253

A few things before we enter these sutras of Heraclitus. First: to know oneself is the most difficult thing. It should not be so; it should be just the opposite, the simplest thing. But for many reasons it is not. It has become so complicated and you have invested so much in self-ignorance that it seems almost impossible to turn back, to return to the source, to encounter oneself.

Your whole life, as approved by society, state, church, is based on self-ignorance. You live without knowing yourself because society doesn’t want you to know yourself. It is dangerous for society. A man who knows himself is bound to be rebellious.

Knowledge is the greatest rebellion – I mean self-knowledge, not knowledge gathered through scriptures. Not the knowledge found in the universities, but knowledge that happens when you encounter your own being; when you come to yourself in your total nudity, naked; when you see yourself as God sees you, not as society would like to see you; when you see your natural being in its total wild bloom – not a civilized phenomenon, conditioned, cultured, polished.

Society is concerned with making a robot out of you because it is helpful, not a revolutionary. It is easy to dominate a robot; it is almost impossible to dominate a man of self-knowledge. How can you dominate a Jesus? How can you dominate a Buddha or a Heraclitus? He will not yield, he will not follow dictates. He will move through his own being. He will be like the wind, like the clouds; he will move like the rivers. He will be wild – of course beautiful, natural, but dangerous to the false society. He will not fit. Unless we create a natural society in the world, a Buddha is always going to remain a misfit, a Jesus is bound to be crucified.

Society wants to dominate; the privileged classes want to dominate, to oppress, to exploit. They would like you to remain completely unaware of yourself. This is the first difficulty. And one has to be born in a society. Parents, teachers, priests are all part of society. Society is everywhere, all around you. How to escape? It seems really impossible. How to find a door back to nature? You are enclosed from every side.

The second difficulty comes from your own self because you would also like to oppress, to dominate; you would also like to possess, to be powerful. A man of self-knowledge cannot be made a slave, and he cannot make a slave of anyone else either. You cannot oppress a man of knowledge, and a man of knowledge cannot oppress anyone. He cannot be dominated and he will not dominate. Domination simply disappears from that dimension. You cannot possess him and he will not possess anyone. He will be free and will help others to be free. This is an even deeper difficulty than the first. You can avoid society, but how to avoid your own ego? You are afraid. A man of knowledge simply doesn’t think in terms of possession, domination, power. He is innocent like a child. He would like to live totally free, and he would also like others to live totally free.

This man will be a freedom here in your world of slavery. Wouldn’t you not like to be exploited? You will say, “Yes,” you wouldn’t like to be exploited. Wouldn’t you not like to be made a prisoner? You will say “Yes,” you wouldn’t like to be made a prisoner. But would you like the other thing: not to make a prisoner of anyone else, not to dominate, not to oppress and exploit? Not to kill the spirit, or make a person a thing? That is difficult. And remember, if you want to dominate, you will be dominated. If you want to exploit, you will be exploited. If you want someone else to be a slave for you, you will be enslaved. They are both aspects of the same coin. This is the difficulty in self-knowledge; otherwise, self-knowledge should be the simplest thing, the easiest. There shouldn’t be any need to make any effort.

Effort is needed for these two things; they are the barriers. Just watch and see these two barriers, and start by dropping your own. First stop dominating, possessing, exploiting, and suddenly you will become capable of getting out of the trap of society.

The ego is the problem; that’s why you cannot know yourself. The ego gives you certain false images of yourself, and if you carry those images for a long time, you become afraid. The fear is that if your image falls, your identity will be broken. You create a false face and become afraid; if this false face falls, who will you be? You will go mad. You have invested too much in it. Everyone thinks about himself in such lofty terms, in such false terms; nobody agrees with him, nobody approves, but then your ego thinks that everyone is wrong.

I used to know a very old man. He lived almost half a century in the same house in a country town. He never went outside the town, in fact, never went inside the town either. He always remained in the house, a very isolated, introverted type of man. He never married, and remained a permanent bachelor with parents dead, no children, no friends – alone. People thought he was a little eccentric, a little crazy. No one ever came to see him and he never went to see anyone. Suddenly he surprised the whole town and neighborhood; he was moving into the house next door. The neighbors gathered together and asked, “Why?” For half a century he had lived in the same house, why now so suddenly a change? The man said, “Boys, it seems that it is the gypsy in me.”

That is his image. Whether you agree or not, that is not the point, but he thinks he is a gypsy. This is how you are all carrying your own images.

The first problem arises: if you want to know yourself you have to drop your false images, you have to see yourself as you are – and that is not very beautiful, that is the trouble. That is not very beautiful, that’s why you have created beautiful images – to hide. If you see yourself in total nakedness it is not going to be a very beautiful scene. You will see anger, jealousy, hatred, and millions of wrong things all around you. You think of yourself as a great lover – and there is jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, anger and all sorts of negativities. You think of yourself as a very, very beautiful person – but when you enter into yourself, you encounter ugliness. You turn your back immediately.

