be false. And how will falsehood lead to truth? Falsehood only gives birth to greater falsehood.

If you pray now, there will be belief, not trust; a creed, not realization. How will you reach knowing through belief? The ladders of belief do not lead to the temple of knowing. Ladders of believing will carry you into deeper and deeper superstition. If today you accept one thing, tomorrow you will have to accept something bigger, and the day after something bigger yet.

To support one lie, you have to tell ten lies. To keep one lie propped up you must gather ten crutches of lies. If the Divine is not experienced, prayer will be a lie. You may repeat it by mouth—but what value has a prayer only mouthed? How will it arise from your life-breath? How will it awaken in the inner soul? How will every hair on your body thrill?

It will be like someone staggering without having drunk wine. He can stagger—actors do it. They take an empty bottle, or one filled with water, only the label is of wine. They begin to lurch, drool from the mouth, tumble and fall. But you know it is all fake. There is no real wine in the bottle, nor is the drunkard drunk on wine. Even when he falls, he falls carefully—lest he get hurt. A real drunkard’s fall is a different matter.

Lao Tzu said: Once I was traveling in a cart. There were four of us; three were sober, one was drunk—solidly drunk. The cart overturned. The three were badly hurt, but the drunkard didn’t even notice. The three had bones broken, ribs cracked, but when the fourth came to, he said, “What’s going on?” Lao Tzu said he was not injured. Why?

From that experience Lao Tzu drew a marvelous principle—worth understanding. The drunkard was not hurt, because injury does not come from falling, Lao Tzu said. If it came from falling, he too would have been hurt. Injury comes from the effort to save yourself. When you begin to fall you try mightily not to fall; you stiffen, you tense; your body forgets the state of relaxation, it becomes rigid. To save yourself, you become like iron. And when something iron-like hits the ground, it breaks. A drunkard falls like a sack filled with chaff. That is why small children fall every day and their bones do not shatter. You try falling and see.

Lao Tzu said: The drunkard was not hurt; thus one thing is established—injury comes not from falling but from the attempt to resist.

Those who have eyes to see draw essences from every experience.

You can walk like a drunkard. And such people are what you will find in temples and mosques, churches and gurdwaras—reeling without drinking. Their reeling is false, because there is no ecstasy within. What you see reeling is display, exhibition, show. Within? Within, no one is reeling. The wine has not yet been drunk.

The Divine is wine. Yes—once you drink, the unselfconscious ecstasy that arises—prayer is one hue of that ecstasy. There will be dance, there will be song; they all flow from that ecstasy. They are streams of that ecstasy. From the Gangotri, the source of that intoxication, the Ganga of prayer is born.

It happened to Meera. People think Meera sang and sang and attained the Divine. They think wrongly—absolutely wrongly! They do not know the arithmetic of life. Meera attained the Divine; therefore she sang. It is not that by singing the Divine can be attained; but if you attain the Divine you cannot help but sing. If God were attained by singing, then Lata Mangeshkar would attain before Meera. Lata Mangeshkar can be awarded a Ph.D.—but not God. That song is only up to the throat. Those whose throats are melodious you may rightly call cuckoo-throated. Meera’s song may not have been so tuneful; where was her attention? She may have erred in meter and cadence; where was her awareness?

Meera herself has said: “I have lost all worldly shame!” Meera began to dance in the streets; she was a woman of a royal house, a queen. Her dear ones were anxious—reputation was being ruined. Poison was sent. The story says Meera drank the poison and did not die. If it is true that Meera drank poison and did not die, then understand it as you did Lao Tzu’s drunkard falling from a cart and not being hurt. It is the same thing. She would drink whatever was sent—wine or poison—but she would have no concern, no defense. The one who defends had already departed; the ego had long since said goodbye. Now only the Divine was there. And if the Divine drinks poison, will he die? Now there was prayer. In prayer, even poison is joined and turns to nectar. In the company of prayer, even darkness becomes illumined.

No—I say Meera attained the Divine; therefore she could sing.

Prayer is the ultimate flower. First plant the tree of the experience of the Divine.

Therefore, Anand Maitreya, you ask: “For those who have not had the experience of the Divine, what should their prayer be? What should their hymn be?”

They can have neither prayer nor hymn—nor should they. And because the opposite is what is happening, the earth lies empty—emptied of the Divine. Where there could have been the greenery of the Divine, there stretches the desert of hollow scholarship, hollow temples and mosques, empty chatter.

And the reason? The greatest reason is this: we have placed prayer first and the Divine afterwards. We have put the shadow first and the original behind. We try to grasp the shadow, and the original never comes into our grasp.

Swami Ram wrote a memoir: I had gone to stand before a door to beg alms. Before I could ask, it was a cold morning, and in the sunlight the household’s child was playing, trying to catch his shadow. He would pounce on his shadow, and when it would not come into his grip he would cry and shout, then pounce again. His mother was explaining: “Son, a shadow cannot be caught!” But he would not agree. The shadow is right there in front of him—why won’t it be caught? It was a hand’s length away. Then he would move and try again. But as you move, the shadow moves.

Ram began to laugh. He said to the woman, “This is not within your power; this is my trade. You will not be able to explain. May I come inside? May I explain to the child? This is our trade—to explain to children. This is our work; this is our question.”

The mother was tired. She said, “Do come, come in—welcome! Explain to him. He is crying, he is upset. Since morning he has troubled me; he does not let me work. He wants to catch his shadow! Can a shadow be caught?”

Ram said, “It can be caught—there is a way.” He took the child’s hand and placed it on the child’s own head. As the child’s hand went to his head, the shadow too came into the hand’s grasp. The child burst into laughter: “I knew there had to be some trick!”

By grasping the original, the shadow came within reach. Catch the original, and the shadow is caught.

Ram spoke truly: “This is my trade.” I say the same to you: this is my trade. Meditate. Through meditation you will come into your own grasp. And for the one who has grasped himself, nothing remains. Then the Divine is easily experienced.

What is the Divine? It is the name for your state of egolessness. The Divine is not a person. The Divine is not some ruler of the universe seated on a golden throne in the sky. The Divine is your supreme experience when not even a homeopathic trace of ego remains; when not even a line of ego remains; when ego exists nowhere at all.

You have seen: a pane of perfectly pure glass casts no shadow. In the ancient lore of the world there are stories that when gods walk in the sky they cast no shadow. Those stories are charming, meaningful. Not that there is some heaven and some gods walking there; the puranas speak truth through stories. A “deva” is one who has become so pure, whose ego has melted so completely, that there is no taint of “I” left within—such a one is a deva, one who has attained godliness. He casts no shadow. Purity has no shadow. The rays pass right through—there is no obstruction in between.

