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Metaphors are metaphors, don’t take them literally. When I say: Melt, let your ice become water, and evaporate, let your water become vapor, I am talking in metaphors. All that I am saying to you is metaphorical, because that is the only way to say it. But don’t become too attached to metaphors, otherwise you will miss the point.

Water is beautiful, and a love for swimming is beautiful. But if you take the metaphor too seriously and you stretch it too far, you will create trouble for yourself. That’s what has happened to you; that’s what has happened to many people here. They listen to me, they jump upon one metaphor that appeals to them, they take hold of it, and they start thinking; that they have got something of the truth.

A metaphor has to be understood and dropped, and forgotten. A metaphor is dangerous. If you take it too seriously, you miss the point. A metaphor is only an indicator; it is a way of saying.

It is good if you understand what I mean by melting. You are not ice, certainly not. Had you been ice it would have been so easy; you would have melted in the Pune heat automatically. You are not ice, certainly not. Things are more difficult.

Metaphors are simple. They have to be simple, because they are meant to relate something which cannot be related in any other way. Melting has to bemunderstood. By melting I mean become loving, because love melts. The warmth of love – not the Pune heat – the warmth of love melts you.

What do I mean when I say, “Become water?” I mean become a flow, river-like, but not that you have to become a river. You have been a river somewhere millions of lives before. You have lost that, you have gone far away from it, and there is no need to go back to it.

You have evolved much; hence the desire remains there. When you go to the sea and you feel a great attraction toward the sea, a gravitation, almost a pull, do you know from where it comes? Millions of lives before, you have been in the sea, you have been a fish, life started there. And our bodies have not forgotten it; they never forget anything, their memory is absolute.

The body knows the thrill, the freedom, the flow of the ocean. So when you see ocean waves, you cannot resist. Something pulls you: “Come into the ocean.” It is your fish inside. Do you know that in the mother’s womb for nine months you swim in almost the same kind of water as in the sea, with the same chemicals, in the same proportion? Do you know inside your body, eighty percent is sea-water? If you don’t take any salt for a few days you will feel tired, because that sea water is not getting as much salt as it needs, and the fish is feeling thirsty, tired, worried.

You are still eighty percent water, and the water is exactly of the same kind as sea-water. That’s why when it is full moon you feel great upsurges of energy in you. Exactly like the ocean, when it is full moon the ocean is affected. You are also eighty percent ocean. You are bound to be affected. In your small ocean, in your tea-cup, storms arise.

Many more people go mad on the full-moon night than on any other night. That is only one side of the story: many more people become enlightened, too, on the same night. Buddha became enlightened on a full-moon night. He was born on a full-moon night, he became enlightened on a full-moon night, he died on a full-moon night. He must have been a great fish.

So when you are attracted to the ocean it is because something is ingrained deep in your memories. That’s what happens when you go to a lake, or a river, a swimming pool, or even just under your shower, if you cannot go anywhere. The falling water on you stirs memories in the body. The body feels relaxed, happy; it feels nourished, rooted, centered.

But that is not what I mean. Enjoy all these things, these are beautiful things. I am not against them, I am all for them. My metaphor has another meaning. When I say “melt” I mean love. Create as much love-heat in you as possible. Only that can melt you. When I say “become water” I mean become a flow, don’t remain stagnant, move, and move like water.

Lao Tzu says: “The way of the Tao is a watercourse way.” It moves like water. What is the movement of water, or of a river? The movement has a few beautiful things about it. One, it always moves toward the depth, it always searches for the lowest ground. It is non-ambitious; it never hankers to be the first, it wants to be the last.

Remember, Jesus says: “Those who are the last here will be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven.” He is talking about the watercourse way of Tao, not mentioning it, but talking about it. Be the last, be non-ambitious. Ambition means to climb uphill. Water goes downhill, it searches for the lowest ground; it wants to be a nonentity. It does not want to declare itself unique, exceptional, extraordinary. It has no ego idea.

That is what I mean when I say become water: drop the ego, drop ambition. Don’t struggle for the top of the hill and don’t start moving upstream. Go with the stream, down the stream, seek and search the lowest, because only in the lowest will you find peace, tranquility and silence. Only in the lowest will you find the inner emptiness I have been talking about all these days. When you start striving to be somebody, you will not be empty. You will become full of bullshit, you will become garbage.

Go downward. Search the lowest depths and disappear there, that is the first thing.

The second thing: the water is soft, feminine, non-aggressive; it never fights. It makes its way without fighting. It is from water that the Chinese and Japanese learned the secret art of judo or jujitsu, winning without fighting, conquering through surrendering – wei-wu-wei.

Learn this one thing from water: it comes across great stone walls, granite walls. It does not fight, it goes on flowing silently; if a stone is too big it finds another way, it bypasses it. But slowly, slowly the granite is dissolved into water, becomes sand. Ask the sands of the oceans from where they have come. They have come from the mountains. They will tell you a great secret: “Water wins finally. We were hard, and we thought that water cannot win. We were very, very settled; we could not believe that this poor water, so soft, unharming, unhurting, nonviolent could destroy us. But it destroyed us.”