That’s why for thousands of years buddhas have always been teaching: “Know thyself,” but nobody listens to them. To know oneself seems to be such a difficult thing. Why? – because you have to encounter ugly phenomena. They are there, one has to pass through them. You have a beautiful being within you, but that beautiful being is not on the periphery, it is at the center. To reach the center you have to pass through the periphery. You cannot escape, there is no way to escape, one has to pass through it. You have to pass through all the ugliness, all the negativity, hatred, jealousy, violence, aggression, and if you are ready and mature enough to pass through the periphery, only then will you reach the center, and the scene changes.

At the center you are God. At the periphery you are the world – and the world is ugly. At the periphery you are nothing but a miniature society, and the society is ugly. At the periphery you are a Napoleon, a Hitler, a Genghis Khan, a Tamerlane, all the politicians, all the mad people of the world. At the periphery you are a miniature of all that; you are the whole history of aggression, violence, oppression, slavery. Remember, at the periphery you are the history that belongs to this world. Everything is involved; it has to be so because the mind is not your own, it is a social product. The mind carries all the germs, diseases, and ugliness of the past because the mind belongs to the collective. There are certain moments when you can see and watch your own Genghis Khan, your own Hitler. There are certain moments when you can see that you would like to murder, kill and destroy the whole world.

You have to be very courageous to pass through the periphery, to be a witness. If you can enter this periphery, this society, the history, at the center you are God himself. There is infinite beauty – but that infinite beauty is untouched by society, it is not the periphery. You are innocent like a newborn baby, fresh as the dewdrop in the morning, uncontaminated. But to reach that, you have to pass through all the ugliness. The whole history of man has to be crossed. You simply cannot avoid it.

That’s what you have been doing, and that’s why self-knowledge has become difficult – you want to avoid it. The only way to avoid it is to close your eyes, not to see, and create a private dream against it. Look at yourself as you would like yourself to be – all ideals, utopias, beautiful images. Make a small niche near the periphery – beautiful, decorated – and don’t look at it, just keep your back to it.

Heraclitus says “Know thyself!” because that is the only wisdom. You become afraid to come out of your decorated part because just near it is the volcano – it will erupt any moment. So people talk about self- knowledge, they discuss, write, create systems about it, but they never try it. Even those who continuously talk about knowing the self, just talk about it, argue it, discuss it, but in actual fact never try it. Self-knowledge is an existential experience, it is not theory. Theories won’t help. Theories will be just part of your decoration. They will not break the ice. They will not break the periphery. They will not lead you to the center.

You listen to what people say; if they say that you are God, you feel very happy; if they say that you are an eternal soul, you feel very, very happy. You also paint, decorate these theories. They are the same trick, escapes – they will not help. If you go around India, everyone knows that everyone is part of God, that everyone is brahman – and look at their lives and the ugliness of it! Look at the lives of the people who talk about God and you won’t find even a particle, not even an atomic part of what they are saying. They are saying it not to convince you, they are saying it to convince themselves. But they remain on the periphery and they are afraid to move.

The fear is there and it has to be dropped. Remember, before you attain ultimate bliss you will have to pass through long suffering. Before you attain the infinite, the eternal, you will have to pass through the temporal, the whole history of man. It is inbuilt, it is in every cell of your body, every cell of your mind and brain – you cannot avoid it. The whole past is there with you, it is in you, and has to be passed through. It is a nightmare, it is a very, very long nightmare, millions of years, but one has to pass through it – that is the difficulty.

Suffering has to be suffered; that is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Through suffering he attains the resurrection; through suffering you will attain self-knowledge. So don’t try to avoid it – there is no way to avoid it. The more you avoid it, the more you are losing opportunities. Face it! There is nothing that can be done except to face it. The more you face it, the more it disappears. A moment comes when you are absolutely ready to face it, whatsoever it is – you drop all the images. Even in a single moment of intense alertness, you can reach the center. But in that single moment you will have to suffer the whole past of humanity, the whole history; you will have to suffer all that has happened.

You must have heard: it is said that if people drown in the sea or in a river, in a single fragment of a moment they remember their whole past from the very birth, the pangs of birth – in a single moment, a flash, and the whole life passes. This is true. And the same happens when you reach the moment of samadhi, the ultimate death, when the ego dies completely. This happens! But in a single moment you suffer the whole past of humanity, not your own. This is the cross. You suffer the whole past of humanity because now you are transcending humanity. You have to pass through all that humanity has lived. You will have to suffer it. It is tremendous – the anguish is absolute. Only then do you reach the center and bliss becomes possible.

Self-knowledge is difficult because you are not ready to pass through any suffering. You think of self-knowledge in terms of tranquilizers; you think self-knowledge is a tranquilizer. People come to me and say, “Give us peace, silence.” If somebody promises to give you silence and peace without suffering, he is befooling you – and you will be caught in the trap very easily because that’s what you would like to have.

