Rituals, Fire and Knowledge

Question 1:

Rituals have an important place in human life; what we call life is ninety percent ritual. human mind is such that it takes recourse to many seemingly unnecessary activities so that the harshness of life's journey is mitigated.

In the course of man's long history thousands of such rituals - I would like to call them plays - have been developed. If they are taken playfully they add juice to life, they become occasions for celebration. And if we take them too seriously they become pathological, an aberration.

It was a D-day in the whole life of the human race when fire was discovered for the first time. It is the greatest discovery ever made throughout man's history. We do not know the name of the person who first discovered fire; whoever he was, he made the greatest revolution in man's life.

Since then man has discovered many other things. There has been a galaxy of great names like Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Einstein, Max Planck - but none of them teaches the height of that unknown person who first discovered fire. Even the splitting of the atom and landing on the moon are not that important.

Now the same fire is such a common and ordinary thing in our day-to-day life - we have captured it in a tiny matchstick - that we cannot comprehend its pristine glory; but it was not so ordinary in the distant past. We are indebted to fire for most of the growth and progress our civilization and culture have achieved down the ages. Human civilization today is essentially the product of fire. None of the great inventions of history would have been possible without this igniting spark called fire. Fire is foundational to everything in our life.

Evidently when it was first discovered, we celebrated the occasion by dancing around it in utter ecstasy. This celebration, now turned into a ritual, was so natural and spontaneous - as if it had exploded on us from nowhere. There was no other way to ex press our gratefulness to existence except by dancing and celebrating. And we said fire was God, because it occupied such a central place in man's life.

Every religion in ancient times grew around fire or the sun. The night was frightening it was full of darkness and danger and man was terribly afraid of wild animals and snakes and reptiles. And the day was comforting, full of light and warmth. One could look around and take care of himself against any danger. So darkness looked inimical and the sun seemed friendly. With darkness there was danger and death. With light there was hope; fear disappeared and everything was relatively safe.

So human beings worshipped the sun as God. When fire was discovered, it heralded man's victory over darkness, and so he began to love fire more than anything - including the sun. Naturally many beautiful things like song and dance, love and festivity grew around fire.

You know when Yuri Gagarin returned from his voyage into space - he was the first man to enter outer space - the whole world joined to celebrate the event. Overnight Gagarin became world renowned; his name reached the farthest corners of the earth. Hundreds of thousands of newborn babies all over the world were named after him. It takes a lifetime to attain to the fame which this first astronaut achieved in no time, because he orbited the earth. It was a great event, an epochal event.

Wherever Gagarin went, people went mad to receive him; wherever he went, millions thronged to see him. Hundreds of people lost their lives in stampedes caused by his visit. Why this madness?

The advent of the new fills man's heart with delight and joy, and he always celebrates the occasion with great fanfare. As we celebrate the birth of a child with song, music and feasting, so we welcome everything new and rejoice over it. That is how it should be. It will be a sad day when we cease to rejoice over the new; it will mean the death of all that is meaningful and vital in our life.

I say all this to explain to you how yajna came into being and how it became so significant in our life. Yajna was our way of celebrating the discovery of fire; we danced around it with abandon and offered to it every good thing we had.

Our ancestors who initiated these sacrificial rituals did not have much to give. They had wheat and they made an offering of it to the fire. They had somras, the best wine of their times, and they offered it to the fire. They sacrificed even their best cows to greet this god who had come to transform their life so radically. And everything was so impromptu and spontaneous. It was an outpouring of a simple, innocent and unsophisticated heart-mind that our people had then. They were a rural people - cities had yet to come into being - who lacked sophistication.

By the time of Krishna and the GEETA civilization had made great strides - thanks to fire. And so fire became a household thing, the extraordinary be came ordinary. Now it seemed meaningless to dance around fire and make sacrificial offerings to it. In the meantime thousands of people had opposed it. Fire was no longer taken as the greatest blessing that it was when it was first discovered.

So Krishna grafted a new word onto the old stem of yajna and called it jnan-yajna or the ritual of knowledge. A new word, jnan or knowledge was added to the old word, yajna or ritual.

Vinoba Bhave is now doing the same thing, he has started a bhoodan yajna, popularly known as the Land-gift Movement. The ancient word yajna has been yoked to a socio-political concept known as bhoodan or land-gift.

The society in which Krishna was born was a highly developed and sophisticated society. Now dancing around fire looked so primitive and backward. So Krishna thought of igniting the fire of knowledge, which is the last luxury of a society that comes to the pinnacle of material prosperity.

But he used an old word, because a word to be a word has to be old. Krishna said, "If we want to dance we will dance around the fire of knowledge. If we have to offer something to the sacrificial fire we will offer our. selves in place of grains and wines and cows."

Jnan-yajna or sacrificial ritual of knowledge stands for a special spiritual path, and every traveler on this path burns his ego, his "I-ness" in the fire of the knowledge of reality. Ordinary fire burns everything that is gross, but it cannot burn subtler elements like thoughts of arrogance, pride and ego. Only the fire of knowing can destroy it.

It is interesting to know that down the centuries the symbol of fire remains alive. And it is not without reason.

