Cooked and Burnt

The Sufi is not an escapist, that is not his climate. He is utterly against escapism. He believes in celebrating the world, celebrating existence, celebrating life. It is the very fundamental of Sufism that the creator can be reached only through the creation. You need not renounce his creation to get to him; in fact if you renounce his creation you will never get to him. Renouncing his creation, indirectly you have renounced the creator himself.

But renunciation still happens. It is not that the Sufi renounces the world, but that he attains to God - and the moment God is attained, the world disappears. Then there is nothing to renounce: then only God is.

The Sufi does not escape from the world, but a moment comes when the world disappears and dissolves. The Sufi lives in the world and he finds that there is no world, only God is.

The Sufi is not an ascetic. He does not believe in inflicting pain on himself, he is not pathological.

The Sufi lives life in an utterly normal way, with no perversions, with no obsessions. Although, slowly slowly, the quality of his life goes on changing, it is not that he tries to change it. His whole effort consists in remembering God, not in changing himself.

Let it sink deep in you; if you miss this point you will miss the whole point of Sufism. The Sufi concentrates on only one thing, remembrance of God - ZIKR. As that remembrance deepens, his obsession with the world lessens. As he comes closer and closer to the ultimate reality, the ordinary reality is no longer attractive; it starts receding back. Because when you find the real gold, how can you go on carrying the unreal gold? When you have found the real diamonds you will automatically drop the stones, colored stones, that you have been carrying all along.

The escapist says, "Renounce your colored stones so that you can get to the real diamonds." The Sufi says just the contrary: he says, "Get to the real diamonds, and that which is not real will drop out of your life of its own accord."

To know the real is enough, the unreal is renounced in that very knowing. And because the unreal is renounced in that very knowing, it leaves no scars and wounds on you. The ascetic suffers from great wounds. He is not ripe yet, otherwise the fruit would have fallen without leaving any scar on the body of the tree. If the fruit is unripe and you pluck it, it hurts the tree, it hurts the fruit; both will remain wounded.

Have you not seen the beauty of a ripe fruit fallen of its own accord? Silently, spontaneously. The tree may not even become aware that the fruit has disappeared, the fruit may not become aware that the tree is no more there.

Sufism is the simplest way possible. The Sufi lives a simple life. But the simplicity is not cultivated, because a cultivated simplicity is no longer simplicity; it is already complex. When you cultivate something, there is motivation, there is desire, there is longing; you are hankering for something.

By cultivating something, you are trying to become something. Becoming is desire. And how can desire be simple? So cultivation is never simple. A practiced sannyas, a practiced simplicity, can never have beauty. In the first place it is not simplicity at all.

You can go and see so many saints in this country, or in other countries: their simplicity is cultivated, calculated, motivated. They are desirous of God, they are greedy for God, hence they are ready to pay the price.

The Sufi says: God is available, it is already available. All that you need is an uncomplicated mind, all that you need is a state of no-motivation. All that you need is to fall into the silence of this moment, no trying to achieve something tomorrow. And what is your afterlife? It is the prolonged shadow of the tomorrow. So those who are thinking to attain to heaven or to nirvana after death are very greedy people. They are not religious at all.

Sufism does not believe in any fairy-tales of the other world, of heaven and hell. And it is not that heaven does not exist, but that is not the concern of the Sufi. The Sufi lives totally in the moment. His simplicity comes out of his understanding, not out of cultivation; he does not practice it. Seeing life, he becomes aware of the austerity of a roseflower, how simple it is, and the beauty of its austerity.

He becomes austere like a roseflower: it is not poor, the roseflower is simple and rich. What more richness can there be? The roseflower is simple and in utter luxury - what more luxury can there be?

The Sufi lives in the moment, blooms in the moment like a roseflower, simple yet rich. The poverty is not imposed; he is poor in spirit. And what does it mean to be poor in spirit? It simply means there is no ego, that's all; not that he is attached to poverty.

Beware of that. There are people who are attached to wealth and there are people who are attached to poverty. But it is the same attachment.

I have heard:

The story is told of a dervish who went to visit a great Sufi master. Seeing his affluence, the dervish thought to himself, "How can Sufism and such prosperity go hand in hand?" After staying a few days with the master, he decided to leave. The master said, "Let me accompany you on your journey!"

After they had gone a short distance, the dervish noticed that he had forgotten his KASHKUL, the begging-bowl. So he asked the master for permission to return and get it.

The master replied, "I departed from all my possessions, but you can't even leave behind your begging-bowl. Thus, we must part company from here."

The Sufi is not attached to wealth or to poverty; he is simply not attached to anything. And when you are not attached to anything, you need not renounce. Renunciation is the other side of attachment.

Those who understand the foolishness of attachment don't renounce. They live in the world but yet they are not of the world.

To willfully insist upon being in poverty is still an attachment: remember it. And to willfully insist upon ANYTHING is again an ego trip.

The Sufi lives simply, the Sufi lives without any will of his own. If it happens to be a palace, he is happy; if it happens to be a hut, he is happy. If it happens to be that he is a king, it is okay; if it happens to be that he is a beggar, that too is perfectly okay. He has no preference. He simply lives in the moment, whatsoever God makes available to him. He does not change anything.

This has to be understood, because for centuries religions have been teaching you renunciation.

For centuries religions have lived with a great inclination towards escapism. The Sufi has a totally different approach, far healthier, far more whole, far more human, far more natural. Because whenever you escape from something it is out of fear, and out of fear there is never any transformation.

When something drops of its own accord - not that you drop it, but simply that it has become nonessential, unimportant - then there is freedom.

Freedom is never out of fear, freedom is out of great awareness. The Sufi lives in the world, mindful of God. He lives in the world, but he remembers God. He moves in the marketplace, but his heart is throbbing with a certain remembrance. The ZIKR continues. He does not become forgetful in the world; that is his work.

Escape or no escape, if you are forgetful you will miss God anywhere you are, in e marketplace or in the monastery. If you are not forgetful, if you are mindful, alert and aware, then God is everywhere - as much here as anywhere else, as much now as then. There is no question of going anywhere; one can simply relax here and fall into a kind of watchful silence. And then life is simple and uncluttered.

