Hearing of this tragedy his son Charles
came looking for him
and he found him standing by the side
enjoying the sight of the leaping flames.
On seeing Charles, Edison said to him: Where is your mother?
Go and find her and bring her here quickly;
such a sight she will never see again!
The next day, walking amidst the ashes
of his hopes and dreams,
the 67 year-old inventor said:
What benefit there is in destruction!
All our mistakes have been burnt to ashes, thank God!
Now we can begin afresh, all over again!
God’s grace is endless.
We just need the eyes to see it.
135. Love.
Wittgenstein has said somewhere:
Of that which one cannot speak,
one should remain silent.
Oh, if only this advice was heeded
there would be no useless arguments about truth!
That-which-is cannot be spoken of.
Whatever is said in words is not,
cannot be,
that-which-is.
Truth is beyond words,
only silence is related to truth.
But silence is very difficult;
the mind wants to speak even of that
which is beyond words.
Really, the mind is the only barrier to silence.
Silence belongs to the state of no-mind.
A preacher came to address some small children.
Before beginning he put a question to them:
If you were asked to address a gathering
of such intelligent boys and girls
who expect a good lecture from you,
and if you had nothing to speak on,
what would you say?
A small child replied: I would keep quiet.
I would keep quiet.
This child-like simplicity is needed to experiment with silence.
136. Love.
Sannyas is a pilgrimage to Mt. Everest –
naturally there are difficulties on the way.
But the fruits of determination are sweet too,
so bear everything calmly and joyously
but don’t give up your commitment.
Serve your mother even more than before –
sannyas is not a running away from responsibility.
Your family is not to be given up,
rather you have to make the whole world your family.
Encourage your mother to take sannyas too.
Tell her: You have seen enough of the world,
now raise your eyes towards God.
But make sure she is caused no trouble on your account.
This doesn’t mean giving in or compromising –
sannyas knows no compromise.
Strong, bold and resolute is the soul of sannyas.
137. Love.
Love does not discriminate
even in dreams,
and in that love which is prayer too,
there are no distinctions at all.
Now I am no more.
The word I is simply a convenience
and as such causes many difficulties.
When the clouds of the I disappear
nothing remains but love –
love without cause,
unconditional love.
Here I stand in the marketplace:
who is ready to come and take it from me?
Kabir stands in the marketplace, torch in hand.
If you are ready to burn your house down, come with me.
138. Love.
Ah, if the veena were outside you could hear its music,
but it is inside
and we do not hear it.
But we can become one with it.
And how much is music worth that ends with listening?
Ultimately the musician, the veena, the music,
the listener
are not separate.
Look inside,
go within,
and see who is waiting there for you.
139. Love.
The springs of meditation are close at hand
but the layers of suppressed sex work like rocks.
The repression of sex has choked your life with anger,
its smoke pervades your whole personality.
When you were meditating in front of me the other day
I saw all this very clearly,
but I could also see that your will is very strong too,
your thirst for God is also strong
and you are working hard,
so there is no need to be disheartened.
Difficulties are there,
blocks are there,
but they will disintegrate
because the breaker is not yet broken.
Meditate totally and soon the springs will be reached.
But you have to put your whole being at stake –
nothing less will do.
Hold back a bit and you will miss.
Time is short so gather all your strength;
whilst the opportunity is here
your effort must be total.
It is difficult to say whether you will have such an opportunity
in another life, so everything must be finished in this one.
If the gates don’t open this time
you will have to start from the very beginning next time –
and then it is far from sure that I will be with you.
In your last life you worked for it
but the work was not completed;
and it was the same in the life before that.
For three lives you have repeated the same cycle
again and again –
it is time now to break it.
It is already late,
any further delay would be foolish.
My regards to all.
140. Love.
The meaning of sadhana
is to enter into one’s own nature,
to live in it,
to be it.
One must therefore know what is not one’s nature
so as to be aware what one wants to be free of.
Recognizing it becomes freedom from it.
A disciple of Bankei asked him:
I become overwhelmed by anger.
I want to be rid of it but I cannot be.
What shall I do?
Bankei did not say a word,
just stared deep into the eyes of the disciple,
who began to sweat
in those few heavy minutes of silence.
He wanted to break the silence
but couldn’t gather the courage.
Then Bankei laughed and said: It’s strange!
I searched and searched but could find
no anger within you.
Still, show me a little of it, here and now.
The disciple said: It is not always here.
