8 Why go to others?

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‌CHAPTER 8

Why go to others?

18 January 1975 am in Buddha Hall

I’M IN A MUDDLE.

YOU RESOLVE IT, BHAGWAN. WHEN YOU ARE MINE,

WHY GO TO OTHERS? IS MIND GREATER THAN WHAT’S MINDING MIND? IS RAM GREATER THAN HE WHO KNOWS RAM?

IS BRAHMA GREATER THAN WHAT HE AROSE FROM?

ARE THE VEDAS GREATER THAN THEIR VERY SOURCE?

SAYS KABIR:

I’M SO CONFUSED...

IS THE TEMPLE GREATER THAN HE WHO SERVES GOD?

An egoist is afraid to accept advice from others, he wants to disentangle himself from his own entanglements. Even to accept the fact that he is entangled, hurts his ego. So an egoist cannot approach a master. And the interesting thing about the whole phenomenon is that all of your entanglements are because of the ego.

You try to solve your problems with the help of the ego, and by the very effort of trying to solve them, you become more and more caught up in them. The ego is the cause of entanglement, and so you are certain to become more entangled. The way to unravel your difficulties is not through the ego. You are trying to use as a medicine the very illness that is the cause of the sad plight you call your life, that is responsible for the diseased state your life is in. This medicine simply makes you sicker. You may possibly save yourself from the sickness, but there is no remedy to save you from this particular medicine. There would be no end to the complications in the life of a man who looked upon sickness as medicine.

It is essential to understand one thing first – you must always look within to find the cause of a particular complication.

And at the same time you must move in the opposite direction. You will find the solution there.

The ego is entanglement; surrender is disentanglement. The ego has created the disease; surrender will cure it. That is why all the scriptures, all religious sects and all doctrines have sung the praises of surrender. Surrender means you are unable to disentangle yourself. It means you are becoming more and more entangled and so you finally give up – you finally surrender yourself; you finally seek guidance from one who has broken away, from one who has moved in the opposite direction.

Unless you set your ego aside you cannot approach a master. But you consult your ego first, and only when it says “yes” do you proceed. This means that your ego is superior to your master, because you only appoint him with the approval of your ego. The master will not be able to help you much.

We have created experts and specialists because of our egos. And these are the kinds of gurus at whose feet you do not have to surrender. At the most, you just pay their fees. That’s all you have to do – this kind of guru will not make much difference. You go to such a guru because he becomes your servant, and then he tries to solve your problems and your difficulties without your surrender. Such gurus are multiplying in the world these days, but there is no lessening of people’s entanglements whatsoever.

There is an old story you may have heard. It is about five blind men who encountered an elephant. They were unable to see the elephant so they felt him with their hands. Whatever part of the

elephant he felt, each blind man thought that was what the elephant was like. In blindness one cannot conceive the whole, and so these blind men each took one part to be the whole. One of them said the elephant was like a huge basket, another said he was like a pillar, and a third, who happened to grab the tail, said the elephant was like a rope. All five had different opinions.

A teacher in a small school had told this story to her pupils, but had not told them the five men were blind. She had only told them that five men were investigating an elephant. After she had related the story she asked the class to tell her what kind of men they were. It seemed obvious the students would say they were blind, but one child raised his hand and said, “They were specialists.”

All specialists are blind. In fact, to be a specialist one has to be blind. To concentrate on a single subject one has to set all else aside. One has to go deeper and deeper into one thing alone, at the expense of all other fields of inquiry.

The advice you receive from a specialist can never solve the difficulties or complexities of your life. His advice may bring you a little satisfaction, it may give you the impression something is being resolved, but the specialist cannot solve anything. You have to disentangle your whole life, not parts of it.

The whole can only be disentangled at the feet of a master. The master is a man whose entire life has been disentangled, but the specialist you expect to solve your difficulties is himself entangled. Western psychologists even investigate one another’s mutual problems. They have their own problems, and so one psychologist goes to another for help. They cannot even find the solution to their own problems. Even the greatest amongst them – Freud, Jung, Adler – suffer from their own complications, from their own diseases.

In his memoirs of Freud, Jung has written that if someone raised a point for discussion, and it was something to which Freud was opposed, he would become so angry and so upset that he would often faint with anger and fall off his chair. Freud’s anger was such – Jung has written that Freud fainted in front of him three times because of excessive anger. No matter how much Freud may go on advising the whole world how to control anger, his advice will be of no help. It is always easy to advise others – what is cheaper or easier to give than advice – but it is very difficult to follow one’s own advice. And advice that has not grown out of one’s own experience is of no value at all. And even though he was criticizing Freud, Jung himself was in the same boat. His problems were as complicated. There was never any improvement in them at all.

I have heard of a man who was somewhat eccentric. When he got up one morning he put his hand on his head only to find – so he thought – a rosebush growing there. He was quite crazy; there was no plant there at all. But when he looked into the mirror and thought he saw roses growing out of the top of his head he became very agitated. He ran to a psychologist and asked him to do something about it. He said, “Do you see a rosebush growing on my head?”

The psychologist examined his head in all seriousness and inquired, “What kind of rose is it?”

The man replied, “Why do you ask? Why don’t you read the name on the card? There must be one attached to the rose!”

Because of examining insane people over a long period of time, psychologists themselves generally go mad. I have not heard whether the patients ever become sane or not, but the psychologists themselves definitely do become insane.

Whatever specialists know, they know from books. The master is not a specialist. He does not know anything at all about any particular disease, he only knows the remedy for one illness – and that illness is known as man. It is a total affliction. The master knows the remedy for the sickness named man: the remedy is, the man must dissolve within himself. The master came to know the cure when he became nothing himself, when he lost his self. The knowledge of this remedy is not to be obtained by attending a university or by reading the scriptures or by any such thing; this knowledge is acquired by becoming nothing oneself. And if you want to avail yourself of the advice of such a man, you will have to surrender yourself completely at his feet.

In these lines Kabir is telling us something very rare. The first thing he asks is whom he should approach to solve his problem. He puts his difficulty before the ultimate master, before God Himself. And God is the ultimate master.

The scriptures say the master is God; they say the two are one. When you surrender, the master becomes God. And if you do not surrender, you will not be able to find God anywhere. Those who have known surrender say that no sooner does surrender happen than you not only acquire the outer master but achieve the master within you as well. No sooner has surrender happened than the disciple begins to achieve his own eminence and greatness. But surrender is the key.

