With Your Total Heart

One friend has said that he is a devotee of Sai Baba, and therefore he is reluctant to call anyone else Beloved Master, but he wants my help, guidance. He says:

Question 1:

The first thing is to remember that the master really does not work. He is there, his presence works, but the presence can work only if you have trust. If you don't have trust, nothing can be done.

So really, if you feel you have surrendered to Sai Baba, what is the need to come to me? If the surrender has really happened, then asking for another master is futile. I doubt your surrender, your trust, because when trust has happened nothing more is needed. And if something more is needed, trust has not happened; you are still in search. If you cannot trust me, it is impossible to work. Not that I have any conditions, my door is open unconditionally, but it will remain closed to you because you can see it as open only when you have trust.

It is good if you feel an intimate closeness with Sai Baba, or anyone else. It is good. But then don't wander here and there, then don't go to anybody else, because this is impossible. Your trust remains with Sai Baba, then no one else can do anything; it is impossible. But you are not certain. You may be believing that surrender has happened. It has not happened, because then to ask for help from somebody else is just absurd. And if you ask for help, surrender will be needed. The reason is:

I cannot do anything positively.

I am available.

If you trust me then the contact is made.

It is just like this: light is there, but if you are sitting with closed eyes, the light cannot do anything in order for your eyes to open. Not that the light has any conditions for you. It is available, it is already there, it is already giving itself to you, but your eyes are closed. And if you say, "In this room I cannot open my eyes, because I have surrendered my eyes to some other room, to some other light," then here you will have to remain in darkness. Not that light is not available, but you are not receptive.

If you have come here, that shows that you may believe you trust in Sai Baba but you don't trust.

You think you have surrendered, but your thinking is wrong, illusory. If you have surrendered then move to Sai Baba, open yourself to him so that he can work; then don't go seeking here and there.

I am ready to help, but for that you will have to be receptive. I cannot be aggressive to you, nobody can be. The very work is impossible with such aggression. If you trust me, something becomes possible. Then without any aggression the work starts. If you don't trust, then I can only be violent to you, forcibly I have to open your eyes. That cannot be done. You cannot be forced into nirvana, you can only flow into it.

If you don't trust my river, how can you flow with me? Then deep down you will be struggling; then you will be wasting your time, my time, and it is useless. So be clear about it. It may not only be the case with one man, it may be with many of you. Your heart belongs somewhere else? - then go there. Be wherever your heart is. If your heart is with me, only then is something possible; otherwise don't waste your time and energy. This has to be understood clearly.

Your trust means that you are open. Your trust means that now you are ready to go into the unknown, into the uncharted. How can you move with me if you don't trust me? And what you call me is insignificant to me, but not to you. Whether you call me Beloved Master or not, it is the same to me, but not the same to you, because your feeling will decide many things. If you cannot call anybody Beloved Master other than Sai Baba, then go to him, because then he is your temple, and only in his presence will you be transformed. And nothing is wrong in it.

But you have come here. That shows that the touch has not happened; you have not moved in deep, close intimacy. The relationship has not happened, the love has not happened. You can go on deceiving yourself. That will not be of much help. So be clear, analyze your own mind. If your heart is here, then there are possibilities. If your heart is not here, then go wherever your heart leads you.

I know you will have to come back, because you have been with Sai Baba, as you have said in this letter, and nothing has happened there. You are here, and I know that now you will move to some other teacher, and there you will say you have been with me and nothing has happened. And you are not here with me! Just physically being here doesn't mean anything.

I know this must have been the case with Sai Baba also. You may have been there physically, as you are here, but it is not a question of physical presence, it is a question of inner opening. Then you may be on another planet and I can work. You are not needed to be here; space doesn't mean anything, nor does time mean anything. You may be on another planet, you may be in another time, but if you are receptive you are here close to me. You may be just here, existing this very moment, but if your heart is not here then there is no possibility of any bridge.

There are many who go on wandering from one master to another. The total result may be simply confusion, because each master works in his own way, he has his own methods, and you go on accumulating information. That information is bound to be contradictory. Then you will get confused, you may even go insane. It is better to stick to one master and give your heart totally to him. If then nothing happens, move. But be finished with that master, don't be in an incomplete relationship. Be finished. Either you are transformed, or you come to know that this master is not for you. Then the relationship has broken, there is no incompletion. Then you can move to another master with your total heart.