That is the appeal of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-type-people in the West. In fact, they are not giving you meditation, they are giving you tranquilizers. A meditation is bound to pass through suffering; it is not a play. You have to move through fire, and only in that fire will your ego drop. Looking at the whole ugliness of it, it drops automatically. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and others say that there is no need to suffer. They say, “I will give you a technique – just do it for ten minutes in the morning and evening and it will tranquilize your being. You will feel infinite peace and everything will be okay, and in just a few days you will become enlightened.”

It is not so easy – it is arduous. Tricks won’t help. Don’t waste your time on tricks. How can you become enlightened by just chanting a mantra for ten minutes? You have passed through history and you have come to a point, here, to this moment; you have passed through millions of years – who will pass back? Meditation means returning to the source. You have come up to this point in time; you will have to go back, you will have to regress, you will have to reach the original point from where the journey started. And you think, just by chanting a mantra for ten minutes in the morning, you will attain it?

Who do you think you are befooling? You are befooling yourself. It is not by chanting mantras that you have reached up to now. Humanity has lived, lived in millions of wrong ways – wandered, missed, committed sin, murdered; war, exploitation, oppression, domination. You have been a part of it, you are responsible for it. Just by chanting a mantra for ten minutes you think all responsibility is gone, and you have transcended? You call this chanting transcendental meditation? Who do you think you are befooling?

Transcendence is possible, but not through such easy tricks. Transcendence is possible only through the cross. Transcendence is possible only through suffering. If you are ready you can suffer the whole past in a single moment – but it is going to be an intense nightmare. That’s why a master is needed – because you can go completely mad. It is moving through dangerous terrain. Self-knowledge is the greatest thing, and self-knowledge is also the greatest danger. You can miss a step and go mad. That’s why buddhas are not listened to. You also know that this is dangerous. Moving into oneself is dangerous! A master is needed to watch every step; otherwise you will fall into an abyss, get dizzy. The mind will simply crack and it will be difficult to repair it.

These are the problems, and this is why man listens to Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Jesus, but never tries. Only a few try it. If you are ready to try it, you have to be aware of what it means. Just a desire to be happy won’t help – a desire to know the truth, not a desire to be happy because a man who wants to be happy will be in search of tranquilizers, narcotics. Meditation will also be a narcotic to him. He wants to sleep well, he doesn’t want to bother about what is happening. He would like to have a private world of his own dreams – of course beautiful dreams, not nightmares. That’s all he wants.

A man who is in search of truth does not think in terms of happiness. His happiness or unhappiness is not the point. He must know the true. Even if it is painful, even if it leads to hell, he is ready to pass through it. Wherever it leads, he is ready to go to it.

There are only two types of people. One is in search of happiness; he is the worldly type. He may enter a monastery, but this type doesn’t change; there he will also ask for happiness, pleasure, gratification. But now in a different way – through meditation, prayer, God – he is trying to become happy, more and more happy. The second type of person – and only two types exist – is in search of truth. This is the paradox: the one who seeks happiness will never find it because happiness is not possible unless you attain the true. Happiness is just a shadow of truth; it is nothing in itself – it is just a harmony.

When you feel one with the truth, everything fits together, falls together. You feel a rhythm and that rhythm is happiness. You cannot seek it directly. Truth has to be sought. Happiness is found when truth is found, but happiness is not the goal. If you seek happiness directly you will be more and more unhappy. At the most, your happiness will be just an intoxicant so that you can forget unhappiness; that’s all that is going to happen. Happiness is just like a drug – it is LSD, marijuana, mescaline.

Why has the West come to use drugs? It is a very, very rational process. It has to come to it because searching for happiness one has to reach LSD sooner or later. The same has happened before in India. In the Vedas they reached soma, LSD, because they were seeking happiness; they were not really seekers of truth. They were seeking more and more gratification – they came to soma. Soma is the ultimate drug. Aldous Huxley has named the ultimate drug soma, whenever it was to be found again somewhere in the twenty-first century. Whenever a society, a man, a civilization, seeks happiness, somewhere it has to come to drugs –because happiness is a search for drugs. The search for happiness is a search to forget oneself; that’s what a drug helps you to do. You forget yourself and there is no misery. You are not there, how can there be misery? You are fast asleep.

The search for truth is just the opposite dimension; not gratification, pleasure, happiness, but asking, “What is the nature of existence? What is true?” A man who seeks happiness will never find it – at the most he will find forgetfulness. A man who seeks truth will find it because to seek truth he will have to become true himself. To seek truth in existence, first he will have to seek the true in his own being. He will become more and more self-remembering.

These are the two paths: self-forgetfulness, the way of the world; and self-remembrance, the way of God. The paradox is that one who seeks happiness never finds it; one who seeks truth and doesn’t bother about happiness has always found it.