It comes all of a sudden, how can I produce it now?
Bankei laughed again and said:
Then it is not your true nature.
That remains with you always,
and if your anger had been part of it
you could have shown it to me.
When you were born it was not with you,
when you die it will not be with you.
No, this anger is not you.
There is a mistake somewhere.
Go away and think again,
search again, meditate again.
141. Love.
God purifies in every way.
It is not only gold that has to pass through fire
to be purified
but man too.
For man this fire is the anguish of love.
It is a blessing when this fire enters a person’s life;
it is the fruit of infinite prayers, infinite births.
It is the intensity of thirst that turns finally into love,
but unfortunately few are able to welcome it
because few can recognize love in the form of anguish.
Love is not a throne, it is a cross;
but those who gladly offer
themselves to it attain the very highest throne.
The cross can be seen, the throne cannot –
it is always hidden behind the cross.
And even Jesus hesitated for a moment;
even his heart cried out: Father, why hast thou forsaken me?
But the next moment he remembered and said:
Thy will be done.
That was enough:
the cross became a throne
and death a new life.
In the moment of revolution
between one statement and the next
Christ descended into Jesus.
Your suffering is intense and a new birth is at hand;
be happy, be grateful.
Don’t be afraid of death,
be thankful.
It is the tidings of a new birth.
And the old must die to give birth to the new;
the seed must break to blossom into the flower.
142. Love.
What is suppressed becomes attractive,
what is negated, beckons!
Only alertness to the mind’s games brings freedom.
Negation does not really negate,
on the contrary, it beckons.
The mind plays around the forbidden
like the tongue around the gap of an extracted tooth.
A small shopkeeper in London once caused a sensation.
He hung in his show window
a black curtain with a small hole at the center;
under the hole was written in large letters:
Peeping strictly forbidden.
Naturally, it brought the traffic to a standstill!
Crowds gathered around the shop
jostling one another for a peep through the curtain.
There they saw nothing but a few towels –
it was just a small towel shop
and the shopkeeper had devised this sure-fire method
of increasing his sales.
It worked like magic.
Man’s mind works the same way
and he becomes trapped by it.
Therefore – always be wary of negation,
opposition, suppression.
143. Love and blessings.
Live the truth,
for there is no other way to find it.
Become the truth,
for there is no other way to know it.
You cannot know truth through words,
not through the scriptures,
nor through learning, study, contemplation.
Truth is within, in the emptiness within.
In the state of no-mind,
in the mind free of desires where only awareness is,
there truth manifests itself.
Truth simply is;
it has not to be found,
simply uncovered.
The lid of gold covering it is the ego.
Ego is darkness;
die, and become light!
Where the darkness of the ego is no more
there, in that emptiness, truth is;
and that is truth,
and that is bliss,
and that is immortality.
Do not seek it,
just die and it is there.
144. Love.
I am glad to receive your letter.
Yes, this much suffering has to be gone through –
it is the birth pangs of our own rebirth.
And going back is not possible
for where is the past to which to return?
Time demolishes the steps we climb to reach the present.
There is no going back –
only going forward is possible,
forward and forward –
and the journey is endless!
There is no goal, no destination,
only resting places,
where the tents are dismantled as soon as they are pitched.
But why this fear of anarchy?
All systems are false –
life is anarchic, insecure.
He who seeks security dies before his death.
Why this hurry to die?
Death itself will take care of that for us
so is it not right that we learn to live?
And the miracle is
that death does not call
on the one who learns how to live –
and this alone is needed.
Doesn’t the gardener silently wait after sowing the seed?
Whenever you need me you will find me beside you.
Regards to all there.
145. Love.
Atheism is the first step towards theism,
and a must.
If you haven’t been through the fire of atheism
you’ll never know the light of theism.
If you haven’t the true strength to say No
your Yes will always be impotent.
So I am glad you are an atheist –
something that can be said only by a theist.
So I say: Go deeper into atheism.
Superficiality won’t do,
so don’t just think atheism, live it –
and it will ultimately lead you to God.
Atheism isn’t it,
it is just a doubting.
Doubt is good but it isn’t it.
Actually, doubt is a search for trust.
So go on, make your journey,
for the path to truth starts with this doubt.
Doubt is sadhana
because doubt eventually exposes the incontestable truth.
Inside the seed of doubt is the tree of trust,
so if you plant the seed of questioning
and work on it
you are bound to harvest trust.