The day the Divine flows through you as the wind flows through trees and the Ganga through the mountains; the day no obstruction remains within you, no rock remains; the day you let the Divine pass through you, enter you; the day the life-energy ripples within you and from your side there is no hindrance, no barrier—that supreme experience is the Divine. Call it nirvana, call it moksha, call it kaivalya—use whatever word you wish. Do not get entangled in the word “God.” The word “God” creates the illusion of a person. But look closely at the word “Paramatma”: it does not mean a person—it means the supreme Self, the supremely pure state of your own soul.

Ask how your soul can be purified—do not ask how to pray. Do not ask how flowers will bloom; ask how seeds should be sown. Do not ask how fragrance will come into the flowers; ask how the plant is to be tended. Sow the seeds, give manure, tend the plant, put up a fence—flowers will come in their season by themselves; leave their worry aside. Buds will open when they are to open; do not try to force them. If you force buds to open out of season, the flower will open but the fragrance will not be available—fragrance needs time to ripen.

Prayer is the ripe fragrance of your life-breath. When the lotus of your life opens naturally, prayer arises. Prayer is fulfillment. Prayer is the joy of the soul returned home, aah!—a benediction.

Therefore I do not tell you to learn prayer. I tell you: learn meditation. And the direction of meditation is altogether different.

Consider: you go to a physician; you are ill. You do not say to him, “Give me tablets of health; give me a medicine that will make me instantly healthy.” Because there is no medicine of health. You say, “Diagnose my illness; recognize what disease I have; give me such a medicine that the disease be cut away.” When disease is cut away, what remains is called health. There is no medicine of health; medicine is for disease.

Ego is the disease; meditation is its medicine. Through meditation ego will be cut away; what remains then is the Divine—that is prayer. Then surely you will sing. Surely from your throat the cuckoo will break forth, the papiha will call. Surely from your life-breath the Upanishads will awaken, the Quran will descend. But all this happens by itself. Meditation is within man’s hands; prayer is grace. Meditation is effort; prayer is benediction.

O lamp of my life-breath!
To shine is your duty;
love is your right.
But do not go begging,
unschooled, from door to door
for alms of love!
Love is received by the worthy—
within its own circumference,
quietly,
of itself.

Do not beg. Do not hold out your bowl for prayer. Do not carry offerings to temples and mosques.

O lamp of my life-breath!
To shine is your duty;
love is your right.
But do not go begging,
unschooled, from door to door
for alms of love!
Love is received by the worthy—
within its own circumference,
quietly,
of itself.

From silence, in solitude, that which is calm,
unwavering, undivided,
the fruit of timeless trust,
attained through disciplined practice—
that is love.
It is bound in the bonds of responsibility;
alert to every limit on all sides!
Love is limited; thus it remains.
If it scatters, it is destroyed,
divided everywhere.

But that which neither accepts
nor knows the bonds of limit
is light—unobstructed it is.
To spread, to divide, to scatter,
and to be distributed
far and wide into every particle—
this is the success
and fulfillment of the life
that gives itself as light.

You are full of love—true that is, my lamp!
But the night of life is very long.
This is not a frenzy of a single moment.
Do not flare up and be finished in an instant,
do not lose all love in excitation!
Practice is to give light;
love is the support of practice.
If you pour it out on one,
you must save it for another.
Love remains alive only so long
as there rests upon it the sweet control
of ceaseless self-restraint.

And storms do come to blow you out.
But with them they bring
a strength as well—
one that is gained by the life-breath through struggle.
It is not enough only to burn; to grapple too—
and even grappling with the wind,
to remain, and then to burn again,
to go on burning without cease.

If courage fails,
if patience slips,
if, at some moment in mid-journey,
the flame of light goes out—
then, with effort, husband your oil;
from the tip of the wick, keep issuing forth,
however small, rays of light,
striking at the darkness—practice this sadhana,
tireless; that which is tireless is called sadhana.
Perfection alone is the end of sadhana.
Perfection will be the world’s liberation,
when, in the sun’s flood of light,
the night of darkness will drown.

Then, leaving even
the oar of your practice,
attaining nirvana, you too—drown
in that ocean of the day’s light.
Then all eyes will rise
to offer salutations
to the greatest splendor of the world-illumining sun;
not a single eye will be turned toward you.
With completeness, fulfillment, meaningful humility,
bearing the silent smallness of your own being,
absorbed in forgetfulness, in the world’s disregard,
sleep peacefully, successful—at dawn!

O lamp of my life-breath!

The lamp is within you—find it. Do not grope elsewhere. The lamp is within you. Remove the veils. There are veils of thoughts, veils of memories, veils of imaginings and desires. Remove the veils! The light is hidden behind the veils. And once all these veils are removed—these veils gathered together are what we call ego; if the veils go, ego goes.

And do not worry—even if only small rays break forth at first, do not be frightened and do not lose courage:

With effort, husband your oil;
from the tip of the wick, keep issuing forth,
however small, rays of light,
striking at the darkness—practice this sadhana.

For now, practice meditation. Prayer will come in its season. When spring comes, prayer will come; flowers will bloom. For now, awaken yourself.

Perfection will be the world’s liberation,
when, in the sun’s flood of light,
the night of darkness will drown.
Then, leaving even
the oar of your practice,
attaining nirvana, you too—drown
in that ocean of the day’s light.

Until then, struggle. Until then, practice. Until then, keep the lamp of meditation aflame. When the lamp of meditation is lit, then let it too be surrendered—into that boundless ocean of light.

Attaining nirvana, you too—drown
in that ocean of light.
Then all eyes will rise
to offer salutations
to the greatest splendor of the world-illumining sun!

Understand this. When your little lamp begins to drown in that great Light, then whoever can see, whoever can experience…

Then all eyes will rise
to offer salutations
to the greatest splendor of the world-illumining sun;
not a single eye will be turned toward you.

You will simply not be. Your ego has already gone. Not a single eye will be raised toward you.

That is why we have called the Buddhas “Bhagwan.” The Buddha has disappeared—now no eye turns toward him. The glass is so pure it casts no shadow. Whoever goes to see in him finds only God. In that moment, there is praise and salutation to the greatest splendor of the world-illumining sun.

With completeness, fulfillment, meaningful humility,
bearing the silent smallness of your own being,
absorbed in forgetfulness, in the world’s disregard,
sleep peacefully, successful—at dawn!

O lamp of my life-breath!
To shine is your duty;
love is your right.
But do not go begging,
unschooled, from door to door
for alms of love!
Love is received by the worthy—
within its own circumference,
quietly,
of itself.