Heraclitus says, “This is the first thing to be understood: self-knowledge must be the only search, self-knowledge must be the only goal because if without knowing yourself you know everything else, it is meaningless.” You may come to know everything except yourself, but what does it mean? It cannot carry any significance – because if the knower himself is ignorant, what can his knowledge mean? What can his knowledge give? When you yourself remain in darkness you may gather millions of lights around you, but they will not fill you with light. You will remain in darkness in spite of them. You will live in darkness, you will move in darkness. That type of knowledge is science. You know a million and one things, but you don’t know yourself.

Science is all knowledge except self-knowledge. Minus self-knowledge, the seeker himself remains in darkness. It is not of much use. Religion is basically self-knowledge. You should be lit within, the darkness should disappear from within, and wherever you move your inner light falls on the path. Wherever you go, whatever you do, everything is illuminated by your inner light. This movement with the light gives you a rhythm, a harmony, which is happiness. You don’t stumble, you don’t clash, and there is no conflict. You move easily, your steps have a dance to them, and everything is a fulfillment. You don’t ask for something extraordinary to happen. You are happy. You are simply happy in your ordinariness. And unless you are happy in your ordinariness, you will never be happy.

You are happy just to breathe, just to be; you are happy just to eat, and to go to sleep again. You are happy. Now happiness is not derived from anything – it is you. A man who knows himself is happy not because of any reasons; his happiness is uncaused. It is not a thing that happens to him, it is his whole way of being. He is simply happy. Wherever he moves he takes his happiness with him. If you throw him into hell, he will create a heaven around him; a heaven will enter with him. As you are, ignorant of yourself, if you could be thrown into heaven you would create a hell there because you carry your hell with you. Wherever you go will not make much difference, you will carry your own world around you. That world is within you, your darkness. This inner darkness should disappear – that is what is meant by self-knowledge.

The second thing Heraclitus says, “This will become easy to attain if you are aware not to move to the extremes.” Remain in the middle – the golden mean, what Buddha calls majjhim nikai, the middle way. Remain in the middle, don’t move to the extremes because when you move to the extremes you think you are going to the opposite, but the opposite is not exactly the opposite, it is a complementary whole. That is his whole teaching.

Watch people and watch yourself. One person indulges in sex too much; indulgence brings boredom, excitement is lost, he is simply bored. He starts thinking of celibacy because he is finished with indulgence. Now he is not interested in sex at all; he would like to become a monk, he would like to move to a monastery, take a vow of brahmacharya. This is going to the extreme; this is again indulgence. The extreme is indulgence. Sex is not indulgence, the extreme is indulgence. There is only one indulgence: to indulge in the extreme. He indulged in one extreme, now he is moving to the other; that too is indulgence. Sooner or later he will be fed up. Catholic monks are fed up now, so they are getting married. They have done too much. One must know where to stop, and the middle is the way.

If you can remain in the middle, the mind disappears – because the mind lives in extremes. You eat too much, then you fast and go on fasting. The first was stupid; this too is stupid. The body doesn’t need too much food and doesn’t need fasting either. It needs just a midpoint; it needs the right quantity of food. First you eat too much, you fill the body too much, and it becomes a burden. To carry it becomes a burden for you; it is not a bliss to be in the body. You move to the other extreme. Now you fast; that too is destructive. Why can’t you be in the middle? Why can’t you eat the right quantity of food and the right type of food? Why can’t you remain in the middle? If you remain in the middle, the mind disappears.

The mind exists with the extreme because the mind has to think again and again. When you eat too much, you think about fasting; when you fast, you think about food. But when you are just in the middle, balanced, what is there to think about? A man who is in the middle has nothing to think of. He is hungry, he eats – finished! He is sleepy, he sleeps – finished! What is there to think about? But you don’t sleep, and you think about sleeping; sleeping becomes a cerebral phenomenon, the mind enters. You don’t eat, or you eat too much, you have to think about it; it goes into the mind. Either you indulge in sex too much, or you become a brahmachari. In both cases it becomes cerebral. Sex enters the mind, and the mind goes on thinking around and around. Thinking exists because of extremes.

Whenever you are simply in the middle, there is no point in thinking; there is nothing to think. In the middle, thinking disappears. When you are really harmonious you have attained a rhythm. You fulfill the needs; you are neither a slave nor an enemy to them. You are neither an indulgent one nor one who is ascetic. You simply remain in the middle. Everything becomes peaceful. Heraclitus calls this, “Being temperate, moderate, balanced.” Balance has to be gained in everything. Through balance you will come nearer to truth because truth is the ultimate balance. When you are balanced, suddenly the doors open.

Now try to understand these sutras:

[It pertains to all men
to know themselves
and to be temperate.]

To be temperate is the way to know oneself. Watch your mind and you will always see it insists on the extreme; it enjoys the extreme, it indulges in the extreme. When you are just in the middle, the mind is unemployed, unoccupied.

Somebody asked a Zen master, “What is your way?” He replied, “When I feel hungry, I eat; when I feel sleepy, I go to sleep – this is my way. I never eat when I am not hungry, and I never fast when I am hungry –this is my way.” The man said, “But this doesn’t seem much of a way – we all do this.” The master laughed and said, “If you did all this, there would be no need to come to me.”

