WESTERN MYSTICS
The Hidden Harmony 04
Fourth Discourse from the series of 11 discourses - The Hidden Harmony by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
God is day and night, winter and summer,
war and peace, satiety and want.
Seawater is at once very pure and very foul:
it is drinkable and healthful for fishes,
but undrinkable and deadly for men.
The nature of day and night are as one.
The way up and the way down
are one and the same.
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators
in what goes on in the universe.
In the circle
the beginning and the end are common.
A thousand and one difficulties have arisen because man has always taken God to be person. God is not a person. All the problems that theology deals with are simply futile exercises – the base being that God is taken to be a person.
God is not a person and cannot be. Let it go as deep in you as possible because that will become a door, an opening. For those who have been raised as Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, it is particularly difficult to take God as anything else but as a person – that becomes a closing. To think about God as a person is anthropocentric. In the Bible it is said that God created man in his own image, but just the contrary seems to be the case – man has created God in his own image. Men differ, that’s why there are so many gods in the world.
When the first Christian missionaries reached Africa, they were in trouble – because they painted God as white and the Devil as black, and the Negroes felt very offended. They wouldn’t listen to them because from the very beginning there was conflict with the image. One missionary simply got the idea and changed the colors. He made God black and the Devil white, and the Negroes were very happy – they could accept it. A Negro is bound to paint his God in his own image, a Chinese in his own, an Indian in his own. We paint God as our own reflection – of course, perfect – but your image cannot be God. You are just a part, a very tiny part, one atom in existence. How can the whole be conceived in the image of the part? The whole transcends the part, the whole is infinitely vast. If you cling to the atom, if you cling to the part, you will miss the whole.
God is not to be conceived in your image; rather, on the contrary, you have to drop your image, you have to become imageless. Only then do you become a mirror and the whole reflects in you.
As man has been seeking more and more, this has become clearer and clearer – that God as a person creates trouble because you are always in conflict with other Gods. That’s why the Jewish, Hindu Mohammedan, Christian God, all exist. This is sheer nonsense! How can God be Christian, Hindu, or Mohammedan? There are different Gods because Jews have their own idea of God, and Hindus have their own idea, so the conflict is bound to be there. Hindus think that God speaks the Sanskrit language; the English think that he is an English gentleman.
It is said that a German and an Englishman were talking. The German said, “We plan in every way, but why are we defeated every time?”
The Englishman replied, “You have to be defeated because whenever we start fighting, first we pray to God and he looks after us. You are to be defeated; you can never be victorious.”
The German said, “But we also pray.”
The Englishman laughed and said, “But who understands German?”
To an Englishman, God is an Englishman. To Adolf Hitler he must be Nordic. He has to be because we create our own image.
I was just reading a memoir of an army priest. This priest was attached to Montgomery’s wing. One day, when they were ready to attack, it was so cloudy and cold with so much mist that it seemed impossible to move. So the priest has written that Montgomery called him and said, “Pray to God immediately and tell him that we, his soldiers, are on the march and what is he doing? Is he in conspiracy with the enemy? Tell him to stop all this immediately!”
The priest was surprised: “A man like Montgomery – what is he talking about?” He said, “But this won’t look good. It doesn’t look good to say to God, ‘What are you doing? Stop this immediately because we are on the move and we are your soldiers.’”
The priest felt a little embarrassed, but Montgomery said, “Listen to my order! You are my priest, attached to my army, so whatever I say you have to do. Go and pray immediately!”
This happens. It looks absurd and foolish, but this is happening all the time, to everyone, to all people. If you take God as a person this is bound to happen. You start communicating with him as a person. He is not a person. There are millions of atheists because you have taken God to be a person. The atheist is not against God, but he is against your conception of God as a person because the whole concept is foolish. Think about what anguish you must be putting your God in because Germans are praying for victory, the English are praying for victory, and everybody thinks that God is with them, on their side.
I have heard…
Once Junnaid, a Sufi mystic, dreamed that he saw himself as dead, and the greatest sinner of the town was also dead; both reached God’s door and knocked. The sinner was received and the saint was rejected. He felt very, very hurt. He had always expected that he would be received, welcomed, so what was happening? – just the opposite. He knew this man who was being received with such ceremony. When the ceremony was over and the sinner was sent to his abode, the saint said, “I have to ask God just one question. What are you doing? I have been continuously praying twenty-four hours, day and night, calling your name. Even in my sleep I have been calling your name and chanting!”