Now you are here and you are thinking of Sai Baba. This division will become a hindrance. First go back to Sai Baba, be finished with him. Either you are transformed, then there is no need to find anyone; or Sai Baba is not your master, it is proved. Then come to me.

And the same applies to my own disciples. If you are here with me, be finished with me. Be totally with me, so that either the mutation happens and then there is no need to find anyone or to go anywhere, or you come to realize, "This man is not for me." Then you can leave me totally, then you can move, then somewhere else.... But being here with me halfheartedly and then moving to someone else halfheartedly will not do. Rather, it may be dangerous. You may become so split, so divided, with so many voices in you, that you may become a crowd. This has already happened to many. They know too much and they have drunk from so many sources that now they cannot decide where they stand, who they are. And they go on adding more confusion.

Patience is needed. If you are totally devoted to one master the thing is bound to happen. And I would say that even if the master is not true, the thing can happen if you are totally devoted. Even if the master is false the happening is possible if you are totally devoted - because the happening doesn't happen through the master, it happens through total devotion. So even a dead master, or a master who has never been, just the name, will do. The real alchemy, the science of mutation, is within you. The master is at the most just a catalytic agent, nothing more.

Go back to your own master and be with him. And don't try to judge him; you have got no way to judge anybody. All that you can do is give your total heart to him. And what have you got to lose?

So why be so afraid? You have got nothing to lose, so why be so untrusting? Give yourself totally.

Just this giving totally becomes the base of your transformation. Many times it has happened that a disciple was transformed through a master who was not a master at all. And many times the contrary has also happened: the master was true but the disciple was not transformed. The ultimate thing depends on you, not on me. You are the deciding factor.

So wherever you go, make it a law: go with your total heart. Otherwise you will move with empty hands everywhere. And the more you move, the more you go to this master and that, the more there will be confusion, suffering, and finally you may decide that there exists no one who can transform you. Or, you may come to conclude that there is nothing like transformation, this is all hocus-pocus.

And the reason will only be this - that you were never anywhere with your total heart.

The next question:

Question 2:

DOES REASON OR INTELLECT HAVE ANY PLACE AT ALL IN SADHANA?

Only this much: that reason has to show you that reason is useless, reason has to commit suicide - only this much. One of the greatest Tibetan mystics, Marpa, is reported to have said.... Somebody asked him, "Can't scriptures help?" He said, "They can. They can help you to go beyond scriptures.

That is their only use. Read the scriptures, study them; they will help you to understand that scriptures are useless, and the truth cannot be attained through them."

Reason can help you only in this way. Reason out, analyze, argue, and through this whole effort you will come to understand that reason cannot lead you to truth. But this is one of the greatest possibilities. Once you realize this you can drop reason, and when reason is dropped, for the first time you start functioning from a totally different center of your being, and that is the heart. And the heart can trust. Reason can never trust, reason by nature is untrusting. Remember, reason can analyze, but can never synthesize. Reason can cut and divide, but can never create a unity or harmony. Reason is just like scissors, scissors can cut and divide.

It happened once that somebody presented Bayazid, one Sufi saint, with a pair of golden scissors.

They were valuable, there were some diamonds on those golden scissors, and the man who was presenting them was very happy that it was a rare, unique gift. But Bayazid said, "Take them back, because my whole being is not to cut, not to analyze, not to divide. Rather, you bring a needle and some thread for me, because synthesis is my goal. I want to join things together, not to cut them apart. Golden or not golden," Bayazid said, "a needle will do. The scissors may be very valuable but they are not for me."

Reason is scissorlike: it cuts, divides, analyzes. That's why science cannot do without reason. It doubts, that's its basic function. It is good - for a particular purpose it is good. As far as matter is concerned, as far as the world of the outside is concerned, reason is the method. Science cannot do without reason, because science is analysis, dissection. That's why science finally reached the atom, the ultimate division. And now they have divided even the atom, and they have reached electrons. They will go on dividing.