I’M IN A MUDDLE. YOU RESOLVE IT, BHAGWAN.

Kabir is asking God to solve his only problem, his only complication, his only entanglement. And if you want God to solve your problem, then total surrender is essential. Before that, there is no question whatever of approaching Him. Before that even the very existence of God is disputable. You will first raise a doubt; you will first ask, “Where is God?” – but how can you put your problem before God as long as you discuss and dispute His very existence? You can lay your mental confusion before God only when you are fully convinced that He alone exists, that nothing else exists.

And remember this second point as well – for the man who puts his problem before God, the very act of placing it before God solves it. God does not solve your problem; there is no need to solve it. Through the very act of putting it before Him through your surrender, through your acceptance, the entanglement is disentangled.

Up to this point there was no acceptance on your side. Up to this point you had kept your problem hidden, you had looked on it as a valuable diamond and had kept it tied up in a knot in your handkerchief. You were afraid to show it – you only showed what was not really there. Your attitude was, “I know everything. How can anything be a problem for me? There is no question. I have all the answers.”

As soon as you open your heart to God, the very act of opening itself becomes the solution. God does not give you any answers. He is not an individual who will give you answers to your questions. The answer is hidden in putting the question in the right way.

If you can understand this sutra in depth you will be able to comprehend this phenomenon. When you understand the question rightly, the answer is there. The man who has understood the question rightly, who has understood it in its totality, is at ease. Such a man is at peace. The answer is not to be found anywhere else – the answer is there, hidden in the question. And He whom you are seeking is not somewhere else either, He is seated within you.

These words of Kabir – I’M IN A MUDDLE. YOU RESOLVE IT, BHAGWAN – are endearing. He is speaking to existence as if it is standing before him. Only a devotee can speak like this; only a devotee can use such a direct approach to solve his entanglement. For Kabir, God is not an imaginary person – for Kabir, He is the very existence itself. Now you can speak to Him too; now you can talk to Him as well.

People thought of Kabir as mad. “Which God is he talking to?” they would ask. “We do not see that God,” they would say. And a psychologist would say Kabir suffered from a kind of neurosis. “It may be a religious neurosis, but it is certainly a neurosis,” he would say. “Where is this God? Where is this BHAGWAN? Who is it you are talking to?” he would ask.

Kabir is sitting in his cottage, saying, I’M IN A MUDDLE. YOU RESOLVE IT, BHAGWAN. For mystics like Kabir, God is not a person, not an individual; for them, the whole existence is BHAGWAN. And if there is a problem in your life, where else will you take it? You have only to disclose it to existence – if a problem arises within you, then ask existence. Ask the existence out of which everything has come, out of which we have come, out of which your problem has come. Ask the existence into which we will all be absorbed. Is it not possible that your knot, your problem, will be absorbed into existence along with you? Can you see any way out for your tiny problem when we will all be lost like drops of water into this vastness? Will not the disease be cured when the patient himself is lost?

Then why do you beg from house to house? Why should you consult anyone else? Why should you not simply bare yourselves, simply surrender yourselves before that totality? This is the essence of prayer. And Kabir’s love of prayer is very profound.

Let us try to understand this a bit more deeply. There are two ways to reach the destination. One way is that of meditation; the other, that of prayer. The path of meditation is for the pursuers of knowledge; the path of prayer is for the lovers, for the devotees.

On the path of meditation there is a danger that the ego, the “I,” may not vanish, because the idea that “I am meditating” remains. In meditation there is no one else but “I”; there is neither God, nor anyone else. In meditation you are alone. Unless you remain tremendously alert in meditation, the ego, the “I,” will thwart you. No matter what heights you reach in meditation, the stone of the ego will remain heavy on your chest and you will be unable to fly. So at the final moment the meditator has to give up the ego. This is his emptiness. This is what Buddha calls the void, when the ego vanishes completely.

To attain to meditation is not enough – after that you will have to give up the ego. The ego will be purified, but it will still be there. That is the final veil. It is very fine, you can see through it. The veil will be transparent, but you will also have to remove it or it will simply remain there like a glass wall. You will be able to see what is beyond it, but you will be unable to meet Him, you will be unable to become one with God.

On the path of prayer, one has to give up the ego at the outset, at the initial stage. The devotee sets aside first what the yogi, the meditator, the sage, gives up at the end.

Prayer means surrender. Prayer means to absorb oneself, to lose oneself at the feet of another. If you are able to pray, in the real sense of the word, there is no need for meditation.

I lay stress on meditation because I know you are not able to pray. My emphasis on meditation will begin to diminish when I see you are becoming strong enough to pray. I stress meditation because meditation can be practiced in spite of the ego, but prayer cannot. And this century is an age of great ego. Never before in history has there been such an egoistic age. The stumbling block of this century is that every individual is filled with ego. Everyone has become a peak unto himself; everyone considers himself complete, without defect. “Why and for what should I surrender?” you ask.

To surrender has become very arduous; your spine has become paralyzed. This is why I talk so much about meditation. But I am really preparing you to enable you to pray. As you are able to go deeper and deeper into meditation I will begin to talk about prayer. There is a purpose in my beginning to speak about the saints to you. It is because I want to take you gradually from meditation into prayer. There is nothing else like prayer. That is why Kabir says:

NOTHINGNESS DIES, THE SOUNDLESS DIES; EVEN THE INFINITE DIES.

A TRUE LOVER NEVER DIES. SAYS KABIR: KNOW THIS.

Kabir says that meditation will die, but that prayer will not die; he says that knowledge will die, but that love will not die. Only one thing is immortal – love. And you must also achieve love through meditation. But if you are ready there is no need to undertake such a long journey, you can also take a direct jump.

Kabir just asks God. This is prayer. This is the beauty of prayer, the inner meaning of prayer. Kabir speaks as if God, the beloved, were in front of him. In the eyes of the so-called worldly-wise he is undoubtedly mad, but these so-called wise people will never be able to understand the heart of a devotee. For a devotee, the real question is not what he says; the real question, the final and deciding factor, is what he becomes.