Either you eat too much, or you eat too little. The mind always has a tendency to find causes for being miserable. It is simply wonderful, the mind is simply wonderful – it is so skilled at finding causes to be miserable. It creates all your miseries because in a blissful state the mind will die. It is against all bliss. You are in misery; it will suggest to you that this is not good, do that. It will suggest just the opposite. Be alert; when the mind suggests just the opposite, don’t follow it! Always find the golden mean. Don’t listen to the mind, know where to stop.

Lao Tzu has said, “I give you three treasures: one is love; the second is never go to the extreme; the third is be natural.” And he says that everything will take care of itself. Why will everything take care of itself if you follow these simple things?

The mind is a perfect expert in creating miseries. A young man came to me and said, “I would like to live just on water.” Why? Why just on water? He is already miserable. He has been eating too much. Now that has become a hell, now he wants to create another hell – because how can you live just on water? That will be another hell, and from that hell you will move to another hell. From hell to hell is the passage of the mind. Somewhere between two hells is heaven, but the mind always bypasses it. Between two hells is heaven, so know where to stop. Just in the middle, stop! Don’t eat too much and don’t fast. But you will not be able to become very egoistic about it because eating too much can be egoistic.

Mulla Nasruddin goes on talking about his capacity to eat, and many times I have heard him saying: “I can eat ninety-nine kachoris!” So I said to him, “Why not make it a hundred?” He replied, “What do you think of me? Just because of one kachori, am I a liar. Why should I lie?”

Bragging – people brag about how much they can eat, and other people brag about how much they can fast, but the bragging remains the same. Criminals brag, and your so-called saints. Both are in the same boat –because bragging is the boat.

I have heard that a criminal entered a prison cell. His cellmate who was already there asked, “How long do you have to be here?” He was an old master. The young, new one said, “Just fifteen years.” His cellmate said, “Then keep your bed near the door. You will be leaving soon. I am sentenced to twenty-five more years.”

If you are sentenced for twenty-five years you are a great criminal. But just fifteen? – you are just a beginner, an amateur. Even criminals brag about how much they can do, how much they have done. If they commit one murder, they claim seven. Saints also do the same. What is the difference? In India, saints publish how many days they fasted this year.

A man came to me with his wife. In describing her husband his wife said, “He is a very, very generous man. Up to now he has donated almost one lakh rupees.” The man looked at his wife and corrected her. “Not one lakh – one lakh ten thousand.” You give and you don’t give – because if the ego is fulfilled through giving, nothing is being given. The ego cannot share. The ego can never be generous; that is not its nature. The ego always fulfills itself by the opposite. Know this trap well.

Heraclitus says:

[It pertains to all men
to know themselves
and to be temperate.]

To be temperate is the greatest virtue. It really is. I have not come across anything greater than being temperate. There is nothing like it. Why? Why is it the greatest virtue? – because it simply destroys your ego, and the ego is the only sin. Because of the ego you miss the divine. And just being ordinary, in the middle, what can you claim? Can you claim that you eat the right quantity of food? Can you claim that you move into sex exactly in the middle, just right? Can you claim anything from the middle? No, that’s not possible. Indulge in sex and you can claim that even at the age of fifty you can make love thrice a day. Or become a brahmachari, a celibate, and claim that you are a virgin, having never made love to anyone. What can you claim by just being in the middle? In the middle there is nothing to claim. When there is nothing to claim and declare, the ego is not fed. Just be ordinary and in the middle – this is the greatest virtue.

To be ordinary is the greatest virtue because when you are just ordinary, with nothing to claim of this world or that, the ego disappears. The ego feeds on imbalance, the ego feeds on extremes. The ego lives on the polarities – in the middle it disappears. In every area, in every direction of life, remember, just stop in the middle and soon you will find the mind has stopped, the ego has stopped. With nothing to claim, it disappears; when it disappears you have become virtuous. Now the door is open for the divine. You meet him in the middle; at the extremes you miss.

[Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth,
giving heed to the nature of things.]

Heraclitus is just like Lao Tzu, exactly the same. He says: Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth… Try, because to know the truth is going to be a long journey. Much preparation will be needed. Before the truth can descend on you, you will have to become a vehicle. You will have to be completely empty for the guest to come because only your emptiness can become the host. What to do right now? If you are a seeker of truth, Heraclitus says, “Speak and act truth.” If you speak truth, there is not much to say; you will become more and more silent automatically.

It happened…

A lady had just left a ladies’ club and the other ladies were talking about her. One said, “She seems to be very sweet, but – yakety-yakety-yak. I couldn’t think how she would stop herself.” Another member said, “But is everything she says true?” “I should say not,” said the third lady, “because that much truth simply doesn’t exist!”