The most important reason was that in the life of the primitive man there was nothing like fire which by its nature moved upward. Water moves downward: pour it anywhere and it will find a downward path to flow. But no matter what you do, the flame will always rise upward. Even if you turn a burning torch upside down, its flames will keep going up. So fire became the symbol of ascension - upward journey; its flame reflects man's highest aspiration to reach the unknown.

Fire was the first thing in the knowledge of man that rebelled against the law of gravitation. The earth seems to have no power over fire. So those who danced around fire and rejoiced over its blessings also nursed a hope and prayer that a day might come in their life when they would go on the upward journey to the highest, the ultimate in existence.

Like water, human mind as we know it is inclined to move downward. There is some similarity between man's mind and water. Pour a container full of water on the hilltop and it will soon find its way down to the lowest lake in the valley. Such is man's mind. Therefore the seers who first exalted the fire and danced around it in joyous homage declared their aspiration to become like fire and ascend to the heavens. Their prayer said, "We want to turn our spirit into a flame so that even if it is put in an abyss it will continue to move upward and reach the zenith." So the ritual of the sacrificial fire was symbolic and significant.

There is another attribute of fire which is still deeper and more meaningful; it is that first it burns its fuel and then burns itself. As soon as the fuel turns into ashes the fire is extinguished. This aspect of fire is deeply representative of knowledge, which first burns the dross of ignorance and then burns itself. It means to say that after one's ignorance is dispelled, the ego, the knower himself disappears. The UPANISHAD says, "While the ignorant wander in darkness the knowledgeable wander in blinding darkness." For sure, this has been said to ridicule the pundits and scholars who subsist on borrowed knowledge. One who attains to true knowledge, what is called wisdom, disappears as an ego, and so there is no way for him to wander in darkness. True knowledge first destroys ignorance and then it destroys the knower too, who ceases to be an ego, an entity. It is like fire, that after burning the fuel extinguishes itself.

So those who came to know the truth realized that knowledge is like fire. It burns ignorance like fuel, and then burns the knower as an ego, who disappears into emptiness. Therefore, he alone can embark on a journey to knowledge who is prepared to become an utter emptiness, nothingness.

There is yet another attribute of fire which is still more relevant to the knowledge of truth. As the fire's flame rises upward it is visible only to an extent and then disappears into the vast space; it becomes invisible. The same is the case with the knowledge of truth; it is related with its knower only to a small extent and then it disappears into that which is un knowable. The visible part of reality is very tiny in comparison with its invisible part which is immense and infinite.

For all these reasons fire became a very useful and powerful symbol of knowledge. and Krishna ushered in jnan-yajna. Worship of knowledge is like worship of fire.

If you rightly understand the significance of fire as a symbol, you will know that worship of knowledge is eternal. While all other rituals that came into being with the discovery of fire have died because they were products of circumstances, the pursuit of knowledge remains with us forever. Knowledge is not bound with circumstances; it is eternal. So for the first time Krishna freed yajna from the fetters of time and events and yoked it to the eternal. From now on in the future, yajna or rituals will be in vogue in the way Krishna refashioned it; its meaning and purpose will be derived from Krishna alone.

The pre-Krishna chapter of yajna is closed forever. It is now outdated and dead. If someone still talks of the yajna of the pre-Krishna days, he is only trying to perpetuate a dead and meaningless ritual. Now it is not possible to dance around fire in the old way, because fire is no more an event, it is an everyday affair.

Krishna talks about another kind of yajna which is japa-yajna or the ritual of chanting. The secret of japa is the same as that of knowledge. Japa at first burns all your thoughts, and then it burns itself - the thought of japa or chanting. And what remains is known as ajapa - wordless chanting. For this reason it is called yajna, because it works like fire.

Your mind is stuffed with thoughts, all kinds of junk. So you use a word for chanting, and with the help of this chanting you banish from your mind all other thoughts - except the one thought which is your word for chanting. However, when all other thoughts disappear, then this last thought - the thought of chanting - becomes unnecessary and it drops on its own. It is followed by a state of utter silence which is called ajapa or wordless chanting or non chanting. So ajapa too, is a kind of fire which first burns the fuel and then burns itself.

But there is a danger with chanting just as with knowledge. In fact, there is danger with every kind of spiritual discipline. There is no path from which one is not going to deviate. Every path leading to a destination has its bypaths of deviation, and you can use them to deviate from your journey. The truth is that we use paths more to digress from them than to reach.

For example, Krishna talks about the path of knowledge. For most people knowledge is scholarship, information, concepts, ideas, doctrines. If someone mistakes knowledgeability for knowledge he is on a wrong path, he is going astray. Now he cannot attain to truth, to knowledge, even if he crams his head full of all the scriptures there are in the world. And remember, ignorance is not as harmful as false knowledge. False knowledge is harmful, pernicious. It is lifeless, it lacks fire altogether.

Pseudo knowledge is like ashes left after the fire has been extinguished. You can collect ashes in tons, but they are not going to change you. So if someone mistakes scholarship for knowledge he is already off the track.

It is the same with japa or chanting. If someone thinks he will reach through chanting he is mistaken.

No one has ever found God or truth by chanting the name of Rama or Ave Maria. Chanting is like a thorn - one uses it to take out another thorn sticking in his flesh and then throws away the two together. Both thorns are equally useless. If he leaves the second thorn in the place of the first, thinking it is something valuable, then he will continue to suffer. And he is for sure a stupid person.