Science reaches to the atomic, and religion reaches to the divine. Religion goes on joining things together, and the ultimate unity is God. The totality has been taken in. Religion cannot work with reasoning, just as science cannot work with trust. If you are a scientist you have to doubt, doubt is the very base. But in religion, if you doubt you are lost. In religion you have to trust.

These dimensions are diametrically opposite. Science moves in the without, religion moves into the within. They move diametrically opposite, their dimensions are opposite, so obviously religion must be opposite to the scientific approach. Science means reason, doubt; religion means trust, faith. So only one thing can be done by your reason and that is to realize that reason will not be of much help in the world of sadhana, in the world of inner discipline. Then drop it and allow another center of your being, the heart, to function.

When the heart starts functioning you will have a different world around you - because you create your world. If you are doubting you create a world which is filled with doubt, depression, sadness, darkness. If you work through the heart you create a different world - of radiancy, of love, of prayer, of joy - but that is totally different. And you cannot change from one world to another, you will have to change from one center to another. And these centers are within you, the center which doubts and the center which trusts.

When you fall in love, what is the use of reason? How can you use your reason while falling in love?

That's why reason says it is a fall: "falling in love." Who created this phraseology, "falling in love"?

Why not "rising in love"? Reason has condemned love, reason says it is a fall. And in a way it is, because from the head you fall to the heart. You start functioning from a different center. But how can you use your reason in love? Is there any way to use it? If you use it, you will destroy the whole phenomenon. The first thing reason will say is, "Doubt!" The first thing reason will say is, "Is there anything in existence which you can call love? Is there anything like love? Dissect it." And if you dissect, love disappears.

Love is a unity and a very delicate harmony; it cannot be dissected. It is just like a small child jumping, dancing, enjoying. He is alive. You cut the child, dissect him; you put him on a table, a surgeon's table, and dissect him to find out where life is, what it was that was alive - you will not find it. Not that it was not there; the way you are trying to find it means you will miss, the very method prohibits. The moment you dissect the child he is dead, the life has disappeared, and by dissecting you will come to death, not to life.

Science ultimately leads to death - Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not accidental. And if man still follows science for one more century... even one century is too optimistic; these coming twenty- five years.... If man continuously follows science it may prove a global suicide, because dissection cannot lead to life; the ultimate result is bound to be death. And science cannot believe in life, because you cannot find it anywhere, in any laboratory. You dissect, and life disappears. You dissect your beloved, and love disappears. You go to a surgeon and let him dissect your heart, or take x-rays of your heart to find out whether love is there or not. He may find a cancer there, but he cannot find love. Death can be detected, love cannot be detected. There is no way to have any x-ray of love. Death can be detected; if tb is there, if cancer is there, it can be detected, science can find it out.

Go to a library and look at medical encyclopedias to find a definition of health. You will not find it.

You will find every disease defined, but you cannot find any definition of health. Science cannot define health, because health cannot be detected. If you go to a doctor he can tell you that you are ill, but he cannot give you a certificate that you are healthy. He can give you a certificate that you are not ill - that's another matter, negative; he cannot give you a certificate that you are healthy. And there is no definition of what health is.

Science goes on fighting with a method, the very method creates the world of science. Religion doesn't work with that method. Religion works through a different type of methodology - the heart is the center. And if you can become headless, only then is religion something meaningful for you. If you are too much in the head, religion is not for you. If you are too much in the head, then prayer is very distant, even love is impossible. You can exploit people, you can kill them, but you cannot love them through reason. Or, reason can create such deceptions.

I was just looking at a Peanuts joke-book. Charlie Brown says there, "I love mankind; it is people that I can't stand." "I love mankind; it is people that I can't stand." The head can love mankind, because there is no one like mankind. You will not find mankind anywhere. Wherever you go you will find people, and the head cannot stand people.

It is easy to love a country, to love humanity, to love the nation, to love Christianity, to love Islam, to love Hinduism. It is very difficult to love a real person, very difficult, because for the real person the heart will be needed. And these concepts, abstract concepts - humanity, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or even God - the head can work with, there is no problem, because only thinking is implied, no lived experience is needed. You are not asked to get involved in anything where your heart will be required: just concepts, just logic, mathematics. The head can do that. Science is head work: religion is heart work. You can use your reason only to destroy reason, to help reason to commit suicide.