God replied, “Precisely because of that – you have pestered me so much that now that you have come to heaven I am really afraid of you. What will you do here? On earth, from so far away, for twenty-four hours a day you have not left me a single moment of peace! This man is good, that’s why we are celebrating. He never bored me, never pestered me; he never used my name, never created any trouble for me.”
God as a person is just foolish, the whole concept is foolish. He cannot be a person because he has to be every person – how can he be a person himself? He cannot be someone because he is everyone, and he cannot be anywhere because he is everywhere. You cannot define him, and personality is a definition. You cannot limit him, and as a person he becomes limited. Personality is just like a wave that comes and goes, and he is like an ocean. He is immense – he abides. Personalities come and go, they are forms; they are there and then they are no longer there. Forms change; forms change continuously into the opposites, and he is the formless. He cannot be defined, it cannot be said who he is. He is all. The moment you say, “He is all,” the problem of how to communicate arises. There is no need; you cannot communicate with him like a person. You have to communicate with him in a totally different dimension – that dimension is of energy, of consciousness, not of personality. God is energy and absolute awareness. God is bliss, ecstasy; indefinable, unlimited; no beginning, no end; always and always, eternal, timeless, beyond space – because God means the total.
The total cannot have a personality – this is the first thing to be understood, very, very deeply; not only intellectually, but as totally as possible because if you conceive, feel, grope toward God as totality, your prayer will be different. Your prayer will not be a foolish prayer, and he cannot be on your side – he is on every side. He is with your enemy as much as with you, and he is as much in the saint as in the sinner – because he is all. He is as much in the dark as in the light. He comprehends all. All opposites meet and mingle and become one in him. Because of the concept of God as a person we have to create a Devil against God because where will you put all the negativity! You have to create someone to throw all the negativity on. Your God then becomes false, your Devil too because negatives and positives exist together, not separately. All that you like you put on God’s side. It is your division. God cannot be divided – he is undivided.
The first thing: God is not a person. And remember, you are also not a person. It is ignorance, self-ignorance; that’s why you appear like a person. If you move deeper, soon the personality becomes blurred; a moment comes when you don’t know who you are. You may have noticed many times that if someone wakes you suddenly, you don’t know where you are – whether it is morning or evening, whether it is your house or somewhere else; you may not know what town it is. For a single moment everything is blurred, no time sense, no space sense, and you don’t know who you are. Why does it happen? – it happens because in deep sleep you move toward the center, of course unconsciously, but at the center there is no personality, an impersonal energy exists. If someone suddenly wakes you, you have to move from the center to the periphery in such a rush that there is no time to gather your personality. In a sudden rush you simply lose identity – and this is your reality, this is in fact, who you are.
When you are in deep meditation you will become more and more aware of the indefinable, the unlimited. First, it will look like a blurred phenomenon, and you may even become afraid, scared: “What is happening to me? Am I losing my mind? Am I going mad?” If you become afraid you will miss. Don’t worry, it is natural. You are moving to the indefinable from the defined; in between there will be ground where everything will become blurred.
That’s why Zen masters have said: “Before one enters the path, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains. When one enters the path, rivers are no longer rivers, mountains are no longer mountains. When one has achieved the goal, again rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains.” What do they mean? ? they mean that there comes a moment when everything becomes blurred. That is the time a school, a master, will be needed because when everything is blurred you are again like a small child – helpless, not knowing who you are, identity lost, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what is happening; a school is needed. This is the meaning of an ashram, a monastery, where many people exist on many levels and they can help each other. A master exists on the ultimate level – you need not be afraid, you can always look toward him.
When your identity is lost the master is your only source of sanity – you will be insane. Many people work alone and many people go mad. If you move in the East, you will find many people who are just hanging ? they have worked without a master; they came to the blurred territory, and now they don’t know where to go. They have forgotten from where they came and now they don’t know where to go. They don’t know who they are. They are absolutely mad. They are better than you, but mad. Now they cannot take any step because who will take the step and where? At this moment a master is needed.
One of the greatest works Meher Baba did in his life and it has never been done before – he lived just near Pune and he is one of the greatest masters – he traveled all over India for years, just making contact with such mad people. Not doing anything else, just doing this one thing. He moved from one village to another, making contact with such people who had gone mad, who were on a better ground than you but some help was needed – just a push. Just a push so that again rivers become rivers, mountains become mountains. And they achieve a new identity again.