Yes, that is what simplicity is: not a cultivated character but a life which is uncluttered by the nonessential, by the unimportant, by the mundane, by the trivial.

And again let me repeat that the Sufi does not believe in any fairy-tales, so there is no question of being motivated. He does not believe in the tomorrows. All that he knows of time is now, all that he knows of space is here.

These sounds of the birds are divine for him. There is no other God separate from this existence.

The dancer is in the dance, so he has no idea of a personal God sitting somewhere above the clouds. His God is an impersonal presence.

Feel it now, this very moment. The presence is here, as it is everywhere else. All that is needed is your falling into a kind of attunement, your falling inwards into a kind of at-one-ment. Then the cawing of the crows and the cuckoo calling from far away... and all is silent. In that silence you start becoming aware of the impersonal presence that surrounds you.

A young bank clerk stole five thousand pounds from the bank and was unable to reimburse it when caught. In despair he went up to the cliff with the intention of committing suicide.

As he was about to jump he was tapped on his left shoulder, and upon turning around he spied an especially ugly lady who claimed to be his fairy godmother, and granted him three wishes.

His first wish was to replace the five thousand pounds, which was granted. His second wish was to be the owner of a large mansion, and his third, the owner of a Rolls Royce. All these were granted to him by his fairy godmother.

Feeling very pleased with himself, he turned back to make his way home to get the five thousand pounds, the mansion and the Rolls Royce. His fairy godmother stopped him and requested that he, too, grant her a single wish. He was only too happy to oblige, whereupon she asked him to make love to her.

He was repelled by her, but obliged because of the wishes she had granted him. He made love to her in a great hurry and pulled his trousers up and was about to leave when she stopped him yet again.

This time she asked, "How old are you, young man?"

His reply was, "I am thirty-five years of age - but why do you ask?"

She said, 'You still believe in fairy godmothers?"

The person who believes in a personal God is still immature. There is nothing like that. That personal God is nothing but your idea of a father, projected and magnified. You are childish. When you pray, if you think you are praying to a personal God you are simply being stupid. There is nobody listening to your prayer. And yet God is. But God is not a person, God is an impersonal presence.

God is this whole, the totality of all that is. Hence prayer can only be a silence. You cannot address God - prayer can only be an utter silence.

If you are silent now, it is a prayerful moment. This is what prayer is all about. When everything stops: no thought moves in your head, your breathing slows down, a moment comes when there is almost no breath. In that state of silence you are connected, you are plugged into reality. You are more separate; you are one.

That oneness is prayer.

Now the sutras.

A RUBY, THERE, IS JUST A PIECE OF STONE...

Where? What does Hakim Sanai mean by "there?" the silence that I was talking about. When you are utterly silent, in prayer, in samadhi...

A RUBY, THERE, IS JUST A PIECE OF STONE...

Your whole way of looking at things changes. When there are desires clamoring in your mind, even an ordinary stone can look like a ruby. You can project your desire on an ordinary stone; you can create an illusion that it is very precious.

Otherwise, when you are not possessed by desires, what is a ruby? An ordinary stone. All diamonds are nothing but ordinary stones. Just think of one day the third world war happens and the whole of humanity disappears from the earth, will there be any difference between a stone and a diamond?

Will there be any difference at all between the great Kohinoor and the pebble by the side of the road?

There will be none.

That means the difference is created by man, is projected by man. It is a manufactured difference.

It is something in man's mind: if man disappears then there will be no rubies and no pebbles, they all will be the same. Then the Kohinoor cannot demand a special privilege.

It happened once, a Zen master used to live in a forest, and the king of the country came to pay a visit to him. And he had brought many presents, among them a beautiful robe studded with diamonds - very valuable, the most valuable robe that the king had. He presented the velvet robe.

The master accepted it, but then immediately gave it back and said, "Please take it back."

The king felt offended. He said, "This is a present from me. Will you not oblige me by accepting it?

I will feel very rejected."

The master said, "It is not a question of my obliging you. If you insist, I can keep it here. But I must tell you one thing: I live here all alone, there are no human beings. So who will appreciate this robe?

I live here with deer and peacocks, and sometimes the lion comes, and all those animals will laugh at me. Don't make me a laughingstock, please take it back. They will all laugh; they will think that now in this old age I have become foolish.

"I have all my companions, birds and beasts, and they won't understand these diamonds and their value. Please take it back, please oblige me by taking it back. This is perfectly good where human stupidity prevails, but here it is meaningless."

It is man who has created the distinctions and categories, otherwise all is one. But there is no need for the third world war to happen to understand this. The moment you drop your mind, you will immediately be able to see. The mind dropped, the world is transformed - because the mind has created a certain kind of world. Once you are no more a mind, that whole world disappears. It was a dream.

And then you are awake, and then you see things as they are in themselves.

A German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, used to say, "You cannot see things as they are in themselves."

Philosophically he is right. If you work through the mind you cannot see things as they are, because the mind will always be there to distort, to improve, to change, to project, to color this way or that, with all its prejudices. The mind will be there. The mind won't allow you to see things as they are in themselves, because whatsoever reaches to you will go through the mind. In that way, Immanuel Kant is right.

I have heard:

An Englishman and an Irishman went to the captain of a ship bound for America and asked permission to work their passage over. The captain consented, let the Englishman go on board, but told the Irishman he must bring references. The Irishman went ashore and got them, but the discrimination angered him and he was determined to get even.

One day, when the two were aiding in washing down the deck, the Englishman went to the railing, roped bucket in hand, and let the bucket down into the water. He was just leaning over to pull it up when a great wave came aboard, caught him up and pulled him overboard.

The Irishman stopped scrubbing and went to the railing. He peered into the water. No sign of the Englishman.

Righteously indignant, the Irishman took himself up to the captain's cabin.

"Captain, perhaps yez remember, whin I shipped aboard this vessel ye asked me for references an' let thot Englishman come on without thim?"

"Of course I remember. You aren't complaining at this late date, are you?"

"Complainin', Captain? Not the likes of me. I'm jist here to tell you thot your trust was betrayed. You know, Captain, thim English..."

"Whatever do you mean, 'betrayed'?"