Kabir lays his difficulty before God. Kabir says he is sad, that he has a problem, an entanglement, and he asks to whom he should go for advice, to whom he should go to find the solution. He has no answer, he says, and so he asks God.

Try to understand this a little more deeply. Whenever you are in search of something, you will first of all use your head. You will think, “I shall find out for myself. I shall solve the problem myself and then I won’t have to reveal it to anybody.” That in itself is the cause of your problem.

And what is your problem? Your problem is that you yourself are trying to solve your own problem. You are like a man trying to pull himself up by his shoe-laces; you are like someone trying to pick up one spoon with another.

During the sunny days of winter, have you ever seen a dog that has been sitting and basking in the sun suddenly trying to catch hold of the tail lying by his side? He pounces upon his own tail. But is it possible to catch one’s own tail by making a rush at it? As soon as the dog rushes at his tail, his tail rushes away. And then the dog rests for a while. He begins to wonder what the difficulty is. “It is so near,” he says. “It is such a small distance. I have caught things before that were much further away than this.” And then he begins to pursue his tail with renewed and greater vigor. If the determination to catch his own tail seizes hold of a dog he will go mad.

Philosophers are caught up in such a trap. And this is why they have all gone mad. Philosophy is the effort to catch one’s own tail. But it can never be caught. So in spite of your efforts, in spite of jumping at it, in spite of running about hither and thither, in spite of trying various tricks, nothing is solved. When you jump, your tail jumps right along with you. Your entanglement is part and parcel of you yourself. It is your tail, it is joined to you.

How can you solve your problem? What you are trying to resolve is concealed, like the dog’s tail, in the very attempt at a solution. Even in the solution you come up with, the problem does not disappear. The problem remains.

So, man tries to solve his own problem first. It is the first sign of his ego. And when he finds it is impossible for him to solve his own difficulty, then he goes in search of an expert. Finding an expert means finding some other person.

Understand the distinction carefully. You are not in search of a master. The master is one who has now become God’s representative, but the expert is just like you. There is no need to have any respect for him, no need to touch his feet, no need to surrender to him.

You approach an expert when you become helpless yourself. But going to an expert is like going to yourself – he is just like you. The difference is completely superficial. The expert has only studied a particular subject a little more than you have. And you pay him a fee for his advice. You are simply asking advice from a person like yourself.

This kind of advice will not solve your difficulty at all. This is also an ego trip. By doing it you will be afforded a little solace. The expert will simply suppress your entanglement for a while. He will give you long explanations; he will create a network of theories that will engross you for a time and make you think your difficulty has been resolved. But, after a bit, the problem will stand before you once again, in new colors, in a new form, in a new shape. And it will pursue you throughout your life.

As soon as you go to a man in whom you can see God the solution to your problem begins. Really, the solution has already been achieved. And when you see God pervading all of existence, then you can talk directly to Him. This is what happens to the devotee in the end. And it is in such a moment that Kabir says, I’M IN A MUDDLE. YOU RESOLVE IT, BHAGWAN. Then there is no need for any intermediary between you and existence, not even a master. And the beauty of it all is that your problem is solved as soon as you reveal it to existence. The problem only existed because you had

tied it up into a neat bundle and kept it hidden away, because you were living in unconsciousness, in perplexity. Before God, keep yourself open. This is the real significance of prayer – keeping your heart completely open to Him, surrendering to Him totally.

When you are praying it is unseemly to make a display of your spiritual knowledge or to recite the scriptures. That is why the prayers of children bear more fruit. And when a saint prays, his prayer is as good as that of a child.

Once a young boy went into his bedroom, jumped straight into bed, and covered himself with his blanket. His mother reminded him that he had not said his prayers. The child replied, “Is it right to awaken God from His sleep on such a cold night? And so late?”

From such a child, God needs no prayer composed of words. His concern that the night was so cold and that it was too late to disturb God’s sleep is prayer itself. Feeling like this is enough; there is no need to say anything.

And the word ‘God’ is merely an excuse, a help in expressing our feelings to the totality. In fact, the whole of existence is God. All is divine. And when you are filled with this feeling of divinity, you become united with the whole of existence. The solution to your problem is in that union.

Your real problem is that you are uprooted. And because you are uprooted you are thirsty. Your roots are unable to absorb water, that is why you feel so afflicted. Even when you have everything you have wished for, you still have the feeling you are missing something, the feeling that you want something. If your roots are not deep beneath the soil you will not be able to absorb water even if the rain is falling. And so you are certain to remain thirsty.

To be united with existence is prayer. Prayer is this particular state of feeling.

There is a very fine anecdote about a famous Hebrew mystic named Baal Shem. He was a peculiar kind of devotee – in his prayers he generally quarreled with God. Only lovers can quarrel. If something he didn’t like happened, he used to make a lot of fuss. His prayers were worth hearing because they were direct conversations with God.

Baal Shem thought the world was getting worse and worse every day, so he complained to God, “Why don’t You come down to earth as You promised? You said You would come when things really got bad. Why are You delaying?” The story tells us that God was greatly harassed by him in this way, and quite often too.

One of Baal Shem’s disciples used to make a note of whatever he said. He was writing Baal Shem’s biography, and he also used to jot down these chats with God.

The story goes on to say Baal Shem once bothered God so much He sent His messenger to earth, telling him to brainwash Baal Shem and his disciple so they would forget everything.

Baal Shem was that much of a nuisance. The divine messenger carried out his instructions to the letter. When Baal Shem arose from his prayers, he had forgotten everything. He could not even remember his own name. He did not remember that the world was full of problems and that he

wanted God to come and remedy them immediately. He could neither remember who he was nor where he was. But when he looked at his disciple he had a vague recollection, as if in a dream, that he was a mystic and that this man was his disciple. He asked the disciple to tell him what he could remember of the past. The disciple was unable to tell him anything, he had been brainwashed totally. He replied, “I do not even remember who I am either.”

Baal Shem said, “I have given you many lessons in the past. Try to remember a sutra from any one of them and repeat it quickly. Time is passing and we may find ourselves in some difficulty.”

The disciple replied, “I remember nothing but the Hebrew alphabet – ALEPH, BETH, GIMMEL, DALETH...”

Baal Shem said, “Be quick. Speak the letters aloud.” The disciple began to recite the alphabet, and Baal Shem followed suit. This one clue brought their memories back. And then Baal Shem began to take God to task. “Why did You play this trick on me?” he asked.