The old identity was with the form, the new identity will be with the formless. The old identity was with the name, the new identity will be with the nameless. The old identity was of this world, the new identity will be of that world. You can hang suspended between the two if there is no school, if there is no master to help you and bring it out. You can enter this wilderness, but coming out will be difficult on your own. Sometimes, accidentally, somebody does come out – that’s not the point – but as a rule it is almost impossible for you to come out.
I have seen many mad people. Whenever somebody comes to me and wants to do everything on his own, I feel very much for him because he doesn’t know what he is talking about. This is the problem. I cannot force anything because the more you force the more he will escape. I can simply say, “Okay, do whatever you like” – but I feel deeply because I know where he is unknowingly moving. God is energy, and if you are not prepared it can be destructive. God is such vital, infinite energy, that if your vehicle is not ready you will simply crack. So the question is not just to know God. A deeper question is how to be ready before you can say, “Now you can come,” before you can invite him – because you are so small and he is so vast. It is as if a drop of water is calling the ocean to come in. The ocean can come in any time, but what will happen to the drop? The drop has to attain a capacity, a receptivity so infinite that the ocean drops into the drop and disappears, and the drop is not shattered. That art is the greatest, and that art is religion, Yoga, Tantra, or whatever name you want to give it.
Don’t look at God according to your conceptions: Jewish, Christian, Hindu. Drop them! That is clinging to the periphery, to knowledge. You cling to whatever you have been taught and God cannot be taught, nobody can teach him – of course, indicated, shown in subtle and indirect ways, but he cannot be taught. Whatever you know about God is wrong – and I say “whatever” unconditionally. Whatever you know is wrong because that has come from teachings; someone has taught you a conception, a theory, and God is not a conception, not a theory; he is not a hypothesis. It is nothing like that – it is absolutely different.
Drop all conceptions, only then are you ready to take the first step. You go to him naked, with no conception, with no clothes about you. You go to him vacant, with no ideas about him in your mind. You go to him empty because that is the only way to go; empty, you become a door, he can enter. Only receptivity is needed, not concepts, not philosophies, doctrines – this is what Heraclitus means. These words are very, very wonderful.
Listen:
God is day and night, winter and summer,
war and peace, satiety and want.
Never have such wonderful words been uttered before and never since. God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and want. Many have said many things about God, but no one is comparable to Heraclitus. There have been people who have said, “God is light,” but where do you put the dark? You then have to explain where the dark comes from. Many have said, “God is day. God is sun, light, the source of light,” but from where does the night come? Where does the dark come from ? the Devil, sin? From where? Why have people talked about God as light?
Something psychological is involved. Man is afraid of darkness; man feels very good when there is light – it is part of your fear. Why do you call God light? The Koran, the Upanishads, the Bible all say, “God is light.” There has only been a small school – in that small school where Jesus was taught and brought up to be ready to receive the divine – and that small school was known as the Essenes; they were the teachers and masters of Jesus. Only that school says, “God is dark, night.” They never say, “God is light”; they move to the other extreme. They are beautiful people.
Try to understand the symbol, light-and-dark. You are not afraid in the light because you can see. Nobody can easily attack you. You can defend, escape, fight or take flight. You can do something, everything is known. Light is the symbol of the known – with the known you don’t feel fear.
Darkness is the unknown. Fear arises in the heart, and you don’t know what is happening all around you. Anything is possible and you are indefensible. Light is security, darkness is insecurity. Light looks like life and darkness like death. Afraid, scared – not only psychologically, but also biologically because man has lived for thousands of years in the dark, in the night, in the wild, forest, caves. The night was a problem because wild animals could attack and man was indefensible. So when fire was invented, it became the first god; it became a protection, a security. With the day everything is okay, with the night you don’t know where you are; with the night everything disappears.
So man is prone to identify God with light. Light has a few beautiful things about it. It is warm, it is a source of energy – you cannot live without the sun, nothing can exist without the sun. Deep down, all life is solar energy; the energy that comes from the sun. You eat it, you drink it – you live through it. If the sun simply disappears, goes cold, within ten minutes life on this earth will disappear – within ten minutes because it takes ten minutes for the rays to reach us. If the sun dies, the old rays will come for ten minutes, but by the tenth minute new rays will not come, and everything will simply die. We will not even be aware of what is happening; nobody will know that we have died. The whole planet will die – the trees, the animals, the birds, man, everything! Life exists through the sun – it is warm, welcoming.