Vairale, the corpus of Charvaka philosophy was dangerous for the pundit-priests. Their death was hidden in it. To save themselves they had to destroy it.

The Charvaka corpus was the ultimate expression of atheism. And only a supreme theist can embrace the ultimate expression of atheism—not the petty, phony believers. The fake believers will panic; the ground will slip from beneath their feet.

The scriptures of these false believers tell you: if anyone speaks against God, plug your ears. Do not hear a single word contrary to God.
Why? Because your God is fragile; your belief is hollow. You’re afraid that if someone speaks against God, my doubt might awaken! The doubt is already there within you; you fear someone may provoke it.
But provoked or not, if doubt is within, it is within. Better that someone does provoke it, so you can know it for what it is. Thank him—he brought your doubt into the open. An enemy in front is auspicious; an enemy hiding behind is dangerous—more dangerous!

And atheism is the ladder to theism. No one has ever become a true theist in this world without first passing through atheism; nor is it possible. Only the atheist has the capacity one day to be a theist. One who has never learned the art of saying no will never understand the secret of saying yes. One unfamiliar with thorns will not recognize the flower; one who has not seen the night—what welcome will he give to the dawn?

But pundits and priests live off a false theism. Their whole business stands on it. By “false theism” I mean believed-in theism, second-hand belief. You don’t know for yourself; people say so, you’ve heard, so you’ve believed. Parents say so, the family says so, society says so, teachers say so, the crowd says so—so you’ve accepted it. It’s been said for centuries, so you’ve bowed to it. You merely believe what others say. You yourself have known nothing; you have no experience of your own.

The irony is this: your doubt is natural, your faith is borrowed. Every small child is born with doubt. That’s why little children ask so many questions that they make you restless. One question raises another. You tell them a thousand times, “When you grow up you’ll understand,” yet they ask again and again. They question what they see. Little children ask such questions that even great wise men cannot answer.

Doubt is born in every child’s life-breath. Existence has given the wealth of doubt. There must be a secret in it. Doubt is the seed; the pulp of faith is hidden in it. Doubt is the husk; if it dissolves in the soil, the sprout emerges from it, the germination happens, and from it the growth of faith. Doubt is not the enemy of faith. Ordinarily people think doubt is faith’s enemy; so they say, “Do not doubt—believe.”

Then your faith will be impotent. One who has not doubted and has simply believed will have a superficial faith—a whitewash. Like coloring the face. As if you painted a white coat over a Black person to make them look fair; or smeared tar on a fair-skinned person to make them look dark. Such is your faith: doubt within, a mask on top—you’ve become a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian—and you strut about! You perform namaz five times a day, you memorize the Quran, you recite the Gita, you chant the Gayatri and the Namokar—you’ve become parrots and think you’ve found faith. Faith won’t be found that way. That faith is lame. There is no life in it; no breath moves in it; no heart beats in it.

Faith is a costly affair. It is attained through long journeys of doubt. The one who doubts so totally that he stakes everything on doubt—he attains faith. In doubting and doubting there comes a moment when doubt itself becomes doubtful; that is doubt’s pinnacle—doubt doubting itself. And when doubt doubts itself, suicide happens—doubt commits self-destruction, hangs itself. Where doubt disappears by doubting itself, where it is effaced—what remains is the cloudless sky, studded with stars, luminous—that is faith!

You ask, Vairale: “Why was the corpus of Charvaka philosophy destroyed?”
What else could the pundit-priests have done! Their entire business rests on false theism. If Charvaka is right, false theism will be shattered to pieces; its roots will be cut. Who will go to temples then? Who will go to mosques? Who will commission these fire-sacrifices and rituals? Who will foolishly burn millions of rupees in sacrificial fires? Who will dig havan-kunds? Who will feed and fatten this long line of hollow pundits and priests? Who will bear the burden of these hundreds of thousands of idling so-called sannyasins, sadhus, munis? Only by destroying Charvaka’s corpus could this trade be saved.

We boast that this country is very liberal. Not as liberal as we claim. Even our liberalism is shallow and superficial; inside, there is great illiberality. In Greece they did not destroy the works of Epicurus—he is Greece’s Charvaka. His corpus was preserved; the Greeks honored him more. But this country has destroyed a great deal. And still we sit with puffed chests as if we are very liberal, very tolerant! “Allah-Ishwar tere naam, sabko sanmati de Bhagwan!”—we chant that, while keeping the knife sharpened. And given the slightest chance, we set Allah and Ishwar to fight! Whether in Aligarh or Hyderabad—wherever you like—Allah and Ishwar are ready to battle.

Perhaps nowhere on earth is there as much hypocrisy as in this country. The reason: nowhere else is there such a long tradition of pundits and priests.

What did Charvaka say? First, remember: Charvaka is not the name of a person; it is the name of an entire philosophical stream—of atheism. The word itself is beautiful, though the pundits distorted its meaning. Charvaka derives from charu-vak—those of sweet speech; it means “those who spoke sweetly.” And the Charvakas said something very sweet: This earth is everything; there is no other heaven. This life is all; there is no other life. Enjoy it! Make it a festival of delight! Dance, sing! Beyond this there is nothing. There is no God; this very life is all.

A very sweet thing to say. Charu-vak—those who offered a sweet, honeyed message. Another name for this philosophy is Lokayat. Lokayat means “that which the people liked; what made sense to countless people.”

The pundit-priests must have panicked: if people grasp that there is no afterlife… The priest lives by the premise of the other world. He exploits you on the basis of heaven and hell. He says, “Give me here, and God will give you there. Give one here and receive a hundred millionfold in heaven.” And to whom should you give here? To the brahmin! Give to the priest. Worship the brahmin here. Bow your head at his feet. He has a direct line to God; he’ll recommend you. He’ll send your name ahead: “Please take care of this one—VVIP. A very distinguished person—he sponsored sacrificial rites worth millions!”

And what foolishness the priests have made people commit! Ashvamedha sacrifices in which horses were killed. And today the same priests who raise a hue and cry to stop cow slaughter—Acharya Vinoba Bhave, who went on a fast unto death to stop it—someone should ask them: your own tradition says something else; there were Gomedha sacrifices too! Cows were killed in yajnas here. Not only that—there are even accounts of Narmedha yajnas, where humans were sacrificed.

What haven’t the pundits and priests made human beings do! All sins—done in the hope that one will reap virtue in the next world, that one will get heaven, heavenly nymphs, and sit beneath the wish-fulfilling tree in unending bliss.

