Action, Inaction and Non-Action

Question 1:

There is no place in Krishna's philosophy for any spiritual discipline, so the question of disciplining the seven bodies does not arise. The path of discipline is quite different from that of devotion.

While discipline is gradual, consisting of stages, devotion is integral and one - without any stages.

Discipline divides man into different bodies and works in stages; devotion does not do anything like this. For the sake of making the spiritual journey in stages, those who believe in discipline have divided the human body into seven parts. Each part is used as a stepping stone to another. But devotion does not believe in dividing man; it accepts him as one piece - a whole and indivisible entity. Devotion absorbs the devotee wholly and totally into its bosom.

Spiritual discipline has a variety of divisions and subdivisions. One discipline divides man into seven bodies, another divides him into seven chakras or centers. Different disciplines have different ways of dividing and subdividing. But devotion rejects all divisions straightaway, and accepts man in his totality. And it is the total man who is called upon to remember himself. Devotion knows only one thing, remembrance. And you cannot remember a thing piece by piece; either you remember it whole or you don't. One cannot remember himself so that he is part God and part man; if he remembers he remembers totally. The process of remembering is sudden and total; it cannot be piecemeal and gradual. It happens in one sweep, a leap. Remembrance is an explosion.

Discipline has a sequence; devotion has none. For example. you need to recall some name that you have long forgotten. You need it badly, but you can not remember it. The name has been so familiar to you that you wonder... You are simultaneously aware that you know the name, and yet you cannot recall it. You are in a state of perplexity, confusion. You know that you know it - and yet you fail to remember it. You have completely forgotten it tor the moment. The very word forgetfulness means you forget something you know. You are aware of it at some deeper level of your unconsciousness, yet it fails to communicate with your conscious mind. So you have to build a bridge between these two parts of your mind. What do you do?

You try different ways to recall this once-very-familiar name that you need so urgently. You strain your mind, you scratch your head, you close your eyes and twitch your brows, and yet it goes on eluding you. Nothing works. The more you strain yourself the more difficult it becomes to find it. The more you try, the more tense you become; this tenseness becomes another barrier between you and your mind. A tense mind goes into pieces; a quiet mind collects itself and becomes whole again.

Your difficulty is that the more you strain your mind to remember the name, the more you become incapable of doing it. A part of the mind is trying hard to recall it, and another part is simultaneously worrying and cursing itself for its incapacity to do it. Two suggestions, contrary to each other, are being fed into your mind simultaneously, and they are enough to incapacitate it, to paralyze it. They also undermine your self-confidence.

Then some friend comes along and you tell him about your difficulty. He tells you to drop it, and engages you in some conversation which has nothing to do with the name you are trying to remember. You take two cigarettes out of your pocket, and you and your friend begin to smoke talking about trivia. In the meantime you forget your worry about the name. and the wonder of wonder happens: the whole name suddenly pops up and you have it once again.

What has happened? how is it that you remember it suddenly in a state of relaxation. The reason is simple. As soon as you gave up straining yourself for the name, the tension caused by the opposing pulls on the mind just disappeared and you entered into a state of relaxation. Before, your mind was split into two parts - one which possess the name and the other which wanted to recall it - and they were fighting with each other. This tension disappeared when your mind was withdrawn from the search for the name and engaged in conversation with your friend. The cigarette added to your relaxation, and the name surfaced. What you had failed to remember with effort came so effortlessly. And when it came it came whole.

I have said this as an illustration this is how our ordinary memory works. Memory is one of the functions of mind which is divided into two parts. one part is called the conscious mind and the other the unconscious, and curiously enough truth the conscious and the unconscious have a hand in the way one's memory functions. We use the conscious mind in our workaday world - it serves us twenty-four hours of the day. The unconscious mind is used sparingly; it is used whenever we need it. The conscious is the lighted part of the mind, while the unconscious is submerged in the dark.

The memory I was speaking about is Lying hidden in the unconscious mind, whose conscious part is trying to remember it. The conscious part of the mind is fighting with its unconscious part, and so long as this fight continues you cannot recall a thing. Remembering is possible only when the fight stops and the two conflicting parts of the mind are put together. Then that which was standing on the doorstep of the unconscious, which made you certain that you knew it, emerges into the conscious and you have it.

Remembering the divine, or what we call self remembering goes even deeper than the unconscious.

It is not buried in the unconscious; it is beyond it. There is yet another part of the mind which is called the collective unconscious.

Let us try to understand it in another way. As I said, the conscious is the superficial part of the mind which is lighted, and below it lies the unconscious buried in the dark. Then below the unconscious lies the collective unconscious, and at the bottom lies the cosmic unconscious - which is the mind of the entire universe, which is the total mind, the universal mind. Remembrance of God or self- remembering happens at the level of the cosmic mind, which is the ultimate in consciousness. God or self is known when we become completely integrated - not only with our un conscious and collective minds, but also with the cosmic consciousness, which is of the highest. To be in contact with the cosmic mind is what we call the contact high.

I will explain it in yet another way. When you meditate here at the camp and go deep into meditation, you first come in contact with your individual unconscious mind. Then some of you begin to scream and cry and some others dance and whirl and sing. All these activities arise from your individual unconscious. And by the end of the first stage of this meditation you cease to be individuals; you all become a collectivity. Now you are not individual entities separate from each other, you are a collective whole. This is the moment when you go deep in meditation and touch those levels of the mind which are part of the collective mind. Then you don't feel that you are dancing - it feels that dance is going on and you are just a part of it. Then it does not seem that you are laughing; it seems the cosmic laughter is happening and you are just a participant in it. Then you don't feel that you are, it feels that only existence is and everything in existence is dancing: stars are dancing, mountains are dancing, birds are dancing, every particle under the sun is dancing. Then your dance becomes a small but integral part of the universal dance. This experience is coming from your contact with the collective unconscious.

Just below the collective unconscious lies the world of the cosmic unconscious. You arrive there via the collective unconscious; and once you are connected with the cosmic unconscious your awareness undergoes a complete mutation. Then you cease to feel that you are a part of the whole, rather you know that you and the whole are one - you are not a part of the total but you are totality itself. And then you suddenly remember who you are; this remembrance shoots up like an arrow from the depths of the cosmic unconscious and fills your conscious mind. Then you also know, and know simultaneously, that this awareness that you are the brahman, the ultimate, the supreme is nothing new - it has always been with you, buried deep in your cosmic unconscious.

I divided the process of remembering into four parts just to make it easier for you to understand.

Krishna would never consent to this division, nor do I. In fact remembering, or consciousness, is nowhere fragmented; it is an integrated whole. The conscious and the unconscious are extensions of the same intelligence which is one and indivisible.

In our innermost depth we are aware that we are God, we are divine. We do not have to become divine, we have only to discover our divinity. It is really a matter of recognition. The seer of the Upanishad says in his prayer "O Sun, please uncover the truth that is covered with gold." It simply means that truth is veiled and it has to be unveiled. Divinity is not to be achieved, but unveiled and recognized. What is it that veils it?

It is our own forgetfulness, our unconsciousness which covers the truth.

In fact, we make do with a very tiny part of our mind, a major part of it remains unused. It is like a person owns a big palace but lives in its porch. And he has become so accustomed to the porch that he has forgotten altogether that he owns a large palace which is just behind. Really there can be no porch without a house, the porch is only the entrance to the house. But we have forgotten the large house that our mind is, and we spend our whole life in the porch - our conscious mind is nothing more than a porch. It is not that the conscious ever gets completely disconnected from the larger mind, but we never enter and explore it so we get psychologically isolated from it. But deep down we know it is there.