It is said that Baal Shem finished his prayer by repeating the alphabet and thus regained his lost memory. There is nothing of substance in the letters ALEPH, BETH, GIMMEL, or DALETH, but he repeated them with such attentiveness that he regained his original self. And then he shouted to God, “It is absolutely essential the Messiah come down to earth now!”

God recalled His messenger and told him he had not done his job very well. The messenger replied, “It is dangerous to work on this man. No matter how hard one tries, his prayer cannot be snatched away from him. We can take everything from him except his prayer. His prayer has no relationship whatsoever with his brain – his prayer comes from his totality. His intellect, his words, can be snatched away from him, but his love cannot, his prayer cannot. There, even you are helpless.”

That is why Kabir says:

NOTHINGNESS DIES, THE SOUNDLESS DIES; EVEN THE INFINITE DIES.

A TRUE LOVER NEVER DIES. SAYS KABIR: KNOW THIS.

Even if God wants to kill your prayer He cannot do so. Here, He too is helpless. Love is the ultimate. How sweet and beautiful are these words of Kabir:

I’M IN A MUDDLE. YOU RESOLVE IT, BHAGWAN. WHEN YOU ARE MINE, WHY GO TO OTHERS?

What is the problem? It is very deep; it is the final, ultimate problem, and so Kabir asks:

WHEN YOU ARE MINE, WHY GO TO OTHERS?

“Why should I be concerned with other people?” he is saying to God. “I ask You directly. When You, the solution to my problem, are there in front of me, why should I go to others?”

IS MIND GREATER THAN WHAT’S MINDING MIND?

Now Kabir is asking which is greater, the mind or the witness. Then he asks:

IS RAM GREATER THAN HE WHO KNOWS RAM?

And then:

IS BRAHMA GREATER THAN WHAT HE AROSE FROM?

Is Brahma greater, Kabir is asking, or is He who is the creator of Brahma greater? Is the existence that is the root of all supreme power greater?

ARE THE VEDAS GREATER THAN THEIR VERY SOURCE?

And then Kabir asks God whether the Vedas are greater than that ultimate consciousness out of which they have been born.

SAYS KABIR: I’M SO CONFUSED...

IS THE TEMPLE GREATER THAN HE WHO SERVES GOD?

Now we shall try to understand each sentence; we shall try to grasp the nature of the problem, to understand why it is there.

This problem is the final problem; I know it is not just your personal problem. When all other problems are solved, this remains as the final problem, as the last one. It is the ultimate question to ask of existence – beyond this there is no question at all.

The beauty of this sutra is that it is complete in itself. No answer is received from God. Kabir already has the answer, that is why the sutra is complete. No discussion arises over the answer. No sooner is the question raised than it is solved. And you can also see that the answer was hidden in the question. It was only a matter of putting the question; the solution was already there.

I’M IN A MUDDLE. YOU RESOLVE IT, BHAGWAN. WHEN YOU ARE MINE, WHY GO TO OTHERS?

Ponder over this a bit. You cannot be free from others, free from the crowd, so long as God is not yours too. You are not strong enough on your own, and so you feel you are in need of the crowd. The crowd is very great and you are sorely tempted to become part of it. This is because your soul is anxious to be linked with existence.

But you know nothing at all about existence. And so you create your own tiny existences. You say, “I am a Hindu,” and by doing so you cease to be alone. Then two hundred million people are with you. For you, Hinduism has now become a miniature existence. Your ego feels expanded – now you no longer feel trivial. You have created an imaginary existence.

But, after all, it is imaginary, a false thing. A crowd has no authentic existence of its own, only individuals exist. There are two kinds of existence – the existence of the individual and the existence of the totality, of the infinite. Everything that lies between these two is simply talk, nothing but imagination.

So if you think of yourself as a Hindu, you become linked with two hundred million others. You have created a big circle for yourself. But no matter how great it is, it has its limits; it can be measured. And so it is small. Even though it is small, it brings you some satisfaction. Otherwise, you yourself seem so small, just encircled by the skin of the body. And this displeases you. This is why people join mass movements.

If you become a communist, then you can become even bigger than a Hindu. Half the world is communist today. One and a half billion people are communists. And so you connect yourself with a very large assembly. Now you are not small at all. You will die, but communism will remain. You feel you have achieved a kind of immortality, but it is a false immortality. You will die, but the country will endure, the nation will remain. The Hindus may die and the communists may also die, but Hinduism and communism will remain.

The truth of the matter is, whether you live with a small crowd or with a larger one, there is no life, no reality in any of them. They are illusions. The individual has his own existence, that is for certain, but the crowd has none. A crowd simply means that many people have come together and are standing in a group. But even in a crowd each individual is a separate entity. Although it appears as a crowd, it is a deception. Where will you go to find society? If you set out in search of it, will you ever be able to find it? Wherever you go you will only find individuals. The individual is a reality; society is merely a word.

You are sitting here, each individual is a reality, but where is the reality in your sitting in a crowd? Where is the substance in it? If you leave this place one by one, will a crowd remain behind? I would not be able to see any crowd here then. The crowd would have disappeared as well. Will any quality of being a Hindu remain if you separate each Hindu from the group? No quality will remain whatsoever. “Quality of being a Hindu” is only a phrase, only words. Nation, society, race – all are just words.

The thirst to be existence itself is great; it is deep-rooted in the mind of man. The thirst is real, but you are trying to quench it with imaginary water. It is not wrong, there is nothing wrong in having this thirst. That thirst is telling you that you will remain thirsty until you become God.

Man is a reality as an individual. God is a reality as an infinite totality. And everything in between is imaginary. No matter how great your idea of manhood is, where will you find it? Wherever you go you will find man, you will find the individual, but where will you find “manhood”? And yet one feels that it exists. But where is it? If each and every individual were to die, manhood would not remain. It is merely a combination of words, it is not real at all. And man is miserable because of these dreams.

You hear phrases like “Hinduism is in danger” or “Islam is in danger.” Islam does not exist at all; how can it be in danger? A Moslem can be in danger as an individual – but will Islam be in danger? It is not a living thing, how can it die? Islam is an empty word. Perhaps that is why it has lasted. Something that is living will die, but a word can go on living for centuries. A word has no life in it. It is life-less; it is a dead thing. Try to understand this correctly.