If you want to be true you will become silent – because ninety-nine percent of what you talk about is simply untrue; it will drop automatically. There are two types of silence. One that you force upon yourself, which is not really silence. You can cut off your tongue, but that will not be the silence. You can close your mouth, that will not be a true silence because inside, yakkety-yak. It goes on and on and on. True silence comes if you start talking truth. Only say that which you know is true; otherwise don’t speak. What is left to say? – not much. A silence descends on you which is totally different. It is not a forced silence. It comes spontaneously because there is nothing to say.

First, when you have nothing to say, you start being silent with people; you talk less and listen more. By and by, the inside talking also stops because if you cannot speak untruth to other people, how can you go on talking about it inside? The whole thing becomes absurd. Inside you talk too much because that is just a rehearsal for talking outside. If you can listen to people, not talking much, just the truth – that for which you can vouch, that to which you can say, “I am a witness” – a silence will come to you. A silence not forced, a silence not disciplined, a silence that comes naturally.

Heraclitus says, “Speak and act the truth, and act only in such a way that it comes out of your feeling of truth.” In the beginning it will be difficult because your whole life depends on lies. In the beginning you will always feel out of step with others, but soon everything settles again in a new pattern, a new gestalt arises.

The interim period is going to be difficult. First, watch in how many ways you lie. You smile and you don’t feel like smiling within. It is a lie. Don’t smile because you are being violent to the lips, to the face. If you go on doing it for long you will completely forget the feeling of a smile, what a true smile is. Only small children know; you have completely forgotten what a true smile is. You simply smile; it is a gesture, false. You smile as a polite mannerism. You smile because people expect you to smile. You smile not knowing what you are doing. Why are you forcing your lips? If your smile has become false, what can be true in you? Your tears have also become false. You weep when it is required; otherwise you suppress.

Watch in how many millions of ways you have become untrue. You say things you don’t mean. You use words completely unconsciously – then you are trapped by them. You say to someone, “You are beautiful.” It may just have been a mannerism of yours, but you have touched the other person, you have stirred something. The other person may start feeling that you really feel that way. Now expectations arise, and soon frustrations will follow because you had said it just by the way, you never meant it. Now you are in a trap; you have to fulfill the expectation. Now you feel burdened.

Be true and you will be less burdened. Be true; don’t create false expectations around you, otherwise you will be in a prison, trapped! Say exactly what you mean and always say, “This I mean in this moment. For the next moment I cannot say anything – because who knows what will happen in the next moment? I love you this moment, but how can I speak for the next moment?”

Only an enlightened person can say something about the next moment because he has come to a point where everything is eternal. But how can you speak about the next moment? Your moods change. This moment you feel, “I love,” and this moment you can say, “I will love you forever and ever.” This is true only in this moment; how can you say anything about the next moment? Be alert and make the statement conditional: “This is how I feel only in this moment – nobody knows about the next moment. I cannot promise anything.”

All your promises are untrue – how can you promise? A promise means you have attained a crystallized center. How can you keep a promise? You say to a woman, “I will love you forever and ever.” How can you keep this promise? After just a few days you feel the excitement has disappeared, now there is no love – what to do? Now you have to smile falsely. And because of the promise you have to kiss this woman, you have to make love to this woman. Now everything becomes false. You become untrue. Now you feel guilty if you don’t fulfill it. If you fulfill it, it is untrue, you are acting. It cannot make you ecstatic – it will create more anxiety and burdens. It cannot be a fulfillment, it will be a frustration. The more you force yourself to love the woman, the more you will take revenge because this woman has become a millstone around your neck. Now you feel that if she goes away somehow it will be good. If she dies it will be good. Now you will find a way to escape – just because of a promise! A promise that is given in a moment and given for one life is not possible for you. You live in moments. You don’t have an eternal center in you yet, you have just a wheel-like periphery that moves. This is how you are trapped.

You cannot love, you cannot laugh, you cannot weep – everything is untrue, and you are in search of truth. No, it is not possible. You have to be true to meet truth, because only the same can meet the same. An untrue person cannot reach the truth; only a true person can reach the truth.

Be alert, don’t promise. Just say that this moment it appears so. Of course, it will give you a feeling of helplessness; the ego cannot stand. The ego can say, “I will, forever and ever.” You will feel helpless that you cannot give even this promise? But it is being true. I know that if even for a single moment you can love another person totally, that will change you; that will give you a taste of truth. But be true. Say what you mean. If you don’t know, if you are confused in a situation, don’t speak – or simply put your confusion out, express it. Before you act, act with full awareness that this is going to give you a truer being. Be authentic.

You go on doing millions of things that you don’t want to do. Who is forcing you? You simply drift. Nobody is forcing you to do those things. Why do you do them? You are not aware. It is just a chain; you do one thing, then another arises. One thing leads to another and you go on and on. When will you stop? Every moment is the right moment to stop. Just watch and start falling out of the chain of lies that you have created.