My whole effort is to persuade you to become headless.

Live without the head, then you will have a life which is totally different from this life you are leading.

The life that you are leading is exactly how hell is defined in old scriptures. And if you go into hell, you may not be able to recognize that it is hell; you will think it is only an extension of the old world.

You will find everything that you have got already, hell now cannot give you anything new. Man has himself created everything here on this earth.

Help your reason to commit suicide.

Fall within to the heart.

Let love, prayer, meditation, become the center of your world.

But in the beginning help will be needed, because in the beginning you cannot do anything else - you are there, existing in the head. That's why I go on talking so much. These talks are useless, they are not needed, but you exist in the head, so somehow you have to drop out. I am not giving you theories, I am not giving you some stuff to think about. I am simply helping your reason to come to a point where it itself realizes that just living in reason is missing life in its totality.

In the beginning it is needed. The first step has to be taken out of the head, so the head has to be approached. The moment you have taken that first step, then there is no need. But the first step is most difficult. You are so much obsessed with reason that whatsoever is said, your reason starts working around it. Whatsoever you read here becomes food for your reason.

Religious discourses are really poisons, they are poisonous food. Buddha talks, Krishna talks, Lao Tzu goes on preaching to the disciples. What are they doing? They are doing only one thing: they are giving you poison which looks like food to reason. Reason immediately absorbs it, but it is poison, and reason will have to die. And once reason is dead, for the first time you will be alert, conscious, awakened, and you will see the whole world in a new light.

The world remains the same but you are different, you have changed. Now you can look through different eyes. Then this world is not evil; then there is no suffering in the world. Then the whole world is just the dance of Shiva, just a divine celebration. And the whole life is a play. That's why Hindus have called it leela: leela means play, a play of divine energy.

Hindus have said that it is not a creation, it is a play. It is not a serious thing, it is simple play - a play of too much energy. But right now you cannot think in that way, that door is closed. Put reason aside, start functioning in a loving way. Bring more heart into your behavior, into your actions, into your movements. Then whatsoever Krishna and Jesus and Lao Tzu have said, that will become a truth to you, it will be revealed. You just need fresh eyes which can see it, hence so much emphasis on trust.

The third question:

Question 3:

IF THE DIVINE IS RIGHT HERE AND NOW, THEN WHAT PREVENTS US FROM SEEING HIM?

WHY DO WE CLING TO OUR DREAM LIFE, EVEN THOUGH IT HAS BECOME A MISERY FOR US?

No, it has not become a misery for you yet, otherwise you could not cling to it. No one can cling to misery. You still have hopes, you have not yet become totally hopeless. Even in your misery you are hoping. You are thinking that today is misery but tomorrow the doors of paradise will open, and this misery is just a means to reach that paradise tomorrow. Unless the tomorrow dies completely, unless the tomorrow drops completely, unless you become totally hopeless, no hope... only then will you see what misery is there where you are living. And once you become aware of the misery that you are living, you will drop it - there will be no need for me to tell you.

Somebody came to Buddha and asked him, "You go on saying that life is suffering, dukkha; you go on saying that the house is on fire, and I realize that this is so, but how should we come out of that house which is on fire?"

Buddha said, "You are not seeing that the house is on fire. If the house is on fire you will not come to ask me, you will simply jump out of that house." You won't go to find a master to learn techniques, you won't consult The Bible and Koran to find out how to get out of the house which is on fire. When the house is on fire, you will leave your Koran and Bible inside, and you will jump out. And even if a Buddha is sitting there, you will remember only when you are out of the house that Buddha has been left inside, the master has been left inside. When you realize the house is on fire, you simply jump out of it; there is no method.

All methods are postponements. You are in search of a method so that you can postpone, because a method will need time, so you can say to yourself, "How can I jump right now? It will take three years, six years, lives, to practice. It is such a difficult thing, so I will first practice how to jump, and then I will jump. But unless I practice, I cannot jump."

