Existence Is One

It is the eternal law of existence that the end is to be found in the beginning. The end is where the beginning is. In accordance with this eternal law, the Ishavasya ends in the sutra where it began.

There is no other alternative but this. All journeys are circular - the first step is also the last step.

Those who understand this law - that the first step is also the last - are saved from the useless turmoil and conflict of emotions of the mind; they are saved from those futile worries and anxieties of life. We attain to the place from where we began. The first station of our journey is also the last.

Therefore we can travel in between very joyfully, because there is no other way. We will never arrive at a place where we were not. No matter how great the efforts we may make, we cannot reach where we were not.

Let us understand it in this way: we can only be what we already are. There is no other alternative.

What is hidden in us will be revealed, and that which is revealed will again be concealed. The seed will grow into the tree, and the tree will again become seeds. This is the eternal law of life. The anxieties and worries of those who grasp this law vanish completely. Their threefold mental agonies become calm and silenced. Then there remains no cause for happiness - there is no cause to be unhappy when we are traveling to our destination, and there is no cause to be happy because we do not get anything at all which was not with us from the start. To give an indication, a hint, of this great law, the Ishavasya ends with that sutra from which it began.

The journeys we have made in between these two ends are various separate doors to enable us to understand this sutra, to arrive at this sutra. Each sutra was a hint to stir our remembering of that great ocean, and each shore and each holy place an invitation, a call, to set our ship sailing. If you had kept this sutra in mind, you might have observed that this sutra was hidden deep in the meaning of all the sutras. That is why it was announced in the beginning and now announces the end. I told you its meaning on the very first day. Today I shall explain its inner meaning - its essence.

You may ask, "What is the difference between meaning and essence?" Meaning is an apparent, manifest, thing, while essence is a hidden one. Meaning is the outer body, essence is the inner soul.

The meaning can also be understood by the intellect, but the essence can only be grasped by the heart. Generally, the meaning is explained in the beginning and not the essence. And now, at this stage, we have looked through many doors into the temple for which this sutra is meant. Not only have we come to understand it intellectually, but we have tried to grasp its meaning by going into meditation also.

This is a unique happening. Many commentaries have been made on this Upanishad, but this is the first occasion on this earth when the commentary was accompanied by meditation. So a deep search of its manifest meaning and of its inner meaning was made simultaneously. The words of the Upanishad have been explained before, but this is the first occasion on which an active effort has been made to jump into its inner meaning - its soul. Whatever I have been telling you was with the purpose of making a diving board for you: the purpose was the jumping. This is why we entered into meditation at the end of each sutra, so that you might experience its significance by taking a jump into it.

So now I can tell you its inner meaning. You have not yet considered the meaning of these words enough; but you have done something else - you have reached silence, calm. Those who understand the words are able to know the meaning, but only those who know silence are able to know its inner meaning, its essence. If you have achieved even a little taste of silence, you will be able to understand the inner meaning into which I am about to enter.

The first thing I shall tell you about the inner meaning of this sutra is that it has declared that life is illogical. This is not said anywhere in so many words in this sutra, there is only a hint about it. Now I shall tell you what is unsaid, what is only hinted at. Wittgenstein has written a book, Tractatus, which is perhaps the most important book of this century. In it he said, "That which cannot be said must not be said: it should be left unsaid." He says further, "That which cannot be said can be shown." His meaning is that a hint, an indication, can be given towards that which cannot be said. That which cannot be said and which should not be said is the inner meaning of this sutra. What I am doing now is only giving you some indications towards it.

The first indication: Life is irrational, so those who try to seek out what life is will be wandering around death. Such people can never discover the secret of life. How do you get an indication of the irrational from this sutra? It says, "The perfect is taken from the perfect." The first irrationality is in the question, "How can the perfect emerge from the perfect?" Since there is no extra space outside the perfect, where can the perfect go?" Purna means the absolute, beyond which there is nothing else at all; if there is anything else, then the perfect will be that much imperfect. There is never anything outside the perfect, not even space, so how can anything come out of the perfect? And suppose it does come out, where will it go? There is no way out. But this sutra affirms that the perfect is taken from the perfect.

