Surrender and I will do the Rest

Question 1:

I contradict myself and do it knowingly. Truth is so infinite, so great, that no partial statement can contain it; the opposite has to be included immediately. The whole will always be contradictory, only the part can be consistent - because the whole has to consider the opposite also. The opposite is there. It exists.

Philosophers can be consistent because their understanding is partial. They can be neat and clean, they can afford to be logical. I cannot afford it, because if I try to be consistent, immediately the whole thing becomes untrue. The opposite has to be involved, the opposite has to be absorbed.

For example, when I say: Surrender and I will do the rest, this is one part. And why am I saying it?

I am saying it so that you can surrender totally. If you can feel this and trust this, that the remaining shall be done, your surrender can be complete.

If you have a fear, a distrust, then even after surrender you will have to do something, the surrender cannot be complete. If after surrender you have also to do something, then you have to retain yourself, you have to hold back - surrender cannot be total. And when surrender is not total it is not surrender at all. Surrender can only be total, you cannot surrender in part.

You cannot say: I surrender half - because the half that has been retained will be against the surrender. It can only be retained against it. So surrender can only be total. It is just like a circle, a geometric circle. It cannot be half; you cannot draw a half circle. If you draw it you cannot call it a circle. A circle must be complete. Half, then it is something else, not a circle at all. Surrender can only be total. It is also a circle, a spiritual circle. You surrender from end to end. Nothing is left behind.

To help this, I say: You surrender, and the remaining will be done by me. The emphasis that I shall do - you simply surrender - is to make your surrender total.

But I know that if you have surrendered, there is no need for anything to be done, not even on my part. Surrender itself is the thing, nothing else is needed. The very phenomenon of surrendering is enough. No further help is needed. Everything will be done by surrender itself. Surrendering means you are no more, surrendering means the ego has been dropped.

Surrendering means now the center has been dispersed; you exist but without a center. If there is no center, there is nothing to protect; the walls drop by themselves. If there is no one, your whole structure of defense disappears by and by; it becomes futile. You become an open space.

This open space will do everything, this openness will do everything. God will pass through you unhindered. God can move through you, in and out - there is nobody to create any barrier.

Surrendered, you become open to the divine forces. Everything happens spontaneously after that.

The problem is surrendering. After surrendering, there is no problem. So I am not needed to help you. Nothing is needed. That's why I go on contradicting myself and I say I don't do anything. There is no need! Now, you can look at the whole.

If I say I will not do, I cannot do anything, there is no need - if I say only this, your surrendering will be impossible. You will be afraid - alone, moving into the unknown, nobody to help, nobody to guide, and this man says: I'm not going to do anything - how can you surrender totally? It will be difficult for you.

If I say only that I will do everything without contradicting it, that will not be true, because, really, I am not going to do anything. So what to do now? How to say this whole? There is only one way, to contradict consistently.

The relationship between a guru and a disciple is a very complex phenomenon. In a way very simple, otherwise very complex.

It is simple because the relationship exists only on the part of the disciple. On the part of the master there is no relationship, because the master doesn't exist. He is there no more. He is a nobody. It appears to you that he is. This appearance will persist unless you surrender. Once you surrender, once you become a non-being, suddenly you will see that the master has never been there.

The master is an absence. But the absence can be seen only when you have also become an absence. Only two absences meet.

If you are present, you go on projecting on the master also that he is. It is your projection, because your ego cannot see non-ego. Only the similar can respond to the similar. Your ego can only see egos everywhere. That is a way to protect your own self. Wherever you look, immediately you project an ego. So even the master will look like somebody, some ego.

And you will find ways and means to prove to yourself that he is also an ego. Your rationalizations may be perfectly logical, but I say they are absurd, because you cannot see the phenomenon of non-ego as you are. Surrendered, suddenly you will see that the master is not there.

If you are surrendered right this moment you will see this chair is empty. This man who is talking to you is not there. This man is just an emptiness. But only absent will you be able to see this absence.

Relationship cannot exist on the part of the master. If it exists he is not a master at all - he is still there. He cannot guide you, he can only misguide you. The teaching may be beautiful, but he will misguide you, because whatsoever he does - I say whatsoever unconditionally - will be wrong. It is not a question of this thing being wrong and that thing being right. Whatsoever comes out of the ego is wrong. It may be virtue, it may be non-violence, it may be love - but whatsoever comes out of the ego is wrong. The ego perverts everything. The ego is the greatest perverter.

If the master loves you and the ego is there, his love will become possessive. He will destroy you, he will kill you. The relationship will be poisonous. The ordinary relationship of love will be there. He won't allow you to move to another master. He will fight, he will create barriers so that you cannot move from him - because he depends on you, his ego depends on you.

The master, if with the ego, cannot exist without the followers. The followers are needed to feed.