And beware all religions!
Only religions obstruct the true path of religion.
146. Love.
Dreams too are true
because what we call truth is only a dream –
it is just the difference between open and closed eyes.
Understand this fully
and then one can go beyond both,
and the way lies beyond both.
Both are the seen and beyond both is the seer.
147. Love.
Not only is a seed a seed,
man is also a seed.
Not only seeds bloom,
man also blooms.
Not only seeds blossom into flowers.
148. Love.
How can the search begin unless there is doubt?
How will the heart awaken to know the truth
unless there is doubt?
Remember – belief and faith bind man,
doubt liberates him.
149. Love.
I was glad to receive your letter.
Make love your prayer now.
Love alone is worship, is God.
Let there be love with every breath –
this is your only sadhana.
Sitting, rising, sleeping, waking
just remember: love.
Then you will see that his temple is not far off.
150. Love.
God is testing you every moment.
Laugh and take the test –
it is beautiful that he considers you worth testing!
But don’t be in a hurry
for the more you hurry the more some goals recede,
and without doubt the temple of God is a goal like that.
He who travels with patience travels fastest on this journey.
The mind will roam again and again –
that is its way;
the day its roaming stops it will be dead.
Sometimes it sleeps –
do not mistake this for death.
Sometimes it gets tired –
don’t mistake this for death either.
Some rest and sleep and it is strong and alive again.
So stop bothering about it altogether
for even this worry gives it strength.
Surrender even this to God.
Say to him: Whatever it’s like, good or bad,
take care of it.
And then just be a witness,
simply watch the whole play.
Watch the play of the mind with detachment
and then suddenly –
there is the consciousness which is no-mind.
151. Love.
God is far off because we don’t know
how to see him close by.
Actually there is nothing closer than him.
More than that – he is the here and now.
The name God is just for those
who can’t find the here and now.
Words, names, doctrines, scriptures, religion, philosophy,
all these are created for those who can see him
only at a distance.
Hence they have no connection with God
but only with those who are blind to the near.
That’s why I say: Drop the distant.
Drop paradises in the sky.
Drop hopes in the future,
and see the near in time and in space.
Be here and now and see!
See the instant in time,
see the atom in space.
In the time moment time ceases to exist.
In the space atom space ceases to exist.
There is no space, no time, here and now.
What is left is truth,
is God,
is that.
You too are that.
Tat tvam asi – that art thou.
152. Love.
Religion too has to take new birth in every age.
Bodies – all kinds of bodies – grow old and die.
Sects are the dead bodies of religion,
their souls have left them long ago.
Their languages have become out of date.
This is why they no longer touch
the human heart any more. Nor is their echo heard any more
in the human soul.
Once Dr. John A. Hutton, while speaking in a gathering of priests asked,
“Why have the preachings of religious leaders turned
so lifeless and dull?”
When nobody stood up to answer, he himself answered it by saying:
“They are all dull because preachers are trying to answer questions
that nobody is asking.”
Religiousness is eternal.
But its body should always be contemporary.
Neither is the body eternal, nor can it be – not even the body of religion.
153. Love.
Drop the fear,
because the moment you hold on to it, it multiplies.
To hold on to it is to nourish it.
But dropping fear does not mean fighting with it.
To fight is also to hold on to it.
Just know that fear is.
Do not run away from it,
do not escape.
In life there is fear,
there is insecurity,
there is death –
just know this.
All these are facts of life.
Where would you run from them?
How would you avoid them?
Life itself is such.
And its acceptance, its natural acceptance, is the freedom from fear.
Once fear is accepted, where is it?
Once death is accepted, where is it?
Once insecurity is accepted, where is it?
Acceptance of the wholeness of life is what I call
sannyas, initiation on the path.
154. Love.
Attainment of meditation is not a question of time,
it is a question of will.
If the will is total, meditation happens in a moment too.
And a mind without will can go on wandering
for lives upon lives.
Intensify the will.
Crystallize the will.
Make the will total.
And then, meditation will knock
upon your door on its own.
And the mind certainly tortures one as long as meditation is absent.
Mind is the name for the absence of meditation,
just as darkness is the name for the absence of light.
As the light arrives, darkness leaves.
As meditation arrives, the mind leaves.
Hence, now drown into meditation.
All else follows on its own.
155. Love.
The world is neither unhappiness nor happiness.
The world becomes the same as we see it.
Our vision is the world.
Each person is the creator of his own world.