But there is no dearth of such stupid people in the world.

Buddha had a beautiful story he loved to tell again and again. A group of eight persons - perhaps they were all pundits and priests - crossed a big river in a country boat. Reaching the other bank they conferred among themselves as to what they should do with the boat which had helped them to cross the river. One - perhaps the most knowledgeable among them - suggested that they were indebted to the boat for having done such a great job for them, and so they should carry it on their heads to repay the debt. Everyone agreed with him and they lifted the boat to their heads and carried it to the next village they were scheduled to visit.

The people of the village were amazed to find their guests carrying a big boat on their heads. They said, "What are you doing? A boat is meant to carry us; we are not meant to carry the boat on our heads. Why did you not leave it in the river?"

The visitors said, "It seems you are all very ungrateful people. We know what gratefulness is. This boat helped us cross the river, now we are repaying our debt to it. It is going to stay on our heads forever."

Buddha says many people turn means into ends and cling to them for the rest of their lives. A boat is useful for crossing a river; we are not supposed to carry it on our heads after it has served our purpose.

Japa can be used with the awareness that it is a means which helps one to be free of his thoughts.

But if someone takes japa to be an end in itself, of course he will be free of other thoughts but he will be a prisoner of this japa which is as good as a thought. His mind will remain as burdened and tense as ever. There is no difference between a mind teeming with thoughts and another filled with the chanting of Rama or Ave Maria. They are equally tense and restless. It is possible a thought-filled mind can achieve something worthwhile in the workaday world; a few of his thoughts may be found useful. But as far as the chanting-filled mind is concerned, it is completely a waste. But this man will say what helped to free him from wasteful thoughts is something valuable, and he is not going to part with it. This man is carrying a boat on his head.

To give japa the place of a yajna or sacrificial ritual has a deep secret, it is meaningful. When Krishna calls it a yajna, a sacrificial ritual, he means to say that japa is also like fire, which first burns its fuel and then burns itself. And it is meaningful only when it burns itself.

So we can use a word, a mantra, a seed word, as a means to cast away other words from our minds.

But ultimately we have to throw away the mantra itself. If we get attached to the mantra, if we cling to it, then it will cease to be japa; it will turn instead into a kind of hypnotic trap, you will be a prisoner of its hypnosis. If you become obsessed with japa, you will go berserk. There are people who get so fixated with japa that they begin to derive an infantile kind of gratification from it, and then they can never be able to part with it. Then it becomes pathological.

Japa has to be used with awareness. If you are a witness while chanting a name or a mantra, if you know that while chanting goes on at the mental level, you remain a witness to it, then you are making a right use of japa. And it is only then that some day you will be able to go beyond it. And then japa becomes a yajna, a fire which first burns its fuel and then burns itself. And when you are empty, utterly empty, silent, you attain to meditation, you attain to samadhi or superconsciousness.

For this reason Krishna gives both knowledge and japa the status of yajna, because yajna happens around fire. And fire is immensely significant. If you understand the significance of fire, you will understand what jnan yajna or japa-yajna is. The truth is: one who is ready to burn his ego, his "I", who is ready to totally efface himself, is ready for yajna. He alone is deserving of yajna who is capable of making an offering of himself into the fire of knowledge. And then all other yajnas fade into insignificance before this great yajna, which I call the yajna of life.

Question 2:

Krishna says a wise man gives up attachment to the fruits of action and attains to freedom from the bondage of birth and death. The whole thing needs to be understood in depth.

Firstly, Krishna does not talk about one's release from action itself, he emphasizes release from attachment to the fruits of action. He does not ask you to give up action and become inactive; he only urges you not to do something with a motive, with an eye on the results of the action. There is a meaningful difference between action and the fruit of action. It is in the interest of action itself, to make action real and total, that all wise men urge you to give up your desire for its result. Action without attachment to its fruit is what forms the heart of Krishna's teaching.

I would like to go deeply into this important matter of action without attachment to its fruits, be cause it is really arduous. Ordinarily, if you give up your desire for the fruit of action, you will give up action itself. If someone tells you to do something, but not to expect any result from it, you will say, "It is sheer madness to suggest such a thing. Why should anyone do something if he does not want to achieve a result? Everyone works with a motive to achieve something, be it bread, or money, or fame. If there is no motive to work, why should one work at all?"

This phrase "freedom from attachment to the fruit of action" has put many interpreters of Krishna in difficulty. These interpreters were themselves at a loss to understand or accept Krishna's emphasis on renunciation of the fruits of action. So they found a clever way to circumvent the real meaning of Krishna's teaching and bring in "the fruit of action" by the back door. They said one who relinquishes attachment to the result of one's labor attains to moksha, liberation. So the fruit of action was back in the form of liberation What is after all this "fruit of action"? We then say, "If you do this you will achieve that," or "If you do this you will not achieve that." This is what we mean by the term "fruit of action." It is the same if you say that one attains to liberation if he gives up his attachment to the fruit of action. In my view, however, these interpreters have been very unjust to Krishna. They have betrayed him.

When Krishna says "A wise man, who gives up attachment to the fruit of action is released from the bondage of birth and death," he is not providing an incentive to desireless action. An action with an incentive can never be desireless, because what is incentive but a desire for result? Krishna's "release from bondage" is a consequence which follows desireless action as its shadow.