The greater the crowd, the better he will feel. If everybody leaves him he will simply be dead. Then the ego will be hurt. So so-called masters go on fighting, competing with other so-called masters. It becomes a market. The whole competition of the market comes in.

If the master has an ego, that means he is not really a master - just pretending. Then his compassion will be only in the name compassion. He will be cruel, he will torture you - of course, in such a way that you will feel this torturing is a discipline. He will force you to do things which are painful and unnecessary, but he will enjoy that pain. He will rationalize it. He will say: Fast, because without fasting you cannot reach. And when you fast and you are tortured, he will be happy.

His compassion is just a hidden cruelty. In the name of compassion he is a sadist. Torturing, he will feel happy. Looking at you, seeing that you are sad, tortured, depressed, he will say: VAIRAGYA has been won - you have become nonattached.

The more you are sad, the happier he will be. If he sees a smile on your face, he will condemn it immediately. If he feels you are blissful, immediately he will find that something has gone wrong, because how can you be blissful in this world, in this wrong world? How can you be happy? Life is misery. How can you be ecstatic? Then you must be enjoying the senses somewhere, somehow. If you look young and fresh and alive, then you are too much attached to the body.

He will start destroying your body. He is a sadist and a very subtle sadist, more subtle than a Hitler, or Mussolini - because they kill immediately, their murdering is simple. This man will also murder you, but in installments - slowly, slowly. Go around this country: you will find many who have been murdering others.

And remember: he can kill you only if he is also suicidal, otherwise not. If he enjoys good food, he cannot force fasting on you - impossible. If he lives in a beautiful house, he cannot tell you to live in a hut, in a cottage.

So this is absolutely logical: if he wants to destroy you, he will have to destroy himself. The more he tortures himself, the more he gets control to torture you. He will fast, he will destroy his body. And the more he destroys his body, the more he has got you around your neck. Now he can crush you completely and crush you with a good conscience.

This is the phenomenon. With a wrong master, with an egoistic master, whatsoever happens goes wrong; his discipline becomes a sadism, his own life becomes masochistic, his whole being becomes destructive. Ego IS destructive.

Then relationship can exist. With a wrong master relationship can exist, because on the part of the master also there is ego, and the ego wants to relate. The ego cannot exist without relating.

But if there is a real master, relationship exists only on the part of the disciple. You love him. You obey him. He is not concerned with your obedience. He is not concerned with your love. That doesn't mean that he doesn't care. He cares infinitely, but there is no one who can be related. His care is natural - just as water flows downward his care flows towards you. Even if you are not there, his care goes on flowing.

Whatsoever I am here with you, when you are not here, I am the same, my being goes on flowing in the same way. When nobody is there, I remain the same. When you are there, I am the same. If I change, then the ego is there, because the ego exists in relationship. When you come there, the ego comes in, becomes active and alive. When you go, the ego becomes lazy, falls asleep. Then there is a change.

With you or without you my emptiness remains the same. The care goes on flowing. The love goes on flowing. There is no lover. I cannot choose to love or not to love. If I can choose, then I am there.

Relationship exists on your part, and it will continue to exist until you surrender.

So surrender is the greatest and deepest relationship - and the end of relationship also. If you surrender, you have come to the deepest relationship that is possible. Beyond that, relationship disappears. Surrendered, you are no more, and the master has never been there.

Two empty spaces cannot be two. You cannot draw a line between two empty spaces. You cannot make boundaries around emptiness. Two emptinesses become one, and relationship cannot exist - because for relationship, two are needed.

So at the last moment of surrender - try to understand this - at the LAST moment of surrender, the greatest relationship that is possible exists. The deepest, the most intimate relationship exists - of course, on your part. The next moment, when you have surrendered, everything has disappeared.

Now there is neither master nor disciple. And now the master and disciple both can laugh. They can have a belly laugh. They can have an uproarious laugh about the whole nonsense that was there just a moment before.

The effort to help, the effort to get the help, the surrender, the constant struggle of the ego not to surrender, all the explanations, all the teachings - the whole thing becomes absurd. Your many, many lives become just like dreams. And now you can laugh, because you could have awakened any moment. You could have become enlightened, you could have come out of your dreaming at any moment in any life.

Once you attain this enlightenment...because surrender is one aspect, enlightenment is the other side of the coin. It is the same door. When you enter, on the door is written: Surrender. When you have entered and you look back, on the door is written: Enlightenment. It is the same door! From one side it is the entrance; from another side it is the exit. That's why there is so much insistence on surrender - SAMARPAN.

The relationship is very complex, because only one exists. The other relater is not there. So all the games with a master are really your games. YOU are playing: it is a game of patience. The other is simply watching you play. You change tactics, you try this way and that way. You try in many ways, but unnecessarily, because the only effort which will be helpful is surrender. All else is just to prepare you to come to a moment of realization when you see the whole absurdity of all effort and simply drop.