If every moment of life gives you unhappiness,
then the mistake is somewhere in your own vision.
And if all that you see around you is darkness,
then certainly you are keeping closed the eyes that see light.
Give a fresh thought to yourself.
Look at yourself from a new angle.
If you put the blame on others, you will never be able to see
your own mistake.
If you put the blame on circumstances, you will not be able
to penetrate the roots of your own mental state.
Hence, whatever the situation, proceed to discover
its causes in yourself.
Causes are always in one’s own self.
But they always appear to be in others.
Avoid this mistake and it will be difficult
to preserve your unhappiness.
Others function only as mirrors.
The face seen is always our own.
Life can become a celebration.
But it is necessary to create oneself anew.
And that is not a difficult thing.
Because in the very seeing of the fault in one’s own vision the mistakes
start dying and the birth of a new person begins.
156. Love.
Do not fight with yourself.
Such a fight is futile.
Because victory never, ever comes through it.
To fight with oneself
is nothing other than a gradual suicide.
Accept yourself.
Happily. In gratitude.
What is, is good.
Sex too, anger too.
Because whatsoever is, is from the divine.
Accept it and understand it.
Search and uncover the hidden potential in it.
Then, even sex feels to be a seed towards the divine.
And anger becomes the door to forgiveness.
Evil is not an enemy of goodness.
Rather, evil is only imprisoned goodness.
157. Love.
Strive for meditation.
Then all problems of the mind will disappear.
In fact, mind is the problem.
All the rest of the problems are only echoes of the mind.
Nothing will come of fighting
each and every problem separately.
Fighting with echoes is futile,
there is no outcome of it other than defeat.
Do not prune the branches, because four other branches
will replace that one pruned branch.
By pruning branches, the tree only grows more.
And, the problems are the branches.
If you want to cut at all, cut the roots,
because by cutting the roots the branches disappear on their own.
And mind is the root.
Cut this root with meditation.
Mind is the problem.
Meditation is the solution.
Mind knows no solution.
Meditation knows no problem.
Because, there is no meditation in the mind.
Because, there is no mind in meditation.
Absence of meditation is mind.
Disappearance of mind is meditation.
This is why I say: strive for meditation.
158. Love.
Don’t be in haste.
Maintain patience.
Patience is a fertilizer for meditation.
Go on tending meditation,
the fruit is bound to come,
it always comes.
But, do not be anxious about the fruit.
Because such an anxiety itself becomes an obstacle for the fruit.
Because such a worry distracts the attention from meditation.
Meditation requires total attention.
To be divided won’t do.
Partiality won’t do.
Meditation is not possible without your totality.
Hence, stay with the act of meditation and leave the fruit of meditation
in the hands of the divine.
And the fruit comes.
Because drowning totally in meditation is the birth of the fruit.
159. Love.
Life is not divided, either in time or in space.
If life is anything, it is undividedness – it is an undivided flow.
Past, present, future – these are human lines drawn on the undivided
flow of time.
Indeed, they are nowhere except in the minds of men.
Mind is time.
Similarly, space is also undivided.
The body is not one’s limit – in fact, the limit or non-limit of the whole
is one’s limit.
But, the mind does not rest without dividing.
It is like a prism; to divide is its function.
Passing through it the ray of existence becomes divided into many rays
and many colors.
What is one at the root becomes many at the branches.
The root is eternal – beginningless, endless.
Branches are in time – they have their beginning, they have their end.
Branches are change.
The root is ever-lasting.
Neither the root changes nor can it be changed.
Yes – one can desire it to be changed, and then such a desire
inevitably takes one into failure and anguish.
Branches go on changing.
They cannot be stopped from changing.
But certainly it can be desired that they don’t change, and then
such a desire inevitably transforms itself into failure and anguish.
The West is in the first kind of failure and anguish.
The East is in the second kind of failure and anguish.
And so far man has not been able to give birth to such a culture
which not only succeeds but becomes fulfilled too.
The two realities I have talked about above – the reality of the root
and the reality of the branches; the law of the intransient
and the law of the transient – it is only in the harmonious balance
of these two that such a culture can be born
which will neither be polar nor lopsided,
which will use the tension of the opposite poles, the same
as architecture
uses opposing bricks in creation of an arched door.
The truth of life is pluralism.
And, the stream of life always flows taking the opposite poles
as its banks.
160. Love.
We just do not know life, that is why we get bored.