Of course, you will feel very, very humiliated, humble, helpless. But if that’s true, feel it. When it comes from your heart, weep when you want to. Don’t stop; don’t say, “I am a man, I cannot be a sissy, I cannot behave like a woman.” Don’t say that. Nobody is so totally a man and nobody can be. Man is also woman, woman is also man; both meet and mingle inside. Weep, because if you cannot weep authentically you cannot smile. You will be afraid. When you would like to laugh you will be afraid because tears may start; they are suppressed there so you cannot laugh. When you cannot laugh, you cannot weep; it becomes a vicious circle. When you are angry, be angry and take the consequences – be truly angry.

This has been my observation. If you are truly angry, nobody is offended by it – nobody! But your anger is impotent, dead. If you are a father and feel angry with your child, be angry and your child will never feel antagonistic toward you. But when you are angry, you smile, and the child simply detects it because a child is innocent; he has clear eyes, more clarity than you have. He simply detects the falsity – that you are angry and you are smiling. He will never be able to forgive you because you are being untrue. A child never feels so bad about anything as he feels about untruth. Be authentic. If you feel like hitting the child, hit him, but don’t be untrue. And when you feel repentance, ask for forgiveness, and be true in that.

A husband who has never said anything in anger to his wife will not be able to love because everything remains false, on the surface. If you cannot bring deep anger out, how can you bring deep love? If you are so afraid of being angry, that shows that you are not confident of love. You are afraid that things may fall apart, the relationship may break up; that’s why you are afraid. But then this relationship is not worth much. If it cannot pass through anger and mature, it is not worth much. Drop it before it becomes a commitment – but be true.

You will have to suffer through truth, but that suffering is needed. Through suffering you will mature, your inner being will become seasoned. You will attain a sharpness and clarity that only comes through encounter, that only comes through facing facts. When you are angry, be truly angry so that you can be truly forgiving. When you don’t want to give a thing, simply say, “I don’t want to give it,” but don’t find excuses. Don’t find excuses because you are creating a pattern every moment, and that pattern can become so ingrained that you will have to follow it. Come out of it – and every moment is a right moment.

Heraclitus says:

[Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth,
giving heed to the nature of things.]

Look at the nature of things. Watch the natural and drop the artificial. The artificial may look beautiful, but it is not alive. Watch the natural and always move with nature. Never move with the artificial. Civilization is artificial, society is artificial – everything seems to be artificial.

I knew a man once, an old, retired professor, a neighbor. People thought that he was a little bit out of his mind, as a retired professor of philosophy is bound to be. But I don’t make judgments, so I listened, and I never really thought much about him. One day, I was just passing by and I had to look twice because he was using a watering can with no bottom. The watering can had no bottom! There was no water in it, and he was making all the gestures of watering his plants. So I said to him, “Hey, what are you doing? Your watering can has no bottom!” He replied, “I know that, but it doesn’t matter because these flowers are artificial.”

Your whole life has become artificial – plastic flowers. From a distance they look good, but if you come close they are plastic. Of course, they don’t die so soon. They cannot die, they are plastic flowers, but a thing that cannot die is not alive.

A real flower has to pass through millions of hazards. How humble a real flower is, how fragile. In the morning it is there, how fragile! And against this whole world. Storms and clouds come, the rain, animals, children and everything. A fragile flower exists against all this. That is the beauty; by the evening it is gone. You will not find it again, it will no longer be there – but it is alive. In the morning it is there in its total beauty, and by the evening it is faded, gone, dust unto dust – but it was alive. Your plastic flower is dead, that’s why it cannot die. Everything alive will die; only dead things never die.

Remember, don’t be afraid of death and don’t be afraid that things may disappear. Untruth never dies. Truth dies millions of times and resurrects again and again. Remember this. Untruth is like a plastic flower, secure. That’s why marriage is secure. A marriage which has been arranged by parents, by society is more secure. Love is fragile like a flower in the morning; by the evening it is gone. Nobody knows how it comes, how it goes. It is mysterious. Marriage is nothing mysterious, it is a calculation. You go to an astrologer, he finds the chart and arranges it. Of course, parents are wiser than you, worldly wise, they have known much. They arrange it all; they look for many things that a lover would never think about – the money, the prestige and millions of things; they think of security. When someone falls in love he cannot think of anything else.

Remember, a dead thing never dies – that is the security in it, but it is dead. It is always possible that an alive thing may disappear at any moment; that is the trouble with life. But it is alive, and worth taking all risks for. Be true. There will be many, many troubles, but each trouble will make you more mature. And being true, talking, acting true, you are getting ready for truth to descend. When you attain a certain maturity, suddenly the door opens. There is no other way.

[Listening to me but not to the Logos,
it is wise to acknowledge
that all things are one.]

Heraclitus says: Listening to me… I would also say, “Listening to me, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one.” If you listen to the logos, the logos means: the law, the tao, the rit, the basic; the logos is the ultimate stratum of existence. You don’t know anything about it. You have never penetrated that depth. It is also in you, near the center, but you have lived on the periphery so you don’t know about it.