Entry into the depths of the unconscious does not take place in stages; it always happens in a leap.

Of course we can discuss and understand the unconscious in terms of parts.

Those who follow the path of spiritual discipline do so piece by piece. Krishna's path, however, does not accept discipline. He says over and over again that we are already divine, but since we have forgotten it we have only to remember it again. That is why the Upanishads repeatedly say it is just a matter of remembering. We have to remember who we are. It is not that we have lost our godliness, we have only forgotten it. It is not that godliness is our future, which we have to become. It is sheer forgetfulness.

And that makes a great difference, because spiritual discipline believes that we have lost something which we have to regain. Or it thinks we have to become something which we are not. Or it is presumed that we have to use discipline to get rid of many wrong things that we have acquired through wrong living. But in the process of remembering we have neither to regain something nor to become something, we have only to remember that which we have forgotten. We are what we are, and it is divine. Nothing has to be added or subtracted. Only a screen of forgetfulness, oblivion, divides us from our real being, our divinity.

Devotion is the foundation of Krishna's teaching, and remembering is basic to devotion. But the devotee has forgotten remembering altogether, and instead has taken to chanting; he goes on chanting the name of Rama. The Sanskrit word smaran, for remembering, has been corrupted, it has become sumiran and surati, and these other words have taken different connotations. Chanting Rama's name will not make you remember that you are Rama or God. Even if someone constantly repeats, "I am God, I am God," it will not be of any use. Remembering has nothing to do with chanting or repetition of names. But constant repetition of God's name can create an illusion. You will begin to believe that you are God. This belief will be illusory, because it remains con fined to the conscious mind while the unconscious remains absolutely untouched by it. Then what is the process, the way of remembering? What is its technique?

As I see, remembering comes through relaxation, silence and emptiness. You don't have to do a thing to remember, because activity will hinder rather than help you to remember. Just sit quietly without doing a thing; just be still and empty. Through action one can achieve something one does not have. By doing something you can become something that you are not. If you want to become an engineer you will have to do something to become it. Or you will have to act if you want to possess a car. But remembering is an entirely different dimension. To remember something you have forgotten, you have to sit still and quiet and do nothing. Doing will only obstruct remembering.

In its deeper meaning, remembering is total inaction. That is why Krishna lays so much emphasis on akarma or inaction. Inaction is his key word. Inaction in depth is his message.

As I said earlier, even if you want to re member a friend's name you cannot succeed as long as you make efforts to remember. You will never remember it as long as you go on straining your mind. Memory comes alive only when you give up efforts and become totally inactive. Similarly if you become totally inactive - inactive in depth - the memory buried in the cosmic unconscious will spring like an arrow from there and shoot up to your conscious mind. It is as if a flower seed buried in the soil has sprouted and sent its shoots up in the form of a plant m your garden. And when the meteor of remember, ing, awareness arising from the cosmic unconscious, reaches and illumines your conscious mind, you know who you are.

So inaction is the key to remembering, as remembering is the key to devotion. On the other hand, action is central to spiritual discipline, it is only through action that you can discipline yourself and achieve your goal. And inaction is the door to devotion.

It would b e good to properly understand Krishna's principle of inaction. Unfortunately it has not been rightly understood so far; all those who have interpreted Krishna up to now seem to have no right understanding of inaction. Most of them have interpreted inaction as renunciation. They always said, "Renounce the world, renounce your family, renounce everything!" But renunciation is an act; you have to do something to renounce the world or the family. The interpreters went on telling people to give up everything - their professions, families and even love - and escape to mountains and monasteries. But renunciation is as much an act as indulgence is; Krishna was really misunderstood. Inaction was thought to be just renunciation and escapism. For this reason, India has a centuries-long tradition of renunciation and escape from life.

And all this has happened in the name of Krishna. No one has ever bothered to see that Krishna himself is not a renunciate, he never left his world, his family and his worldly responsibilities.

Sometimes I wonder how such a long tradition can be so blind; all along it has refused to see the stark fact that the man who applauds inaction so much is himself deeply engaged in action throughout his life. He loves, he marries, he has children. He fights war and negotiates peace. He does many other things. So by no stretch of imagination can Krishna's inaction be interpreted as renunciation and escape.

In this context Krishna uses three words: akarma, karma and vikarma, meaning inaction, action and non-action. What is action? According to Krishna, mere doing is not action. If it is true - if any kind of doing is action, then one could never enter into inaction. Then the inaction of Krishna's definition will be impossible. For Krishna, action is that which you do as a doer, as an ego. Really action for Krishna is an egocentric act, an act in which the doer is always present. A doing with a doer, in which one thinks himself as a doer, is action. As long as I remain a doer, whatever I do is action. Even if I take sannyas it is an act, an action. Even renunciation becomes an action if a doer is present in the act.

Inaction is just the opposite kind of action; it is action without a doer. Inaction does not mean absence of action, but it certainly means absence of the doer. An egoless action is inaction. If I do a thing without the egoistic sense that I am the doer, that I am the center of this action, it is inaction.

Inaction is not laziness as is generally understood; it is very much action, but without a doer at its center. This thing has to be clearly understood. If the center, the ego, the I, the doer, ceases and only action remains, it is inaction. With the cessation of the doer every action becomes inaction.

Action without a doer is inaction. It is action through inaction.

Krishna's every action is egoless, and therefore it is inaction. Even when he is doing something, he is really in inaction.

Between action and inaction there is akarma or non-action, which means a special kind of action.

Inaction is egoless action; action is egoist action and non-action is a special kind of action. This thing which is midway between action and inaction, which Krishna calls non-action, needs to be understood rightly.

What does Krishna mean by non-action? Where there is neither a doer nor a doing, yet things happen, there is non-action. For example, we breathe, which we are not required to do by our own effort. There is neither a doer nor a doing so far as acts like breathing are concerned. Similarly the blood circulates through the body, the food is digested, and the heart beats. How can you categorize such acts? They come in the category of non-action, which means action happening without a doer and without a sense of volitional doing. An ordinary person lives in action, a sannyasin lives in inaction, and God lives in non-action. As far as God's action is concerned there is neither a doer nor any doing of the kind we know. There things just happen; it is just happening.

There are a few things in man's life too that just happen. And these are non-actions. In fact, these actions are divine operations. Do you think it is you who breathe? Then you are mistaken. If you were the master of this action known as breathing, then you would never die really. Then you can continue to breathe even when death knocks at your door. But can you say you are not going to stop breathing? Or try it otherwise - stop breathing for a little while and you will know you cannot stop it either. Your breath will refuse to obey you, it will soon resume its breathing. In breathing you are neither the doer nor the doing itself. Many things of life are like breathing; they just happen.

If someone understands rightly what non-action is, and comes to know its mystery, he will soon enter into a state of inaction which is acting without a center, an ego. Then he knows that every significant thing in life happens on its own; it is utterly stupid to try to be a doer. And he is a wise man. He alone is a sage.