Not only this, but it adds another irrationality: "After the perfect is taken from the perfect, the remainder is perfect." If anyone looks at this statement from a logical point of view, he will declare it to be the statement of a madman. And if someone examines it from a mathematical point of view, it will be found totally incorrect. He will think it is written by someone who is not in his senses. This will be the opinion of anyone who examines it from the logical or mathematical points of view. But those who examine and think in this way will make the mistake which was once made in a garden.

A certain gardener invited his friend to see the beautiful roses which had flowered in his garden. His friend was a goldsmith, and he went there with his touchstone. On seeing the roses he said to his friend, "I do not believe your statement simply by seeing the roses. You cannot deceive me, I am not a child. I test gold, so to test roses is child's play. I shall test them."

The gardener asked, "How will you test the flowers?"

His friend replied, "I have brought my touchstone with me."

The gardener became nervous and thought, "I made a mistake in inviting this man!"

But by this time the goldsmith had plucked a flower and tested it by rubbing it on the touchstone.

He threw the flower on the ground and said, "The touchstone has shown that there is nothing in this flower; it is fake."

The sage of this sutra will feel the same as the gardener must have felt if someone tries to understand this sutra from the logical point of view. Flowers are not tested on the touchstone for gold, and if someone tries to do so, the flowers are not at fault; it merely shows the man's foolishness.

Of all the sutras of the Ishavasya, this especially has the flavor of self-realization. This cannot be tested by the touchstone of logic, and it is fully implied in the sutra that it should not be so tested. It is telling us that it is going to say something which is irrational, which is beyond logic, which cannot happen and yet happens, which should not happen and yet happens, which has no basis for its happening, which has no way of being proved - and yet it happens, and yet it is!

Life is irrational: what does this statement mean? It means that those who try to find out the meaning, the secret of life from the point of view of mathematics, logic, justice, conventions, rules and regulations, will remain without knowing it.

The goldsmith tested the flower on a touchstone. If you take that flower to a science laboratory and say, "This is a very beautiful flower," then the scientist too will dissect its every part and say, "Where is the beauty here?" He will extract its elements one by one and scatter them. Each chemical will be separated and then he will ask, "Where is the beauty?" It has juice, minerals, chemicals, and all such things, but there is no beauty in it anywhere. If beauty is not found in the laboratory of a scientist, it is not the fault of the flower; nor is it the fault of the scientist, because his laboratory is not there to discover beauty. The dimension in which beauty may be sought and measured is altogether different.

So those who think about life from a mathematical point of view can never measure it, because life is basically a secret. All our knowledge, however great it may be, is founded in ignorance; it simply hints at what remains to be known. And as we come to know more and more, we realize the depth of our ignorance. We are not able to unfold life, and if we try, we become more and more entangled.

All our efforts to unfold it are like those in a story by Aesop which I have heard. It tells how a centipede was walking along a road. A rabbit saw it and was much perplexed. The rabbit may perhaps have been instructed in a school of logic. Its perplexity was this: which of its hundred feet did the centipede raise first? And which second? Which third? and so forth. How could it remember the order of its one hundred feet? Would it not stumble while walking? It must surely be confused.

The rabbit asked the centipede to stop and answer its question. It said, "I am a student of logic and I am in great perplexity watching you. We walk on four feet so it is easy to remember the order of raising them while walking. But how do you remember the order of your one hundred feet?"

The centipede replied, "I have been walking very easily up to now; I have never found it necessary to remember the order, and I have never thought that way up to now. But as you now ask me, I shall think about it and solve your problem."

The rabbit sat there watching. The centipede tried to raise its feet but staggered and fell down.

It was now in difficulty. With a sorrowful heart it said to the rabbit, "Friend, your logic has put me in great difficulty. Please keep your logic to yourself, and do not ask your question to any other centipede which happens to pass you on the road. We live in great comfort and happiness. Our feet have never given us any difficulty - they never raised this question and never argued about it. We have never thought about which foot is lifted first and which second. We do not know. This much is certain: up to now I have been able to walk. Only now, because of you, do I find myself in difficulty!"