A devotee becomes free of the crowd. Kabir asks why he should go to others when God is his. He asks why he should have anything to do with other people, with the crowd, with society?

When the individual awakens within you only two shores remain – existence and you, God and the devotee. And the river that flows between these two is prayer. As long as you think of the crowd as real and follow it, you will be living in delusion, in deception. You are not able to live alone, you are not that strong. Alone, you feel insecure. And so man clings to the crowd to his last breath.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin once drank too much wine and fell down in the street. It was midnight, and it was very cold. A policeman approached him and asked, “What are you doing here? What has happened to you?”

The Mulla thought he was dying, so he said, “My death is approaching. Please bring a brahmin to me.”

The policeman asked, “Why a brahmin? What is your name?” “Mulla Nasruddin,” he replied. The policeman said, “What do you want with a brahmin? I’ll call a Mohammedan priest.” The mulla said, “No. I want to convert to Hinduism before I die.”

The policeman was a bit surprised and asked, “Why? You have lived as a Moslem all your life, why do you want to change at the time of your death?”

The mulla replied, “I do not want a single Moslem to die. It would be much better if a Hindu were to die instead.”

Man holds fast to the crowd even with his dying breath, and so it is preferable to decrease the Hindus by one so there should not be fewer Moslems. The crowd gives you a sense of security. You are surrounded by the crowd in life as well as in death, but the devotee has to be alone. The devotee will have to leave the highway and proceed in the opposite direction.

REACH THE TOWN BY SOME BACK WAY; GET LOOTED ON THE HIGHWAY.

Those who choose the by-ways reach their destination. Such people are ready to make their journey quite on their own.

The real prayer will arise out of your heart only when you are prepared to be alone, because only then will you be able to see God. Kabir says, these kind of people have one foot on this shore

and one foot on that shore, and that the bridge between the two shores is prayer. And prayer moves deeper and deeper until finally this shore disappears and that shore disappears and prayer alone remains; until neither the devotee nor God remains, until only devotion remains – until only its fragrance remains. Now both the devotee and God are lost.

Kabir’s question is about the mind – about this mind which is a web of thoughts, causing all this trouble; about this mind which gives rise to problems and anxieties, dreaming all sorts of foolish dreams; about this mind which is the home of desires: about this mind which is the total expanse of this dejected and uneasy world. Kabir asks if this mind is great, or if the witness that hides behind and observes it is greater.

When anger comes, it is the mind. If you become alert and look within you will see the smoke of anger rising. Then you have become the witness. If you consider the mind as you, then you are a SANSARI, a worldly man. But if you have started to see yourself as a little outside the mind, even the tiniest bit, then you are a SANNYASI. And when you have realized that you are completely outside the mind, then you become God.

Kabir asks if this mind is great, or if he who knows the mind is greater. And bear in mind that the one who knows, even the one who knows the mind, is you. And so you will never know your self, because when you know your self, the knower himself is you. Whatever is known is not you. And so the soul will always keep on receding, moving backward. Whatever can be known by you will become detached, separate, different – it will stand apart from you. So how will you know your self? To know one’s self means this much only – that you have realized you are that supreme element which can never be known. That is self-realization.

You have already known all that can be known. But all these things are of the outer world; they are not of the inner world. And you have ignored that which is, that which is to be known. When you try to know that, you will begin to move deeper and deeper within.

The one who knows what is happening is you. Continue to go within, deeper and deeper, until there is nothing left to know, until only the knower is left. That is meditation, where no one but the knower is left.

If the knower is a man of intellect alone, then he will be in meditation, but if the knower is a man of the heart he will be in love. If the knower is dry like a desert, then he has one step further yet to take; the cloud of love has not yet showered on him. This is the cloud Kabir describes:

KABIR SAYS: CLOUDS OF LOVE CAME ON ME SHOWERING; SOAKED THE HEART, GREENING THE INNER JUNGLE.

Your jungle has not yet become green. You have almost reached your destination, but the seed has not broken apart yet, the seed has not blossomed yet. You have just been freed from your rubbish.

It is just like a person making a new garden. At first he removes the rubbish, cleans the whole area, pulls out the weeds, and thus prepares the soil for the seeds. But as yet there is no garden.

Meditation is the preparation; love is the fruit. That is why Buddha says not to consider your knowledge as complete as long as the stream of compassion does not flow from it. Buddha uses the word KARUNA, compassion, for love. If knowledge is not mixed with love, if it remains dry, it is like preparing the soil but not planting seeds in it. So there will not be any flowers. And if there are not to be any flowers then what was the point of preparing the soil? Then all your labor has been in vain – flowers must blossom in a garden.

Bear in mind that love is the ultimate. Meditation is just the preparation, it is just the path. Love is the goal, the destination. So understand this – the meditation from which love does not flow still has ego concealed in it. That is why you are dry. The ego is without feelings, it is like a stone. And so we say that a heart without love is a heart of stone. You cannot get any juice from it, it is dead. Life only flowers out of love.

Whatsoever you know is just your mind. What else have you known up to now? Even the worldly things you know are hardly your own experiences. You only know things through the mind, you only know them mentally.

You see a tree in front of you, but you have not really seen it. You see its shadow in the mirror of your mind; that is what you see. When you touch a tree you think you are touching it, but you are mistaken – your hand touches it. And there is a great distance between your hand and your mind. Your hand touches it and tells your mind about it. You only know the mind – you are always following the mind.

This is why the enlightened ones say there is no difference between the world and dreams. The world and dreams alike both happen in the mind, they are both creations of the mind. And there is even no proof that the world outside exists. How can there be any proof? You only know the world through the mind. And no one who has removed the mind has ever known the world. So what guarantee is there that the tree is outside? You can also see a tree at night in your dreams, and you even think it is as real as the one you see during the day.

When the enlightened ones say that the world is like a dream, it means that both are known through the mind. It is difficult to decide about the reality of things. Their reality is doubtful. It is possible you are seeing a dream now, that I am not here. How can you definitely say whether you are hearing my voice in a dream or in a waking state? What test do you have to decide the truth, to decide whether you are hearing me while awake or in a dream? How do you know that I am present here? Whatsoever you find out will be found out through the mind – the mind will always be there.