"Sure, an' that Englishman's gone off wid your pail!"

If you are carrying a certain prejudice in your mind, you will see only through the prejudice. And the mind is nothing but prejudices and prejudices. The mind means your whole past, and anything that enters you will have to go through your whole past. It will be distorted, it will be colored, it will be changed so much by the time it reaches you that you will not be able to know what in reality is the case.

Immanuel Kant is right, but philosophically only. He is not aware of the world of meditation, he is not aware of the Sufis and the Zen people and the Taoists. Otherwise there is a way to know things as they are in themselves: just put the mind aside. Look with empty eyes and then there is no interference with reality.

And suddenly you will see the pearl is no more a pearl, the ruby is no more a ruby, the diamond is no more a diamond. Then all distinctions, differences, evaluations and judgments have disappeared.

Then suddenly things are there without any labels and names and categories.

A RUBY, THERE, IS JUST A PIECE OF STONE:

AND SPIRITUAL EXCELLENCE THE HEIGHT OF FOLLY.

And those who have tasted something of meditation, the world is no more significant to them. They don't renounce it, it is simply no more significant - not even worth renouncing. It has no value at all.

When you renounce the world you are giving it value. You are saying, "It is so valuable that if I don't renounce it I will be caught in it." When you escape from the world you are afraid of the world.

Otherwise why escape? Your very escape shows that you are obsessed by things, that you are too attached and afraid that if you live here you will be drowned by things. This simply shows your impotence. The escapist simply shows his cowardice and impotence.

The Sufis say: Don't be worried, attain to meditation. Attain to that uncultivated silence. Relax into your being, just be, and then see. And there is nothing to renounce. There is nothing to indulge in and there is nothing to renounce; both those polarities have disappeared.

A RUBY, THERE, IS JUST A PIECE OF STONE:

AND SPIRITUAL EXCELLENCE THE HEIGHT OF FOLLY.

And not only worldly things disappear, your so-called otherworldly experiences also become stupid.

All claims become foolish.

This is the criterion of a real Sufi: he will not claim any excellence, he will not claim any spiritual experience. He will live very ordinarily, he will live without claim. How can he claim anything?

Because deep inside he has come to know that there is nobody to claim anything, it is all emptiness.

He has come to see the state of FANA: he has dissolved. Who is there to claim? He cannot claim worldly power and prestige, he cannot claim spiritual excellence.

Sanai says: That is the height of folly. why? Because one who claims, "I have riches of the world"

can be forgiven - he is a fool but he can be forgiven. But the person who claims spiritual riches, he cannot be forgiven. This is the height of folly; you are still carrying the same categories of the world, you are still bragging about yourself.

The really spiritual person simply becomes anonymous.

A strange story is told of a Zen master that when he attained to samadhi, birds started coming to him - birds which never used to come to him before. They would sit on his shoulders, on his head, they would play in his lap, they would sit around him, as if he was also a bird.

Great fame spread. His disciples started claiming, "See, this is a real master. This is what a real master should be. There is no other master like our master; he has attained to such heights of samadhi that birds no longer fear him. He has attained to such love and compassion that even birds understand it."

Then one day a very strange thing happened: the birds stopped coming, they disappeared. For days the disciples waited, but the birds were not coming anymore. They were puzzled. They asked the master and he said, "Now something really has happened. The birds were coming because there was some claim inside me that 'I have attained.' Now even that claim has disappeared, so the birds also have forgotten all about me.

"Now I am anonymous. Now even the birds know that I am anonymous, I am a nobody. they used to come because I was still somebody. Now they don't com;e now the ultimate has happened. Now they don't come because they don't see anybody here - it is just absence."

This is FANA. This is what Sufis call dissolution. In this state you cannot CLAIM - spiritual excellence or anything. Remember always, any spiritual claim becomes a barrier.

SILENCE IS PRAISE...

And now there is not even any prayer. Words won't do; all your prayers are nothing but words. Now silence is praise, just to be silent is enough.

... HAVE DONE WITH SPEECH; YOUR CHATTER WILL ONLY BRING YOU HARM AND SORROW - HAVE DONE!

If you really want to be in a state of prayer, have done with words. You have been taught as Christians, as Hindus, as Mohammedans, how to pray, what words to use, what is proper prayer. All prayers are false. The real prayer has nothing to do with words and formalities, the real prayer is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian.

How can silence be Hindu or Mohammedan? Silence is silence. Words can be Hindu and words can be Mohammedan, hence words create conflict, hence words create violence in the world. It is not that people are fighting for realities - they are fighting for words.

Thousands of wars have been fought, not for any real thing, but just for mer words. One believes in the Koran and one believes in the Gita: it is enough to kill millions of people. And both are words; neither the Koran nor the Gita is a reality.

Have you seen people killing each other for a roseflower or for the moon or for the sun? These are realities. but they can kill even in the name of the moon: if somebody claims, "The moon is our God,"

then he has imposed a word 'God' on the moon. And then somebody says, "You are a fool. The moon is not the real God, the real God is the sun." And the fight starts and the quarreling starts.

Words have been the cause of all wars - religious wars, political wars. Ideology is the root cause of all violence. And now there are people who try to bring peace to the world, and again they create another ideology.

For example, the followers of Mahatma Gandhi think that his ideology will bring peace to the world.

You have not learned a single lesson from history. No ideology can ever bring peace to the world; all ideologies bring wars to the world in their wake.

Do you think Mohammed knowingly gave an ideology to the world to bring war? The name that he gave to his religion is "Islam": Islam means peace. But the ideology didn't bring peace, it brought thousands of wars.

Jesus is the man of peace. Who else can claim more peaceful attitudes towards life than Jesus?

But Christianity, the ideology that was created around Jesus, has been a calamity.

All ideologies are bound to bring war, even ideologies based on peace and for peace. Then how can peace come? Peace can come only if man understands the stupidity of all ideologies and drops them. If man simply starts living without any ideology, there will be peace. Otherwise there cannot be any peace.

And remember, you can make an ideology out of it also: "This is our ideology, that we will not believe in any ideology." Then war will come again. Then those who won't believe in it and won't agree with you will start fighting with you.