I have heard... A person boarded a train and took a seat, but the bag he carried with him remained sitting on his head. His fellow travelers were surprised and asked him why he was still keeping his bag on his head. The man said he did not want to add to the burden of the train which was already over-loaded. The fellow travelers were amused, and one of them said to him, "You seem to be a crazy person. Even if you carry the load on your head it is going to be a load on the train. Why carry an unnecessary burden on your head? Isn't it stupid?"

The man burst into laughter and said, "I had thought you were householders, but you all seem to be sannyasins." This man was a real sannyasin. He said, "I carry the bag on my head in order to conform to the ways of the world. I wonder why you laugh at me? I see all of you carrying the burden of the world on your heads, although you know that like this train it is God who bears all our burdens. I just wanted to conform to your ways." And then the man not only put the bag down on the train, but seated himself on it saying, "This is the right way a sannyasin should sit. He is not a doer; everything just happens."

One who understands the beauty of non-action enters the state of inaction which is acting without ego. As we are, we are all doers, and all our doings are egocentric. We live in action. But if we understand what non-action is we will begin to live in inaction. Then inaction will be at the center sf our being and action at its periphery.

Inaction is foundational to Krishna's devotion or upasana or whatever you wish to call it. You don't have to do a thing; you have only to allow that which is happening. You have to die to your doer, to your ego.

And the moment the doer disappears, remembering happens. This doer is the steel wall that separates you from your authentic being and makes you forget it. As long as this wall remains you cannot know who you are. Chanting Rama's name or repeating the mantra "I am God" will not help, because it is the doer in you who chants and repeats the name, the mantra. As long as you exist as an ego, you can do what you will, nothing will happen. So let the doer go, let the ego disappear. But how will the doer go?

Just try to understand what non-action is. Continue to act, but try to understand what non action is.

Continue to do what you do, and try to understand life. The very understanding of life and its ways will tell you nothing is in your hands. Neither you decide to be born nor do you decide to die. Neither you breathe of your own volition, nor you have a hand in the circulation of your blood through the body. You were not consulted before your birth nor will you be consulted when your time arrives to depart from this world. Do you have a say in when you grow from childhood to youth to old age?

Existence was very much here when you were not, and it will continue to be here after you will be gone. You will make no difference whatsoever so far as existence is concerned. Stars will continue to shine as brightly as ever. Flowers will bloom as they have always bloomed. Streams will continue to flow and birds continue to sing. We are like lines drawn on the surface of the water: no sooner they are drawn than they disappear. Then why carry this utterly unnecessary burden of "I" on our heads and suffer endlessly? If the whole of existence can go without me, why cannot I go without me?

To understand the deeper meaning of non action is wisdom. To understand non-action is to understand everything. And then every action be comes inaction, then you do without being a doer, then you act through inaction. Non-action is the gate to wisdom; it is alchemical. Passing through ordinary action, if one encounters non-action with understanding, he will soon come upon inaction, which in its turn leads to remembering. Remembering happens only in inaction. Remembering that comes with effort is false; it is another form of action. Remembering that comes on its own, effortlessly, is real; it comes straight from the cosmos. That is why we say that the Vedas are divine revelations. Whenever something comes from the beyond - whoever may be its medium - it is divine revelation. The Bible is as much divine knowledge as the Vedas are. That is why Jesus says again and again that his father in heaven speaks through him. And Krishna says, "I am not, only God is; I am God. And it is I who am making the Mahabharat happen; it is all my play."

Krishna says to Arjuna, "You need not be afraid of killing, because all those you are going to kill have already been killed by me. They are already dead, you have only to give them the news of it through your arrows. And what I am saying is not my words, they are coming straight from the cosmos, from the beyond. From the depths of the beyond comes this information that what you see as life before you is only an appearance, it has already become extinct, it is no more alive. It is just a matter of moments when those standing across the battle lines will be dead. You are only an instrument in the hands of existence, nothing more. So don't think that you ate going to kill them. If you think you are the doer then you are bound to be afraid. With the doer comes fear, anxiety and anguish.

Every suffering, every sorrow, arises from the ego, the doer, which is a false entity. You are utterly mistaken if you think you are the doer; you are merely an instrument in the hands of the divine. Let it do what it wants to be done through you, and let go of yourself."

Therefore, while concluding the GEETA, Krishna says to Arjuna, "Give up everything, give up all religions, all sense of the doer and doing, give up your ego and be established in inaction."

Inaction is the technique of remembering.

Question 2:

Krishna says that when one acts as if he does not act at all, it is yoga. Yoga means action through inaction. To become a non-doer is yoga. The other thing he says is that when one does not do a thing and yet knows he has done everything, it is sannyas. This is another side of the same coin.

Doing nothing, everything is done.

Sannyas and yoga are two sides of the same coin. Of course, they are two opposite sides of the coin, but they are inseparable. It is difficult to say where the one side ends and the other begins. It is true that the one side is the opposite of the other, but they are so inextricably joined that one cannot be without the other. In fact, there cannot be a coin with only one side, it has to have two sides - one opposite to the other. They really complement each other, they are not at all contradictory. Its front and back together make up a coin.

There is no contradiction whatsoever in the two statements of Krishna, and there is no room for confusion either. If you look at a wise man from his front side he will look a yogi, and the same wise man will look a sannyasin if you view him from the rear. And Krishna's definition of the two sides is absolutely right. He defines a wise man, who is both yogi and sannyasin, as one who is actively inactive and inactively active. And remember, these two sides are simultaneously present in one who knows the truth, it is not possible to separate one of his sides from the other. One who acts through inaction can also be non-acting through action. These are two sides of the same coin. And there can be no coin with a single side; up to now it has not been minted anywhere. It is a different thing that we look at it from a single side. It depends on us. Krishna looks at it from both sides.

Krishna is trying to explain truth from all of its sides. He says to Arjuna, "If you are interested in yoga then you should know what yoga is. Yoga means that one can attain to inaction through action. And if you are not interested in yoga, if you do not want to take part in the war, in bloody fighting, if you want to renounce the world and take sannyas, then you know from me what sannyas is. Sannyas means one does not do a thing and yet everything is done. A sannyasin is established in the center of inaction and allows nature to take its course. He gives non-action - which is a kind of action - a free hand."

Krishna is just trying to rope Arjuna in from every possible side. That's all. For this very reason his statements appear many times to be contradictory. I find myself exactly in the same space in relation to you. I am trying to surround you from every possible direction. If you refuse to move in one direction, I immediately try to persuade you to move in another direction, so you consent to go along with me from wherever you can. And the beauty is that once you get going from anywhere you will come across the same space in which you first refused to move. Krishna is trying to persuade Arjuna in every way. If Arjuna wants to follow the yogic path, Krishna says okay, because he knows yoga is one side of the same coin with sannyas as its other side. Take a coin from any side, front or back, you will have the whole coin in your hand.

There is a beautiful Taoist story which will help you to understand this point very easily. Sages in the line of Lao Tzu have gifted us with some of the most extraordinary stories of the world. They are rare.

A sage lives in a forest. He has raised a number of pets - all monkeys. One morning a seeker comes with a question like the one you have just now put to me. He says to the Taoist sage that his statements are often contradictory and they only confuse him. The sage grins and says to the visitor, "Just wait and see what happens." And he calls his monkeys to his side and tells them, "Listen, I am going to make some changes in your menu." The monkeys look surprised. For so long they were being given four breads in the morning and three in the evening. The sage Says, "From now on you will receive three breads in the morning and four in the evening."