You have seen the world, but you have only had a glimpse in a mirror. You have never seen beyond the mirror, so how can you be certain about what you have seen? Therefore the enlightened ones say the world is an expansion of the mind, an extension of the mind. That is what it is. Whatsoever you know is only a reflection created in the mind. The mind is nothing but the sum total of all those reflections. Know this well: the mind is sansara, the mind is the world, the mind is illusion.

I have told you one Zen story many times. Once two Buddhist monks were standing at the door of a temple, hotly discussing why the flag at the top of the temple was fluttering in the air.

One monk said, “The wind is making it flutter.” The other monk insisted, “The flag itself is fluttering, and that makes the wind blow.” The discussion was heated; it was a difficult point to decide.

The master came out of the temple and said, “Both of you are silly. Neither the wind nor the flag is fluttering. It is your mind oscillating; it is your mind swinging back and forth.”

The master means to say that both happenings, the blowing of the wind and the fluttering of the flag, are known through your mind.

You can be certain of one thing only, and it is this – the mind swings to and fro. Other things are not definite either; nothing definite can be said about anything.

The sansara, this world about which nothing can be definitely asserted, this world we cannot pinpoint as real or unreal, is called maya. The word ‘maya’ is wonderful.

Truth is that which is – that about which we can be absolutely certain, that about which there can be no doubt whatsoever, and the only thing like this there is, is your existence as the witness. About the witness there can be no doubt. “I am” is the only thing about which there is no doubt at all. Even if you wish to doubt it, the presence of the “I” is necessary. Otherwise, who will raise the doubt? Whatever does not exist is false, exactly opposite to truth.

About the existence of truth no thought is possible; about the nonexistence of truth no thought is possible either. These are the two situations, and maya is between the two. Maya is that which appears to exist but in fact does not. Maya is a phenomenon about which you can neither assert nor deny. It is doubtful.

And why the doubt? The doubt exists because we have not known it directly – no one has. And those who come to the state of no-mind say that, along with the mind, the world also disappears. All agree on this point. All the enlightened ones agree on this single point, that no sooner does one attain to true knowledge than sansara, the world, is no more. No mind; no sansara. And what is left they call God. Those that do not know call it sansara.

God is the form of existence seen when the mind is not, when the mind is not interfering. Then on one side there is the soul and on the other side there is pure existence. Maya is existence seen through the mind; truth is existence seen by the witness. That is God.

Kabir is asking:

IS MIND GREATER THAN WHAT’S MINDING MIND?

What is the need for a reply? The reply is hidden in the question. If you unravel the puzzle first, then the whole thing becomes so clear. The one who sees is greater; whatever is seen is smaller. The one who sees is consciousness; what is seen is matter.

IS RAM GREATER THAN HE WHO KNOWS RAM?

And then Kabir raises a difficult question. If a man is unaware that his mind is not as great as the knower of his mind, then this question will crop up.

IS RAM GREATER THAN HE WHO KNOWS RAM?

If God is also known, Kabir is asking, then is the knower of God greater than God? If God is also known, then the knower is certainly greater, then the witness is certainly greater. Some enlightened men put self-knowledge above God; they consider it greater than God. Mahavira did, for example. Mahavira said the soul was supreme.

And so, in the final analysis, only the knower remains. God is also known, so He too cannot be greater than the knower. It is a very subtle thing to understand that everything vanishes at the moment one attains the highest knowing, at the moment one achieves the ultimate knowledge. Sansara vanishes, and the creator of sansara also disappears. Existence disappears too, and only consciousness, only pure consciousness – the seer, the witness, the soul or whatsoever name you want to call it – remains. The knower is certainly greater; consciousness is undoubtedly greater.

At the final moment, consciousness becomes God. When the devotee reaches this final stage he becomes God, he himself becomes BHAGWAN. Now everything is smaller. Whatsoever is known – all experience – becomes small, and the experiencer is the greater. All perceptions, all things seen become insignificant, and once and for all the seer, the witness, is ultimate.

IS BRAHMA GREATER THAN WHAT HE AROSE FROM?

Kabir asks if Brahma who created the universe is great, or if the great existence in which Brahma himself was born is greater.

Ultimately, the original source is greater. And that original source is hidden within you. Kabir is indicating this fact, that no one is greater than you. And how small and insignificant you consider yourself to be! You are the ultimate, the finality. Nothing is beyond you or above you. Yet how small you think you are!

And it is because you think of yourself as so small that the ego is born in you. The ego is born in you because you do not want to believe you are so small. And so you claim you are big. All such assertions are false. And yet the inquiry that underlies these claims is very significant, very meaningful indeed. Indirectly you are asking, “How is it I am willing to be so small?” The innermost consciousness within you is unwilling to be small and so you make false claims. You have no idea of what truth is and so at times you say, “See how much wealth I have! See how learned I am! Look, I have renounced this! Look, I have renounced that!” But you do not realize what you are saying. All this egoistic talk is false. You are in fact greater than God; you are greater than BHAGWAN. You are the ultimate.

This feeling that you will not be at ease until you have become the ultimate, until you attain to the highest state, pervades every particle of your being. You hanker after significant positions, but ultimately find them all to be useless. Whenever you attain to a particular position, you immediately find it to be insignificant.

There was a very famous American president named Coolidge. He once fought for election and won; he became president. He was very popular, and unlike most politicians he was a man of saintly character. He was also a man of very few words. It was difficult to make him talk; he liked to be quiet, to remain silent as much as possible.

A lady once invited Mr. Coolidge to dinner and made a bet she would extract at least four words from him. She went on talking for a long time but Coolidge remained silent. Finally, she pressed him to say something. He answered, “I don’t know.” He only uttered three words. She could not even get four whole words out of him!

Another time Coolidge was strolling up and down in front of the White House. A stranger to Washington stopped him and asked who lived in that huge house. He answered, “No one lives here. People just come and go. It isn’t a house, it’s a tavern.” It was only afterwards the stranger realized that the man himself lived in the White House, that he had spoken to the president of America himself. Coolidge was that kind of man.

When his first term as president was over, his friends and followers requested he stand for election once again. They said success was assured. Coolidge replied, “No further now.” Why? His words were wonderful. He said, “There can be no further promotion. I have been president once. Now there is no post higher. What is the point? Now I know that this position, this status, brings no contentment either.”