Man's greatest dilemma is that he is in the predicament of that centipede. Man does not need a rabbit to ask the question; he raises the question himself and creates doubt and gets himself entangled.

He asks himself the questions and provides his own answers. The questions are definitely wrong, so the answers become even more incorrect and misleading. Each answer gives rise to a new question. These questions and answers multiply, a great mess is created, and man becomes more and more perplexed until a moment comes when he is so perplexed that he does not know what is what. All of us are in this predicament.

Someone said to Saint Augustine, "I am much troubled by one question, and it would put my mind at rest if you would kindly answer it for me. I have heard you are a learned person."

Saint Augustine said, "You might have heard that, but now that you tell me, I am in difficulty."

The man said, "What difficulty can you be in? Difficulties are for ignorant people like me."

Then Saint Augustine explained, "I am in difficulty ever since I first heard that I am a learned person, because now I am trying to find out where this knowledge is within me but I am having no success in finding it. In error, in ignorance, I believed in it in the beginning. But now it is difficult for me to believe so. And yet, let me know your question. You have come a great distance, so ask your question. Even if I am unable to answer it, you will at least be relieved that the question has been asked. In case I am able to answer your question though, do you think questions are correctly answered by someone giving answers? But ask your question."

The man asked, "What is time?"

Saint Augustine said, "You have asked the question I was afraid you might ask. There are certain questions to which we assume we know the answers, but when they are asked, we are lost for an answer. I definitely know what time is, but when you ask the question I am in difficulty."

Until somebody asks you this question, you know what time is very well. You catch the train in time, you catch the bus in time, you go to the office in time and return home in time. So you know very well what time is. But no sooner does someone ask you the question than you are in the predicament of the centipede. You know dates, you have watches, calendars are hanging on the wall, and yet no one so far has been able to give a correct answer to that question. And the answers that have been given are like groping in the dark - nothing is established.

If someone asks you, "What is the soul?" you cannot answer, because as yet you do not know, even though it has been with you from the day you were born. Not only that, those who know say it was there before you were born. There is no difficulty about it as long as no one asks about it.

If someone asks, "What is love?" then the same difficulty arises. Everybody makes love, and even if they do not make love, they act as if they do. What a great number of love-stories there are! All stories are love-stories, and they are about love because man has not yet been able to make real love so he deceives his mind by writing stories about it. All poems are love-poems, and the person who has no love in his life begins to write love-poems. To write a poem is very easy, to make love is very arduous. Poems can be composed by rhyming lines, but love can only be made by tearing out all the lines. Poems have their own meters and rules, love is totally without meters or rules. Poems can be learned and can be composed. There is no way, no trick, to either learn or to make love. We constantly talk about love, and yet if someone asks us, "What is love?" then we are perplexed.

G.E. Moore is a great thinker, perhaps the greatest of this century. By his logical thinking he has made the greatest impression on man's mind during the past fifty years. He has written a book called Principia Ethica - principles of ethics. He has taken great pains in writing this book, working diligently on just one question: What is good? And he has labored so hard to prepare this monumental work that I don't think anyone else in the history of mankind has ever worked so hard on one book. It was prepared after the hard labor of years in which every word was weighed and written after a great deal of thinking. This logician of Oxford university, this greatest thinker, in his final conclusion has said that good is indefinable. In the end, he says that to define good is like defining the color yellow.

If someone asks me, "What is yellow?" what shall I say? I can only say, "Yellow is yellow." What else can I say? But is this its definition? Everyone knows that the color yellow is yellow. What would you do? You might pluck a yellow flower and show it, saying, "This is yellow - this is a yellow flower."

But Moore objects and says, it is not the color yellow." It is like a yellow-painted wall. A yellow wall is not the color yellow. There is a yellow piece of cloth - but it is a yellow-painted piece of cloth, it is not the color yellow. Our question is, "What is this yellowness which is seen in a yellow flower, a yellow wall or a yellow piece of cloth?" Now what would you say? You might say, "Here it is, don't babble further." Moore also says this. After doing so much hard work on this subject, he says, "At the most we can say that this is yellowness." We can give an indication, a hint only; we cannot give its definition. When you cannot define the color yellow, would you dare to define God? If someone goes to Moore and asks... but the poor fellow is no more now! If he were alive, I think I would ask him - or if I happen to meet him in another life I shall ask him, "Can God be defined when you are not even able to define what the color yellow is?"