Many techniques are used. Those techniques are not really going to help. They are only going to help you to realize that you have to surrender. They will simply prove the futility of all effort.

But you play a game. You go on changing your tactics. The ego employs every type of strategy - for the ego it is a life-and-death problem. It will deceive you, it will deceive you continuously. And the ego is a perfect rationalist. When it deceives it gives you reasons. You cannot argue with it. And if you try to argue you will be defeated.

Hence, the supremacy of trust and faith. Only a faithful one can surrender. And only a faithful one can reach to the very peak of existence, to the climax of bliss.

In the west one of the deepest psychologists of this century was Abraham Maslow. His whole life he worked around the phenomenon of peak experience. His whole life he devoted to the phenomenon of certain experiences which he called the peak, the ultimate, the final - the enlightenment of Buddha, or the luminous unconsciousness of Ramakrishna, or the ecstasy of Meera, Boehme, Eckhart - the peak, the highest that can happen to human consciousness.

Trying to probe into this phenomenon, Maslow became aware that there are two types of people.

One he calls peakers; the other he calls non-peakers. Peakers are those who are ready and open and receptive; non-peakers are those who are convinced that no peak experience is possible.

In the non-peakers he includes scientists, rationalists, logicians, materialists, businessmen, politicians - practical types, so-called practical people, for whom the end is meaningless, they are means-oriented. These people create walls around them, and because of those walls they cannot have any ecstasy. When they cannot have any ecstasy, their original standpoint is confirmed. Then they create more walls, and that becomes a vicious circle.

There are peakers - poets, dancers, musicians, madmen, impractical adventurers. These are peakers. They don't bother, they don't argue with their mind. They simply allow things to happen.

And then even in ordinary life, sometimes certain peaks are achieved.

I have heard about one psychoanalyst who was being analyzed by another psychoanalyst. This first psychoanalyst who was being analyzed went for a holiday. From the holiday spot he telegrammed the other, saying: I am feeling very happy - why?

This type of person cannot accept even happiness. They will ask: Why? Why am I feeling happy?

There must be something wrong. They have a notion that happiness is not possible. The great psychologist, Freud, says that happiness is impossible for human beings. He says the very structure of the human mind is such that happiness is not possible, at the most you can be tolerably unhappy.

If this is the attitude - and Freud has convinced himself, he has fortified himself with all types of arguments - if this is the concept, the notion, the idea, that happiness is impossible, then you are closed. Then happiness will not be possible for you. And when it is not possible, your original concept is strengthened, that you were right. Then there is less possibility for happiness. Then your original concept is strengthened still more, and there is even less possibility. Finally, a moment will come when you say that unhappiness is the only possibility.

A disciple should be a peaker; and the greatest openness comes with surrender. But what should a peaker have? How should he structure his mind so he is open? Less reason, more trust; less practicalness, more adventure; less prose, more poetry. Be illogical; otherwise happiness is not for you.

Logic is the enemy. Logic will prove that life is misery. Logic will prove that there is no meaning.

Logic will prove that there is no god. Logic will prove that there is no possibility of any ecstasy. Logic will prove that life is just an accident, and in this accident there is no possibility. Between birth and death, if you can at the most manage somehow to exist, that's enough.

Logic is suicidal. If you go with it, finally it will give you the key to get out of life. Finally it will say that suicide is the most logical step to be taken, because life is meaningless. What are you doing here?

Repeating the same routine? In the morning getting out of bed - unnecessarily, because you have been getting up every day and nothing has happened. So why get up today again? And then taking your breakfast - you have been taking it your whole life, and nothing has happened out of it. Then reading your newspaper, going to the office, coming back again, and doing the same nonsensical things! And then eating your food, then going to sleep, then the morning again...a repetitious circle, leading nowhere, moving in a rut. If you are really logical, your mind will say: Commit suicide! Why prolong this whole nonsense?

Logic leads to suicide; faith leads to supreme life. And faith is illogical - it doesn't ask, it doesn't argue, it simply enters into the unknown, it tries to experience. Experience is the only argument for a man who has faith. He will try to taste it, he will try to experience it. Without experiencing he will not say anything. He will not decide, he will remain open.

By one step, then another step, then another, faith leads to surrender - because the more you try with faith, the more you know, the more you experience. Your life becomes intense. Every step says to you: Go beyond it, much more is hidden beyond. Beyond becomes the goal. Transcend everything and go beyond. And life becomes an adventure, a continuous discovery of the unknown.

Then more trust is created.

When every step taken into the unknown gives you a blissful glimpse, when every step taken into madness gives you a higher form of ecstasy, when every step taken into the unknown helps you realize that life doesn't consist of the mind, it is a total organic phenomenon, your whole being is needed and called - then by and by your inner being becomes convinced.