And you have been doing this practice, this rehearsal, for many lives. You are not here for the first time to ask me - you have asked many times. The same questions you have been asking in every life, but you never do anything, because Buddha may be saying that the house is on fire, but you look... it is a palace, nothing is on fire. Just out of consideration for Buddha you don't deny him.

Otherwise you know he is crazy; the house is not on fire. Or he may be talking in symbols, he may be meaning something else. Or he is such a great man that you cannot understand what he is saying, so just out of respect you don't deny him, you say yes. Your yes doesn't mean any more than your no. Your yes, your no are meaningless.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was in love with a woman, but very worried, depressed, always sad, so one friend asked, "What is the matter?"

He said, "Everything is finished, and I am contemplating suicide."

The friend said, "But you have been contemplating so long. Tell me what the matter is - maybe I can help you."

Nasruddin said, "I asked the woman to get married to me."

The friend said, "Yes, no need to say anything more, I have understood. She must have said no. But you are a fool. Don't believe it when a woman says no; she always means yes."

Nasruddin said, "I know that wisdom, and if she had said no, then there would have been no problem.

But when I proposed she said, 'Rats.' So now what to understand? She said, 'Rats'; she never said no. Had she said no, then yes could be understood."

Everybody's mind is just like that woman. When you say no, the yes is hidden behind it. If somebody has slightly penetrating eyes, he can see your yes hidden behind the no. When you say yes it is just skin-deep, the no is hidden behind. And your yes can be turned into no without any effort. Your no can be turned into yes without much effort. Your yes and no are only different in degrees, not in quality. They can be changed, they continuously go on changing.

Even a small child knows this. The father says, "No, you are not going to the movie today." But even a small child knows that yes is hidden behind it. He starts a tantrum, he starts crying, and within minutes the father says, "Go, go! Go away from here." The child knows the yes is hidden behind the no. It can be brought out immediately, a little effort is needed. And no child believes in your yes or no because you can change so easily; no child trusts you. But this is how the human mind is.

So the first thing: you are not in misery. Buddha has said so, I may be saying so, but you know that you are not in misery. You go on feeling, hoping, that tomorrow something is going to happen.

And tomorrow is the drug; through the tomorrow you intoxicate yourself, and then the day which is present, today, you can suffer it. It is not much, only a question of a few hours and then the tomorrow will be there; it is coming nearer and nearer. Because of the misery on this earth, we conceive of heaven as somewhere in the other life; that heaven is our tomorrow extended. Just to carry on anyhow this misery that is around us, we look somewhere ahead. We never look right now, here.

You are not in misery. I may be saying so; you go on believing that happiness is just near, you are just on the verge of it. The goal is so near, so why leave? Just continue a little more, be patient. If you realize that you are in misery, then there is no need to ask how to drop it. Then masters will be needed to teach you how to cling to it, and even then you will not listen to them.

Once you know that your life is misery, even a buddha cannot persuade you to cling to it. But the penetration is not there. It is not your realization. This knowing is not your knowledge, this wisdom has not been achieved through your own efforts. It is borrowed, it is cheap. You have heard that life is misery, but you have not realized it. And you say, "Why do we go on clinging to this dream life?"

It is not a dream life to you; it is real. When you see a dream the dream is real. Somebody who has awakened from sleep may go on saying that whatsoever you are seeing is just a dream, but the person who is dreaming, he is dreaming a reality, not a dream. In a dream, howsoever absurd, you cannot feel it as a dream. You believe in it, because once you feel it is a dream the dream disappears. The dream cannot remain there, your cooperation is withdrawn. You can cooperate only with reality, not with dreams; and if you cooperate dreams become reality - it is through your cooperation.

In the night, deep in sleep, you dream that you have become a king. You may be a beggar, or vice versa: you may be a king and you dream that you have become a beggar. But in that dream you are so identified you cannot think that it could be a dream. If you can think that it could be a dream, the dream will stop immediately. It will be broken, you will come out of it.

Try this. Try this with ordinary dreams. While going to sleep at night, every day just go on thinking only one thought: "When I dream, I must remember that this is a dream." It will take many months for this thought to drop down into the unconscious, but it will reach there. After three weeks to three months it will reach if you persist, if you don't forget. Every night while falling into sleep, you go on thinking that when a dream starts you will immediately recognize that it is a dream. After three weeks to three months this will happen; suddenly one day you will start dreaming and you will have the realization, "This is a dream." Immediately the dream will disappear and your eyes will be open.