Hearing about this change the monkeys became wild with rage. They fret and fume and even threaten to revolt against the proposed change. They insist on the old system being continued. But the sage is equally insistent on his proposal. So his pets prepare themselves to attack and harm their Master. The sage grins again and says to them, "Wait another minute. You w ill continue to have four breads in the morning as ever." It calms down the monkeys instantly.

The Taoist sage now turns his face to his visitor and says, "Do you get it? The monkeys were to receive seven breads in all, even after the slight change I had proposed. But they refused to accept three breads in place of four in the morning. Does it make a difference if they receive four in the morning or in the evening? Yet they are happy to know that no change is being made."

This is how Krishna tries to hem in a reluctant Arjuna. He now tells him to accept three breads and Arjuna refuses vehemently. Then he tells him to take four breads instead of three. He is to receive only seven breads in all, but Krishna leaves the distribution of breads between the morning and evening meals in Arjuna's hands. It is for this reason that the GEETA runs into eighteen long chapters. Time and again Krishna changes his offers. Now he persuades him to take up devotion, and if Arjuna does not agree he persuades him to take up yoga. He gives him a wide range of choices from yoga to knowledge to action to devotion. But in every case the total number of breads remains seven. And it is towards the end of the GEETA that Arjuna comes to know the truth, that in every case the number of breads is the same and Krishna is not going to budge from this fixed number.

Now I come to the other part of the question. Shankara's definition of action is a partisan's definition.

He makes a choice that agrees with him. He is against action; he believes that action binds. He says action is ignorance, it stems from ignorance. To attain to knowledge, to know the truth there is no way but to renounce action. He interprets Krishna's non action as renunciation of action. For him, action belongs to the world of the doers, the worldly people, and a seeker has to run away from the relationships that action entails. His emphasis is on renunciation of the world of action.

It is true that for one established in wisdom there is no action, he does not do a thing. But Shankara's interpretation is partial and wrong. There is no action for a wise man because he has ceased to be a doer, an ego. Krishna's emphasis is on the absence of the doer, not on the absence of action itself.

Shankara changes the emphasis from the non-doer to non-doing. And his emphasis on inaction is wrong.

There are two sides of action one is the doer and the other the deed. Krishna wants to emphasize that the doer should go and only doing remain. We cannot do away with action. Never mind the doer, the ignorant worldly person - even God cannot do without action. This universe is his work, his handicraft. Without God working on it this universe would not survive for a split second. How does the universe keep going? The energy behind it keeps it going. So let alone the wise, even God cannot give up action. Krishna's whole emphasis is on the cessation of the doer. But an escapist sannyasin, one who runs away from the world emphasizes inaction.

This is the reason Shankara has to declare the world to be maya, an illusion. He means to say that the world is not real, not the work of God; it is an illusion, it does not really exist. It is difficult for Shankara to accept the world as real. If all these suns and stars, mountains and rivers, trees and flowers, animals and insects, are His handiwork then He is also a workman, and not a renunciate.

Then why ask human beings alone to take sannyas? And Shankara is a sannyasini he does not want to get embroiled in the validity of action.

In fact, logic has its own difficulty. If you get hold of a particular line of argument, then you have to pursue it to its logical end. And it has its corollaries which cannot be bypassed. Logic is a hard taskmaster; once you get involved in it you have to follow it to its end. Having once accepted that action is ignorance and bondage and that there is no action for a wise man, Shankara has no choice but to declare the world an illusion, a dream. Because there is an immense world of action all around us; it is action and action all down the road. So to escape it Shankara calls it maya, an appearance which is not real. He says the world is magic, magical. It is like a magician sows a mango seed and instantly it grows into a mango tree with branches and foliage. In fact it only appears to be there, there is neither seed nor tree, it is just a hypnotic trick. But the irony is that even if the tree is a magical phenomenon for the spectators, it is real work for the magician. It is through his concrete action that the tree takes on an appearance. After all, hypnotizing the spectators is an act in itself.

This is the dilemma in which Shankara finds himself by denying action. To deny action he denies the whole world and calls it maya - a dream. But how to explain the illusion? Even if it is an illusion of our own making, it is God who allows us to create and see it as such. How can it be there without his implicit consent? Maybe the world is false, but what about our perception of it? Perception should be real. And perception in itself is action. What does he say about it?

Shankara is an accomplished logician, and he works hard to make his point. He asserts that action is false and there is no action for a wise man. His difficulty is that rather than denying the doer he is out to deny action itself. But don't go away with the impression that I mean that Shankara has not known the truth, I am not saying that. Shankara has known the truth. The moment you deny action, you have denied the doer in the same stroke. Without action there cannot be an actor; it is just unthinkable. It is action that creates the actor, although the latter is false, the actor is an illusion.

So Shankara's logic is absurd, but his experience of truth is not wrong. He arrived at the temple of truth through a long and devious path. He had to wander long around the temple, but ultimately he made it. And he arrived at the goal for a very different reason. If someone denies action totally, even if the denial is an imagination, then there is no room for the doer to be. The doer depends for his existence on the idea of action; deny action and the doer disappears.

Shankara arrived at truth, although he began his journey from altogether the wrong place. He did not touch the place that belongs to Krishna.

Krishna says let the doer go first, and the mo ment he goes action is bound to go. Action and the actor, as generally understood, are two ends of the same string. But I am willing to choose Krishna against Shankara, and there is a reason for my preference. In the ultimate analysis Shankara's whole interpretation of the GEETA turns out to be escapist; he becomes the leader of all escapists.

But the irony is that all his escapist sannyasins have to depend on those people who don't escape, who remain in the world. If the whole world agrees with Shankara's philosophy, it will not last a day longer. Then there is no way for it but to die. That is why the world is not going to accept Shankara's definition. No matter how hard Shankara tries to prove action as illusory, it remains action even as an illusion. Even Shankara goes out to beg from the same world of illusion; he accepts alms from the same world. He goes into the world to explain his philosophy of maya and tries to convince it that it is not.

Shankara's opponents mock him saying, "If everything is illusory then why do you go about explaining your philosophy to a world that does not exist in reality? Why do you preach? And to whom? Why do you go to a place whose existence is illusory? and what about your begging bowl, your begging, your hunger and your thirst? Are they real?"

I am going to tell you a beautiful story.

Once a Buddhist monk who believes that the world is false, an illusion, visits a king's court. With the help of cogent and irrefutable arguments he proves before the court that the world is unreal. Logic has a great advantage; it cannot establish what truth is, but it can easily prove falsehood. Logic cannot say what is, but it can very well say what is not. Logic is like a sword which can kill something but cannot revive it; it can destroy but it cannot create. Logic is as destructive as a sword, but it cannot construct anything. So the Buddhist monk concludes his arguments with an air of triumph proclaiming that the world is not real.

But the king is not going to be defeated by arguments. He says, "Maybe every thing is false, but I have something in my possession which cannot be false. And I am soon going to confront you with this reality." The king has a mad elephant among his animals and he immediately sends for it. The roads of the town are cleared, and the mad elephant let loose on the defenseless monk. The king and his courtiers go to the roof of the palace to watch the play from there. The elephant rushes at the monk with fury, and the monk starts running away in panic. He yells and screams, "O King, please save me from being killed by this mad elephant!" But the king and his courtiers and the whole town are enjoying the fun. After a long chase the monk collapses and the elephant grabs him and is about to kill him when the king's men suddenly appear on the scene and rescue him from the elephant's deadly clutches.