And it is not a logical conviction. It is your experience, it is experiential or you can say it is existential, not intellectual - it is total. Then a moment comes when you can surrender.

Surrender is the greatest gamble. Surrender means putting the mind aside completely. Surrender means going mad. I say surrender means going mad, because all those who live in their logic and in their minds will think you have gone mad. To me it is not madness. To me madness, this type of madness, is the only courageous way of life. To me this madness is the deepest jump. To me this madness is all that a man is called to be. But to the logicians, your trust will look like madness.

This is one of the phenomena that has to be penetrated very deeply. All the great religions are born around some madman. A Jesus is a madman, perfectly insane. A Buddha is a madman. But the people who gather around are not all mad. Many come who are not peakers, who are intellectuals.

They are attracted to Jesus and to Buddha also. The very being of Buddha is so magnetic now, filled with so much infinite energy, that they are attracted. Their mind reasons that something has been attained by this man, but they are not peakers; they are non-peakers.

Intellectually they become attracted. The very phenomenon of a Buddha and his being becomes a logical argument to them. They listen to Buddha, they rationalize his sayings, they create metaphysics around them, then a religion is born. At the base is a madman, but in the structure are logicians. They are the contradictory people, absolutely contradictory, opposite to Buddha. They create the organization. They create Buddhism and the philosophies.

Jesus is a madman, Saint Paul is not. He is a perfect logician. The church is created by Saint Paul, not by Jesus. The whole of Christianity is created by Saint Paul, not by Jesus. And this is one of the dangerous things that has been happening. There is no way to prevent it. It is in the nature of things.

If Jesus is born now, the church will deny him immediately. The church will not allow any madmen.

Eckhart or Boehme, the church will deny them - they are madmen. They will be expelled from the organization. They will not be allowed because they can prove destructive. They say such things, that if people listen to them and believe in them, they will destroy the whole structure, the whole organization.

Religion is born, at the base, madman, and then taken over by the logicians who are the opposite.

They create all organizations. Peakers give birth, and then the child is adopted by the non-peakers.

So every religion at its birth source is beautiful - but never again. Then it becomes ugly. Then, really, it becomes anti-religious.

Whatsoever I am saying to you, you are fortunate - you are at the source. That's why I say you are fortunate. And it happens only after thousands of years that you are near the source.

It will not be so again! Even with my ideas, it will not be so again. Sooner or later, the logician will enter, the non-peaker will come. They are bound to come - they are already on the way. They will systematize everything, they will destroy everything. And then the opportunity will be missed. Then it will be a dead thing. Right now, it is alive, and you are near the source. That's why I say you are fortunate.

In your mind also, both the possibilities are there - the peaker and the non-peaker. If you allow your peaker, then you will surrender. If you allow your non-peaker, then you will listen to me, argue about it, rationalize about it, philosophize about it. Then either you are convinced by me, or not convinced by me. If you are convinced, you hang around me. If you are not convinced, you leave. But in both the cases you miss. Whether you hang around me or leave is irrelevant.

If you are trying to be convinced intellectually, you have missed. This can be done when I am dead.

Right now, something else is possible and can be done - and that is: allow your peaker, allow your trusting soul to adventure. Don't make it a reasoning within you. Make it a jump.

The source happens rarely, and very few people can take the advantage. This has always been so; this will be always so. Around Jesus there were only a few people; around Buddha only a few people. And then for centuries they weep and they cry.

When Buddha was dying, many were crying and weeping. Only a few were blissfully sitting around - only a few. Those were the peakers who were sitting blissfully; they had become one with the source. They had become one with the Buddha; the disciple and the master had disappeared long before and now there is going to be no death.

Only a few - a Mahakashyap, a Sariputta, were sitting silently, enjoying. Even Ananda, Buddha's chief disciple, was crying and weeping. Buddha opened his eyes and said: Why are you weeping, Ananda?

Ananda said: For many, many years I was with you and I missed the chance, and now you will be no more. What will happen to me now? You were here and I couldn't attain. Now you will not be here.

What will happen to me? Now how many lives will I have to wander?

Even if the source is available to you, you can miss. You can miss by no-surrendering. Surrender, and the remaining I will do. Then I will be smiling continuously.

Question 2:

It is relevant, because to speak is such a torture and such a useless activity. It has to be done because there is no other way to bring you towards the silence that exists in me. You won't listen to it; you can listen only to words.

So I am smiling when I start talking, but while I am talking it is difficult to smile. It is such a torture and such a futile effort to say something which cannot be said, to talk about something which cannot be talked about, to go on continuously pointing with the fingers to the moon which cannot be fingered.

But there is no other way, so I have to continue it. By and by, you will become able to listen to the nonverbal, to the wordless. By and by, you will become able to listen when I am not talking - then there will be no need...then I will be smiling continuously.

So when I finish, I smile again - the torture is no more.

Enough for today.