If you realize in dream that it is a dream the dream is broken, the dream cannot exist. It exists through your cooperation, your identification is needed. If you are committed to it, if you get involved in it, only then can it continue. And the same happens with the greater dream which is life. When you realize this is a dream, immediately you have become a buddha, you are enlightened. But this enlightenment cannot happen to you by others' knowing, others' wisdom.

Buddha may go on calling to you that this is a dream you are living, but you will only feel that this man is a disturbance, a constant nuisance, he is disturbing your life. That's why we kill such persons.

Socrates - we poisoned him because he was a great disturber. Jesus - we crucified him because he was a nuisance. Everybody is dreaming such beautiful dreams, and these persons unnecessarily, and without being invited, go on disturbing people and saying to them, "Wake up! You are dreaming.

This is a dream." And the man may have been dreaming such a beautiful thing that he could throw away all life for that dream.

Now psychologists say that for the ordinary mind, for the normal mind, dreaming is a must. If you cannot dream, if you are not allowed to dream, you will go mad. Previously it was thought that sleep is a necessity, now the new research says a totally different thing. The new research says that sleep is not a must; it is not sleep which gives you rest, it is dreaming which gives you rest. And if you are allowed to dream you will remain happy, if you are not allowed to dream you will go insane.

The whole night there is a rhythm: sleep period, then dream period, then sleep period, then dream period, of almost the same duration. If you sleep for eight hours, at least for four hours you are dreaming: forty minutes dreaming, then forty minutes sleep, then forty minutes dream, then forty minutes sleep - just like day and night, a rhythm.

They have tried many experiments, because now it can be known from the outside whether you are dreaming or not. Not many devices are needed. When a person is sleeping you can simply go on looking at his eyes. When he dreams the eyes move fast. He is looking at the dream, so the eyes move fast. When he is fast asleep the eyes stop and become dead. So just sitting by a person who is asleep, you can note down when he is dreaming and when he is asleep.

They have tried to disturb persons while they are asleep, in their sleep periods of forty minutes.

When they are dreaming they don't disturb them; when they start sleeping they disturb them. Many nights you can disturb a person while he is asleep but allow the dream period, and he will be happy and okay, no problem; he will not feel tired in the morning. But do otherwise: when he is asleep let him sleep; when he starts dreaming wake him. If continuously the whole night, for only three nights, you don't allow a person to dream, then he will go insane. Why? It is so much needed. Your ordinary mind feeds on dreams, and if a person is not allowed for three days to dream he will start dreaming while awake. It is such a great need. He will be awake, sitting in his chair, and dreaming. He will have to fulfill the quota, in the day he will have to dream.

And if you insist for many weeks, if for at least three weeks a person is not allowed to dream, he will become hallucinatory. He will be awake and talking to a man who is not present. He will become just like madmen. Now psychologists say that these madmen whom we have pushed into madhouses may be simply persons who have been starved as far as dream food is concerned. They need more dreams to be readjusted to normal life. What is the problem? Why are dreams needed so much?

Why can't you live without dreams? Because your life is so miserable that only through dreams can you exist. If you come to know life as it is, in its nudity, without any dreams, you will commit suicide.

Albert Camus has written that the only philosophical problem is whether to commit suicide or not, and that is the big problem. If you come to realize that the whole life is just nonsense.... What are you doing? What is happening? Nothing is happening, and you continue in suffering. If you are reasonable, you will start thinking of committing suicide.

Dreams help you to not commit suicide. They help you to create worlds of your own in which you can be happy, in which you can enjoy, in which you can become emperors, in which you can become conquerors, in which you can fly and reach the planets, in which you can do anything. You are free only in your dreams. The whole life is a slavery, only in your dreams can you destroy the whole world and create a new one.

You can have a beautiful woman in your dreams, a beautiful man. Life is not so beautiful. And howsoever beautiful a woman, you come closer and the flowers disappear and only thorns are left.