No matter what you obtain, it will not satisfy you. You will not be satisfied until you attain to the ultimate. There is no contentment until you achieve God. God is your original source; God is your nature.

Kabir asks if Ram is greater or the one who knows Ram, if Brahma is greater or the one out of whom Brahma was born, and now he asks:

ARE THE VEDAS GREATER THAN THEIR VERY SOURCE?

Kabir asks if the highly-praised Vedas are greater than the RISHIS, than the consciousness which created them.

The Vedas are only the utterances of the enlightened, so is the utterance greater, or is the consciousness by which it was uttered greater? What benefit will there be in knowing the Vedas? Try to attain to that state out of which the Vedas were created.

The Vedas descended upon the RISHIS. And the Koran descended upon Mohammed. So is the Koran greater, or is the consciousness of Mohammed, the consciousness out of which the Koran was born, greater? The Vedas are merely words, and that wordless witness from whence they came is the greater.

The questions of Kabir are so clear and so unambiguous that no answers to them are needed. SAYS KABIR: I’M SO CONFUSED...

IS THE TEMPLE GREATER THAN HE WHO SERVES GOD?

There are reasons for this question. Kabir spent his life in Kashi, never going to bathe in the Ganges, and when the time of his death drew nigh, he asked his followers to take him to Maghar, a small village near Kashi.

It is said that whosoever dies in Maghar will be reborn as a donkey, and that whosoever dies in Kashi will go to heaven, will become liberated even if he is the greatest sinner in the world. So Kashi is a sort of cremation ground, and people journey there when death is approaching. Old men and women congregate there, waiting for death, so that they can go straight to heaven. But it is said that he who dies in Maghar, even if he is a holy man, becomes a donkey after death, while from Kashi, it is said, there is no other possibility but liberation.

So when Kabir asked his followers to take him to Maghar they said, “You have gone mad! You have spent all your life in Kashi, and now, at the time of your death, you are thinking of going to Maghar? At the end of their lives people from Maghar run to Kashi!”

What Kabir said in reply is very significant. “If I die in Kashi and go to heaven,” he said, “I will know nothing about God’s grace. Where will there be any room for His grace if I die in Kashi? To reach heaven just because I died in Kashi is not at all palatable or agreeable to me.” He said, “If I die in Maghar and go to heaven, then and only then will it be because of His grace. To enjoy the bliss of God’s grace it is necessary to go to Maghar. And so I shall die in Maghar!”

SAYS KABIR: I’M SO CONFUSED...

IS THE TEMPLE GREATER THAN HE WHO SERVES GOD?

Why is a holy place considered holy? A place is considered holy because some devotee of God must have lived there at some point. There doesn’t seem to be any other reason for it. A devotee attains to God in a certain spot and so the site becomes a holy place. It is easy for another person to reach God from there because the place is charged with the vibrations of the devotee who attained.

Buddha achieved the ultimate knowledge under the bodhi tree, so the tree became holy. Buddha didn’t become enlightened because of the tree, but the tree became holy because of Buddha’s enlightenment. And so Bodhgaya became a place of pilgrimage. Under that tree one man was absorbed into the highest consciousness, and this happening is so great its effect remains for eternity. The impression can never be effaced. The effect on the place is immortal; the effect of an individual giving up his mortal life and attaining to the immortal one is eternal.

At some time in the past divine nectar poured down on Buddha on this spot; he was drenched in the downpour of the infinite, and the place will always be fragrant with the sweet smell of that nectar. This piece of earth has known an extraordinary event. This small plot of land has witnessed a small crack in the sansara, and through it an individual has gone beyond. And so it has become a holy place. The place where the devotee of God walks becomes a place of pilgrimage.

The PUNDITS, the scholars of Kashi, condemned Kabir as a sinner. They never liked him; they could never tolerate him. They were incapable of digesting Kabir. To digest Kabir great courage is required, and the pundits, the learned men, are not so bold. Kashi is the home of pundits. From time immemorial, Kashi has abounded in pundits. And if the pundits of the world have ruined anything, it is Kashi. If a place becomes holy because of an enlightened one, then what happens because of pundits has happened to Kashi. Refuse has collected there.

The pundits used to harass Kabir. They used to say, “You have not studied the Vedas, you do not know Sanskrit, and yet you are bold enough to talk about the supreme wisdom, the supreme knowledge! And you do so without knowing the Vedas!”

So Kabir asks:

ARE THE VEDAS GREATER THAN THEIR VERY SOURCE?

The pundits also used to say to Kabir, “You are living in a holy place like Kashi, so go and bathe in the Ganges. She will make you holy.” So Kabir asks:

IS THE TEMPLE GREATER THAN HE WHO SERVES GOD?

The question is rhetorical: the answer is already there. Wherever the devotee of God walks, that place becomes a place of pilgrimage. Nobody reaches God because he resides in Kashi; Kashi has become a place of pilgrimage because someone residing in it has attained to God.

All the Hindu places of pilgrimage are situated on the banks of rivers, because the Hindu technique of meditating on the flow of a river is a very deep and meaningful experiment in meditation. If a seeker continues to meditate on the continuous flow of a river for a long time, his mind will also flow away.

To understand this phenomenon, it is worth reading SIDDHARTHA by Hermann Hesse. Hesse understood the deep significance of this Hindu technique to an extent no Hindu could ever do. Sitting on the bank of a river, witnessing its changing moods, working as a boatman on it, Siddhartha, the hero of Hesse’s book, achieves liberation.

With the seasons, the river changes its form, its appearance. When it is in flood, its fury, its youth and its turbulence are something to see. When the dry summer days come it loses its force and assumes a rather sorrowful appearance. Pits form and pools gather at various places; all its splendor, pride and mischief are gone. It is now a skeleton. It is as if the river were old, as if it were now on its deathbed.

Siddhartha watches all these changing moods of the river. He spends hours sitting on the bank, and by and by, slowly, slowly, he recognizes the changing moods of his own mind in those of the river. Youth, old age, misery, happiness – he watches them all pass away. The river of the mind is always flowing; the witness, steady and hidden, simply observes. This is the Hindu meditation technique.