I am not telling you that you have to make THIS an ideology, that no ideology is needed. I am simply saying try to understand what has happened through ideologies, words, theories, philosophies. Just see the point; and seeing it, let it drop.

Don't make a new ideology against ideologies. Just seeing the point, drop it, let it drop, be finished with it.

HAVE DONE!

Sanai is right. He says: Have done, and then live without ideology. Live without any theories of HOW to live. Live without any ideals, live without any shoulds and oughts.

Every fact sooner or later becomes an ought, and then it becomes dangerous. Every truth sooner or later becomes an ideology, and then it is harmful and poisonous.

Can't man live without any ideology? I don't see that there is any problem. If birds and animals and trees can live without ideology, man can live without ideology. Have you seen any Catholic tree or any communist peacock? If the whole existence can live without ideology, why not man?

And the moment a man lives without ideology he is prayerful. Then his whole life is prayer, then he is religious. The man who has an ideology is political; all ideologies are political.

The religious person lives without any ideology. He simply lives, responding to reality moment to moment - not through words, not through disciplines, not through certain attitudes and conclusions, no. He simply responds to whatsoever is the case and whatsoever is right in the moment, not according to some idea.

Certainly a religious person will have to be very alert so that he can respond. The man who has a certain ideology need not be alert, he can remain asleep. He has a certain ideology; if any situation arises he has a ready-made answer for it. What need has he to be aware? That's why people are living in sleep, there is no NEED to be alert. You have been given ready-made answers for everything.

If you have to search for the answer each moment on your own, how can you live in sleep? The reality goes on creating challenges, and if you don't have any ready-made answers you will have to be alert and watchful.

The moment one drops words and ideologies, suddenly one becomes very very aware. And that awareness is prayer. Silence is always full of awareness, and the chattering mind is always unconscious.

BELIEF AND UNBELIEF BOTH HAVE THEIR ORIGIN IN YOUR HYPOCRITE'S HEART...

See the revolutionary statement in these words:

BELIEF AND UNBELIEF BOTH HAVE THEIR ORIGIN IN YOUR HYPOCRITE'S HEART...

From where comes belief? And from where unbelief? They are not different, they come from the same source; the hypocrite's heart.

You can see the hypocrites in the temples, mosques and churches. You can see them in so many shapes and so many sizes with so many different kinds of words, but it is the same source: hypocrisy.

Why is hypocrisy the source of belief and unbelief? A man says "I believe in God" without knowing anything about God. Without have ever experienced God, without having ever tasted God, he says, "I believe in God." From where is this belief coming? It is hypocrisy. He is pretending; he is deceiving others, he is deceiving himself.

If you have not known on your own, how can you believe in God? But your father has told you, your mother has told you, you have been taught by the priest, by the state. They go on giving you beliefs.

If you are born in a Catholic country the Catholic belief will be given to you, if you are born in a communist country the communist belief will be given to you.

Before the child becomes aware, he is already conditioned, already poisoned. And then his whole life he will repeat the belief that has been put into him, and because of this belief he will remain a hypocrite.

The man who says, "There is no God" - has he known? Has he enquired? Has he explored the whole existence and FOUND that there is no God? No, he has not explored it, this again is out of hypocrisy.

So remember: belief and unbelief, howsoever contradictory they look, the theist and the atheist, howsoever antagonistic they look, are the same. They come from the same source. Without knowing anything, without experiencing anything on their own, they go on believing, they go on declaring.

That's what hypocrisy is all about: to say something that you don't know, to utter something that is not your own authentic experience. To live in borrowed knowledge is hypocrisy. Deep down you are something, on the surface you pretend something else. This is hypocrisy.

And Sanai's statement is tremendously revolutionary, because he puts the believer and the unbeliever in the same category.

The religious person is neither a believer nor an unbeliever, because he is not a hypocrite. He will say only that which he knows, he will not utter a single word that he does not know. If he does not know, he will say that he does not know.

Socrates is a religious man, because he says, "I know only one thing, that I don't know anything."

This is religiousness. This is sincerity of the heart, this is simplicity, this is humbleness.

... THE WAY IS ONLY LONG BECAUSE YOU DELAY TO START ON IT...

And the way is only long because you delay to start on it. Otherwise it is not a long way. Between you and God there is only one step to be taken, just one step. But people go on postponing - and they can postpone because they have beliefs; beliefs help them to postpone.

The so-called religious man knows that God is there; without knowing, he knows that God is there.

"So what is the hurry? Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, I will go and have a dip in the Ganges.

Or I will go to Kaaba and pray there. Or at the last moment when I am dying I will remember him.

He is there, so why be worried and why be in a hurry?"

It can be postponed. Because of belief, there is no need to explore, enquire, investigate.

And for the one who says, "There is no God," there is no question of investigation either. If there is no God, what is the point of investigating and enquiring? Both are finished with enquiry.

And the man who is not in constant enquiry, he will go on missing - although the distance is not very long, the distance is of just a single step. And what is that step? From hypocrisy to sincerity: that is the single step.

Drop all that you don't know but you go on pretending to know. Let all borrowed knowledge disappear and just be true to one thing, to your own experience. Only that which is your own experience is going to help, and everything else is a hindrance.

Just see the point. Sanai is really making tremendously significant statements.

... ONE SINGLE STEP WOULD BRING YOU TO HIM...

From hypocrisy to sincerity. And this is not a long long journey, you can do it right now this very moment. You already know what is your experience and what is not your experience, don't you?

Everybody knows. The believer knows, "I believe, but I don't know." The unbeliever knows, "I don't believe, but I don't know - maybe God is." The believer goes on doubting: "Maybe he is not."

You are perfectly aware about borrowed knowledge. But why do you cling to it? Because it gives you a good decoration for the ego. It gratifies your ego; you can pretend that you are knowledgeable.

You can walk upright, you can tell people, "I know, and you don't know." You can go on carrying that holier-than-thou face. You can enjoy this trip, because you can recite the Gita like a parrot and because you know the Koran like a computer.

This is not knowing. Have done with all this! And one single step is enough...

WOULD BRING YOU TO HIM:

BECOME A SALVE, AND YOU WILL BE A KING.