Howsoever beautiful a man, a person, if you are far away the beauty is there, but the closer you come, the more the beauty starts evaporating. Sartre says, "Hell is other people - the other is the hell." The closer you come to the other, the more a hell is created. Only in your dreams can you be in paradise.

So don't say that you know that your life is suffering and dreamlike - it is real to you. To you I say it is real; to a buddha it is unreal. But you are not a buddha yet, so remain with your reality, and remain with your real mind. Don't move with borrowed things, because once you move on borrowed things you will never come to the reality again.

"If the divine is right here and now, then what prevents us from seeing him? Why do we cling to our dream life even though it has become a misery for us?" Think again. Contemplate on it. If it is a misery for you - for you I insist again and again, not for me - if it is a misery for you, don't do anything. Remain with the fact that your life has become a misery to you, because if you start doing something about it you may again create hope in the tomorrow. Just remain with the fact. If it is hell, remain in hell, don't do anything. Just remain alert that this is hell. And if you can be patient and alert and wait, just through waiting the hell will disappear, it will fall down. It needs your cooperation.

It is just like dreams.

That's why Shankara and Buddha say your life is a dream life - because it can be just dropped like dreams. If you become alert a dream disappears; if you become alert of your misery, the misery disappears. You cling to it because you think it is not misery, or some happiness is hidden somewhere in it. It may be misery outwardly, but a deep treasure is hidden behind it, so you have to cling to it for that treasure. Your life is misery - but not for you. Realize its misery, it falls down. The very truth transforms you. And the moment misery falls the divine is revealed. To a miserable mind the divine cannot be revealed. To a celebrating mind the divine is revealed.

Remember, only to a celebrating mind, to a mind which is happy, blissful, enjoying moment to moment, ecstatic, is the divine revealed. To a miserable mind the divine cannot be revealed, because a miserable mind is closed. The divine is here and now, but you are not here and now. If you are also here and now then the divine will be revealed to you. The whole of my effort is to bring you here and now. This very moment, if you can be here, then nothing is hidden.

The last question:

Question 4:

THE RISHI OF THE UPANISHAD FEARS HE MAY SPEAK SOME UNTRUTH, AND SO HE PRAYS, "MAY MY SPEECH BE ROOTED IN MY MIND." DOES THAT MEAN THAT WHEN HE COMES DOWN TO EARTH TO SPEAK, HE COMES OUT OF HIS ENLIGHTENED CONSCIOUSNESS TO DO SO, BACK INTO THE ORDINARY MIND AGAIN? IF HE IS PERMANENTLY IN DIVINE CONSCIOUSNESS, HOW CAN NONTRUTH COME IN?

There is no way of coming back to the ordinary state of the mind. Once you are enlightened there is no way to become blind again, no way to fall into the darkness - because this light is not something accidental. When you become enlightened you have become the light, so wherever you go, even in darkness, it will be light there. It is not something external, the light is not something accidental.

Enlightenment means you have become the light, so now there is no way to fall into the darkness again. Wherever you go, even if there was darkness before, just by your reaching there the darkness will disappear. So there is no way of falling back.

Then why is this rishi afraid? Why does he fear? He fears for a deep reason. The fear is not that he can utter untruth, the fear is that the moment the truth is expressed in language it becomes distorted. He is not going to utter any untruth, but the medium of language is such that whatsoever you express through it, it changes, its nature changes. It is just like this: a river is flowing and you push a straight stick down into the water. The moment it penetrates the water it is no longer straight, the medium of the water and the refraction of light rays change it - the straight stick is no longer straight. Pull it out again, it is straight; push it down again, it is no longer straight. The stick remains straight, but because of the medium of water it appears as though it is not straight.

The truth is realized in a silent mind where there is no language, no words, no verbal existence... total silence, soundlessness. In that silence the truth is realized, and then it has to be expressed through language. That which has been known beyond language, that which transcends language, has to be forced again into language to communicate. And with you there is no other way to communicate it. You cannot understand silence.

I can remain here silent; you cannot understand it. If you can understand silence then there is no need to express, but then you will not be here, then there will be no need to come here also. If you can understand my silence you can understand the silence of the sky, because the language is the same. You can understand the silence of the rocks, you can understand the silence of the night. You can understand the silence with which the cosmos all over is filled. There is no need to come to me because silence is everywhere - if you understand it.