Krishna does not say that those who want to be free from the bondage of birth should give up attachment to the fruit of their action. If he says so, he is providing a motive, he is contradicting himself. No, he only says that freedom or liberation is a con sequence of desireless action, not its motive. One who desires liberation or freedom can never come to it, because desiring is the barrier.

So the question is: How to work without attachment to result?

To understand this thing rightly, it is first necessary to know that there are two kinds of action in our life. One of these is what we do today in order to achieve something tomorrow as a result. Such an action is future-oriented; future is leading you into action. Just as an animal is dragged by a rope tied to its neck, so our future is dragging us into action. I do something with an eye on the future when my action of today will yield some result for me. While action takes plaice in the present, its fruit lies in the future. And the future is unknown and uncertain. Future means that which is not in existence, which is only a hope, a dream, an expectation. In that hope we are being dragged like cattle by our future.

The Sanskrit word for animal is pashu, which is meaningful. Pashu is derived from pash which means bondage. Hence pashu is one who is a captive, a slave. In that sense we are all animals, because we are captives of the future, we live in future hopes. The reins of our life are in the hands of the future. Man always lives today in the hope of tomorrow. And likewise he will live tomorrow in the hope of the day after, because when tomorrow comes, it will come as today. So he never lives really, he goes on postponing living for the future.

And he will never live as long as he lives on hope for the future. His whole life will pass away unlived and unfulfilled. At the time of his death he will say with great remorse, "All my life I only desired to live, but I could not really live." And his greatest sorrow at the time of death will be that the future is no more, there is no hope of achieving result in the future. If there was a future and a hope beyond death, he would have no regrets. That is why a dying man wants to know if there is life after death. In reality he wants to know if there is any chance of reaping a harvest of hopes in the future, because it was only hopes that he had sown in the soil of his life.

He had wasted all his todays in the hope of a tomorrow that never came. And on the last day of his life he faces a cul-de-sac beyond which there is no tomorrow, and no hope of any fruits of action.

That is the despair of a future-oriented life.

There is another kind of action which is not future-oriented, which is not done with a motive to achieve some future result, which is not based on any ideas and patterns. Such an action is natural and spontaneous; it arises from the depths of our being. It springs from what I am, not from what I want to become. You are passing down a street when you come across an umbrella dropped unaware by a person walking ahead of you. You pick up the umbrella and hand it to the owner without any fuss. You don't look around for a press reporter or a photographer to report to the public your great act of selfless service to a fellow traveler. You don't even expect a "thank you"

from the person concerned, nor hope for any results in the future. This is what I call a natural and spontaneous act.

But if the owner of the umbrella goes his way without thanking you, and if you feel even slightly hurt thinking how ungrateful the man is, then your action is no more natural and spontaneous, it is not without motive. Maybe you were not aware of your expectation of a thank you when you picked up the umbrella and handed it to him, but it was very much there in your unconscious. An expectation even of a thank you destroys the spontaneity and purity of action; it is no more free of attachment to its fruits. Then it is a contaminated act, contaminated with the desire for result.

If action is total in itself, if it is self-fulfilling, a love's labor - if it has no other expectation outside of it, then it is what Krishna and I call action without attachment to its fruits. This action is complete in itself like a circle it has no expectations for the future. It is an end unto itself. In that case you will feel thankful to the other person - say the man with the umbrella - for giving you an opportunity to act totally, to do something without desire for results.

A future-oriented mind is full of desires for achieving results in the future, and its action is always fragmentary and partial. But when there is no such desire for results, when the action is without any motive, such an action fills you with tremendous joy and bliss. In my vision action without attachment to its fruits is so complete, so total, that there is nothing beyond it. It is its own fruit, it is its own end result. It is fulfilling in the moment. Such an action is its own reward, there is nothing outside of it.

Jesus is passing through a village and he comes across a field full of lilies. He stops near it and says to his disciples, "Do you see these lilies?" The disciples look at the flowers, but they really do not look because looking through eyes alone is not enough, one has to look with his whole being.

So Jesus says again, "Do you see these flowers?"

The disciples say to him, "What is there to see? They are lilies as other lilies are. They are nothing different." Jesus then tells them, "It seems you are not looking, look again. How beautiful they are!

King Solomon in all his grandeur and glory is not that beautiful."

The disciples are surprised to hear their Master compare the lilies with King Solomon, who happened to be the wealthiest king of their times. There was, they thought, no point in comparing an ordinary flower with the wealthiest king of the world. So noticing their confusion and bewilderment, Jesus again says, "Look at them again and look with attention. They are ordinary flowers, but they are so beautiful that they outshine even King Solomon with all his grandeur and glory."

One of the disciples asks why they are so beautiful. Jesus says, "These lilies are blossoming here and now; they live and act in the moment. They don't do anything out of hope for the future, whereas Solomon lives for the future and in the future. And this tension between the present and the future makes everything tense, sick and ugly. These flowers have no idea of tomorrow; they are fulfilled in the moment. This small piece of land on which they are growing is enough for them, they don't crave a larger field. The wind that is passing through them, making them sway, is everything for them.

The sun that is shedding light on them is more than everything they desire. These bees humming around them give them the joy of the world.