The moment you move from hypocrisy to sincerity, suddenly your whole ego will disappear - because it is hypocrisy that helps your ego to remain there. If you drop all that is borrowed, you have taken away all the props of the ego: your ego will fall flat.

And in the fall of the ego is the beginning of a real life. When the ego falls you are in a state of surrender, you become a slave. Remember, this word 'slave' has a tremendously different connotation in the East than it has in the West. The West knows only one kind of slave: one who has been forced. That's why in any Western language the word 'slave' is ugly.

One day I gave sannyas to a young man and I gave him the name Devadasyo: divine slave.

Immediately I could see on his face that he was feeling offended. "Slave?" Although he didn't say anything to me that moment, next day he wrote a letter saying, "Beloved Master, I have enquired into it. If instead of 'slave' the word can simply mean 'servant' it will be more appreciated - not 'slave' but just 'servant'. Can I make it mean just 'servant'? I have enquired into it and people said yes, both meanings are possible."

So much fear of the word 'slave' - because it only has a one-dimensional meaning in the West:

when the slavery is imposed on somebody.

And similar is the case with the word 'surrender'. In the West it does not have a beautiful connotation.

In the East 'slave' has two meanings. One, that you know, is forced slavery, which is ugly. Another is, willfully accepted slavery, which is beautiful - voluntarily accepted. Seeing that "I am only a part and not separate from the whole, so how can I be a master?" one surrenders.

This is a totally different meaning of surrender. It is utterly blissful. It is not that you are forced to surrender; if you are forced then it is not surrender. It is when you do it on your own, seeing that you are just a part, a wave in the ocean, and the wave surrenders to the ocean because "I am not separate, so why go on pretending that I am separate? The ocean is the master, the total is the master, and I am just a wave in the ocean. I am surrendered: let the ocean have its say."

That's what Jesus says on the cross: "Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done." That is surrender, that is becoming a slave. In that moment Jesus dropped the last remaining shadow of his ego.

... BECOME A SLAVE, AND YOU WILL BE A KING.

And this is the miracle, that when you become a slave you become the king. Why? And how?

When you surrender to the ocean as a wave, you become the ocean. Separate from the ocean you are just a wave, continuously fighting and afraid of death. Separate from the ocean you are just a worry, an anguish, and nothing else.

One with the ocean, there is no question of death. The wave will disappear but you will remain in the ocean for ever and for ever. Now there is no worry, and now there is no goal either. Wherever the ocean is going is right; that is the only place to go. Now there is no private destiny, so no worry.

And even disappearance is no more disappearance, because you have already seen the point that you are not separate. When you are, you are in the ocean; when you are not, you are in the ocean.

And the ocean remains. Only waves come and go; the wave was only a form. Forms come and go but the substance remains.

When the wave becomes one with the ocean - or REMEMBERS that it is one with the ocean, becomes aware of the oneness - it is no more a slave, it is the king. It has attained to the deathless, to the eternal.

THE DUMB FIND TONGUES, WHEN THE SCENT OF LIFE REACHES THEM FROM HIS SOUL.

And when this happens, even those who have been dumb find tongues. Even those who have not said a single word before, whose life was only of prayer, whose life was only of silence, suddenly start singing. Their silence becomes a song.

The moment the slave disappears and the king arrives, the wave disappears and the ocean takes over, there is great creativity. Your life is no more ordinary and mundane. Now it has the flavor of the divine, of the sacred.

THE DUMB FIND TONGUES...

Those who have never spoken anything, they start saying things which are unbelievable, things which are incredible, words which are radiant, pregnant. Their gestures have a power now: if they touch you they will transform you by their touch, if they look in your eyes you will never be the same man again.

... WHEN THE SCENT OF LIFE REACHES THEM FROM HIS SOUL.

The great Sufi master, Jalaluddin Rumi, wrote these three lines as his own epitaph:

Not more than three words, My whole life is condensed in these three words:

I was raw, now I am cooked and burnt.

This is the death that brings resurrection.

I was raw, now I am cooked and burnt.

Jalaluddin, the greatest Sufi, says, "These three words contain my whole life."

If you are separate, you are raw. If you join together with existence, you are cooked. And if you disappear absolutely, without leaving even a shadow of the ego, you are burnt.

Patanjali has called this state NIRBEEJ SAMADHI: seedless samadhi, when the seed is burnt. Now there will be no more misery, no more coming and going, no more constant change of form. Now you will abide in the eternal as eternal.

Jalaluddin also says:

Listen to the reed. It is complaining.

It tells of separation, saying, "Ever since they tore me from the reed bed, My lament has moved man and woman to tears.

Everyone who is left far from his source Wishes back to the time of union.

"Listen to the reed... everyone who is left far from his source wishes back to the time of union." We are all searching for our source. We are all like reeds searching for the reed bed from which we have been torn.

Jalaluddin had a special love for the reed flute. "Do not ask why God created the flute" goes a folk song. "He wanted the people to understand Rumi." Otherwise how would people have understood Rumi? That's why he created the flute.

When a man attains to the ultimate he becomes a flute. A song is born: a song that goes on and on.

Buddha sang it for forty-two years - day in and day out, year in and year out, for forty-two years he continued a song. Mahavira did the same, and so did Mohammed and Bahauddin and Jalaluddin.

And it is this song that we are listening to and going into right now: Hakim Sanai.

From where comes this song? It comes out of silence. It is condensed silence, it comes from your absolute emptiness. You become just a passage to God, a hollow bamboo, a flute, and God starts singing through you.

All the great scriptures of the world are songs of the divine. But you will understand them only if you have understood silence. Not by going into the scriptures will you understand them, but by going into your own silence. When you are in the same state as Krishna, you will be able to understand the Bhagavadgita.'Bhagavadgita' means the divine song, the celestial song. But how can you understand the song if you have not even understood silence, from where it comes? It consists of silence, it is condensed silence.

You will not be able to understand the Koran unless you attain to that state of FANA where the Koran descended into Mohammed. Only then will you be able to understand the Koran. And the beauty is that if you understand the silence of your being, you will be able to understand simultaneously all the great scriptures of the world, and you will not find any contradictions in them. But right now if you start reading the Koran and the bible and the Gita, you will be very much puzzled and confused.