Darkness also has beautiful things about it; it is infinite. Light always has a limit; darkness is limitless. Deep down light is exciting, it excites you; darkness is absolutely unexciting. Light is warm, darkness is cool, cool like death, mysterious. Light comes and goes; darkness remains. That’s why the Essenes called God the dark, the night, because light comes and goes, darkness remains, and is eternal. Light seems to be an episode, it happens. You can arrange for light, but you cannot arrange for darkness; it seems beyond you. You can put the light on and off, but you cannot put the dark on and off. It seems beyond you – it is! Light is manageable. If it is dark you can bring light in, but you cannot bring darkness, you cannot manipulate darkness; it is simply beyond your control. You put your light on, but you know it is momentary. When the fuel is finished the light will go – but darkness is eternal, it is always there. It exists as if without any cause, uncaused; it was always there, it will always be there. So the Essenes chose darkness as the symbol of God, but Heraclitus alone chooses both.
To choose one extreme is still logical, rational; reason is working. To choose both together is irrational; reason is simply bewildered. God is day and night – both together, no choice – winter and summer, war and peace… It will be difficult for people like Tolstoy, Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, if God is war and peace. They think God is peace; war is created by men. War is ugly, something the Devil may have invented – God is peace. Tolstoy cannot agree, a Gandhi cannot agree that God is also war. A Hitler also cannot agree that God is peace; God is war. Nietzsche also cannot agree that God is peace; God is war.
They are choosers. Heraclitus is not a chooser, he is simply a choiceless awareness. He doesn’t choose, he simply says whatever the case is. He doesn’t bring his own morality into it, he does not bring his own mind into it, he simply reflects; he is a mirror. Gandhi, Tolstoy, Ruskin, are all choosers; they have their own idea to impose on God. They impose the idea of peace, that God is peace; then war is from the Devil. But it is not possible.
What is peace without war? Is there any possibility of peace without war? Won’t that peace be simply dead if there is no war? Just think: no war in the world, just peace. What type of peace will it be? ? it will be cold, it will be a dark night, dead. War gives intensity, tone, sharpness, life. But if there is only war and no peace, then too death will happen. If you choose one opposite of the polarity, if you choose one polarity, everything will be dead because life exists between polarities: war and peace; satiety and want; contentment and discontentment; hunger, want, desire, passion, peace, satiety, contentment; the way and the goal. Difficult to comprehend, but this is the truth.
It is God who desires in you and it is God who becomes desireless in you. This is total acceptance. It is God who is a passion in you and it is God who becomes enlightenment in you. It is God who is anger in you and it is God who becomes compassion in you. There is nothing to choose! But just look at the fact: if there is nothing to choose and everything is God, your ego simply disappears – because it exists with choosing. If there is nothing to choose and everything is just as it is, nothing can be done and God is both. With the chooser, with the choice, the ego disappears. You accept, you simply accept. When you are hungry and when you are satisfied, both are beautiful.
This is difficult for the mind. The mind staggers, feels bewildered, loses ground, feels dizzy – as if you are standing on the edge of an abyss. Why does it happen? – it happens because the mind wants a clear-cut choice: “Either this or that.” Heraclitus says, “Neither this nor that – or both.” Ask Mahavira, Buddha and they will say, “Desire? Leave desire. Become desireless – choose! Become content, deeply content; leave discontent!” Heraclitus penetrates even deeper. He says, “Who is there to leave? Who will leave? God is both!” And if you feel this, that God is both, everything is hallowed, everything becomes holy. Then in hunger also there is a contentment; in desire there is also a desirelessness; in anger there is also compassion. If you haven’t known compassionate anger, anger which is compassion, you have not known life at all. You have missed the greatest climax, if you haven’t known darkness which is also light, coolness which is also warmth.
Where opposites meet, ecstasy happens; where opposites meet, the ultimate, the ultimate orgasm with the universe. God is both man and woman, war and peace.