So first, the pundit-priest exploited. If Charvaka’s message had spread, that exploitation would have ended. Second, they did something else: they gave protection to the worldly exploitation that goes on here. They said: “This is the fruit of your karma. You are not poor because the rich are bleeding you; you are poor because you sinned in your past life. And the rich are not rich because they exploit; they are rich because they accumulated merit in past lives.” Thus the pundit-priest became the protector of the rich and the devourer of the poor. He did not allow revolution in this country. This is the only country where in five thousand years there has been no revolution! Who could block revolution in such a poor, destitute land? What opium was fed to these wretches? Great webs of doctrine—past lives!

See the trick. The next life is for greed—to keep you tethered, with drool ever dripping. The past life is for resignation—to keep you content with your present condition. If you show even a little restlessness, your next birth will be spoiled. This one is already ruined; there’s no remedy now. If you remain quiet—no noise, no rebellion, no protest—the next one will be better. Bear this for the sake of the next. And you suffer not because anyone is making you suffer; you suffer the fruits of your own sins. The wealthy, the powerful, the kings—they enjoy the fruits of past merits.

This suited entrenched interests. Charvaka was prepared to smash both props—no past life, no next life. Dangerous indeed! If there is no past life, revolution will happen. How will you dope the poor then? How will you feed them opium? How will you console them? How will you explain their suffering? If there is no past life, the matter ends: if suffering is, it is here; if joy is, it is here. And if there is no next life, on what basis will the priest exploit?

So there was a collusion—a conspiracy—among priests, wealthy men, and kings. Together they destroyed the entire corpus of Charvaka philosophy.

It was one of India’s most unfortunate moments. Had Charvaka’s works survived, the science that arose in the West would have arisen here. There was no need for it to be born in the West. Long before the West we had the capacity to understand the materialist outlook. Charvaka opened the doors to nature. When the afterlife ends, the doors to nature open. We would have produced Einsteins and Darwins.

Instead we produced only trash. No Darwin, no Kepler, no Galileo, no Einstein—no truly significant figures. Had Charvaka’s shadow remained, under that shade these plants would have grown tall. We would have had an Einstein long ago, because the theory of relativity that Einstein proposed was given to this country by Mahavira two and a half thousand years earlier. But the groundwork, the context, the right frame were missing. That right context could have come from Charvaka—from a materialist perspective.

And let me also say: had Charvaka’s corpus remained and his ideas spread, this country would neither be meek nor destitute; it would be prosperous. It would still be the golden bird of the earth. We sit on such wealth, such natural abundance—and yet we beg in the world today. The greatest reason is our pundit-priests. The greatest reason is the destruction of Charvaka’s philosophical wealth.

And had this country become prosperous and wealthy, it would also have become religious. This is my proposition: a truly religious society is possible only after a base of prosperity has been created. A poor society cannot be religious; only a prosperous society can be. If Charvaka’s atheism had been allowed to spread, by now we would have become theistic.

This will sound upside down to you. My words seem upside down because people are bound to a single notion, and they’ve lost the capacity to think beyond it. In matters of thinking, a great impotence has set in. But this is not an upside-down statement! If we had embraced atheism in a genuine way, from that very atheism theism would have been born. Without theism, the inquiry does not come to rest. Atheism begins the journey; it cannot complete it. Begin with Charvaka; fulfillment is with Buddha. Whoever stops midway will suffer.

Don’t you see this so clearly today? In the West there is far more inquiry into religion than in the East. People come to me from at least thirty countries around the world—Indians seem less eager! They imagine they already know what religion is. Why has so intense a thirst for religion arisen in the West? Because the whole world has begun rising to heights of prosperity, and atheism has spread worldwide. The West is atheistic. But there is no fulfillment in atheism; there cannot be. Can anyone be nourished by a no? Can a no fill a stomach? Make blood? Quench thirst? Nothing can come from a negation. Life cannot be lived in the negative. Life is lived in the affirmative.

Theism means affirmation; atheism means negation. Theism means the capacity to say yes to existence. Atheism means fear, anxiety, no-saying, hesitation, refusal.

The West has become atheistic over the last three hundred years; the result is that it is turning toward theism. The most thoughtful minds in the West today are in deep search of the theistic. Einstein, at the time of his death, said: “The conclusion of my life’s work is this: the more I understood science, the more it seemed that life is an unfathomable mystery—and we shall never solve it.”

That very mystery is what I call God. The experience of life’s mysteriousness is God.

Eddington, too, wrote in his memoirs: “At first I thought the world was merely an aggregate of things. But the deeper I went into matter, the more I experienced that the world is not a heap of objects—it is a communion of consciousness.”

A communion of consciousness! That is another name for God. An ocean of consciousness! What better description could there be for the divine? The West became atheistic, material, prosperous—and the final result of all this is before you: the temple is built; only the golden finial of theism is yet to be mounted.

Had we preserved Charvaka’s philosophical wealth, the priests would have gone, the worship-peddlers would have gone, the brahmin’s power would have gone, the clout of politicians and plutocrats would have gone—but there would have been a sunrise. We would have been the first on earth to be prosperous, the first to be scientific, and the first to have the privilege of mounting the finial on God’s temple. We missed it. And we may still keep missing it, because the priestly grip on our throat is still very tight. Even now yajnas are being performed! Even now millions of rupees worth of ghee and grain are thrown into fires! Even now, in house after house, the Satyanarayan Katha is recited—in which there is neither satya nor Narayan. Even now people sit twirling rosaries—like corpses, mechanically.

You asked, Vairale: “What are your thoughts on Charvaka?”
Charvaka is like the foundation of a temple. The stones in the foundation must be strong. The foundation must be materialist. The foundation of any well-poised society should be materialist. Yes, the temple will rise in spires; the finial will be mounted—of gold; it will be adorned with pearls and studded with jewels. But you don’t pour jewels into the foundation. The capacity to lay foundations—that is Charvaka’s gift. Charvaka discovered all the principles of materialism that in the West were found later by Epicurus, Diderot, Marx, Engels, and others—discovered thousands of years later. Charvaka had already found the materialist keys.

Again let me remind you: Charvaka is not a person’s name; it is the name of a stream of many persons. The first who raised atheism in this country was Brihaspati. I count Brihaspati among India’s greatest rishis, because he attempted to lay the foundation. Foundations disappear into the earth; no one sees them. Yet without them no temple can stand.

I am attempting the same today. I have to do double work. That is why I will make everyone my enemy. I must use Charvaka for the foundation of the temple; therefore I will turn the religious against me, make them my enemies. Because they will say, “Charvaka! This man is an atheist, a denier of God, a materialist.” And I am angering the Charvakas too—the communists and socialists are angry with me. They say, “This man is teaching people meditation when people should be sharpening their swords. People should be hoisting red flags, and he is making them wear red clothes. We want the red flag!”