Even the most insignificant facts of life are indefinable; so when I say life is irrational, I mean it is indefinable. You can live life, but you cannot define it, and if you ever try to define it you will make the same mistake made by the sage of this sutra. He says, "The perfect comes out of the perfect, and the remainder is perfect."

This is a sort of a puzzle, a koan like those which the Zen master Rinzai used to create. These masters took great pleasure in devising koans, because hints could be given through them. When someone went to them in search of truth, they would say, "Look for that afterwards - right now I am in a bit of difficulty, and would like you to solve my problem first."

The seeker would ask, "What is your problem?" The man who has come in search of truth forgets that, "I myself have come in search of truth, how can I solve another's problem?"

When Rinzai said, "Ask your question afterwards, solve my problem first," the man would at once ask, "What is your problem?"

The person who comes to be a pupil tries to be the teacher. He forgets he has come to learn. He should say, "I have come to learn from you. How can I solve your problem? I am in difficulty myself."

But Rinzai has written, "I have played this trick with thousands of people and every time the person said, 'What is your problem? Tell me.'"

Rinzai created such problems as cannot be solved. In actual fact problems are such that they cannot be solved. No problem will be solved, because it is not manmade. It is existential, it is there in existence. If it is manmade we can solve it. Riddles are manmade so we can solve them.

Children's arithmetic books have questions on one side of the page and answers on the other. No such trick is possible in life. We cannot turn a page in life to find the answer to one of life's problems.

No copy of anybody's life can be useful. Who would you imitate? And how? There is absolutely no way to turn the page of life and find the answers to your problems. There are problems only, no answers at all.

Rinzai kept one particular problem ready. He used to say, "Listen, if you solve my problem, I will solve yours." The questioner felt pleased that there was a person who would solve his problem, provided he solved the other's first. Rinzai would say, "My difficulty is that I kept a goose's egg in a bottle. The young one hatched out of the egg and began to grow. I used to feed it through the mouth of the bottle. Now I want to get it out, but it has grown so much that the neck of the bottle is too narrow for it; but I do not want to break the bottle as it is very valuable. Now show me the way. The goose is trapped in the bottle, and the neck of the bottle is too narrow for it to come out. So don't say, 'Bring it out through the mouth of the bottle.' We have already tried that. If it remains there any longer it is sure to die - and you will be responsible for that!"

On hearing this most of the questioners used to become very nervous. They would say, "This is not possible. What are you telling us?" But in the event that a person said, "I shall try, I am thinking of a way out," then Rinzai would say, "Go to the adjoining room and meditate upon it. Don't take much time, because the goose's life is in danger. Meditate quickly and deeply because the goose may die at any moment." There was another exit to that adjoining room, and when Rinzai opened the door after half an hour, he always found that the questioner had run away. Then Rinzai would return and tell his friends, "The bottle is empty, the goose is out!"

Only once he got a reply from a man, but that man had not come to ask anything of Rinzai. One morning he came and sat near Rinzai. Rinzai said, "Do you want to ask me anything?"

The man replied, "Do you want to show me anything? I do not want to ask anything. If someone is eager to show something, let him show it!"

Rinzai was taken aback by the reply and thought, "This man is dangerous. He will either kill the goose or break the bottle!" But now there was no way out. Because it had become a longstanding practice, Rinzai could not help asking the man his riddle. He said, "No, I have nothing to show. In fact, I myself am in difficulty." The stranger asked Rinzai to tell him his difficulty. So Rinzai told him.

When he had finished, the man got up and caught hold of Rinzai by the neck. Rinzai protested, "The goose is not within me, it is in the bottle."

But the man said, "I am just bringing the goose out," and asked Rinzai to say, "The goose is out of the bottle!"

Rinzai said, "Yes, it is out!"

Life is not a riddle, and those who try to make it so get into difficulty. Life is not a problem; those who make it a problem have to seek its answer, and all the answers only puzzle them more and more.

