The thrust of death goes deep
but the mind cunningly goes on evading it.
Don’t evade it,
don’t console yourself –
any kind of consolation is a suicide.
Let yourself feel the wound of death completely:
wake up and live with it!
This will be hard
but revolution always is.
Death is,
it is there always,
but we forget about it.
Every day death is there,
every moment.
104. Love.
I received your letter.
So many questions!
To answer them I would have to write a book
bigger than the Mahabharata!
But even then you would not get your answers
because some questions others can never answer –
your answers lie deep within your own life.
And some questions have no answers
because they are wrong questions
for which no answers can be found.
As the search continues
these questions always gradually drop away.
Then there are some questions which are right questions
but have no answers at all.
They have to be experienced deep within oneself.
105. Love.
Do not desire bliss
because that desire gets in the way.
Live life unchained to desire
and without an eye on a goal.
Live free!
Live from moment to moment!
And don’t be afraid, be free of fear
because there is nothing to lose –
and nothing to gain
– and the moment you realize this
the totality of life is attained.
But never approach the gates of life as a beggar,
never go begging,
for those gates never open to beggars!
106. Love.
It brings me happiness to bear witness to your new birth.
You have worked for it over many lives
and now the boat flows rightly,
I can rest assured about you.
Once I made you a promise
and this is now fulfilled.
It is your turn to fulfill your part of the promise;
make sure you don’t miss the chance.
Time is short
and I may not be able to be with you again.
Muster your whole will,
take the oars in your hands
and begin the journey that is infinite.
You have wasted much time sitting on the banks;
now the winds are favorable.
This I know,
and that’s why I am pushing you off
the banks so earnestly.
God’s grace is showering –
be open to it and let it in.
Dance it and drink it in!
With such nectar at hand will you still stay thirsty?
107. Love.
What is sought totally is always attained.
Thoughts, when concentrated,
become things.
As the river finds the ocean,
thirsty souls find the temple of God.
But the thirst must be intense
and the work tireless
and the waiting without end
and the calling with the whole heart.
And all this thirst, work, waiting, calling –
are contained in one small word
and that word is prayer.
But praying cannot be performed,
it is not an act,
you can only be in it.
It is a feeling,
it is the soul,
it is a surrender of oneself
without words or demands.
Leave yourself to the unknown
and accept whatever comes.
Whatever God makes of you – accept it,
and if he breaks you, accept that too.
108. Love.
My blessings on your new birth
– sannyas is a new birth,
in oneself, by oneself, of oneself.
It is also a death,
not an ordinary death but the great death.
It is the death of all that you were up until yesterday.
And what you are now –
that too must keep dying every moment
so that the new can be born and born and born again.
Now you will not remain you even for a moment.
You have to die and be reborn every moment –
this is the only sadhana.
Live like a river, not like a pond.
The pond is a householder;
the river, a sannyasin.
109. Love.
The temple of God is open only
to a dancing, singing, happy heart.
A sad heart cannot enter there
so avoid sadness.
Fill your heart with color
as vivid as a peacock –
and for no reason.
He who has reason to be happy is not really happy.
Dance and sing –
not for others,
not for a reason,
just dance for dancing’s sake;
sing for singing’s sake;
then one’s whole life becomes divine
and only then becomes prayer.
To live so is to be free.
110. Love.
I am glad to get your letter.
The moment of the inward revolution is near
but first you have to go through the birth pangs.
Nothing hurts more than this giving birth to oneself
but what comes after it is life’s greatest bliss.
So, longing, waiting, prayer –
take these for your sadhana.
Everything else is fine.
My regards to all.
111. Love.
As the birds sing each morning at sunrise,
the heart fills with song at the dawn of meditation.
As flowers bloom in spring,
the soul is drenched in fragrance
as meditation is born.
As everything glistens green beneath the rain,
consciousness shines with many colors
as meditation showers.
All this and much more takes place,
and this is only the beginning.
Ultimately everything goes;
fragrance, color, light, music –
everything disappears.
And an inner space, like the sky, appears –
empty, formless, without quality.
Wait for that. Long for that.
The signs are good, so do not waste even a moment.
Go on! I am always with you.
112. Love.
Thirst is good,
longing is good, an aching heart is good,
because he comes through the vale of tears.
Weep so much
that only the tears remain, not you.
If the tears alone remain
and he who weeps vanishes
then God comes by himself.
That is why I let you go, not stopping you.
I knew you would regret it –
but this regret is good.
I knew you would weep
but these tears have their usefulness –
can there be a profounder prayer than tears?
113. Love.
What is truth?
This much at least can be said:
It cannot be defined.
So forget about all definitions,
drop all evaluations and interpretations –
these are all mind games,
all creatures of thought.
What is, is beyond the mind.
Thoughts are as unaware of reality
as the waves are of the peace of the lake.
With waves
the lake loses its tranquillity;
when the lake is calm
then the waves cannot exist.
One has to know that-which-is.
Its interpretation is very different from knowing it.
Interpretations take one astray –
they are as illusory as scarecrows.
The seeker of truth has to be wary of words.
Words are not the truth,
truth cannot be words.
Truth is an experience,
truth is reality,
and the path to it is neti, neti –
neither this nor that.
Drop explanations,
drop definitions,
drop scriptures and doctrines,
remember neti, neti – not this, not that!
Then drop I and thou
and say neti, neti.
What is left manifest in the emptiness –
that is truth,
and that alone is.
All else is dream.
114. Love.
The decision to take sannyas is propitious –
and sadhana follows decision like a shadow.
Seeds have to be sown in the mind as well;
there too – as we sow we reap.