We make life mechanical, that is why we get bored.
We are not living life, we only drag along with it, that is why we get bored.
Boredom is not in life, rather it comes out of our fear of living.
We are not only afraid of death – we are afraid of life as well.
In fact, we fear death because we fear life.
Otherwise, death is not the end of life – it is the completion of life.
This is why I say: live – live fearlessly.
Let go of the past: man goes on carrying it because of fear.
And do not invite dreams of the future, because in order to avoid living today
man plans for living in the future.
Live today, and now, and here.
‘Tomorrow’ is a deception –
the ‘tomorrow’ that has passed as yesterday, as well as the tomorrow
that is yet to come.
Only this moment is.
Only this moment is eternal.
161. Love.
Life is a mystery.
It can be lived.
It can also be known by living it.
But it cannot be solved like a mathematical problem.
It is not a problem – it is a challenge.
It is not a question – it is an adventure.
Hence, those who only go on asking questions about life remain,
by this action, deprived of the answer forever.
Or acquire answers which are not answers at all.
It is such answers that one acquires from scriptures.
In fact, an answer acquired from any other source
cannot be an answer.
Because the truth of life cannot be borrowed.
Or such questioners fabricate answers of their own;
thus they certainly gain consolation, but not solutions.
Because fabricated answers are not answers.
Only the experience can be an answer.
Hence, I say: do not ask – live and know.
This is the difference between philosophy and religion.
To ask is philosophy, to live is religiousness.
And, the interesting thing is that philosophy asks but never gets the answer,
and religion does not ask at all and yet attains the answer.
162. Love.
Society is only a collectivity of individuals.
Hence, finally and essentially, it is a reflection of the minds
of the individuals.
If the individual mind is without peace, the society cannot be at peace.
Only a radical transformation of the individual mind can become the peace
of the society.
There is no other alternative.
Nor is there any shortcut.
The technique for individual transformation is meditation.
With more and more people moving into meditation; only then
is something possible.
To take shelter in the divine is the only way.
1971
163. Love.
You ask for the way to make the invisible visible?
Pay attention to the visible.
Do not just see, pay attention.
It means, when you see a flower,
let your whole being become the eye.
When you listen to the birds, let your entire body-soul become the ear.
When you look at a flower, do not think.
When you listen to birds, do not ponder.
Let the total consciousness
either see or hear or smell or taste or touch.
Because it is due to a shallowness of sensitivity that the invisible is unable
to become visible,
and the unknown remains unknown.
Deepen the sensitivity. Do not just swim in sensitivity, drown in it.
This I call meditation.
And, in meditation, the seen disappears
and finally the seer too. There remains only the seeing.
It is in this seeing that the invisible becomes visible
and the unknown becomes known.
Not only this – even the unknowable becomes knowable.
And remember that whatever I am writing –
do not start thinking about this as well: act.
Nothing has ever been nor can be attained
by creating theories.
There is no other door except ‘seeing for oneself’.
164. Love.
You ask: how far is the destination?
Ah! The destination is very far, and very near too.
And the distance or the nearness of the destination
is not dependent on the destination but upon you yourself.
The deeper the will, the nearer the destination.
If the will is total, then you yourself are the destination.
165. Love.
The word is not the thing –
the word God is not God.
But the mind goes on accumulating words and
words and words,
and then the words become the barrier.
See this as a fact with you:
can you see anything without the word?
Can you feel anything without the word?
Can you live even for a single moment without the word?
Do not think but see
and then you will be in meditation.
To exist wordlessly is to be in meditation.
166. Love.
Always see what is –
the facts.
That which is.
Do not project anything,
do not interpret,
do not impose any meaning:
that is, do not allow your mind to interfere,
and you will begin to encounter reality.
Otherwise everyone lives in his own world of dreaming.
And meditation is the coming out of these worlds,
these dreaming patterns.
A philosopher stopped Mulla Nasruddin on the street.
In order to test whether the Mulla
was sensitive to philosophical knowledge
he made a sign, pointing at the sky.
The philosopher meant: There is only one truth,
which covers all.
Nasruddin’s companion, an ordinary man, thought:
The philosopher is mad.
I wonder what precautions Nasruddin will take.
Nasruddin looked in his knapsack and took out a coil of rope.
This he handed to his companion.
Excellent, thought the companion.
We will bind him up if he becomes violent.
The philosopher saw that Nasruddin meant:
Ordinary humanity tries to find truth by methods