Man has been in difficulty because he has always been choosing. Society has always remained lopsided, all societies and civilizations have remained lopsided because everything depends on choice. We have created a society in the world which is male-oriented, war-oriented. The woman has been cut out, she has no contribution to make – she is dark, peace, silence, passivity, compassion, not war; woman is satiety, not desire. Man is desire – the excitement, the adventure, war; always going somewhere, always reaching somewhere, finding something, seeking, searching. Man is the vagabond, woman is the home. But when they both meet – when the vagabond meets the home, where desire and satiety meet, where activity and passivity meet – there arises the greatest harmony, the hidden harmony.
We created the male-oriented society, so there is war, and the peace is not true. Our peace is just a gap between two wars; it is not true, it is just a preparation for another war. Go back and look at history ? the gap between the World Wars I and II is not peace. The gap is just the getting ready for another war. It is not real peace, it is just a preparation. If peace is not real, the war will also be unreal.
In the past, war was beautiful; now it is ugly because it has no opposite to it. In the past, warriors were beautiful people; now warriors are just ugly. War doesn’t give you anything; otherwise, it is an adventure, it brings you to a peak of existence, you put yourself totally into it. Warriors were beautiful; they encountered death, they went to meet death on the front. Now a warrior is nowhere to be seen – he is hidden behind the tanks, throwing bombs, not knowing who is going to be destroyed. Can you call this man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima a warrior? What type of warrior is he? He drops the atom bomb, immediately kills one lakh people, not knowing whom he is killing, who the enemy is – small children…
I was looking at a picture someone sent me from Japan. A small child is going upstairs to his room where he would study and go to sleep; a very small child, carrying his bag of books and thinking of his homework. First he would do his homework and then go to sleep. He was just on the staircase when the bomb fell. He was totally burned and became just a dot on the wall, still clinging to his bag with the books inside; his mind thinking about the homework, of the next day, tomorrow morning – everything is burned. The man who dropped the bomb was not even aware of who died; he went back home and had a good sleep. Hiding himself, he had done his duty. What type of war is this? It has become ugly. In the old days, to be a warrior was one of the greatest possibilities – bringing your potential to a peak. But now it is nothing, it is just like an ordinary mechanical duty; you push the button and the bomb falls and kills – you are not confronting anybody. War without real peace becomes false. When war is false, how can peace be real?
We have been choosing. We have been creating a society according to a male pattern. The man has become the center, the woman has been thrown off center. It is lopsided. Now there are women who think of creating a society according to a woman’s pattern, where man has to be thrown out of the center. That too will be lopsided. God is both male and female; there is no choice. Male and female are opposites: dark and light, life and death. Opposites are there. A hidden harmony has to be sought. Those who come to know the hidden harmony have realized the truth.
God is day and night, winter and summer,
war and peace, satiety and want.
Seawater is at once very pure and very foul:
it is drinkable and healthful for fishes,
but undrinkable and deadly for men.
Everything is good and everything is bad – it depends. War is good sometimes, peace is bad sometimes – it depends. Sometimes peace is nothing but impotence, then it is not good; it may be peace, but it is not good. Sometimes war is nothing but madness, then it is not good. One has to watch and see, without any prejudice. Not every war is bad and not every peace is good; one should not become addicted. For Nietzsche, every war is good; for Gandhi, all times of peace are good – both are addicted. God is both.
Heraclitus says: Seawater is at once very pure and very foul… For fish it is life; for you it can be death. So don’t create absolute ideas, remain flexible. Remember, something may be good for you today and not good tomorrow because life goes on changing and you cannot step in the same river twice. Even if you do, you are not the same and yet you are the same. Everything is moving, a flux, so don’t remain fixed. This is one of the diseases of the human mind; you become fixed, you lose flexibility – and flexibility is life.
Look at a child, he is flexible; look at an old man, he has become inflexible. The more flexible you are, the more alive and fresh and young. The more inflexible you become, you are dead already. What is flexibility? ? it is to respond to the moment without any preconceived idea; to respond to the moment, not through any preconceived idea – directly, immediately. Immediacy is flexibility. You look at the situation, you become aware, and sensitive to it – and then you act. The action comes through the encounter of the situation and you, not from a past mind.
The nature of day and night is one.
War and peace are one; and desire and desirelessness are one. The phenomenon is the same: peace is war inactive; war is peace active. The nature of man and woman is one: woman is inactive, passive man; man is active woman. That’s why they attract each other, because if you take them just in themselves, they are halves. If they become one then the whole is created; both meet and become one. That oneness is the search.