"They are contented in being what they are; just being is enough, and they don't want to become anything else. Not that another moment will not come for them. It will come, and it will come of its own accord. And when it comes they will welcome it and live it as totally as they are living this existing moment. Not that the lilies will not bear fruit, they will, but it will be another action complete in itself and it will arise from their existential moment. That is why they are so beautiful."

We believe everything happens according to our desires and expectations. We are like that crazy woman of a fable I love to tell again and again.

This crazy old woman had lived her whole life in a certain village, but one fine morning she left the village in anger, cursing the inhabitants with foul words. When the people enquired why she was leaving the village she said, "I go because of the torments that you have inflicted on me so long. But you will know what my going means to you from tomorrow. You will learn the lesson of your life."

The villagers were surprised at the threat the old woman made. They asked, "What is that lesson you are going to teach us?"

She said, "I am taking with me my cock at whose crowing the sun rose here every morning. Now the sun will rise in another village where I am going."

And the story says when the old woman reached another village and her cock crowed and the sun rose, she said to herself, "The idiots of that village must be weeping bitter tears, because the sun is now rising here, and they are in the dark forever."

The old woman's logic is flawless. Her cock crowed and the sun rose in the village where she had lived before. And when she went to another village and the sun rose with her cock's crow, there was no doubt left in her mind that sunrise depended on her cock's crow. But no cocks become victims of such illusions, only their masters. Cocks know they crow when the sun rises, but their masters think otherwise.

This fable reflects human mind.

The future comes on its own; it is already on the way. We cannot stop it from coming; we cannot prevent tomorrow from becoming today. Let man do his work and do it completely; that is enough.

There is nothing beyond or outside of the act. We need not worry about tomorrow, which will come for itself.

The act must be total; this is the whole of Krishna's teaching. By total action he means, once you have done your thing you are finished with it; there is nothing more to be done about it. And if something remains to be done, even if you have to wait in expectancy for its result, then the act is not total. Your act is complete in itself when you don't look forward to some reward, some recognition or even appreciation.

For this reason Krishna says, "Leave the fruits of labor to God." By God he does not mean there is some accountant-cum-controller general sitting some where in the heavens who will take care of it on your behalf. Leaving it to God means: please do your work and leave it at that, leave it to existence.

Existence is like a mountain which echoes every sound that is uttered around it. It is like some one telling us, sitting here among the hills, to make a sound and leave it to the hills to echo it. We don't have to wait prayerfully for the echo, it will come on its own.

If one worries about what the echo is going to be, he will not be able to create a sound properly. And then it is possible the hills won't echo it. To produce an echo a proper sound, a sound of a particular volume is needed. This is how the desire for a result, the tension caused by desire and expectation does not allow you to do your work rightly.

People who are anxious for results often miss the moment of action itself, because the moment of action is now and here, while the result lies in some future. So those whose eyes are set on the future are bound to miss the present. If you are concerned with the result, if the result is what is important to you, then the action itself becomes meaningless. Then you don't love your work, you love only the result. Then you don't give your whole heart and mind to action - you do it reluctantly, haphazardly.

If your attention is focused on the future - and you are where your attention is - then you can not be totally in the present. And action lies in the present. And that which is done inattentively cannot be deep and total; it cannot be blissful.

Krishna's vision of action without attachment to results is clear. He tells you to be totally in the present, in the moment. He tells you not to divide yourself between the present and the future. Not even a fraction of your attention should be passed on to the future. Then only you can act wholly and joyously, and then only will your action be total.

Desire for results is a distraction from action, so give up your attachment to results and be totally in action.

Leave future to the future, to existence, and be totally in what you are doing now and here. Then you will also be total in the future when that future comes. Otherwise your habit of being fragmentary will pursue you throughout. Be whole in the now and you will be whole in the future, you will always be whole. And this wholeness, not your desire, will bear fruit. So you can trustfully leave the matter of fruit in the hands of God or existence or whatsoever you like to call it.

I would like to explain it in a different way. Unless we make action our joy, unless we love what we do, unless we do something for the love of it, we cannot be free of our attachment to the future, to the result. And unless our action flows from our being, our blissfulness, like a stream flows from its source, we cannot be totally into it; we will always be pulled by the future.

Do you think a stream is flowing towards some future? Do you think a river is running to the sea?

You are mistaken if you think so. It is another matter that the river reaches the ocean - but it is certainly not flowing for the sake of the ocean. A river flows for the love of flowing, it is really its abundant energy that is flowing. And this energy, this force, this strength of a river comes from its source, its original source.

The Ganges flows with the strength of the Gangotri; it is the Gangotri flowing through the Ganges.

Of course she reaches the sea, but it is just a by product, it is inconsequential. In her whole journey the Ganges has nothing to do with the ocean; she is not even aware that she is going to the ocean.

It is her own abundant energy that makes her flow and dance and sing and celebrate.

The Ganges dances not only when she reaches the shore of the ocean, she dances on every shore, on every bank. She dances through hills and valleys, through green forests and dry deserts, through cities and villages, through happiness and misery, through human beings and animals. She dances and rejoices wherever she happens to be. And if she reaches the ocean it is just a consequence which she had neither desired nor expected. It is the culmination of her life's journey; it is existence's echo, its answer to her.

Life is a play of energy; like a river it moves with its own energy. Krishna says man should live so that his action stems from his own energy, from its innermost source. In my view there is only one difference between a householder and a sannyasin: a house holder lives for tomorrow, he is future-oriented; a sannyasin lives and flowers now and here. He derives his strength from his today.