The next day the monk is called to the court, and the king asks of him, "How about the elephant? Is it false?"

The monk promptly says, "Yes; the elephant is illusory."

"And what about your screams?" the king asked.

The monk says again, "They were illusory too." When the king looks puzzled the monk says, "You are deluded about the whole thing. The elephant was unreal, its attack on me was unreal. I was unreal and my screams were unreal. My prayers were unreal and you too, to whom they were addressed were unreal."

This monk is incorrigible; he defeats even a mad elephant. But he is consistent; he says, "If everything is false, how can my escape from the elephant and my screams and prayers be true?"

You cannot argue with a person who believes the whole existence is unreal.

Shankara's opponents made fun of him, but it made no difference for him. He said to them, "Even your perception of me and my going about arguing with people is illusory. There is no one who argues, and there is no one who listens to these arguments. Even your taunts are unreal." How can you argue with a person like Shankara?

No matter how powerfully Shankara supports his belief that the world is maya, even maya has its existence. He cannot deny maya, or can he? We dream in our sleep; this dream is unreal, but dreaming itself is not unreal. You cannot deny the existence of the state of dreaming as part of man's consciousness. A beggar dreams that he is a king, which is not a fact, but his dreaming is a fact. I take a rope for a snake, which is false, but what about my deluded perception itself? Even as delusion it is very much there. Granted that there is no snake, but what about the rope? The rope exists. And even if you deny the perception as real, you cannot deny the one who perceives.

We cannot deny existence totally. In the ultimate analysis it is there. Descartes is right when he says that we can negate everything, but we cannot negate the one who negates. We can negate everything, but how can we negate Shankara? Shankara is. Shankara has to survive in order for his negation to survive. Therefore Shankara's interpretation is partial and incomplete. He emphasizes one side of the coin and is unaware of its other side. His denial of the other side is wrong; a coin has to have two sides.

It is true, however, that Shankara is less confusing that Krishna. For this reason he created a large following, and a self-confident following at that. Krishna could not do that. The truth is that in India, Shankara alone has the largest group of followers - all self-confident, assertive sannyasins. It is so because Shankara's approach is simplistic, he speaks about only one side of the coin without worrying that another side exists as well. Presentation of both sides together is difficult, so subtle and complex that it needs great intelligence to understand it. That explains why most of Shankara's sannyasins are stupid, It is true that sannyas in India came with Shankara, but it is also true that it is lackluster and stupid at the same time.

It takes great intelligence to stand alongside Krishna. Such an intelligence refuses to be confused by contradictions, because contradictions are inherent in life. Most of us get confused and bogged down by contradictions. Because Shankara denies all contradictions, his commentary on the GEETA has achieved immense popularity in this country. He was the first man who eliminated all contradictions, all confusions from the GEETA and presented a simplistic and monotonous interpretation of Krishna's superb philosophy. But I say that no one has done so much injustice to Krishna as Shankara has, although it is just possible that if he had not commented on it the GEETA would have been lost to the world. It is because of Shankara's commentary that the GEETA became known throughout the world.

But this is what it is.

Question 3:

You can put any meaning you like, but for Shankara, it is its very changeability, its ever-changing character that makes the world unreal. That which is changing, which is not everlasting, he says is false. That which was one thing yesterday, is another thing today and will turn into something else tomorrow, is false. Change is at the root of Shankara's definition of maya, of illusion. He says reality is that which is immutable and eternal. What is unchanging and unchangeable is truth, what is everlasting is truth.

Eternity is Shankara's word for the truth, and changeability is his word for the world. That which does not remain the same even for a moment is false. If a thing was one thing a moment ago, turns into another thing this moment, and is going to be some thing else the next moment, it means that it was not that which it was, it is not that which it is, and it will not be that which it will be. That which is not is false. And truth is that which ever was, is and will remain the same. In Shankara's definition, change is synonymous with untruth and the unchanging is synonymous with truth.

But in my vision, as also in the vision of Krishna, change is as much true as the unchanging. For Krishna, both the changing and the unchanging worlds are real. The reason is that the unchanging cannot be without the changing world. The wheel of change revokes on an axle that is itself still and unmoving. The changing wheel and the unchanging axle are interdependent, one cannot be without the other. The moving and the unmoving are like two wheels of the same chariot. Krishna absorbs all contradictions in himself; he rejects none - neither the moving nor the unmoving. For him motion and rest are inextricably linked; you reject one and the other is rejected at the same time. If we understand Krishna rightly, then we have to accept that for the truth to untruth it essential and inescapable. Truth and untruth are as inescapably interconnected as light and darkness, life and death, health and sickness. The opposites are not really opposites, they are compementaries.

They are two sides of the same thing But our difficulty is we take them not only to be opposites, but enemies to each other.

People often ask me about the source of untruth, but they never ask about the source of truth. If truth comes from nowhere, why cannot untruth come from the same source? Those who debate over the ultimate knowledge always ask, "Who is the author of falsehood?" But they never raise the question "Who is the mother of truth?" And if truth can happen without a mother, why should untruth have any difficulty? In fact, in this regard, untruth is in a better position than truth, because untruth means that which is not. It does not need any source, any gangotri.

No, it is wrong to ask about the source of truth and untruth; they exist simultaneously, together. The question of their source does not arise. The day you were born your death too was born. Death is not going to come to you in some future, it always walks in step with you. Death is another side of birth, but it may take you about seventy years to see this other side. It is your incapacity that doesn't allow you to see the two simultaneously. But they are there together. Similarly truth and untruth are together. It is wrong to speak in terms of their coming and going; they are. Truth is, untruth is.

Existence is, and non-existence is.

Shankara emphasizes one side of the coin, and for this reason we have to look into the other side too. Then only the coin is complete.

Shankara says that which is observed is maya, false. Buddha says just the opposite, and Buddha's philosophy finds its culmination in Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna says that the one who observes is false, the observer is false. If the world is false in the eyes of Shankara, the soul is false in the eyes of Nagarjuna. This giant among the Buddhist thinkers says that between the observer and the observed the former is much more basic, and this basic element itself is false. All that is false flows from this basic falsehood.

When I close my eyes, the world becomes invisible, but then I begin to dream with eyes closed. I am the basic lie; even when the world is absent 1 can create another world by dreaming. The most amusing thing is I can create dreams within dreams. Sometimes you too might have dreamed that you are dreaming. It is really a miracle that one dreams that he is dreaming. Like the magician's boxes within boxes you have dreams within dreams. You can dream that you are watching a movie about your own life and you go into sleep and start dreaming. There is no difficulty about creating such a dream. Therefore Nagarjuna says it is no use trying to prove the world to be false; the false is really within you; you are false. Nagarjuna asserts that the self is false.

In fact, the true and the false go hand in hand. If someone asserts that only truth is, then he will have to assign a place to untruth and say, "It is here." In the same way one who asserts that only the untruth is, has to say where truth is. Krishna is not that assertive, he hesitates. And Krishna's hesitation is deep. People who don't hesitate are often superficial, shallow. Hesitation arises from the depths of one's being; hesitation is very significant. You are fortunate if you are gifted with a grain of hesitancy. Your hesitation will show that you have begun looking at life in its totality. Then you will not say that this is true and that is false. Then you will not say that only the truth is, or only the untruth is. Then you will know the true and the false are two aspects of the same thing, two notes of the same song. Then you will know existence and non-existence are two differ ent notes of the same flute. We can well imagine the problem of a person who sees life in its totality, because his statements are bound to be hesitant and hazy, paradoxical and confusing.