Heraclitus says, “But listening to me” – listening to a Buddha, to Heraclitus, to Lao Tzu – “it is good to acknowledge that all things are one.” This is not your experience yet.

Here enters trust, shraddha, faith. Religion cannot exist without trust because you don’t know what the ultimate stratum is. There is no way to prove it, there is no way to argue about it. If you know, you know; if you don’t know, you don’t know. What to do about it? There is only one possibility: to listen to a Heraclitus – not only to what he says, but to listen to his being, what he is. You will come to acknowledge one thing, that one exists in this diversity, in this “too-manyness” of the world. Behind it, one exists.

You have been listening to me, you have listened to me from many, many dimensions. Sometimes on the periphery you feel I am contradictory; if you listen not only to my words but to me, to my presence, you will never feel any contradiction. If you feel, not just think, by and by you will start feeling that whatever I say is the same. Whatever I say, whether through Heraclitus, Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, I always say the same thing. The language differs, words differ, but not the logos of it.

[Listening to me…
it is wise to acknowledge
that all things are one.]

When you can listen to the logos itself, you will know; there will be no need to acknowledge it. You will know, and there will be no need to trust. Trust is needed because you don’t know and you need somebody who knows. You need the hand of somebody who knows, who can take you from the known to the unknown, who can take you to the uncharted. Without trust it is not possible; otherwise how will you come with me to the unknown? If you don’t trust me, how can you come with me to the unknown? You will always stick to the boundary of the known. You will say, “Up to here I know that I am safe; beyond this is wilderness. And who are you to take me into the wilderness? Why should I trust you?”

At the boundary where known and unknown meet, there is no way except trust. You have to be in a love affair with a master, nothing less than that will do because only love can trust. It has to be a heart-to-heart, depth-to-depth relationship; it has to be intimate. That’s why I go on insisting on sannyas and initiation. Unless you trust me, totally, you will cling to the known, to the mind, your ego –what is the point? You have to take at least one step with me without asking why. Love never asks why because love trusts.

A small child has to trust his father; the father takes his hand and the child follows. He’s not worried; wherever the father is going, he goes, happily. He is not worried about what is going to happen. That is trust. If the child stops and says, “Where are you going and where are you leading me? What do you mean by trust, and how can I trust you?” He will immediately stop growing, and there is no possibility of growth. The child has to trust the mother, the father. A master is nothing but a father into the unknown. You are learning to walk again, you are learning to search and seek again, you are moving into something – you don’t know what it is, where you are headed.

This is what Heraclitus means:

[Listening to me…
It is wise to acknowledge
that all things are one.]

[Wisdom is one –
to know the intelligence by which
all things are steered through all things.]

[Wisdom is one and unique;
it is unwilling and yet willing
to be called by the name of Zeus.]

Zeus is the supreme god. Wisdom is both willing and unwilling to be called the supreme god. It is paradoxical and very difficult for the mind to understand.

Buddha says, “There is no god” – unwilling. He also says, “No need to worship me, find your own light” – unwilling to declare his wisdom, his consciousness, to be the supreme god. The next moment he says, “Come and surrender to me.” The next moment he contradicts himself. Why is it? – because a man who has reached, arrived, has no ego, so it is difficult for him to claim anything, unwilling. The wisdom is unwilling to declare itself the supreme god, but it is. The ego is not there to claim, but it is so. It is a fact, so it cannot be denied either.

So what to do? If a Buddha says, “I am not the supreme god,” he is untrue. If he says, “I am the supreme god,” it gives a tinge of ego. So what is he supposed to do? Either way there is difficulty. If he says, “I am the god,” you may think he is an egoist. If he says, “I am not a god at all,” it is untrue. So sometimes he says, “Yes, I am”; sometimes he says, “I am not.” You have to find the balance between these two. He is both somewhere in between. He is not a god because he is no longer an ego, there is nobody to claim. He is a god precisely because there is no ego, precisely because there is nobody to claim.

Wisdom is one and unique; it is unwilling and yet willing to be called by the name of Zeus. Hence, all the contradictions of all the enlightened ones. Whatever they say they have to contradict immediately because they are saying something which is unique, one. The unique and the one cannot be put into any language because language depends on duality. If they say, “I am light,” who will be the darkness? Language depends on the duality; light means not darkness. But a man who has attained is both light and dark together. He is both – all the dualities together – that is the mystery. And because of this mystery Aristotle said, “This man Heraclitus is defective somewhere. Either his mind is defective, or his character because he talks in absurdities.”

Arthur Koestler came to the East to watch people who have attained samadhi. He reported back to the West: “They are mad, absurd because they talk absurdities. This moment they say something, the next moment they contradict themselves.”

Wisdom is vast, it contains all the opposites together. You need a feeling heart to penetrate this absurdity; that is trust. Trust is the weapon to penetrate the absurdity of an enlightened man – then suddenly everything fits. You suddenly see through all the absurdity to the one, the unique.

Enough for today.