Life is an open mystery - absolutely open in front of our eyes and all around us. It is not hidden anywhere, it is not behind any curtain, and yet it is a mystery.

There is a difference between a mystery and a riddle. A riddle means that which is not open but can be opened. The mystery means that which is already open and is still not open; that which, though open, is still so profound that in spite of your innumerable lives' journeys you will find that there is always something which remains to be known. "The whole comes out of the whole, and yet the whole remains, and when the whole is absorbed in the whole, it remains as much as it was before."

This sutra hints at the fact that he who agrees with it can enter the mystery. And he who disagrees with it, says it is not possible, will remain outside the door. He cannot enter. Life is a mystery; it is beyond logic and rationality.

Rules of logic have been established by man's intellect. They are not written anywhere in nature.

Nature does not supply the rules of logic. They are manmade and temporary, though we forget that they are so. All our rules are like this, like the rules of games. For example, in a game of chess there are knights and castles and so on. There are rules governing their moves, and the players play the game with great seriousness. The fact is, people do not seem as serious in life as they do when they are playing chess. If a quarrel arises between the players, there are occasions when they will fight each other, swords in hand. The chessmen are all made of wood, yet players forget and behave like children. There is actually no knight, no castle, no king; the whole game is a make-believe!

All the rules of logic in life are like the rules of chess - they are all make-believe. There are no rules which have been given by nature or life. All have been thrust upon us by ourselves. Our rules are like traffic laws. In India people keep to the left, in America they keep to the right. If you break this law either in India or in America you will be taken to a police station. People are very strange. But one thing is certain: you have to drive either on the left or on the right, otherwise there will be chaos on the road. And in driving on the left, gradually we begin to think that there is some ultimate, some fundamental principle in it. There is nothing of the sort. It is merely a manmade arrangement.

All our rules of logic are devices, necessary to regulate our lives; but by and by we become so trapped by them that we try to apply them to the whole mystery of life. We try to ensure that our life follows them. A person becomes crazy when he makes his life follow his own rules. This is the main characteristic of a madman. I call a man healthy when he conducts himself according to the mystery of life, and I call a man mad when he tries to thrust his own rules upon his life. That is when the difficulty enters his life; and we have piled the rules up around our lives.

It will be easy to understand this sutra if we understand one or two rules of logic. One of the basic rules of logic is that A is A and cannot be B. It is okay, absolutely right, but there is nothing in life which will not change into something different. There is nothing in life which will not change into its opposite. Everything in life is fluid, all things change. Night changes into day and day into night.

Childhood changes into youth and youth changes into old age. Life changes into death. Sometimes poison changes into nectar. All medicines are poison, but they are nectar for the sick. There is fluidity in life, but rigidity in rules because they are not living.

There are so many people sitting in this hall. Suppose I leave, return after an hour, and I expect you to be sitting in the same places and in the same positions in which I left you; then either I am crazy or you are. If I find you as you were when I left, then you are! There would certainly be some change, otherwise dead bodies must be sitting here. Living people would certainly have changed places and positions.

A dilemma rather like this situation once occurred in a certain town. One logician - and it is difficult to keep account of the dilemmas of logicians - went to a barber's shop early in the morning for his haircut. He got his hair cut. The charge was fifty paise, and the logician gave the barber one rupee.

Having no change, the barber requested him to come back the next day for his change. "How can I be sure that this man will not change his premises or his profession before tomorrow?" thought the logician.

Generally logicians demand proofs. He argued with himself, "Suppose this man changes his business tomorrow? Suppose he closes his barber's shop, and opens a sweet shop instead? People will laugh at me if I say this man cut my hair. They will say, 'But he is a sweet seller!' So I have to devise some trick so that he cannot fool me."

He thought long, then he saw a buffalo sitting opposite the barber's shop. He thought, "This is perfect! It is very difficult to move a buffalo. It is a calm and settled animal - just like the rules of logic! It sits resolutely on the road, ignoring all the traffic rules. The barber could never persuade it to move. How could a barber persuade it when even a logician would fail to do so?"