It is for this reason that Krishna's statements confuse you. It shows Krishna's perception is most profound.

Question 4:

Shankara has no choice but to compromise. Whoever insists on an incomplete truth meets with this fate; he has to compromise at one level or another. The other side of reality which he goes on denying will assert itself, because it is very much there. He will have to accept it in one form or another. He will call it maya that is indescribable, he will call it utilitarian truth or the truth that is transient. It does not matter what he calls it, he will have to accept it because it is there. Shankara cannot say that he will not speak about maya. Why should he speak about a thing that does not exist? But he speaks. And then he has to compromise in one way or another.

Only a man like Krishna can be uncompromising, he need not compromise. He is uncompromising because he accepts both sides of truth together; he does not deny either of them. One who denies something is forced to compromise at some deeper level with what he denies, because it is. He who accepts life in its totality need not compromise at all. Or you can say he has already made his peace, his compromise.

Question 5:

I only said that hesitation is good; I did not say to be always in a state of hesitation is good. Those who feel hesitant strive to go beyond it; those who don't are stuck there.

Hesitancy is the transitional stage the beginning of the journey. It is only after one hesitates that he goes beyond it. And there are two ways to transcend it. If you accept one side of the truth, your hesitation will disappear. You can agree with Shankara or Nagarjuna, and you will cease to hesitate.

You will be out of trouble, you will be certain. But this way of getting rid of hesitation is costly, you have to part with your intelligence. Stupid people never hesitate; so if you lose your intelligence then you will overcome hesitation. But this is certainly not the right way.

You have to go beyond your hesitancy intelligently. That is, you don't escape it, rather you face it and transcend it. Hesitation has to be transcended at the point where both sides of truth are seen as one and inseparable. This is a rational way of dealing with hesitancy. The other way is irrational, stupid, when you choose one side and reject the other. Then you go below hesitation, not beyond it.

This is the way of the insane, who is also unhesitating, certain. There is a trans-rational state, above reason, when you see the two sides as together and inseparable. Then all contradictions disappear, opposites go and you come to oneness, unity and integrity.

That is why I say that hesitation is a blessing. It takes you from stupidity to intelligence He is fortunate who hesitates, because it opens the door to that which is beyond intelligence.

Question 6:

Not one commentary on Krishna is complete. It is not possible, unless someone like Krishna himself comments on him.

Every interpretation of Krishna is incomplete and partial. There are many sides to a single thing, and Krishna is a man of infinite dimensions. So every commentator chooses from them according to what appeals to him. Shankara establishes that sannyas and inaction form the cornerstones of the GEETA. From the same GEETA, Tilak chooses karmayoga, the discipline of action, and he brings all his arguments to prove that action IS GEETA'S central message. Now Shankara and Tilak are polar opposites.

A thousand years have passed since Shankara commented on the GEETA, and in the course of time his escapist philosophy has enfeebled India to her very roots, weakened her in many ways. By its nature, escapism is enervating. Shankara's teachings sapped this country's vitality and dynamism.

A thousand years' experiences were enough to turn the pendulum in the opposite direction. It became urgent that someone comment on the GEETA saying that it stands for dynamism and action.

So Tilak comes forward with a statement which is at the other extreme of Shankara While Shankara had chosen inaction and renunciation, Tilak chose activism and action.

So Tilak's commentary is as incomplete as Shankara's.

There are any number of commentaries on the GEETA. They are not in dozens, but in hundreds, and the number increases every day. However, not one of them has done justice to Krishna's philosophy.

And the reason is that not one commentator has shown the courage to be super-rational. Each of them has tried to be rational and logical.

In fact, a commentator cannot be other than rational. If he transcends the rational he will not write a commentary on the GEETA, he will instead create the GEETA itself. When one attains to the super-rational state a GEETA is born through him. Then commentary becomes unnecessary. A commentary means that you don't understand something in the GEETA and I explain it to you by way of interpreting it. It is an attempt at interpreting something. And when you explain something you have to keep within the bounds of logic and reason.

The moment something transcends reason it turns into a GEETA, not a commentary on it.

Question 7:

One thing is certain, it is not a commentary.

Question 8:

I leave that to you. Should not something be left to you?

Question 9:

It is true. Shankara is a supra-moralist.

A moralist is action-oriented; he says do this and don't do that. Shankara says every action is illusory; whether you practice asceticism or indulge in stealing makes no difference. In sleep now you dream you are a robber, and then you dream you are a saint; it does not make any difference in your waking state. On waking you say both robber and saint are dream stuff, they are meaningless. For this reason nothing is moral or immoral for Shankara. There is no way to choose between morality and immorality, just as there is no way to choose between two dreams. Choice is possible only between two realities. Because the world is an illusion to Shankara there is no place for morality in his philosophy. Shankara's vision is supra-moralistic; it transcends morality. The principle of inaction is bound to go beyond morality.

When Shankara's commentaries on Indian philosophy were translated into the languages of the West, they were thought to be supporting immorality. Thinkers of the West said that Shankara's vision upheld immorality. If such a view that nothing is right or wrong - that all actions, like dreams, are the same - gains ground, then people will go off the track; they will simply sink into the mire of sin and degradation. And it is not surprising if the West reacts in this manner. Western people have lived down the centuries, have been brought up on the food of Judaic philosophy, which has ceaselessly harangued them to "Do this and don't do that." Their whole religion and culture are based on the Ten Commandments, which clearly enunciate what one should do and should not do.

So it is no wonder that they reacted sharply to shankara's thinking and called it immoral.

Certainly Shankara's thinking is not IMmoralist, because immorality is a choice against morality.

Shankara stands for choicelessness and for this reason he is supra-moralistic. He does not ask you to be moral or immoral, a saint or a thief; he does not ask you to become anything. He is against becoming; He is for being what you are. In fact, he is for non-being. This is really a trans-moral vision.

Tilak, on the other hand, is a moralist. He believes there is a choice between a good action and a bad one, between what one should do and one should not. According to him religion consists of shoulds and should-nots. He really is for action. For this reason he does not call the world unreal. It is real. The visible world is true for Tilak; it is not maya or illusion. In the midst of this reality we have to decide what is right and what is not right. And religion simply means choice of the right, virtuous, good. It is true that Tilak holds a wholly contrary viewpoint to that of Shankara.

You ask whether it will make the thing complete if we combine Shankara's supra-moralism with the activism of Tilak. No, it will not be complete that way. And there are reasons for it.

The basic reason we cannot make some thing whole by putting together its parts. It is like we break up a person's body into pieces and then put the parts together to make a whole person again. It is simply impossible. If the person is whole then his parts will function in unison, but separate parts put together cannot make a person whole again. Parts put together don't make a whole; it is a different thing however, that a whole consists of many parts.

My vision of Krishna takes in both Shankara and Tilak, but just a mixture of their viewpoints will not make a complete philosophy of Krishna. There is yet another reason why a blending of Shankara and Tilak will not make a complete Krishna. There are a thousand views about Krishna; Shankara and Tilak represent only two. Even a combination of all the thousand views cannot make a complete Krishna.