The Communist Party is against me; the Shankaracharya of Puri is against me—what a delightful irony! What relation is there between the Shankaracharya of Puri and the Communist Party? Yet these enemies stand together against me. Karpatri Maharaj is against me, Acharya Tulsi is against me, Acharya Shriram Sharma is against me, Kanjiswami is against me, all the jagadgurus are against me—and the Communist Party too. How astonishing!

The reason is clear: I am speaking of a synthesis they have not even imagined. I am building a bridge between materialism and religion. I want this country to be prosperous and peaceful. I want it to be wealthy and meditative. I want it to be master of matter and also to invite the divine. Why not hold both? Both worlds belong to him; why should they not be ours too? After all, we belong to him as well. Why settle for half?

Whenever we settle for half, trouble begins. The atheist says “only the body” and neglects the soul. The theist says “only the soul” and neglects the body. But you are both. If you neglect either, you will remain incomplete—crippled, limping; your life will never be whole. And where there is no wholeness, how can the Whole, the Absolute, find a place within? To call the Whole, you must be whole.

So I am saying something new, which should have been said centuries ago; since it was not, I am compelled to say it now. I am building a bridge between Charvaka and Buddha. My sannyasin will be a Charvakan and my sannyasin will be a Buddhist. My sannyasin will honor the body—precisely because within this body the soul resides. My sannyasin will give prestige to the world—because the world belongs to the divine, and the divine pervades every particle of the world.

Understanding and understanding—there are two kinds of understanding. One is of the intellect: of words, of thought, of logic. And one is of the heart. You feel joyous, you weep, tears of joy flow; that is the deeper understanding. What will you do with the intellect’s understanding?
And you say, “Why don’t you speak in a language I can understand?”
Could language be any simpler? I am speaking in everyday, colloquial speech. The difficulty is not of language. The difficulty lies in that great synthesis of mine which doesn’t fall into your grasp. The difficulty is not language. The language is perfectly plain and straightforward. What could be plainer! I don’t know Sanskrit; I don’t know Pali or Prakrit; even my Hindi is broken—just enough to get by. The difficulty isn’t language. The difficulty is with the vision of life I am offering, because you carry fixed notions.
You have never even heard that Charvaka and Buddha can stand together. And here I am both, together.
If I were to stand naked on the road, you would immediately understand my language—the very same language I speak would become perfectly clear to you. You would say, “This is renunciation!” You are familiar with the language of renunciation.
Or if I stopped talking about meditation, prayer, God, and began explaining pure indulgence to people, you would understand that too. You would say, “All right, this man is an atheist, a Charvaka—end of story.”
Your difficulty is that I don’t let you draw a conclusion; I don’t allow your dilemma to be settled. I don’t stand naked in the street, I don’t fast, I don’t stand in the blazing sun. This creates a big difficulty for you. This is what you expect from meditators. I do not fulfill your expectations of meditators. So how can you take me to be a meditator? How can you take me to be dispassionate, beyond attachment?

And I say: only a person of right vision truly knows what raga is and what rang is. What will the blind know of melody or color! Only one who has right vision knows: life is a festival!

But Jains carry a fixed notion of samyak-drishti (right vision). Those who go to listen to Kanji Swami would be Jains. They have a rigid idea of how a person of right vision should be: he should eat only once a day, and even that standing—not even the comfort of sitting. He should be naked. He should wander from village to village, go on foot, not even wear shoes. He should wilt and wither the body, suppress it—then, they say, it is right vision!

What they call right vision, I call self-torment, masochism. I call it a mental sickness. Why else would anyone harass themselves? Why starve to death? Hunger is natural. Neither overeat nor undereat. Undereating is unnatural; overeating is unnatural. I teach balance. And if you interpret samyak precisely, it means balance. Samyak means balanced. When the sun is blazing, to stand in the sun is not right vision—sit in the shade. And when you are shivering with cold, to sit in the shade is not right vision—sit in the sun.

One whose vision is right lives naturally, in accord with nature. I am living in accord with my own nature. Let Mahavira and Mahavira’s ways be his affair. If being naked was in accord with his nature—his joy. If walking barefoot was in accord with his nature—his joy. I have no objection. Individuals should at least have that much freedom. No person is a carbon copy of another. Nor do I want to be their carbon copy, nor do I want them to be mine. I am I; they are they.

So Kanji Swami’s disciples must be troubled: how can one speak of right vision and also of revelry and color? That cannot be—he should speak of renunciation. And I maintain: only fools talk of renunciation. Only a meditator knows the real raga. In real raga, dispassion is hidden.

What does real raga mean? Love, affection, compassion, nonviolence. What does real raga mean? Not taking life as a complaint, but as grace. Real raga means: being filled with gratitude to the Divine, “You have given so much—so much that I was not even worthy of!”

My language is simple and straight. My standpoint too, from my side, is simple and straight; but because of your fixed notions it seems difficult. Communists used to come to me. They would say, “What you say about prosperity is right; technology should grow, industry should grow; these spinning wheels and spindles and such foolishness should stop. You are absolutely right. We should be free of Gandhism. But why do you add meditation? There we begin to doubt.”

Even he doesn’t find my language difficult; his obstacle is that I do not fit his expectations.

I am not fitting anyone’s expectations—and I will not. I am not here to fulfill your expectations. I am nobody’s slave. I will live in my own way. If you wish to learn something from how I live, learn; if not, don’t. If you learn, it is your good fortune; if you don’t, your misfortune. It has nothing to do with me.

But this is not a question of language. And if I change the language, what difference does it make? Whatever I say, I will say the same—whether I speak in Pali, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Hindi, Urdu, English, or Marathi. I will still say: From sex to samadhi! I will say exactly that. It will make no difference.

A boy once said to his mathematics teacher, “Masterji, the English teacher teaches in English, the Hindi teacher in Hindi, and the Sanskrit teacher in Sanskrit. Then why, being a mathematics teacher, don’t you teach in the language of mathematics?”

The teacher said, “You 420! Don’t do any 3–5; quickly do 9–2–11 from here.”

There—you got the language of mathematics. But what difference does language make?

My language is utterly plain. The hitch lies elsewhere. Radhakrishna, this is not a problem of language. And it is beginning to make sense to you—otherwise tears would not flow. Tears are saying that even if the intellect can’t grasp, the heart is moved. Even if the intellect denies it, the voice has begun to reach the heart. And that is what matters. The intellect invents devices; even if it understands it will invent devices to not understand. The intellect is such a trickster there’s no counting it.