He went away, having established positively that the buffalo was sitting opposite the shop. The next day he came back and saw the buffalo sitting there. Looking opposite, he saw that the mischief he had suspected was already done. There opposite the buffalo was a sweet shop. He ran in, grabbed the sweet seller by the neck and said, "I had already suspected this yesterday, so I devised a plan to confound your trickery. This is too much! You have changed your whole business to save a few paise!" The poor logician did not know that buffaloes do not follow the rules of logic. It is not a fixed, stationary animal; during the night it had moved and sat opposite the sweet seller's shop.

Rules of logic are lifeless. Life is a living current, a flow. Those who value the rules of logic highly and try to live accordingly end up holding dead things in their hands, but those who break away from the network of logic and jump into life are able to know the mystery of life. That is why the sutra says to break all the nets of logic. I am telling you about the hint, the indication within this sutra, not about its actual words. I explained its meaning to you on the first day. This is its inner meaning. Break down all rules of logic, because if you follow them it will be difficult for you to enter life.

Plato was a very great logician who lived in Greece twenty-five hundred years ago. He should be called the father of logic. He had a very famous academy where he taught logic to his students. A wandering mystic named Diogenes once went to this academy. He was a mischievous and playful mystic; there have been very few people like him. Like Mahavira, he had even discarded his clothes.

When he arrived Plato was conducting a class, explaining the principles of logic. Plato is known in our country as Afalatoon. Hence, if somebody harasses people with arguments and rules of logic he is taunted by the name of Afalatoon. Plato was such a renowned logician that if someone began to argue logically, even in a small village, people would say, "He is a big Afalatoon," even though they did not know who Afalatoon was.

Diogenes went to the academy where Plato was teaching. At that moment a student got up and asked Plato to define man. Plato said, "Man is a two-legged animal without feathers." Standing behind the teacher, Diogenes was listening, and he laughed loudly on hearing this definition. Plato looked around, and asked him, "Why are you laughing?"

He replied, "I am just going to find the answer to this definition." He went out, caught a chicken, a cock, and plucked all its feathers. He brought the cock into the class and said, "Here is your definition of man. It has no feathers, and has two legs." Then he asked Plato to come up with another definition, "And when you do, please let me know, and I will bring you another answer!"

It is said that Plato never offered another definition. He knew Diogenes was a troublesome man. He himself had seen how he plucked the chicken and brought it to him, and he thought, "Who knows what he will do next?" Diogenes went to the academy many times to find out if Plato had made another definition. At last Plato became nervous and said, "Friend, excuse me, I made a mistake in defining man in this way. How long are you going to harass me?"

Diogenes replied, "I wanted to hear you admit your mistake. Why talk about man? Even a piece of stone cannot be defined. Life is indefinable, no definition is possible of anything. I wanted you to admit your mistake. Now I will go away. I was bothered by your definition."

The rules of logic are fixed, while life is flowing. One wave changes into another wave. While you are defining a thing, something else is happening to it in the meantime. Before you finish calling a person angry, he has begun to ask your forgiveness. Then what will you do? The fact is that the anger may very well have disappeared before you finish saying that this man is angry - what lasts in this life? - so your definition will be incorrect.

Definitions are always of the past, while life is always of the present. Life is constantly changing, everything is changing every moment, but definitions remain fixed, remain established. There is no growth, no change in them. They are like our photographs. Suppose someone takes my photograph; now it will remain fixed and static, while I am becoming older every moment. Life is like a living person; definitions are rigid and lifeless. This sutra says there is no rationality, no logic, about life.

Life is a mystery.

There was a Christian mystic called Tertullian. Someone asked him, "Why do you believe in God?

What is the reason for your belief?"

He said, "You want to know the reason? When I looked into life, I found that there is no reason for anything. Then I thought, 'Now there is no harm in believing in God. When the whole of life itself is without reason, God can also be believed in without reason.' And if you don't believe in God and yet ask me the question, I will tell you, I believe in God because he is totally absurd" - he used the word absurd... I think it is the right word - "because I examined all the rules, analyzed them, and found them incorrect. I examined all logical reasoning and found it false. All the definitions I tested proved wrong. Whatever things I considered right intellectually, in the end proved to be wrong. Now I have abandoned the help of intellect and reasoning and becomes reasonless. I believe in God."