Putting different parts together is a mechanical process, it cannot be organic. We can break up a machine into its parts and remake it by putting the parts together again. But we cannot do the same with a live, organic body. Please bear in mind this fundamental difference between organic unity and mechanical togetherness. While a mechanical combination is equal to the totality of parts, an organic unity is much more than the sum total of its parts.

For example. if we make a list of all the ingredients that make up a human body - like iron, copper, sodium, aluminum, phosphorus and the rest of it, they will be worth four to five rupees, not more, Nine-tenths of a human body is water, which does not cost anything at the moment. And the rest of these things are available in the market. If however, you put them all together in the right proportions they cannot create a live human body. They cannot. A live body is much more than the sum total of its parts, although it cannot be without these parts.

An organic unity exists in Krishna's philosophy of life, although it has a thousand different parts. And every part has been interpreted differently by different persons. Ramanuja says one thing, Shankara says another, and Nimbark says something else Even Tilak, Arvind, Gandhi and Vinoba speak in different voices. And if you collect all these different views on Krishna, they cannot re-create the organic unity that Krishna is. There is no difficulty in putting them together, but you will not find Krishna in this amalgam. And it is also true that if Krishna is present, then all these parts plus something much more will be there.

Leave aside a blend of Shankara and Tilak - even if you blend all the commentaries on Krishna, it will not do. It will be a mechanical, dead unity. It will be nothing more than an arithmetical addition.

What I have been saying here is not a commentary on Krishna; I am not interpreting him. I have nothing to do with commentary. Therefore I am not afraid of contradictions; they are there.

Contradictions exist in Krishna himself, and I cannot do a thing about it. So I am not commenting, I am just unveiling Krishna before you. I am not trying to impose myself on him, I am only unraveling him exactly as he is: right and wrong, moral and immoral, rational, irrational and transrational. As Krishna himself is choiceless, neither do I pick and choose any thing from his life. I am presenting him to you exactly as he is.

I am aware I am going to be in difficulty on this score. It is going to be the same difficulty that Krishna had created for himself. For thousands of years people have been struggling to interpret and understand what Krishna said in the GEETA. In the same way, what I am saying now will need to be interpreted and you will all strain yourselves to under stand it. I am unveiling Krishna in his entirety with out caring for the inconsistencies and contradictions inherent in his life and teachings.

I don't care if one of my statements about him is going to clash with another statement that I may make subsequently. I will go on revealing his life and philosophy as it authentically is. I want to give you Krishna whole and in one piece.

So what I am saying to you is not a commentary.

Question 10:

One needs to become something which he is not. The question simply does not arise here.

Becoming is needless; I am it.

Question 11:

All Arvind's talk of supraconsciousness and the supramental is within the confines of the rational mind. He never goes beyond reason. Even when he speaks about the transcendence of reason, he uses rationalistic concepts. Arvind is a rationalist. Everything he says and the words and concepts he uses to say it belong to the grammar of rationalism. There is a great consistency in the statements of Arvind which is not there in statements from supra-rationalism. You cannot find the same logical consistency in the statements of mystics. A mystic speaks in terms of contradictions and paradoxes. He says one word and soon contradicts it by another word that follows it. A mystic is self-contradictory. Arvind never contradicts himself.

Arvind is a great system-maker, and a system maker can never be a supra-rational. A system is made with the help of reason. Supra-rational people are always unsystematic; they don't have a system. System is integral to logic; that which is illogical cannot follow a methodology or order. The unthinkable cannot be systematized. All the thinkers of this century who have crossed the threshhold of reason are fragmentary in their statements; none of them followed a logical order. Wittgenstein, Husserl, Heidegger, Marlo Ponti and the rest of them, have made fragmentary statements. 1 Krishnamurti belongs to the same category which denies system, order. Their statements are atomic, and they contradict themselves.

Arvind's case is very different. The truth is, after Shankara there has been no greater system-builder in India than Arvind. But this is what makes for the weakness and poverty of his philosophy. He is very skilled in playing with words, concepts and theories. But the irony is that the reality of life is far beyond words, concepts and doctrines. His trouble is that he was wholly educated in the West where he learned Aristotelian logic, Darwinian theory of evolution and the scientific way of thinking.

His mind is wholly western; no one in India today is more western in his way of thinking than Arvind.

And ironically he chose to interpret the eastern philosophy, with the result that he reduced the whole thing into a system.

The East has no logical system. All its profound insights transcend logic and thought; they cannot be achieved through thinking. Eastern experiences go beyond the known. the knower and knowledge itself; they all belong to the unknown and the unknowable - what we call mystery. And Arvind applies his western mind to interpret the transmental experiences and insights of the East. He divides them into categories and makes a system out of them, which no other eastern person could have done.

So while Arvind always talks of the unthinkable he uses the instrument of thought and the think able throughout. Consequently his unthinkable is nothing but a bundle of words. If Arvind had the experience of the unthinkable he could not have categorized it, because it defies all categories. One who really knows the unthinkable cannot live with categories and concepts.

Curiously enough, Arvind creates concepts out of things that have never been conceptualized. His concept of the supramental is a case in point. But he goes on fabricating categories and concepts and fitting them into logic and reason. And he does it without any inhibitions.

The other part of your question is relevant in this context. In a sense, no religious thinking subscribes to the concept of evolution.

In this respect, we can divide the religions of the world into two groups. one group believes in the theory of creation with a beginning and an end, and the other believes in an existence that has no beginning and no end. Hinduism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism believe in creation; they believe that God created the universe. The other group of religions like Jainism and Buddhism, deny the theory of creation; according to them, that which is, is beginningless. It was never created.

All those who believe in creation cannot accept the theory of evolution. If they accept it, it would mean God created an incomplete world which developed gradually to its present state. But how can a perfect God create an imperfect world? Evolution means that the world grows gradually, and creation means that the whole world comes into being altogether.

It is significant that originally the word shristhi, meaning creation, belonged to the Hindus, and prakriti, meaning pre-creation, belonged to the Jainas and Buddhists and Sankhyaites. In the course of time, however, they got mixed up. But the Hindus cannot accept the word prakriti, which means that which is is there from the time before creation, that which is uncreated, which is eternal. Creation means something which was not always there and which was created and which can be terminated, The concept of the pre-created, the uncreated, of prakriti, belongs to an altogether different school which does not believe in creation. Sankhyaites, Jainas, and Buddhists don't have the concept of a creator because when nothing is created, the question of a creator does not arise. So God disappeared, he has no place in their philosophies. God is needed only in the form of a creator, and so those who rejected creation also rejected God. God as creator belongs only to those who accept the idea of creation.

Arvind brought with him the idea of evolution from the West. When Arvind was a student in England, Darwin's ideas were sweeping across Europe. Evidently he was very much influenced by them.

After his return to India he studied eastern philosophy, and studied it deeply. I deliberately use the word "studied" to say that he did not know the truth on his own, his knowledge was merely intellectual. Although he possessed a sharp intellect, his direct experience of truth was very dim.

Consequently he produced a crossbreed of eastern mysticism and western rationalism, which is an anomaly. India's psyche is not much concerned with the study of nature, matter and their evolution, it is basically concerned with the understanding of mind and spirit. The meeting of the western thought of evolution with the eastern understanding of the psyche gave rise to a strange idea of psychic evolution, which became Arvind's lifework. Like nature, he thought consciousness evolves too.