The way has to be carved out of the mind too.
The temple of God is close
but the mind is like a dense forest
we have to hack our way through to reach it.
The first steps have to be taken from where you are.
Even for a long journey
the first steps have to be taken just close by,
and in every journey,
not only that towards truth,
the beginning is not different from the end –
they are two ends of the same span,
two poles of the same entity.
Yet often you cannot guess from the first step
where you will end up;
those first steps may seem quite unrelated to the last!
Charles Catering recollects this interesting incident:
Once I bet a friend
that if I bought him a birdcage to hang in his sitting-room
he would have to buy a bird.
The friend laughed and said
he could keep a cage without a bird –
there was nothing to it!
He accepted the bet
and I bought him a beautiful cage from Switzerland
which he hung in his sitting-room.
Naturally, the inevitable happened –
life has its own logic.
Whosoever saw the cage
immediately sympathized with him,
asking:
When did your bird die?
He would answer: I never had a bird.
Then they would say: So why the empty cage?
Finally he got sick and tired of explaining
and went and bought a bird.
When I asked him about it he said:
It was easier to buy the bird and lose the bet
than to explain things to each and everyone
from morn till night.
And also,
seeing this empty cage hanging there
day in and day out, my mind kept repeating:
The bird! The bird! The bird!
So, if you hang commitment like a cage in the mind
it won’t be long before the bird of sadhana comes!
115. Love.
Man lives not in reality but in dreams.
Each mind creates a world of its own which exists nowhere.
During the day as well as the night
the mind is swamped in dreams.
When the dreams become too much, too intense,
insanity results.
To be clear and healthy is to be without dreams.
Once, the president of a country went
to inspect the nation’s largest lunatic asylum.
The director took him to a room and told him:
In this room, the inmates suffer from car-phobia.
The president, curious, looked through the window.
But there is nobody there, he said.
They are all there, sir – under the beds repairing cars,
the director replied.
Everyone is lying under their dreams in the same way.
If this president had looked within, what would he have found?
Is not every capital a great madhouse?
But one cannot see one’s own madness – this is a sure trait of madness.
When someone starts doubting himself, seeing his madness,
know well that the time has come for his insanity to go.
Awareness of madness marks the end of madness.
Awareness of ignorance heralds its end.
Awareness of dreaming brings dreams to an end.
What is left is truth.
116. Love.
I am very glad to have received your letter.
Anxieties exist in life but there is no need to worry about them.
Worrying stems not from the anxieties but from our attitude towards them.
To be anxious or not is always our open choice.
It is not that a non-anxious mind is free of anxieties – anxieties are there,
they are an unavoidable part of life –
but it does not burden itself with them.
Such a person always sees beyond them;
dark nights surround him too but his eyes look to the rising sun
and therefore his soul
is never drowned in darkness.
And this alone is enough —
that the soul not be drowned in darkness.
The body is bound to drown in it – in fact it already has.
Those who are condemned to die live their lives in darkness;
only the deathless have their lives rooted in the light.
Blessings to the children and regards to all.
117. Love.
There is no greater power than trusting oneself –
its fragrance is not of this world;
peace, bliss and truth flow from this fragrance.
He who trusts himself is in heaven
and he who mistrusts himself
holds the keys of hell in his hands.
The Scottish philosopher David Hume was an atheist,
but every Sunday he made it a point
to attend the sermon of John Brown,
a confirmed theist.
When people pointed out
that going to church was against his own principles
he laughed – and replied: I have no faith whatever
in what John Brown says,
but John Brown has total faith in what John Brown says.
So once a week I make a point of hearing a man
who has total faith in himself!
118. Love.
Love is also fire,
but a cool fire.
Yet we have to burn in it
because it also purifies;
it burns only to purify.
The dross burns
leaving pure gold.
In the same way my love will bring suffering
because I wish to destroy you in order to recreate you.
The seed must be broken –
how else can the tree be born?
The river must end –
how else is it to merge with the ocean?
So let go of yourself and die –
how else will you find the self?
119. Love.
Truth is discovered not through swimming
but through drowning.
Swimming is a surface happening,
drowning takes you to the infinite depths.
120. Love.
The search for meaning is disastrous;
it has brought nothing but meaninglessness.
To see that there is no meaning –
is to have the real meaning
where meaninglessness cannot be,
where meaning doesn’t matter
and so its disasters are avoided.
What remains just is, and what is,
is and what is not, is not and that’s all.
You ask for a clear statement about motivelessness.
Your attempt to understand cannot succeed
because it is motivated!
Why bother about understanding?
Look, isn’t the thing clear before you there?
All things are open!
All things are clear!
But man is so busy understanding no one is left to see what is clear,
what is obvious, what is there!
Confusion is the effort to understand.
Ignorance is the effort to know.
If you don’t try to understand or know,
nothing can hide itself from you!
Truth is always in front of you, naked, clear.
121. Love.
You say you feel broken.
It would be better if you broke down completely and disappeared.
That which is will always be the case
and that which has become is bound to vanish.
Becoming always leads to dissolution so do not try to save yourself.
One who loses himself goes beyond life and death,
and he who saves himself is lost.
You are busy saving yourself
and that is why you are afraid of breaking down.
But what is there to save?
And that which is worth saving is already saved.
122. Love.
You long for the sun
and you will get it for sure,
but you have to have the courage to burn!
You can’t reach the light without dying,
for ego is darkness,
and besides, the sun isn’t anywhere outside
but is born within when everything else there burns.
When the self is alight – that is the light.
The fear of dying is darkness,
the jump into death is the light.