Mulla Nasruddin always talks of spiritual topics, explains esoteric facts—the awakening of kundalini, the seven chakras, and so on and so forth; and the mysteries of life and death, ghosts and spirits, heaven and hell… His beloved was very upset with him: there was never a chance to talk of love—everything got swallowed by esoteric discourse, the whole night would go that way. One day they were sitting by the riverbank: lovely weather, the sun had set, the full moon was rising! Would Mulla miss such a moment? He launched into a spiritual discussion. The beloved was thoroughly bored. And even on a full-moon night—again spirituality!

At last she said, “Nasruddin, stop this nonsense today!” But Nasruddin didn’t listen; he went on absorbed in his philosophical talk, went on lecturing. The beloved tried many times, and every time failed. Finally it came to the verge of a quarrel. When she kept interrupting, Nasruddin, irritated, said, “What I am saying—do you call it nonsense? Do you take me for the number-one donkey?”

“Not a donkey,” she said, “but for God’s sake stop this braying.”

The intellect is very cunning. You close one door—it will open another. It won’t make any difference.

Understanding—real understanding—is of the heart, not of the head. Real understanding belongs to love. And it is happening. Radhakrishna, don’t worry about language, nor about your intellect. Tears are coming—don’t stop them. Let them flow, let them rain. They will lighten you. They will cleanse you. They will polish your mirror. And slowly, not only will you begin to see what I am saying—you will begin to see what I am. And that is what is valuable. Drop worrying about what I am saying. Take care to see what I am. And that can only be approached through the heart.

But your mind must be stuffed with many notions, scriptures, learned things. You must be trying to fit me into them. The fit doesn’t happen, and you get a little awkward.

Everyone who comes to me initially enters just such a state of bewilderment. They come holding a certain worldview, and here I am saying something altogether different, making them experiment with something altogether different. Everything gets disarranged.

A pickpocket asked his fellow professional, “Why do you always read fashion magazines?” The other replied instantly, “If I don’t read them, how will I know where people are getting their pockets sewn each season?”

So each has his own world. Those pundits and priests you have been listening to—they have their own world. This is not a pundit’s discourse. This is not a priest’s temple. This is a madhushala—a tavern—of the mad ones, the intoxicated ones. Here the life-energy of Charvaka and of Buddha are meeting. Here Charvakas are becoming enlightened; here Buddhas are becoming Charvakas. Such a unique experiment has never happened on earth; therefore no ready-made language exists for it.

What I have to say I must say, and for that the language has to be created slowly. By saying it again and again I am forging the language for it. If you become willing to drop your old notions, it won’t take long to understand. But people don’t drop notions.

I asked Mulla Nasruddin, “I heard you beat your child Pintu badly yesterday. What mistake could the poor thing have made?”

Mulla said, “The thing is, Pintu’s results are coming in four days, and I’m leaving for Bombay today for a month.”

He has already decided in advance that Pintu will fail—so better do the beating now!

There is another famous incident about Mulla Nasruddin. He used to teach in a small village madrasa. One hot day he said to a boy, “Take this pot and bring water from the well.” As soon as the boy lifted the pot, Mulla called him close, twisted his ear, and slapped him twice. The boy, with tears dripping, left with the pot. A man who saw it all said, “This is too much! The boy did nothing wrong, made no mistake, and you slapped him twice, twisted his ear, and still sent him to fetch water with a pot!”

Mulla said, “I understand my children better than you. Don’t interfere! If he breaks the pot and I beat him afterward, what’s the use? I’ve fixed him in advance. Now he’ll go alert, and even if he does break the pot, at least I warned him. And what’s the use of beating afterward? By then it’s all wasted.”

Some people have decided everything in advance. Not some—most. When you come here you don’t come empty; who knows how many whirlwinds of ideas are raging in your head! In the midst of those whirlwinds you listen to me. If what I say happens to fit your ideas, fine. But it cannot fit. And if one thing fits, another will go against. You get pulled apart.

This is not a language problem. Radhakrishna, empty your consciousness. Free it from trash. Here we are planting a garden; flowers of the heart are to bloom here. We are not here to produce great pundits, great scholars, and Veda-experts. We have had enough of Veda-knowers; the country has suffered plenty from them.

A gentleman used to write me letters. His surname was Trivedi. By mistake, in replying, I addressed him as Dwivedi. He got angry. Change Trivedi to Dwivedi—naturally, it jolted him. He wrote me, “I am Trivedi; you wrote me Dwivedi.” So I wrote him Chaturvedi. He replied, “You are impossible! Will you ever write it correctly?” I said, “I wrote Chaturvedi as repentance for the old mistake, to make up for it. Combine the two and you are now Trivedi.”

The knower-of-the-Vedas type is everywhere. It is because of such Veda-knowers that this country has died, is dying, is rotting. I am teaching you something else here. I am teaching your inner Veda. I am trying to awaken your inner being. I don’t want to teach you to read the Vedas; I want your Veda to be born. I want to make you a rishi, not a pundit. Let your own proclamation arise! And of course that is difficult. It is as difficult as a sculptor taking chisel and hammer to stone for years until a statue emerges. Only those who consent to be shattered, who can endure the chisel and hammer, can stay with me.

Radhakrishna, your heart is consenting. Your tears report it. Don’t run away by listening to your intellect. The intellect is very cowardly—remember. The heart is brave, even audacious. The intellect is a shudra; the heart is a brahmin. Listen to the inner! I call the heart a brahmin because Brahman dwells there.

Kabir has said: Only he can walk with us who has cut off his head.

Is Kabir saying you should literally cut off your head? Cutting off the head means: put the intellect aside—then you can walk with us.

Kabir has said: He who burns his house will walk with us.

Is he saying set fire to your home and roast your wife and children? No. He is saying: the house of your security you have built so far—of doctrines, of scriptures—burn it down. Come with us! We will bring you news of a new house, open the door to a new home!

And in a new house there will be a few difficulties—memories of the old house. You will try to exit from the old door; in the new house there will be a wall there. So sometimes there will be obstacles, sometimes mistakes.

I have heard: A woman asked her psychologist—she was in therapy with him—“What should I do? My husband and I just don’t get along. I try a thousand ways to make it work; things keep breaking, keep getting worse; just when it seems it may work, it collapses. Every day quarrels, every day it comes to blows. And it’s not that it’s all my fault. I cannot stay quiet; I say things too—nonsense comes out—and then it all breaks.”