This is the true meaning of trust.

It means jumping into the unknown. This sutra explains what trust is. This sutra is on trust. Leaving aside all rules, all definitions and all calculations, to jump into the immeasurable is the meaning of trust. Giving up reasoning to jump into reasonlessness.

You should remember that philosophers are those who try to seek out the truth of life with the help of intellect. So far they have been unable to discover anything. They have written thousands of books, but their books are merely a play on words. They are adept in the interpretation of words and they spread their net of words cleverly and so widely that it becomes difficult to find the way out. But they know nothing, nothing at all. Those who know the truth of life are the mystics and the sages. These are the people who, rather than practicing verbal juggling, dive into existence.

Why should we try to learn from books what the Ganges is? When the Ganges is flowing, why should we not dive into it to know what it is? It may be written in books, in libraries, what the Ganges is, but should we resort to books to know what it is? Why should we not know it by actually entering it? There are two ways of knowing. If I want to know about love, I can go to a library and read books about it and learn all about it. The other way is for me to personally fall deeply into it. The first is definitely easier, so the weak resort to that path; even children can read about it. But to really know love is to pass through a great fire, through great penance, through the great ordeal by fire.

To know love and to know about love are two different things. There is no relation at all between them. Similarly, to know truth and to know about it are two different things. Whatever is known about truth is all borrowed knowledge, it is all stale. One who wants to know truth will have to take a jump away from his intellect.

A friend came to see me two days ago. He said, "I doubt whatever I hear. I doubt even what you say, and I shall continue to doubt what you will say. But I have some questions; please answer them."

I told him, "What will you do with the answers you get from me? Why do you want to trouble me uselessly when you are not prepared to move even a little from your position of doubting? You should live in your doubts. Why have you come to ask me? Don't ask anybody if you are determined to doubt, because whatever he says will be his knowledge, it cannot be yours, and you will doubt it. Existence is spread on all sides - flowers are blooming, birds are dancing, clouds are moving in the sky, the sun is rising, life is throbbing within you. Existence has endless expanse! Jump into it, know from there! It is futile to ask others - you are going to doubt anyway. But I want to ask you one thing: When will that day come when you will doubt your doubts?"

When one is determined to doubt, he should doubt the doubt itself; that way he can achieve something through his doubting. Did your doubting achieve anything up to now? If not, it is because you have not doubted the doubt itself. You have not doubted totally. Bear in mind, trust comes from two sources. Either do not doubt at all and take a jump, or make your doubting so deep that you doubt the doubt itself. Thus your doubt will cancel out further doubting and you will be empty of doubts, and out of the influence of the intellect. It is not that your intellect creates doubts; your intellect is your doubt.

After understanding this sutra, those who are innocent and straightforward should not doubt it; and those who are subtle and complex by nature should doubt it totally. Trust will be born from both these conditions and you will be able to take a jump.

Those who know what trust is will grasp the meaning of this sutra, and those whose trust is in reasoning will not be able to grasp its meaning, because reasoning has no place in it. Logic will not agree with the statement that the perfect comes out of the perfect, and the remainder is also perfect.

But trust will agree with it, because it is very innocent and straightforward. It is a trust - a faith - in existence. It says, "Can I not have some faith in this existence which gave me the power of thinking, which gave me love, which gave me heart? Can I not give a bit of friendly trust to this existence which gave me life, awareness and consciousness? If I cannot, it is the ultimate ingratitude." This sutra demands trust and faith from us. It hints that only trust will open the door of life, trust alone will help you to reach the peak of life. This is its hidden meaning.

Finally you should fully understand what it is saying about the whole, at the end as well as at the beginning. Everything in life seems imperfect. Maybe the Ishavasya should have talked about imperfection, because then it would have been a talk on facts. No individual seems perfect, no love seems perfect; neither does any power nor any form seem perfect. Everything in life is imperfect.

Then why did the sage of the Ishavasya think of starting and ending his discussions with the whole?

Those who believe in realism will denounce this as unrealistic. They will criticize it as the fanciful make-believe of dreamers. Where is anything whole or perfect in this world? What the sutra hints at is the fact that wherever imperfection is seen by you, it is due to the imperfection of your capacity to see, because otherwise there is imperfection nowhere at all. In reality the imperfection is in our vision.