For him today, now is enough unto itself. And when a sannyasin's tomorrow comes, it will come in the form of his today, and he will live it the way he lives his today.

There is a significant episode In the life of Mohammed. Mohammed is a rare kind of sannyasin, and I would like to see many more sannyasins like him in the world.

Every day his lovers bring all kinds of gifts for him. Someone brings sweets, another brings clothes, and another money. Mohammed shares everything with his visitors and others, and if something is left over by the evening he asks his wife to distribute it among the needy.

By the evening Mohammed again becomes a pauper, a fakir. When sometimes his wife suggests that something should be saved for tomorrow, Mohammed says, "Tomorrow will come as today, and it will care for itself." If his wife still grumbles he says to her, "Do you think I am an atheist that I should care for tomorrow? Caring for tomorrow is what I call atheism. Worrying for tomorrow means I don't trust existence, who has provided everything for today. I trust existence will provide for our tomorrow too. Worrying about tomorrow is lack of trust in existence, in the cosmic energy. And after all, what carl we do? What worth is our own effort?"

Mohammed insists that his wife give away everything that is left over saying, "With trust in our hearts we will wait for tomorrow. I am a theist, and if I save for tomorrow God will say, 'Mohammed, don't you have even this much trust in me?'"

This is the way Mohammed lives all through his life. Then he becomes critically ill, and one evening his physicians declare that he is not going to survive the coming night. So his wife, thinking she should save something for any emergency that may arise that night, saves five dinars and hides the money under her pillow.

As midnight comes Mohammed becomes restless, tossing and turning in his bed. He is surprised at this strange kind of suffering. At last he uncovers his face and tells his wife, "It seems tonight Mohammed is no more a pauper; you seem to have saved something for this night."

His wife was surprised and asked, "How could you know it?"

Mohammed answers, "Looking at your face tonight I can see you are not calm and peaceful as you always are. For sure there is some money in the house. Those who are worried become acquisitive and acquisitive people become worried. It is a vicious circle, So take out what you have saved and distribute it so that I can die in peace. Remember, this is my last night. I don't want to spoil it and appear before God with a guilty conscience."

His wife hurriedly takes out the five dinars from under her pillow, and says to Mohammed, "But there is no one out there to receive this money, it is midnight."

Mohammed says, "Just call out and someone will come."

And someone, a beggar really appears at the door. Mohammed says to his wife, "Just see, if someone comes to take in the dead of night, someone else can come to give as well." With these words he drew the shawl over his face and sank into eternal sleep. This was his last act - to cover his face with the shawl.

It seems the five dinars were blocking Mohammed's passage to eternity. They were too much load on the heart of a true sannyasin like him.

If each day, each moment, each act is complete, it will be followed by a complete tomorrow.

Tomorrow always comes, but if you complete your today your tomorrow will be new and fresh, not old and stale. It will not be frustrating.

But if you leave your today incomplete with expectations for tomorrow, it will frustrate you and your expectations, and you will be miserable on top of it.

The future will never conform to your expectations, because the future is immense and your hopes and desires are petty, trivial. The immense, the infinite cannot be controlled and manipulated by the trivial. A drop cannot decide the course of a river the river goes its own way irrespective of what the drop wants.

But if a drop has its own desires and expectations if it wants to go upstream, or go right or left, then it will suffer and suffer immeasurably. This is man's misery; it is hopes and dreams that turn into his frustration and despair.

One who lives each moment totally knows no anxiety and no frustration; he is contented and blissful and fulfilled.

Let each of your actions, no matter whether you are peeling a potato or composing a poem, be complete in itself. Leave the result to God. If you do so, Krishna says, you will be released from the bondage that comes in the form of birth. Krishna does not say that birth is a bondage. He only says that one who is full of expectations, who is attached to the fruits of action is always in need of tomorrow, future, future life.

One who lives in desires, in hopes and expectations anxiously seeks a new birth after his death; he cannot escape rebirth. And for such a person birth becomes a bondage; it can never become his freedom. Because such a person is not really interested in life and living, he is interested in his expectations, in the results he expects from it. For him birth is just an opportunity for achieving some results.

And for such a person death is going to be very painful, because death will put an end to all the desires and demands he lived for. Naturally when he is born again he will find his birth to be his bondage. Birth is bondage for one who does not know the life that is freedom. In fact desiring is bondage, craving and attachment to result is bondage.

To live and know life totally is freedom. And for one who knows this life there is no birth and death.

He is released from both birth and death. Krishna has said only the half truth; it is a half-truth to say that one is released from the fetters of birth. To complete it, I say he is released from death as well.

He is released from both birth and death.

This does not mean that birth and death are bondage. In ignorance, for an ignorant person birth and death appear to be bondage; they bind him. For a wise man, one who knows the truth, birth and death cease to be, he is in freedom. In fact, bondage and freedom are states of mind. While the ignorant mind experiences bondage, the mind of the wise is free. Krishna does not condemn birth as such, but the way we are, birth feels like imprisonment to us.

We are a strange people, who turn even love into a bondage. I receive any number of wedding invitations from time to time. Someone's daughter is going to be married; another friend's son is being married. They invariably write in their invitation letters that their daughter or son is going to be "bound with the fetters of love." We turn even love, which is utter freedom, into shackles.