If you take them apart, as all the religions have done in the past – Catholics, Jainas, Buddhists, have totally separated men and women. All these religions have remained halfhearted; they cannot be total, they cannot accept the whole. Their circle is half, and half a circle is not a circle at all because a circle, to be a circle, must be the whole – half a circle is no circle. That’s why the whole of Christianity turned out to be ugly, Jainism turned out to be ugly, Buddhism turned out to be ugly. You cannot divide, you have to accept the totality.
Beauty is of the total and ugliness is of a torn part. Everything total is beautiful, fulfilled – the circle has become complete. The nature of day and night is one. The day itself becomes the night, the night itself turns into day. Can you find the divide between day and night? Can you make a demarcation? There is no demarcation – by and by, day turns into night; night turns into day. It is one wheel. If you see all opposites as a wheel, you will have transcendence. You will no longer be a man and no longer be a woman because many times you turn into a woman and a woman turns into a man. If you watch yourself for twenty-four hours, you can find at which moment you were a woman and at which moment you were a man; you can find when you are passive, when you are active. When you are passive you are a woman, when you are active you are a man – and both are hidden within you.
Now psychology accepts that man is bisexual; every man is woman also, and every woman is also man. The difference is only of quantity, degrees, not of quality. If you are a man that means you may be fifty-one percent man and forty-nine percent woman – that is the difference. That’s why it is possible for you to change your sex; it is a difference of degrees. Just a little hormonal change and the sex will change. No need to even change the hormones; if you simply change your psyche the change will come. It happened to Ramakrishna. He tried many paths to reach the divine. Even when he had reached, he still went on trying every path just to see whether every path leads to him.
There is a very beautiful path in India; that path is to conceive God as the only male and you become the female, the beloved. Whether you are a man or a woman is not the point. God is the male and you are the female; God is Krishna and everyone is just a beloved. Those who follow this path start behaving like women. They cannot use male clothes, they have to use feminine ones; they sleep with a statue of Krishna. They completely forget whether they are male or female; whatever they are, they become female. Every fourth week, for five days, they act as if their period has come. In the beginning it is just acting but, by and by, changes start happening.
It happened to Ramakrishna; he completely became a woman. It has remained a mystery. How is it possible? Menstruation really started! He would bleed for three or four days every month. His breasts became feminine, they grew; his voice changed, it became feminine; he started walking like a woman. He was on that path for six months – he completely became a woman. And this is a mystery because doctors are the witnesses that he started bleeding – the period would come. Just the mind changed the whole body. After he reached through that path and left it, he started trying something else. Even after that, the body remained the same for one year. It took one year to come back, to become a man again.
Inside you are both; it is just a question of emphasis. Heraclitus came to realize this:
The nature of day and night is one.
The way up and the way down
are one and the same.
Heaven and hell are one, God and the Devil are one because it has to be so: two poles of the same phenomenon.
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators
in what goes on in the universe.
Even sleepers are responsible. What does Heraclitus want to say? ? he is saying that responsibility is not individual, karma is not individual; it is total. This is a rare insight. I absolutely agree with him. This is a rare insight because in India they have believed that karma is individual – that is also clinging to the ego. Why? When there is no ego, and you insist that there is no ego, why should karma be individual? If karma is individual, you cannot leave the ego. In fact it will cling in a subtle way: “I have to fulfill my karma and you have to fulfill your karma.” Where do we meet? I will become enlightened, you will remain ignorant. Where do we meet?
If Heraclitus’ insight is to be understood, it means that there are no individuals, no islands; man is not an island, we are part of one whole. Even karma is not individual. That has many implications; a vast dimension opens. That means that if someone somewhere murders, I have a part in it. Even if I am asleep – I was sleeping, I don’t know anything about the man, I have never heard of him – and somebody somewhere, in the Himalayas, commits a murder, if we are not individuals I have a part in it, I am also responsible. It is not so easy to throw the responsibility: “I am not committing a murder, I am a saint.”
No saint is a saint because every sinner is implied in him. It is foolish to claim: “I am a saint because I am not committing any murder, robbery, sin.” But there are sinners in the world, and if we are one part, one vast continent, not islands but connected, then how can you commit a sin without me? No, it is not possible. How can I become enlightened without you also becoming enlightened? No, that is not possible. It means that whenever a sin is committed, the whole is involved. Whenever there is a phenomenon like enlightenment, the whole is involved.