You don't understand it. That's why you don't go to a rock, you don't go to a tree, you have come to me... because the tree cannot express it in language, the rock cannot express it in language. The rock also exists in the divine as much as I, but the rock cannot express it through language. You need language. The fear is because of you, the fear is because of the very medium of language.

Truth said becomes untrue.

Lao Tzu has said, "The Tao that can be said is no more Tao. The truth that can be said is no more true." Why? - because language, the very mechanism of language, depends on duality. For example, if you ask me whether God is light or darkness, if I say light, it is wrong, because he is also darkness. If I say darkness, it is wrong, because he is also light. If I say he is light, then the question arises, "Then darkness exists. Where does it exist? Then there must be something other than God where darkness exists." If I say God is life... then death? Who is death? If I say God is death, then who is life? And if I say God is both life and death, then it becomes a paradox. If I say God is both light and darkness, then you will say, "You are not saying much, it is a paradox. How can one be both?"

These are the four ways: either I can say God is light or darkness, or I can say God is both, or I can say God is not both, but the problem remains. And these are the only ways to express. That's why Mahavira has developed saptabhangi - sevenfold logic. You ask one question and Mahavira will answer seven answers. And if you can stay with him to listen to his seven answers, you will be more confused than when you came to him.

If you ask about God, he will say God is; immediately he will say God is not; immediately he will say God is both, is and is not; immediately he will say God is both not, is and is not - and he goes on.

Sevenfold will be his answer, because he says, "I cannot be untrue. This is the whole truth." But you remain the same as you were and even more confused. You need a clear answer, you want that he either says God is, or God is not.

That's why Buddha remained silent. You asked about God, he would remain silent. He said that he would not answer eleven questions, and those eleven questions are the base of the whole of philosophy; all metaphysics consists of those eleven questions. He would not answer because he said, "Whatsoever I say will be wrong, or I will have to say it in such a way that nothing will become clear - as Mahavira is doing."

This rishi is going to try to communicate exactly, meaningfully, not creating paradoxes; linguistically understandable statements he will try in this Upanishad. That's why he is afraid - because the nature of language distorts.

Secondly, the moment something is said and you have heard it, you will destroy it. Firstly it will be destroyed by the medium of language; secondly, it has entered your mind, and your mind is a madhouse. Once it enters your mind, what meaning will come out of it no one can say. How you will interpret it, how you will follow it, what you will do according to your interpretation, no one knows.

Buddha has said somewhere that it is dangerous to talk to ignorant people, because whatsoever you say they think they have understood, and then they are the masters. You are no more in possession of your truth; they also possess it, and they will interpret it. That's why so many philosophies exist.

Buddha died. At least twenty-four systems immediately were there, twenty-four leaders saying, "This is the meaning of Buddha" - and they all were contradicting each other. Twenty-four schools, and each school against the other twenty-three: "Those twenty-three others are absolutely wrong!" This happens even when a master is alive, nothing can be said about what happens when a master is dead.

I remember, once it happened: Freud was old, and just before he died, two or three years before....

And Freud was not a religious man at all, not a man of trust and faith, but a man of doubt, logic and reason. But still he was working in a very dangerous field - the mind - so he had become a master in his own right. He had disciples, a great following, a big movement, so thinking that he was going to die soon as he was ill and old, all his great disciples gathered, just to meet him for the last time.

Twenty people were there, Freud was sitting with them and they were discussing. They were discussing, and they forgot that Freud was still alive. They were discussing what Freud meant about certain principles and each one had his own interpretation. They discussed, argued, and there was chaos, and there was no possibility of their coming to one conclusion - and Freud was sitting there!

He suddenly stood and said, "My friends, you have completely forgotten - I am still alive! You can ask me what my meaning is."

But if I had been there I would have said to Freud, "Even that will not help, because they can ask what your meaning is, but again they will interpret the meaning. Then again there will be twenty interpretations. 'What is the meaning of your meaning?'"

You cannot escape disciples. That is the fear.

Enough for today.