Arvind added something new to the idea of evolution which is his own, and for this very reason it is utterly wrong. Very often original ideas are wrong, because they happen to be the finding of a single person. It is true that traditional beliefs, in the course of time, degenerate into fossils, but they have a validity of their own because millions of people go out to find them. This new idea which built Arvind's reputation concerns the descent of divine consciousness.

Down the centuries we have believed that man has to rise and ascend to God; it is always an upward journey, an ascent. Arvind thinks otherwise: he thinks that God will descend and meet man.

In a way this is also like the two sides of a coin. The truth happens to be exactly in the middle.

That truth is that both man and God move towards each other and meet somewhere midway. This meeting always happens somewhere midway, but the old idea emphasized man's efforts - and not without reason. As far as God is concerned, he is always available to man providing man wants to meet him. That much is certain, and therefore God can be left out of this consideration. But it is not certain that man will make a move to meet God. So it mostly depends on man and his journey towards God, his efforts. God's journey towards man can be taken for granted. Too much emphasis on God moving toward man is likely to weaken man's efforts.

Arvind starts from the wrong end when he says that God is going to descend on us. But he has great appeal to people who are not interested in doing anything on their own. They took enthusiastically to Arvind's idea of the descent of the supramental energy and they rushed to Pondicherry. In recent years more Indians have gone to Pondicherry than anywhere else. There, God could be had for a song. They need not move a finger, because God on his own was on his way to them. There could not be a cheaper bargain than this. And when God descends he will descend on one and all; he will not make any distinctions. Many people believe that Arvind alone, sitting in seclusion at Pondicherry, will work for it and divine energy will be avail. able to all, like the river Ganges was available when it was brought to earth by Bhagirath. Arvind is to be another Bhagirath, and at a much higher level. It has put a premium on man's greed and led to a lot of illusions.

I think that is a very wrong idea. It is true God descends, but he descends only on those who ascend to him. A great deal depends on the individual and his efforts. Divine energy descends on those who prepare themselves for it, who deserve it. And there is no reason for God to be collectively available to one and all. In fact, God is always available, but only to those who aspire and strive for him. And it is always the individual, not a collective or a society, who walks the path to God. And he has to go all alone. And if God is going to descend on all, why do you think he will exclude animals, trees and rocks?

The experiment that is in process at Pondicherry is utterly meaningless; there has not been a more meaningless experiment in man's history. It is a waste of effort, but it goes on because it is very comforting to our greed.

In this context, the questioner has remembered Raman who is just the opposite of Arvind. While Arvind is a great scholar, Raman has nothing to do with scholarship. Arvind is very knowledgeable, he is well informed; Raman is utterly unscholarly, you cannot come across a more unscholarly man than him. While Arvind seems to be all-knowing, Raman is preparing for the non-knowing state, he does not seem to know a thing. That is why man's highest potentiality is actualized in Raman, and Arvind has missed it. Arvind remains just knowledgeable; Raman really knows the truth. Raman attained to self-knowledge, not knowledge. So his statements are straight and simple, free from the jargon of scriptures and scholarship. Raman is poor in language and logic, but his richness of experience, of being, is immense; as such he is incomparable.

Raman is not a system-maker like Arvind. His statements are atomic; they are just like sutras, aphorisms. He does not have much to say, and he says only that which he knows. Even his words are not enough to say what he really knows. Raman's whole teaching can be collected on a postcard, not even a full page will be needed. And if you want to make a collection of Arvind's writings, they will fill a whole library. And it is not that Arvind has said all that he wanted to say. He will have to be born again and again to say it all, he had too much to say. This does not mean that he did not bother to attain real knowing because he had already so much to say. No, this was not the difficulty.

Buddha had much to say and he said it. Buddha was like Raman so far as his experience of truth was concerned, and he was like Arvind in general knowledge. Mahavira has said little, he spent most of his time in silence. His statements are few and far between; they are telegraphic. In his statements Mahavira resembles Raman. Digambaras, one of the two Jaina sects, don't have any collection of his teachings, while the shwetambaras have a few scriptures which were compiled five hundred years after Mahavira's death.

Question 12:

The question of being close or distant does not arise. Krishnamurti is exactly like Raman. I compare Arvind with Raman and Buddha for a special reason. In the experience of truth, Krishnamurti is very much like Raman, but he lags behind Arvind in knowledgeability. Of course, he is more articulate and logical than Raman. And there is a great difference between Krishnamurti and Arvind in so far as the use of logic and reason is concerned.

Arvind uses logic to reinforce his arguments; Krishnamurti uses logic to destroy logic; he makes full use of reason in order to lead you beyond reason. But he is not much knowledgeable. That is why I chose Buddha as an example; he compares well with Arvind in knowledge and with Raman in self- knowledge. As far as Krishnamurti is concerned, he is like Raman in transcendental experience, but he is not scholarly like Arvind.

There is yet another difference between Raman and Krishnamurti. While Raman's statements are very brief, Krishnamurti's statements are voluminous. But in spite of their large volume, Krishnamurti's teachings can be condensed in a brief statement. For forty years Krishnamurti has been repeating the same thing over and over again. His statements can be condensed to a postcard.

But because he uses reason in his statements, they grow in volume. Raman is precise and brief; he avoids volume. You can say that the statements of both Krishnamurti and Raman are atomic, but while Krishnamurti embellishes them with arguments, Raman does not. Raman speaks, like the seers of the Upanishads, in aphorisms. The Upanishads just proclaim: the brahman, the supreme is; they don't bother to advance any argument in their support. They make bare statements that, "It is so" and "It is not so." Raman can be compared with the Upanishadic rishis.

Question 13:

According to Raman and people like him, that which is has no beginning, it was never born, it is unborn. The same thing has always been said in another way: that which is will never die, it is deathless, it is immortal. There are hundreds of statements which proclaim the immortality of Brahman, the ultimate, who is without beginning and without end. Only that which is never born can be immortal, that which is beginningless. This is Raman's way of describing the eternal.

Do you know when you were born? You don't. Yes, there are records of your birth which others have kept, and through them that you came to know that you were born on a certain date, month and year. This is just information received from others. Apart from this information you have no way to know that you were born. There is no intrinsic, inbuilt source of information within you which can tell you about it; you have no evidence whatsoever to support the fact of your birth. The truth of your innermost being is eternal, so the question of its birth does not arise. In fact, you were never born; you are as eternal as eternity.

You say you will die someday, but how do you know it? Do you know what death is? Do you have any experience of death? No, you will say you have seen others die, and so you infer that you too will die someday. But suppose we arrange things, and it is quite possible, that a certain person is not allowed to see any other person die. Can he know on his own that he is ever going to die? He cannot. So it is just your conjecture, based on external evidence, that you will die in some future.

There is no internal evidence, no intrinsic source of knowledge within you which can sustain your conjecture that you will die. That is why a strange thing happens, that in spite of so many deaths taking place all around, no one really believes that he is going to die; he believes while others will die he is going to live. Your innermost being knows no birth and no death; it is eternal. You only know that you are.

Raman asks you not to guess, but find out for yourself if there is really birth and death. You have no inner evidence in support of birth and death; the only dependable evidence available within you says, "I am."

I too, say to you there is every evidence that makes you know, "I am." And if you go still deeper you will know, "I am not." Then you will know only a state of "am ness" within you.