The psychologist said, “For one day, just as an experiment, change your entire behavior. When your husband comes to the door, don’t ask, as you always do, ‘Where have you been?’ Instead, embrace him at once. Put a garland of flowers on him. Take off his shoes, wash his feet, lay him on the bed, change his clothes, bring his dinner to the bed, feed him with your hands, massage his hands and feet.”

She said, “It will be very difficult. But if it’s only for one day, all right—I’ll do it. I’ll do it as a spiritual practice. It will be very difficult. To wash the feet of that wretch, to garland him—the one who has never beaten me with anything but his shoes! To massage his feet, to feed him in bed with my hands! I feel like feeding him poison! But since you say so, I’ll do it today—perhaps something will happen.”

She did exactly that. She bathed and dressed beautifully, put on a sari; at home women often keep the form of a fierce goddess, and only when they go out do they comb their hair, dab on kajal, put on jewelry, and go to impress others! The husband knows their real form—if you want to see them as they are, see them at home, where they appear as Mahachandi. That day she abandoned the Mahachandi form, dressed up, wore her best clothes, used intimate perfume! She made a garland of roses, hung festoons on the doorway!

The husband arrived. He had been drinking—he could not come home without drink, because without drink it was impossible to tolerate this wife. Drinking was the only way to get by. He saw the festoon—understood nothing—grew suspicious. When the wife opened the door, he was more astonished—intimate fragrance! And when she placed the rose garland around his neck he said, “Hey, have I died? Is this heaven? What is happening!” He stared wide-eyed to see if she was some celestial nymph. The bed was made. He said, “This is the limit! Liquor has shown many miracles, but such a miracle! Till now the shopkeeper sold me rotgut; today he gave me the real thing.” The wife began to wash his feet. He had never chanted Ram’s name; he said, “Hey Ram!” He’d never thought such good fortune would come to him. She laid him down and began to feed him. He said, “Unbelievable!” Startled again and again, he kept watching. After feeding him, she began to massage his head.

She asked, “How does it feel?” He said, “Very good. Let it go on as long as it can—then I’ll have to go home and suffer hell.”

He could not even believe this was home. “When I get home I’ll suffer hell! The fierce goddess must be waiting. And today I’m even later than usual. Whatever happens at home, for now, let me take whatever bliss I can.”

When you enter a new dimension of life, the old habits, old conditioning, old notions do not drop at once; they keep dragging behind, stuck to you, have become part of your flesh and marrow. Because of them, you find it difficult to understand me.

This is not a language issue. The language cannot be simpler than this. I am speaking plain colloquial speech. I am no orator; I am just speaking like people speak. I am laying before you directly what is in my heart. But what I am saying comes from the heart; if you too receive it with the heart, you will understand. It is an affair between heart and heart; if the intellect puts its foot in, understanding is impossible.

But your tears are a very auspicious sign, a blessing. Let those tears flow. Support them, cooperate with them. This journey won’t happen by thought; it will happen by tears—of love, of joy, of grace.

Do not worry so much about what lies ahead. Concern for the future is the mind’s expansion. Thinking of the future is a disturbance in the present. Think neither of what is behind nor what is ahead. Right now, in this very moment, dissolve into what is happening.

You say: “When I listen to you, a yearning for the Divine arises.”
Become the yearning! A blazing ardor! Become a moth determined to burn in the flame of God.

Think of the now; do not ask about the future. These are the mind’s tricks. The mind says, “Think about what is ahead—what will happen?” And in thinking of the future, you will miss. For what is, is now; what is, is the present. The Divine is now, not tomorrow. He was not yesterday, nor will he be tomorrow. God is always today. He has only one time—today, now. He has only one way of being.

In the realm of the Divine there is no “kal.” It is our narrow vision that has put a today between two kals—yesterday and tomorrow. Both kals are false! And how can a true today exist between two falsities? Between the two kals, our today too becomes false. Between the two millstones of the two kals, our present is being crushed; the tiny moment of now is dying. And that very moment is everything—the treasure of treasures, the heaven of heavens!

Do not ask about the future, Narayan. Whatever will happen, will happen. If there is so much bliss now, more bliss will unfold from it. If so much yearning is here now, there will be even more yearning. If so many tears are flowing now, the downpour ahead will be heavier. The coming moment is born of this very moment! Tomorrow is the offspring of today! Tomorrow is but the continuation of today.

But the mind says, first think of the future. Often it leaps far ahead. You have heard the tales of Sheikh Chilli, haven’t you? They are symbols of the mind. A Sheikh Chilli was going to the market to sell milk, a pot balanced on his head. Along the way, thoughts began to arise—as they arise in you, in everyone. As long as the mind exists, Sheikh Chilli exists. The mind’s other name is Sheikh Chilli.

He began to think: “Today I’ll sell the milk and get four annas. I’ll spend two annas and, just for today, I’ll fast—call it an Ekadashi—so I’ll save two annas. In two, four, six days I’ll save enough to buy a hen. Once I have a hen—eggs and more eggs! More eggs, more sales—won’t be long before I buy a cow. And then how long before a buffalo! Then I’ll have my own fields, farming, wealth and grain.” Then it occurred to him: “With farming and wealth, I’ll need big arrangements. These days there’s a lot of theft—people break into fields and cut the crops.” So he said, “We’ll see! Who can cut my crops! I’ll stand in the middle of the field with a club and shout—Alert! Beware!”

As he shouted “Beware!” with his hand raised, the pot slipped! The pot fell; and with the pot, the whole world fell—everything shattered to pieces!

The mind is Sheikh Chilli. It slips quickly into the future. It says, “Think about tomorrow; settle tomorrow.”

When tomorrow comes, we will be there—then we will face it tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, we will encounter it with awareness. Narayan, do not ask now. “When I listen to you, an intense yearning for the Divine arises.” Let it arise! Become the yearning. “I feel the pain of separation.” Become the separation! “I cry, I cry a lot.” Become the crying! “What will happen next?” Next, only the auspicious will happen. But do not think of the future.

Night has fallen; the Beloved has not come—let the clouds rail and scold.
Eyes languid as gold,
in remembrance the sweet wings are drenched;
blossoms fall from the mind’s cupped hands,
the branches of melody have withered;
ash settles, the tune congeals on the path—let worry spread its net.
My honeyed mate keeps a co-wife at home,
and has only ever given me the noose.
His laughter drops lightning,
laying waste to a lifetime.
I, faithful, keep counting my beads, stricken with sorrow.
Night has fallen; the Beloved has not come—let the clouds rail and scold.

For now, call to the Beloved! For now, let the separation blaze. If separation is arising, prayer is not far away.