You will find contradictions and contradictions and nothing else.

What to say about contradictions between the Gita and the Koran? If you read the Gita itself you will find thousands of contradictions in it. It is not a question of comparing it with the Koran; just go on reading the Gita with a critical eye, and you will be puzzled - Krishna goes on contradicting himself.

You will not be able to understand at all. Understanding arises only out of meditation.

And when you have attained to meditation, even your words will have the sweetness of the Koran and the Gita - even YOUR words. You who have always been dumb will suddenly start speaking, which will not only surprise others, it will surprise you too, because you will not be able to understand from where they are coming. They come from the beyond: you are just a receptacle.

THE DUMB FIND TONGUES, WHEN THE SCENT OF LIFE REACHES THEM FROM HIS SOUL.

LISTEN TRULY - AND DON'T BE FOOLED - THIS IS NOT FOR FOOLS...

And when in silence something starts speaking to you, listen truly - don't be fooled! What does Sanai mean by "listen truly?" Don't bring your old mind in, don't start interpreting it, otherwise you will have missed. Just listen to whatsoever happens. Forget that you have to interpret it, forget the very idea that you have to understand it, forget absolutely about bringing your intellect into it.

Just listen as you listen to the sounds of the birds, or the sound of running water, or the wind passing through the pines: how do you listen? Do you try to decipher the meaning? How do you listen to somebody playing the guitar? You don't bring your intellect in, you listen from the heart. You only listen, for no other purpose; just listening is so tremendously joyful. You start swaying with the music, you feel like dancing with the music.

This is the right way of listening, when the infinite starts passing through you, when those sources from the beyond start pouring into you.

Please beware, don't be a fool. If you bring your mind in, you have disturbed the whole process.

Then you will learn something which has not been told, and you will tell about something which you have not heard.

So the greatest preparation is silence: the silence of a no-mind. And only when the silence is absolutely ripe will you be able to listen.

The music is still going on, but you are not able to listen because you are not tuned to silence. It is not that one day suddenly, twenty-five centuries ago, underneath a bodhi tree, God spoke to Buddha.

Or that fourteen centuries ago, suddenly on the mountains, God poured himself into Mohammed.

No, it is not so: he is pouring every moment.

And when I say this to you, I am saying it as an eye-witness. He is pouring every moment. He cannot stop pouring, he is helpless, that is his way of being. The Koran is being poured into you every moment, the Gita is just showering all around you. But you are not tuned. You are like a pot put upside-down: it goes on raining but the pot remains empty.

It is as if the sun has risen but you are sitting with closed eyes. Open your eyes any moment, and for you it may appear that the sun has just risen because you have opened your eyes. It is not so:

the sun has always been there.

God cannot be absent for a single moment, because if he is absent the whole world will collapse.

LISTEN TRULY - AND DON'T BE FOOLED - THIS IS NOT FOR FOOLS...

And who are the fools? You will be surprised: the pundits, the scholars, the learned people. They are the fools, because they are so full of knowledge that they will not be able to listen. Even if God starts pouring into them, they will correct him. They will HAVE to correct him; it is impossible for them not to interfere. If somebody is a follower of the Gita and God speaks through him, he will make God fit with his Gita. That is what proves him a fool.

God always speaks in a new way. He is always original and fresh: he need not repeat the old. He has spoken once that way as the Gita, now he will never speak the same way again. He has spoken once as a Buddha in the Dhammapada, now he will never speak the same way again.

And this is what man goes on expecting. I receive thousands of letters, and the basic thing in those thousands of letters is: why don't I behave like a Buddha? But why should I behave like a Buddha?

They have a fixed expectation. If they see that I am saying anything which goes differently from Buddha, they are immediately alert and alarmed. They are afraid something has gone wrong.

But do you know? Buddha spoke in HIS way - he was not repeating Krishna, not at all. And people must have been reaching him too, saying, "Why don't you speak like Krishna?" And Krishna spoke in his own way, and he was not repeating Rama either. And people must have been reaching him too: "why don't you speak like Rama? Why don't you live like Rama?"

These are the fools. And these are learned fools. They know much about scriptures, but they know nothing about life. Life is always new.

When a roseflower comes on the rosebush it is not a repetition of any roseflower that has preceded it. It is unique, incomparable.

And that's how it happens every time God pours himself through somebody. He is always unique.

He never fits with his own past expressions. He always goes on transcending his own past, he goes on surpassing himself. He is never confined and contained by the past, because he is not dead.

If God speaks to you like he spoke through Krishna, that means that in these five thousand years he has not grown up at all. Then these five thousand years he had been dead. Then there is no need of him - a His Master's Voice record will do.

Remember it. If you feel something in you that fits with the bible, that fits with the Gita, that fits with anything else, beware: it may be your mind which is playing tricks on you. God never fits with anything, he is always unique. The song is always new.

LISTEN TRULY - AND DON'T BE FOOLED - THIS IS NOT FOR FOOLS:

ALL THESE DIFFERENT SHADES BECOME ONE COLOR IN THE JAR OF UNITY...

And if you have listened well, you will be surprised:

... ALL THESE DIFFERENT SHADES BECOME ONE COLOR...

The Koran and the Gita and the Bible and the Dhammapada and the Tao Te Ching - suddenly all become one color. All the shades dissolve into one color. The whole spectrum of seven colors disappears and all become one color, white. Hence the color white has always been a symbol for unity, for oneness, for purity.

... THE ROPE BECOMES SLENDER WHEN REDUCED TO A SINGLE STRAND.

This is the mystic union: UNIO MYSTICA. When you have dissolved yourself with the whole, then all differences disappear. Then everything is separate and yet not separate, different and yet not different. Then the songs are different but the melody is the same. This is unity in multiplicity, and this is the richness of life. All songs are different but the melody is the same.

YOUR INTELLECT IS JUST A HOTCH-POTCH OF GUESSWORK AND THOUGHT, LIMPING OVER THE FACE OF THE EARTH...

Beware: your intellect is the root cause of your going astray. It is all a hotch-potch of guesswork and thought.

The intellect can never give you truth. It can at the most guess and infer - but truth is not an inference and it is not guesswork. It is not a question of guessing: either you know or you don't know.