That is the beauty of feminine energy. Don’t be like a rock. Be like water, soft, feminine. And victory is yours.

Remember Jesus again: Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. The meek? The watercourse way. They win. It takes time, but they have patience. They have no idea of winning, that’s why they win. The people who want to win are defeated by their very idea, because they start struggling, and in struggling they dissipate their energy.

That’s what I mean when I say “become water” – melt, become water. And what do I mean when I say “evaporate”? That is the ultimate: learning how not to be, learning the art of absence. The vapor simply disappears, you cannot catch hold of it; you cannot even see it. You can see it only when it is turning into vapor and soon it is gone, soon it is invisible.

A buddha is seen only when he is in the body. Once the body is dropped, you will not be able to catch hold of him. He is simply gone, he has become part of the ultimate sky. That is the ultimate – to disappear. Buddha calls it anatta – no-self, shunyata – emptiness, nothingness, nirvana, cessation.

So when I use these metaphors, always remember they are metaphors, poetic ways of saying things which cannot be said in any other way.

You ask:
“During your discourse yesterday, you spoke on how we can move from being like ice to becoming like water, then evaporating. Your words prompted a feeling I have been getting for a few months now, a feeling of great affinity for and attraction to water.”

Get attracted to water, feel affinity with water. Feeling affinity with any element of nature, water, fire, sky, earth, or air is immensely helpful. But that’s not what I meant.

“I really love taking showers and to go for a swim is my idea of paradise.”

You are a good man. That’s how one should think of paradise. Do you know about Jaina monks? They don’t take a shower, they don’t take a bath. Never go to a Jaina paradise, otherwise you will be in difficulty. There will be no showers. And plumbers, of course, will not be needed. They are so much against the body that even a simple joy like a shower seems to be too much of a luxury.

See the pathological mind, how it works. They are afraid that if they take a shower they will be enjoying the body, that joy will come, and gladness will spread all over the body. They are so against the body, how can they take a shower? They stink; they don’t brush their teeth because that is a kind of beautifying of the body. And for what? – for the idea that the body has to be dropped, and the sooner the better. The body has to be felt as horrible, so make it as horrible as possible. Make it horrible for yourself and for others too.

It used to happen in the past: Jaina monks and nuns would come to see me. Now they have become too afraid, they don’t come. And even if they want to come, their followers won’t allow them. They used to come; it was such a difficult thing to talk to them, because their breath smells so bad that one really feels that the body is horrible. Their bodies smell so bad.

What have people been doing on this earth? They have been negating life. My approach is that of affirmation. I am in love with life. It is fleeting, it is momentary, but who says that it is not momentary and it is not fleeting? Still you can love it even more so because it is fleeting. You can pour all your love. Tomorrow it may not be there. Go on loving, go on being as much in celebration as possible, in all the ways possible.

You say:
“I really love taking showers and to go for a swim is my idea of paradise. I want to become the water and merge with it.”

That is taking the metaphor too far. It is good when swimming in a river to feel one with the river. Feel the river pass through you. But please don’t become water itself, otherwise how will you come back? And who is going to do the plumbing in the ashram? Please don’t do that; you have to come back too.

And that will not be a real thing, either. If somebody thinks he has become water, he has simply gone mad. If somebody thinks that he has become the tree, he has gone mad. It is the same as if somebody thinks he has become Napoleon and somebody has become Alexander the Great, it is the same. Now you are doing the same trick with water, but it is madness. Enjoy the unity, the affinity, the synchronicity with water, the harmony. But there is no need to become water, there is no need.

“I want to become the water and merge with it. But I get out of the water feeling frustrated.”

Naturally. If you want to merge with it and then you have to get out of it, frustration comes. It is your idea of getting merged with the water that is creating the frustration. You have to get out of it just as you got into it. Enjoy being with it but don’t become obsessed, and then the frustration will disappear.

“I can’t quite make it.”

There is no need.

“It is the same with looking at a river or lake, the desire for union is there but the realization seems both so close and yet so far away.”

It is bound to be so. You are trying to live a metaphor. A metaphor has to be understood, not lived. Live life; understand metaphors. The word God is not God. Don’t start living the word God – that’s what people are doing. The word love is not love – don’t start living the word love – that’s what people are doing. Love is just a symbol to indicate toward something which is far more complex, far simpler, far bigger and more infinite, than the word can contain. Only silence can contain it.

“Can this tell me anything about myself?”

Certainly. It tells one thing: you take words too seriously. You don’t understand that which is hidden behind the words, you don’t understand that which is between two words in the intervals and the gaps. You jump upon the words and you try to carry them in your life. Your life will become false, phony, pseudo. Avoid it.

“By the way I am a plumber,” you say.

By the way, I am also a plumber. I plumb into the depths of your being. And when somebody starts leaking, I have to fix them. And when somebody’s nuts and bolts become loose, I have to make them tight again. Or when somebody’s nuts and bolts are too tight I have to make them loose. By the way, I am also a plumber.

Enough for today.