Love is freedom, so the right way to say it is that someone is going to be set free in love. But we say and do the opposite, we turn love into an imprisonment. Not that love is imprisonment, but we make it into one. The way we are, even death looks like captivity to us. The way we are, we turn life itself into a concentration camp.

On the other hand, he who lives in the present, in the moment, who lives without expectations and attachments and does his work without hope for reward or fear of punishment, whose action is like inaction and whose inaction is like action, who turns his whole life into a play - he turns even bondage into freedom. For such a person, action is freedom, love is freedom, living is freedom, life is freedom, and even death is freedom. For him everything is freedom.

It all depends on the way we are; we carry both our slavery and freedom within us. If one begins to live without desire for the fruits of action, if he becomes responsible to himself and to existence, if he trusts life, then life for him will cease to be a bondage - it will be a blessing, a benediction. Such a person attains to a life of freedom he is free while he is living in this world. Such a life is possible here and now. And it depends on us.

I have heard that a rebel sage - a sage is always a rebel - was thrown into prison for his irrepressible love of freedom. He was going around the country singing songs of rebellion. He was a Sufi sage and his captor was a Caliph who was both the religious and temporal head of Mohammedanism. The sage was put in shackles from his neck downward, but he continued to sing his songs of freedom.

One day the Caliph came to see him and enquired if he had any troubles. The sage asked, "What troubles? I am a royal guest, your guest; what troubles can I have? I am utterly happy. I live in a hut and you have put me in a palace. Thank you!"

The Caliph was amazed. He asked, "Are you joking?"

The Sufi said, "I say so because I have turned life itself into a joke."

Then the Caliph came with a down-to-earth question: "Are the chains on your hands and feet heavy and painful?"

The Sufi looked at his chains and said, "These chains are far away from me; there is a great distance between me and these chains. You may be under the illusion that you have imprisoned me, but you can only imprison my body, you cannot imprison my freedom. You cannot turn freedom into prison because I know how to turn prison into freedom."

It all depends on us, on how we see things. Seeing is foundational. The Sufi told the Caliph, "There is a great distance between me and the chains on me. You cannot imprison my freedom."

Mansoor, another Sufi rebel, was executed. And the manner of his execution was very cruel and brutal. One by one, his limbs, even his eyes were severed from his body. Hundreds of thousands of people had gathered to witness the event. As his hands and feet were being cut off, Mansoor was laughing and his laughter went on getting louder as his body shrunk in size. Someone from among the spectators shouted, "Are you crazy, Mansoor? Is this a time to laugh?"

Mansoor said, "I am really laughing at you, because you think you are killing me. You are badly mistaken, you are really killing someone else. Don't forget that Mansoor is laughing when you are killing him in such an inhuman manner. How could it be possible? Let alone killing him, you cannot even touch Mansoor. The one you are killing is not Mansoor. Mansoor is the one who is laughing."

These words of Mansoor infuriated his executioners, his enemies, and they said to him haughtily, "Now we want to see how you laugh!" and they cut his tongue. Then Mansoor's eyes began laughing.

Someone among the spectators mocked at the executioners. "Even after you have removed his tongue his eyes are laughing." And the executioners gouged out his two eyes. But then Mansoor's face, every fiber of his being was laughing. Spectators told them, "You cannot stop his laugh; see, his whole being is laughing." They had spared nothing, not a single part of his body, and yet he was laughing.

Our life becomes what we are psychologically and spiritually, our death becomes what we are in our mind and spirit. If we are free, our birth, our life, our death, everything becomes free. And similarly if we are in bondage, then everything we do or don't do binds us. Then action binds, love binds, life binds, even death binds. Then even God binds.

In fact, we are our own makers.

Question 3:

I did not say that the proportion of male and female energy is fixed at sixty and forty percent. It can vary; it can be seventy and thirty, even ninety and ten. But in case it is fifty-fifty, it makes a man or woman asexual. Then he or she is out of the dialectics of sex, then he or she is neutral or impotent.

It is significant that in Sanskrit the word brahman or the supreme energy or God, is categorized as neuter gender. Is brahman male or female? No, it is neutral. What has been called omnipotent has been indicated in language as without gender. How can the supreme be male or female? That would make brahman partial. No, the ultimate being is impartial. This impartiality is possible only if the proportion of male and female energy is fifty-fifty.

The concept of ardhanarishwara is the symbol of brahman, the supreme, because the proportion of male and female in brahman is fifty-fifty. Brahman is both man and woman, or it is neither. If God were all male, then there would be no way for the female species to be. And if God were all female, then there would not be a male species on the earth. It is both together and therefore it is capable of creating both the species - male and female.

And as long as we are man and woman, we are two separate fragments of God, broken away from him. That is why man and woman attract each other; this mutual attraction stems from their desire to be united and one. Separately they are half and incomplete. And everything incomplete strives to complete itself; that is the way of life.

Not only our concept of ardhanarishwara is unique, even the statue of ardhanarishwara that we have created is rare in the known history of mankind. There are many beautiful statues around the world.

But the ardhanarishwara depicts a great psychological truth - it is simply incomparable. This statue, this ancient symbol is a blend of male and female energies, because the statue is half male and half female. One of its sides is feminine and the other is masculine, or you can say it is a blending or the combination of the two. It can also be said to be beyond the two.