And how can you guess about the unknown? You may guess about the known, but you cannot guess about the unknown. "The unknown" simply means that you have no idea about it, no idea at all. How are you going to guess about it? How are you going to think about the unknown? Only the known can be thought about. So thinking is a repetitive process, it goes on moving in a circle. It never leads you to new truths, it never leads you to discoveries.

And this is not only so in religion, it is so everywhere, even in science. All the great discoveries of science have not been made by the process of thinking; all the great discoveries of science have happened through no-mind. And now scientists are becoming aware of the phenomenon.

For example, Madame Curie discovered something - for three years she had been working hard on a problem; she had tried all possible clues but the problem remained. One evening she was utterly tired and finished, and she thought, "Now it is enough. Enough is enough!"

In the same way, it happened to Buddha one night. For six years he had tried and tried to know who he is, and had failed and failed again and again. And there is a limit. That evening he decided, "It is finished. There seems to be no way, all is futile." He dropped the whole idea, went to sleep, and by the morning he was enlightened.

Because in that night's sleep something surfaced. There was no effort now; he had made every effort and he was done with it. That night he was relaxed, totally relaxed. Not even a single dream disturbed him, because when all desires are dropped, dreams disappear. Dreams are the shadows of your desires.

That whole night was just a peaceful prayer. A meditation that he had not been able to attain through effort, happened in that moment. It always happens when your efforts have failed, when you have reached the optimum of your efforts. Remember, it can't happen just now. If you go there - and the tree is still there in Bodhgaya: you can go and lie down underneath the tree the whole night - nothing will happen. You will simply dream about your girlfriend or boyfriend, and you will have nightmares.

Your night will be YOUR night, it will not be Buddha's night. You have not yet done anything to attain to that.

The attainment is paradoxical. First one has to do all that one can do, and then one has to drop that doing. Then it comes, then it comes rushing.

The same happened to Madame Curie. Of course, their worlds are totally different. Buddha was searching for "Who am I?" Madame Curie was searching for a mathematical conclusion to a certain problem; she was a mathematician, a scientist.

That night she was tired, finished; there seemed to be no hope, she was hopeless. She dropped the idea. "Wasted were those three years," she decided, "and now no more. From tomorrow morning I shall start some new project."

Now there was a gap. Tomorrow morning she would start a new project, and the old project was gone. And this night, these eight or ten or twelve hours were in a gap. And in the night it happened.

Silently something penetrated into her consciousness from the deeper layers. From intuition to intellect, something penetrated.

In her sleep she walked to her table, wrote the answer - in sleep - went back, fell asleep again.

In the morning she found the answer scribbled in her own hand. She could not even remember immediately that she had done it. Then slowly slowly she remember that yes, there had been a dream. In a dream she had seen that she was going to the table and writing something. Now she knew it was not a dream, it had really happened and the answer was there. And for three years she had tried and the answer had remained elusive.

What happened? It is the same phenomenon. Intellect cannot reach to the unknown, the unknown is available to intuition. Intellect can work only in the world of the known - so it is good, but it has limitations.

YOUR INTELLECT IS JUST A HOTCH-POTCH OF GUESSWORK AND THOUGHT, LIMPING OVER THE FACE OF THE EARTH; WHEREVER THEY ARE, HE IS NOT...

And whenever thoughts are there, whenever your intellect is there, God is not. Your intellect does not allow him entry, it keeps you occupied. He comes, he comes again and again, he knocks on the door, but he never finds you unoccupied, available, vulnerable. You are constantly engaged with your intellect; he has to go back.

... THEY ARE CONTAINED WITHIN HIS CREATION.

Your thoughts, your mind, your intellect, are contained within his creation. How can the part know the whole? Can your hand know your totality? Can a hair of your head know your totality? It is impossible.

And the intellect is a very small phenomenon in this immense existence. What is your intellect? And it is trying to do the impossible, it is trying to grasp the whole. The whole effort is futile.

Once you have understood it, that the whole effort is futile, you relax. And then the miracle happens; that which cannot be grabbed becomes available. But you cannot grab it. On the contrary, when you are silent it possesses you, it grabs you.

MAN AND HIS REASON ARE JUST THE LATEST RIPENING PLANTS IN HIS GARDEN.

WHATEVER YOU ASSERT ABOUT HIS NATURE, YOU ARE BOUND TO BE OUT OF YOUR DEPTH, LIKE A BLIND MAN TRYING TO DESCRIBE THE APPEARANCE OF HIS OWN MOTHER.

It is like a blind man trying to describe something that he has never seen. Although he has come from the mother, he has lived in the mother's womb for nine months, he still cannot describe the mother because he has no eyes.

We have lived in God, we ARE living in God. He is our womb: from eternity to eternity we never leave his womb. Still e cannot describe him, we still don't have the eyes which can see him.

Hence the symbol of the third eye. These two eyes can see his world, these two eyes can see the without. These two eyes can see the duality of day and night, summer and winter, life and death, man and woman, positive/negative, yin/yang - all kinds of dualities these two eyes can see.'Two' means the dual.

The third eye means one single eye. That one single eye is still hidden in you, nonfunctioning. It is a metaphor, remember. It is not that there is some third eye as a fact - it is a metaphor, and of tremendous value, of great significance. It signifies ONE. Only one can know the one; two will always know the two.

Behind these two eyes there is one eye. The two go outwards, the one goes inwards. Unless that eye arises in you, you will not be able to know God. Belief is of no help, it is hypocrisy. Disbelief is of no help, it is hypocrisy again.

Don't be a theist and don't be an atheist, be an enquirer. Move with great passion into this enquiry about God. Don't say he is, don't say he is not. How can we say anything without knowing and seeing?

Go into this existence - and the beginning has to be from your very inner core. That one eye is created by meditation, by silence.

WHILE REASON IS STILL TRACKING DOWN THE SECRET, YOU END YOUR QUEST ON THE OPEN FIELD OF LOVE.

Such a beautiful statement. And you will be surprised one day: your two eyes were searching and searching and were not finding it, and suddenly one day the third eye has opened and you have found it. Your intellect was searching and searching for the secret, and one day intuition has ripened and the heart has known.