Our condition is like a person who looks at the sky from a window of his house. We all do it. Naturally he will find the sky cut in the shape of the window. The boundary of the window will also be that of the sky. Is it a mistake if a person who has never seen the open sky from outside his house says that the sky is rectangular in shape? No, there is no mistake, because it will always appear so if seen from a window. It would be difficult for such a person to conceive that there is no such frame on the sky.

The frame is on your window, there is no frame around the sky. It is given by you. The sky is absolutely frameless and formless. But nowhere does it seem formless, even when we go outside the house. The frame becomes a bit bigger, it assumes the form of the earth. The sky appears to encircle the whole earth, like a dome - the domes of temples are constructed on this model. Even outside in the open you are still standing inside the window - the earth is a window - so it does not make any difference. Proceed further, go around the whole earth. You will see that the sky does not touch the earth anywhere: there is no horizon, it is as false as the window frame around the sky. But even if you fly in a spacecraft you will see the sky from a particular viewpoint, and that will appear to be its boundary. No matter how extensive, it is still its boundary.

Then where can we go where we shall be able to see the formless? The sages of the Upanishads say, "There is only one place, and that is within you, where there is no window at all." Leave aside the use of all sense organs because they create frames. Our sense organs are the windows. If we look anywhere with the help of these windows, forms will be created. Close your eyes and go within; be without eyes, without ears, without hands and legs, without the body, and dive deeper and deeper within where everything is formless. There you will experience the whole.

Having experienced the whole within, the sage has affirmed that it is so, and that one who has known the whole will always see the whole, no matter where he goes, no matter what window he looks through. Even if he looks at the sky standing behind a very small window, he knows well that the frame is that of his window and not of the sky. Whoever has once seen the whole within will begin to see it everywhere. He may be surrounded by any number of windows, he may be shut in any number of prisons, yet he knows that the prisons are imposed from outside; the formless is still sitting within.

Therefore the sage begins and ends his talk with the whole. There will be no tuning, no resonance, between this sutra and ourselves if we stand with our backs to it. We and the sage of the Upanishad are standing back to back. We hear his words, commit them to memory, repeat them every morning; but if only our backs touch, then the meaning which we derive from them becomes useless.

The last thing I wish to tell you is that this whole is the only truth. It is on all sides; everything is whole. There is no question at all of the imperfect. How can the imperfect be? Who would create it? God alone is; there is no one else who can make imperfection. God alone is, so who would draw the boundary? Boundaries are always made by the presence of others. If you think the boundary of your house is made by your house, then you are mistaken. It is made by the neighbor's house. It is not made by your house on its own, it is always made by the presence of others.

God is always alone, existence is always one, the flow of existence is always one. There is no other at all. Who would make the boundary? Who would make the imperfect? No, it is impossible; existence is limitless, existence is absolute. But we will only know it when we are able to catch a glimpse of it within.

One who has tasted even a drop of the ocean within is able to know the mystery of boundless oceans. The whole comes out of the whole, and is absorbed in the whole also; and in between comes the imperfect which is created by the frames of our intellect, by our sense organs. Give up these frames, go a little beyond them. Then you will be established in the whole, and one who has been thus established in the whole will be able to understand the hidden meaning of the Ishavasya.

Now, at the end, let us start on our journey within. As it is the last day, I want to tell you two or three things. First, during this six-day experiment I have brought you to such a point that I now ask you to add one small thing to it. There will be a great explosion if that is added, so be prepared for it.

When you look at me, gaze fixedly, do not blink your eyes, and at the same time, with each out breath make the sound Hoo, Hoo! This sound of Hoo, Hoo will hit powerfully on your dormant kundalini.

The Sufis have researched deeply into the sound Allah Hoo! They start with the sound Allah Hoo, then by and by the word Allah is dropped and only Hoo remains. Shout Hoo forcefully, and as you do so, your navel will contract. Let your Hoo strike powerfully below the navel. This will make your navel contract completely and strike against the kundalini. It is the place where the kundalini is. It will be hit hard.