This is also the reason the Hindus created their holy places on the banks of rivers. Innumerable people have achieved liberation there, it has been happening since time immemorial. But a holy place is a holy place only because of them – they did not achieve liberation because of the holy place. Nobody becomes liberated just by going to Kashi. The place where you achieve liberation will become a Kashi.

The Jainas have made all their places of pilgrimage on hills and on mountains. Their technique is not linked with rivers at all, their technique is linked with mountains.

Try to understand this. The Hindus created holy places on the banks of rivers because the nature of the mind is ever-changing. It is just like the flow of a river. The river is flowing, and the unchangeable, ever-steady witness is simply standing there, observing. The Jainas created their places of pilgrimage on mountains, exactly opposite to the Hindus. The mountain is a symbol of

steadfastness; the mountain stands there, unchanged, solid. The Hindu technique is to transcend the mind, while that of the Jainas is to remain in that steadfastness. If you remain steady you will automatically transcend the river; if you transcend the river you will automatically become steady. These are the two banks. You can transcend from either of them.

Mount Girnar and the Shikharji mountains are holy places because down the ages countless people have achieved liberation from there. Twenty-three Jaina TIRTHANKARAS achieved liberation on the hills of Shikharji. Mahavira is the only exception. So the atmosphere of the place is filled with the vibrations of these great masters. Every particle of the place reminds one of their presence. When you visit that place you feel as if you are falling into that flow. It becomes easy to do so. Your journey becomes rather easy from there. This is the only significance of a holy place. But the devotee of God is certainly greater than any holy place.

Kabir says no one is greater than you, but you will only achieve that greatness when you surrender totally. In this SADHANA, in this journey, the paradox is that no one is greater than you – even Ram is not greater than the one who knows Ram – but you will only attain to this greatness when you become the smallest of the small. You will become the Gourishankar, the Everest, only when you become a deep chasm, a deep abyss. When you surrender, when you become smaller than a particle of dust, you become as great as God.

To be humble, to surrender, to give up the ego is to achieve the highest possible greatness. If you remain egoistic, you remain insignificant. The ego is mean, inconsequential. If you hold on to it, you will be no more substantial than a grain of sand. It is absolutely essential to be free of it; the ego is the only impediment to your greatness. You are insignificant only because of it. When it is no more, no one is higher than you. Then you are the sovereign sound of existence, then you are the supreme music. And this is the answer to all your problems.

The whole problem exists simply because you have been unable to come to know what you really are. And your innermost desire is to know that, to be that. This means you have been trying to achieve greatness with the help of something utterly insignificant. You are like a certain king of Egypt the Sufis tell about.

The king loved a certain fakir very much, and the fakir used to go to the palace whenever he was sent for. Many times the king said to the fakir, “I wish to come to your cottage,” but the fakir always said, “No. There is nothing worthy of you there. Whenever you want me I shall come to you.”

This reply aroused the king’s curiosity. It instilled a desire in him to visit the fakir’s cottage, and so one day he went there without warning. The fakir’s wife was at home, but the fakir was working in the fields. The wife said, “Please sit down here. I will just fetch him.” But the king kept pacing up and down in front of the cottage.

The wife thought, “He is pacing up and down because there is nothing to sit on,” so she brought an old torn carpet from the hut and spread it upon the ground. She then requested the king to sit on it, saying she would go and fetch the fakir. The king said, “Yes, go and fetch him,” but did not sit on the carpet. He simply continued to pace up and down. The woman was a bit surprised, but went to get her husband anyway.

On the way back she said to him, “The king seems to be a very strange person indeed. I asked him to sit down several times. At first I thought he wouldn’t sit down because there was no rug, so I spread the carpet out but he still wouldn’t sit on it.”

The fakir replied, “You made a mistake. We don’t have a place fit for him. That is why I never invited him here. If we press him to sit down on that old torn carpet, he will become impatient to leave rather than sit on it for any length of time. You should not have asked him to sit down.” When they arrived at the cottage the fakir began to talk to the king, walking up and down with him at the same time.

When he noticed this the king was somewhat surprised – the fakir’s wife had asked him to sit down several times and the fakir did not invite him to sit down even once. So when the time came for him to depart, the king inquired, “Why did you not ask me to sit down, not even once, when your wife asked me so many times?”

The fakir said, “My wife is a simple woman. She knows nothing about court etiquette. We don’t have a place suitable for you. You are used to sitting on a royal throne. You would have been very uneasy on an old torn carpet. It would have been very difficult for you.”

Although this is a Sufi story, it is also about you. You will always be uneasy as long as you remain less than God. And your ego is no better than that old torn carpet. Your ego is dirty all over. Your ego is false. Its claims have no meaning; they are undisciplined and wanton. You know this too, but your problem is that you are unable to see the royal throne.

How long can you go on pacing up and down? So you become willing to sit down on the old torn carpet and then you try to persuade your mind that it is not an old rug but a royal throne. If you do not persuade your mind thus, imagine how long you will have to go on pacing up and down! So you make the false assumption that the old torn carpet is a royal throne.

If someone notices it and asks what you are sitting on, you will exclaim, “What are you saying? Are you blind? This is a royal throne!” The whole world sees you are sitting on an old torn carpet, only you are unable to see it. And the one who points this out to you becomes your enemy, you think he is trying to snatch your throne away from you.

Your ego’s claim, your claim that you are God, is bogus. There is no need whatsoever to make such a claim – that is what you already are. The problem is the old torn carpet. You keep on claiming it is a throne. And if I were to place a throne before you, you would protest. “What is the point of this?” you would ask. “I am already sitting on a throne,” you would insist.

From birth to birth, through countless lives, you have convinced yourself that the old torn carpet is a royal throne, that there is no seat higher. That is why you experience great difficulty when an awakened master, a SATGURU, asks you to give up your ego. He says to you, “Look, I am giving you a throne,” but you are incapable of seeing the throne he is offering. You can only see your old torn carpet. You feel at least you have something to hold on to as long as the carpet is in your hands, but when you listen to the master you feel the carpet slipping from your grip. And you do not know whether the throne he is offering you is truly a royal throne or not.

You will only be able to see that the throne is really you when you are able to set your ego aside. Then your dream about the old torn carpet, about sansara, about the world, will end. And then you will begin to experience the existence of God.

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