The intellect goes on thinking and thinking, and never knows. And the heart never thinks, it only knows. The heart is the faculty of real knowing. In the world of the heart, knowing means being; there is no difference between knowing and being.

The scientist knows the object THERE, separate from himself. The mystic knows God not as an object but as his own subjectivity - here, in himself, as himself.

Hakim Sanai says: The pure person, the meditator, knows the unity of two. And the lover knows the unity of three: of love, the lover, and the beloved. There comes a point in you where all is integrated.

Thoughts keep you fragmentary and divided. When all thoughts have disappeared, how can you be divided, how can you be fragmentary? Integration arises; you are centered, you are one. And in that oneness, you have known; you have already known.

The heart comes to know, and then the heart informs the intellect, "Now there is no need, don't worry about it: it has happened. Now no need to enquire and search - stop! I have come to know."

It is always the heart that knows, remember it. Hence the emphasis on trust, on surrender. When you come to a master you have to be joined with the master through the heart, not through the intellect. If you join through the intellect then it is not much of a bridge, because the intellect does not know how to create a bridge - it knows how to create walls. And just small things will be enough to create walls.

A few days ago, a woman took sannyas. And just the other day she wrote a letter to me, saying, "Your criticism of the priests is ugly." Now, she does not know that she is creating a wall. Now it will be difficult for her to feel me, she has brought her own mind in. And she has been here for only a few days. Wait a little: if I have criticized the priests, there must be some reason. Wait a little, be patient, listen to what I am saying and why I am saying it. Don't be in such a hurry, otherwise you will start creating walls.

And if you create walls then there is no possibility of my being contacting your being. Then I cannot find you where you are. You will be hiding behind walls: I will come and knock, but you will not hear me - and for unnecessary reasons.

Now, what do you have to do with priests? Why should you be concerned about priests? Have you come here just to listen to me praise your priests? You have come here to be transformed: now, what has that got to do with the priests? And it is such a small thing!

And that woman has also written, saying, "Whenever you use the word 'ugly' it appears to me that the very use of the word is ugly."

Now, if you are in such a state of mind that my use of the word 'ugly' looks ugly to you, then you are not here. Then you are far away on some other planet: you are in your intellect. What is ugly in the word 'ugly'? It is very expressive and beautiful. Even the woman herself has to use the word 'ugly' - she says, "You use of the word 'ugly' is ugly." It is expressive; and that is the function of a word, that it should be expressive. And it REALLY expresses, it fulfills its function!

But are you here to decide about my words? Are you here like some examiner? Then you are just functioning stupidly. Then you are the fool Hakim Sanai is talking about: you will miss. You will miss the whole message; you are more concerned with unnecessary things. And there must be a great ego behind this, who knows, and who believes she knows in a better way.

You will not be able to surrender, you will not be able to trust at all. And it is the heart, the trusting heart, which comes to realize reality - it is not the doubting mind.

THE PATH CONSISTS IN NEITHER WORDS NOR DEEDS:

ONLY DESOLATION CAN COME FROM THESE...

Hakim Sanai says that there are three paths: GYANA yoga, the path of knowledge; KARMA yoga, the path of action; and BHAKTI yoga, the path of love. He says:

THE PATH CONSISTS IN NEITHER WORDS NOR DEEDS...

So neither is the path of knowledge going to help you, nor is the path of action going to help you, because action will come out of your mind, and knowledge will come out of your mind.

Only the third thing can help you: love and silence, which are not part of your mind.

THE PATH CONSISTS IN NEITHER WORDS NOR DEEDS:

ONLY DESOLATION CAN COME FROM THESE, AND NEVER ANY LASTING EDIFICE.

SWEETNESS AND LIFE ARE THE WORDS OF THE MAN WHO TREADS THIS ROAD IN SILENCE...

Neither words nor deeds but utter silence. And then your very life becomes a sweetness, and your very life becomes expressive, then your existence has a grace. And that is the song, that is your sermon.

SWEETNESS AND LIFE ARE THE WORDS OF THE MAN WHO TREADS THIS ROAD IN SILENCE...

And one who penetrates into this inner silence, one who comes to know how to be in love and how to be in prayer and how to be in silence, and who drops all the mind and its ways, then the sweetness of his life is his expression. The aliveness of his life, the radiance of his life, are his words.

... WHEN HE SPEAKS IT IS NOT FROM IGNORANCE, AND WHEN HE IS SILENT IT IS NOT FROM SLOTH.

And such a man speaks sometimes, but his speech does not come from ignorance. Your speech comes from ignorance. You speak just to hide your ignorance, you speak to show your knowledge.

Now this woman has written me, saying, "Your criticism of the priests is ugly." She is trying to show her knowledge about priests. She thinks she knows better than me; she is advising me.

When you speak, remember, it should not be to show your knowledge, because any effort to show your knowledge is nothing but to cover your ignorance. Such a man who has known what silence is, and what love is, does not speak from ignorance, he speaks because he has known.

"He speaks" is not really a right expression - God speaks through him. He is no more. He is not the speaker, just a vehicle, a medium.

... AND WHEN HE IS SILENT IT IS NOT FROM SLOTH.

And when you are silent it is out of sloth, laziness, tiredness. When he is silent it is not out of sloth.

He is silent out of prayer, out of love. He is silent, but tremendously alive in his silence. He is not dull, his silence is not unintelligent, his silence is not lazy, his silence is not mediocre.

His silence is full of songs, very pregnant. His silence is like a seed, and when he uses words those words are like flowers that come out of the seed. His silence is beautiful, his songs are beautiful, because those songs come from silence and those songs carry some fragrance of the silence.

When words speak in such a way that they carry silence, then you have come to know how to use words. Then you are no more dumb.

THE DUMB FIND TONGUES, WHEN THE SCENT OF LIFE REACHES THEM FROM HIS SOUL.

But it all comes from him, from the beyond. Buddha, Bahauddin, Kabir, Christ, Mohammed, Mahavira, Sosan and Sanai - they don't speak on their own. They are hollow bamboos, flutes:

they sing a song that comes through them but is not their own. The signature on their songs is that of God.