As I said, God is the median, the golden mean. Jesus has used a weird phrase, "eunuchs of God"

to point to the same phenomenon. He says those who want to find God should become eunuchs of God, which really sounds outlandish. But )esus is right; those who want to find God should become like God: neither male nor female. And if you look attentively at men like Buddha and Krishna, who reflect godliness on this earth at its highest, you will find that they too are neither male nor female.

Seen in their full glory and grandeur they are both or neither, or a blending of the two. In a way they reflect the transcendental sex, they have gone beyond the duality of the sexes.

As far as we are concerned, we are dual - both male and female in different proportions.

You want to know why some people are born eunuchs who are neither men nor women, people who may be called a third sex. The reason is the same. If the child in its embryonic form in the mother's womb has both male and female elements in equal proportion, then he cannot grow into one sex clearly. Then the two equal elements will neutralize each other and the person will be a eunuch.

From time to time cases of sex-change have been reported. Usually their news is suppressed. It has happened that a young man slowly changed into a young woman and vice versa. It was thought to be accidental, a freak of nature. But now medical science knows how it happens, and is virtually in a position even to effect such changes clinically.

In the recent past a very sensational case came before a court of law in London. The case was that a young man and young woman were duly married as husband and wife. After they lived as husband and wife for a few years, the woman's sex underwent a change and she became a man.

The crux of the com plaint was that the woman was never a woman, she was a man and that she deceived the young man by disguising her true sex.

The judges were in real difficulty to come to a correct judgment. The wife pleaded that she was always a woman and that the change came later. At the time of the hearing of this case even medical science was not clear about the matter. In the course of the last twenty-five or thirty years many cases of sex change have come to light and physicians accept that it is possible. And science is busy exploring this area with the help of such cases.

If the difference between one's male and female elements is very small or marginal - say it is fifty-one to forty-nine, then a change of sex can take place any time. It is just a question of chemical changes taking place in one's physiology. And with the discovery of hormones and synthetic hormones, the day is not far off when medical science will bring about this change clinically.

Now it is not necessary that a man or woman should suffer the boredom of being man or woman for good. He or she can have a change any time they want. It is just a matter of manipulating the quantity of certain body chemicals and hormones. Soon we will see that a man turns into a woman and a woman into man if they choose to. In fact, there is not much difference between man and woman; the difference is rather quantitative.

The concept of God as ardhanarishwara says that the primeval source of creation is neither male nor female or it is both. But I don't say that a eunuch or an impotent person is nearer God as a result. I don't say so.

It is true, God is both man and woman, but this man or woman is not impotent. This difference has to be kept in mind: while God is both male and female, the eunuch is neither; he is a negation of both. While God is the presence, the affirmation of yin and yang, the eunuch is their absence, their negation. Therefore the statue of ardhanarishwara is part male and part female. If it were a eunuch we could have depicted it as such. God represents positivity; the eunuch is utter negativity.

The eunuch has no individuality and for this reason there is no end to his misery. Jesus does not say that we should become eunuchs to attain to God, all he means to say is that we should neither remain men nor women, and then we will be both together.

Question 4:

This question will change the context of our discussion and therefore I would deal with it briefly and then we will sit for meditation.

You ask why the Jaina scriptures say that women cannot attain to freedom. The reason is that Jaina scriptures are the handiwork of the male mind. The truth is, the whole of Jaina discipline is male-oriented, it is aggressive. Therefore Jaina scriptures cannot think how women, who represent passive energy can attain to liberation. But devotees of Krishna think otherwise. If you ask one of them about it he will immediately say women alone can attain to it, no one except them can.

The male mind is simply incapable of reaching God, according to Krishna's philosophy. Even male devotees of Krishna turn into feminine minds so they can fall in love with Krishna.

There is a beautiful anecdote in the life of Meera, the renowned devotee of Krishna. When she went to Vrindavan, Krishna's birthplace, she was prevented from entering the temple on the grounds that she was a woman and women were not allowed in that temple. She was told the chief priest of the temple was under a vow not to look upon a woman - he had never seen a woman since he had taken charge of the temple. Meera strongly protested, and what she said is significant. She said, "As far as I know there is only one man in all the universe and he is Krishna. How can there be another man in the form of the priest of this temple? I wonder how he continues to be a man and a Krishna devotee too!"

When this message from Meera was conveyed to the chief priest he was taken aback, speechless, and he rushed to the temple gate where Meera was being held. He threw the gates of the temple wide open and asked her forgiveness. He said to Meera, "I am grateful to you for reminding me of my relationship with my Lord."

Krishna stands for the feminine mind, the trusting mind, the surrendering mind.

But Mahavira represents the male mind, the aggressive mind, the conquering mind. Therefore he cannot think women as women can achieve liberation. So the Jaina tradition believes that a woman seeker will have to be born as a man before she attains to complete freedom. If there were only one spiritual path in the world, the path of Mahavira, then there would be no way for any woman to seek God. It is exclusively meant for the male mind, the aggressive mind.

Similarly a male mind can have no way with Krishna; his is the path of love and trust and surrender.

These are the two psychological archetypes in the world, and everything depends on these archetypes.

I will take up the rest of the question tomorrow.