Narayana, that does not apply to you. Within you, viraha—longing born of separation—is arising. Viraha means that somewhere nearby the presence of the Divine has begun to be felt. When He is, then the desire to attain Him is born. It is not yet clear; it is hazy. It is still dawn; the sun has not risen; a twilight has spread. But in that haze, some glimpses have begun to appear. The east has begun to blush.

The question Anand Maitreya has asked is not your question. You do not need meditation. You should descend into longing. You should weep—weep your heart out. Very soon you will find that within you the touch of the Divine begins to descend; prayer begins to arise, to awaken. Do not be frightened of viraha, because viraha will bring pain. That pain is the price that must be paid to receive prayer. Do not be afraid of crying. When you cry it will feel: “Am I going mad?” Others too will say, “Are you going mad?” But there is a kind of madness that is wiser than wisdom. There is a madness on the path of God, on the road to the Divine, before which all cleverness pales.

It is far better to be mad like Ramakrishna than to be “wise” like the so‑called intellectuals. Better to be mad like Chaitanya than to be “wise” like the so‑called wise. There is a dignity even to such madness. When madness is joined with the Divine, it becomes nectar. And when you join even great cleverness to the world, to the petty, it is worth two pennies; it has no value.

Krishnadatt, don’t be in a hurry. If your wife stops you, she has her reasons. She has only heard of and known the old kind of sannyas—and the old sannyas was very violent, murderous. The old sannyas was death-oriented, stone-like. The old sannyas made many wives into widows. The old sannyas made many children into orphans. The old sannyas ruined many homes. The name of sannyas has long been stained by that history.

So if your wife is afraid, it is no surprise; if she trembles, it is no surprise. She simply doesn’t know my sannyas. The old sannyas was escapist, a flight. I am initiating a wholly new sannyas. It is not escapist, not a flight.

My sannyas trusts in love. My sannyas is not opposed to being a householder. My sannyas blossoms right within the household. My sannyas is like a lotus in the mud. Where is there to run? Where is there to go? And running is always easy. Cowards can do it, fools can do it. To run away you need neither intelligence nor courage.

Chandulal was standing on the roof telling his friend, pointing down to the road, “Do you see who that gentleman is? That is Dhabbuji! Yesterday his wife left home, ran away—no one knows where she is. And today he too has left home and run away.”

The friend asked, “Why? When the wife has already gone, what need is there now for him to run away?”

Chandulal said, “Out of fear that she might come back!”

Who wouldn’t want to flee from responsibilities! A wife is a responsibility, children are responsibilities. There are worries, a thousand hassles, problems. Who wouldn’t want to run! Light a sacred fire, land in some blanket-clad baba’s ashram. You get a blanket, even a meal a day. And if you can manage a little spiritual talk—who can’t! The paan-seller talks metaphysics, the rickshaw-walla knows the Absolute. In this country it’s hard to find a person who doesn’t know Brahman-knowledge! If you can stir a bit of metaphysical chatter, then what to say—two or four disciples will gather, they’ll pack your chillum, massage your feet, tend the fire—nothing but fun. All hassles gone!

This is what has been called sannyas up to now. The days of that sannyas are over. Such sannyas has no future. I cannot call your wife wrong; centuries of experience have shaken women’s hearts to the core.

So I say to you, Krishnadatt, bring her here. Don’t rush. There is no such hurry to take sannyas right now. Bring her here. Let her listen to me, let her understand. She herself will become a sannyasin—why are you so worried! First we’ll make her a sannyasin, then we’ll make you one. And that is the better way.

When we marry, the husband leads; while taking the wedding rounds, the wife walks behind. This case is the reverse—this is sannyas. Here we send the wife ahead and the husband follows. Then the wedding rounds are undone. If you want to undo them, you have to walk in reverse.

You wait a bit. Bring your wife here. If you can do just that, it’s enough. If you hurry, you’ll harm yourself, you’ll harm your wife, you’ll harm your family. And the sannyas you take will not be my sannyas.

You say, “My wife stops me from taking sannyas. I don’t want to hurt her.”

That is a good thing. One should not hurt anyone—certainly not your wife. By making her your wife you have already given her enough suffering; what more suffering do you want to add! By making her your wife you have already put her into a prison—why torment her further! You took away her freedom, clipped her wings, made her economically crippled. And every year you must have given her another child. So youth never really arrived—old age came early. Now, having thrown her into the crush and clamor of children, you set out to take sannyas!

No, not like that! Bring her. We will win her consent. Sannyas should not happen through displeasure but through consent; then it has fragrance, it has beauty.

Now, on my solemn oath to you:
Look, don’t take the helm!
This is a storm; these are waves—
an ill-starred hour; clouds mass in the sky.
A surge has risen—let me see
how life-filled this heart truly is;
leave me to the wheel of darkness;
you, tend the home and hearth.
If by feints and grapples with fate
I escape and win, laughing,
then the history of man will be made;
I shall write a new Gita of life.
It is a summons from Mahakaal—
adorn the platter with fresh, unbroken rice!
I do not want the shadow of night
to touch you while I am here.
From you, too, I have received—
grace; my life found auspiciousness in your love.
I shall return—do not be afraid;
I go now—rise, hold me to your heart.

Until now the sannyasin has spoken like this to his wife: “Welcome me. Even as I go, welcome me. Even as I go, lay flowers at my feet.” And wives have wept in their hearts and offered flowers outwardly. Wives have sobbed and broken within, shattered to pieces, yet still honored the husband—because the husband is becoming a sannyasin, a renouncer, a muni.

No, I will not tell you that. There is nowhere to go. Right where you are, sannyas can happen. Right where you are, God can descend. For God is everywhere. There is none other than him. There is no place where he is not.

So where are you going to search? He dwells in your wife as well. If your wife is stopping you, it is he who is stopping you.

I have only this request, Krishnadatt: bring your wife here. And if you take sannyas now, then your wife may never be able to come here. Your sannyas will become a wall between me and her. Wait a little. Do not become a wall between your wife and me.

And let me tell you plainly: women understand my language sooner than men. Not only today—always. Among Mahavira’s sannyasins there were thirty thousand nuns and ten thousand monks. Buddha’s ratio was the same—three women to one man. And the same is the ratio among my sannyasins. This proportion is perennial. There is a reason: woman understands the language of the heart. And in one sense she is fortunate, because the pundits have not spoiled her head—no Dvivedis, no Trivedis, no Chaturvedis. A woman’s mind is cleaner, and her heart is more open. She grasps the essence. She doesn’t go leaf by leaf and twig by twig; she catches the root. Her understanding is not intellectual; it is of the heart, of the soul.

That’s all for today.