That’s why whenever a man becomes enlightened, immediately many follow in his wake and become enlightened because he creates a possibility for the whole. It is just like this: if my head aches, it is not only the head that is ill, my whole organism becomes ill – my legs, my heart, my hand also feels it because I am one. It may be focused in the head, that’s okay, but the whole body feels ill. A buddha becomes enlightened – it is focused there, that’s all, because no individual is there. It is just a focusing, but he will vibrate all over. Existence is just like a spider’s web. You touch the web from anywhere and the whole vibrates. Somewhere the touch is focused, that’s right, but the whole vibrates. That’s the meaning, and you have to understand it. Whenever you do something, it is not only you who is involved – the whole is involved. Your responsibility is great. It is not only that you have to be finished with your own karma; the whole history of the world is your biography.
Even while asleep I am collaborating, cooperating, so each step has to be very, very responsible and alert. If you commit a sin it is the whole that you drag into the sin, not only you because you are not separate. If you meditate, become aware, and feel blissful, it is the whole that you are taking toward a peak. You may be focused, but the whole is always involved.
Remember, whatever you do, God is doing it; whatever you are, God is that; whatever you will become, God will be becoming. You are not alone, you are the destiny of the whole.
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators
in what goes on in the universe.
In the circle
the beginning and the end are common.
If you make a circle, the end and beginning meet – only then is the circle complete. If you become a circle, whole, total, you will meet the beginning and the end. You will be the very source and the very climax of the world. You will be both the alpha and the omega. Unless you become that, something is incomplete; when something is incomplete you will remain miserable. The only misery that I know is being incomplete. The whole being tends toward being complete, needs to be complete; the incomplete becomes a torture. The incompletion is the only problem. When you become complete, the end and the beginning meet in you. God as the source and God as the ultimate flowering meet in you.
Ponder over these small fragments. Each fragment can become a vast contemplation, and each fragment can give you an insight into yourself and into the reality. These are not philosophical statements, these are Heraclitus’ insights – he knows, he has come to see. He is not theorizing; he has touched the reality, penetrated it. Each fragment is complete in itself, it is not a system. These fragments are like gems, individually cut; every gem is complete in itself. You simply penetrate one fragment, and through that one fragment you can become totally different – that one fragment can become the door for the infinite.
Meditate, ponder over what Heraclitus is saying. He can have a tremendous impact on you. He can become a transformation for you.
Enough for today.
war and peace, satiety and want.
Seawater is at once very pure and very foul:
it is drinkable and healthful for fishes,
but undrinkable and deadly for men.
The nature of day and night are as one.
The way up and the way down
are one and the same.
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators
in what goes on in the universe.
In the circle
the beginning and the end are common.
A thousand and one difficulties have arisen because man has always taken God to be person. God is not a person. All the problems that theology deals with are simply futile exercises – the base being that God is taken to be a person.
God is not a person and cannot be. Let it go as deep in you as possible because that will become a door, an opening. For those who have been raised as Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, it is particularly difficult to take God as anything else but as a person – that becomes a closing. To think about God as a person is anthropocentric. In the Bible it is said that God created man in his own image, but just the contrary seems to be the case – man has created God in his own image. Men differ, that’s why there are so many gods in the world.
When the first Christian missionaries reached Africa, they were in trouble – because they painted God as white and the Devil as black, and the Negroes felt very offended. They wouldn’t listen to them because from the very beginning there was conflict with the image. One missionary simply got the idea and changed the colors. He made God black and the Devil white, and the Negroes were very happy – they could accept it. A Negro is bound to paint his God in his own image, a Chinese in his own, an Indian in his own. We paint God as our own reflection – of course, perfect – but your image cannot be God. You are just a part, a very tiny part, one atom in existence. How can the whole be conceived in the image of the part? The whole transcends the part, the whole is infinitely vast. If you cling to the atom, if you cling to the part, you will miss the whole.
God is not to be conceived in your image; rather, on the contrary, you have to drop your image, you have to become imageless. Only then do you become a mirror and the whole reflects in you.
As man has been seeking more and more, this has become clearer and clearer – that God as a person creates trouble because you are always in conflict with other Gods. That’s why the Jewish, Hindu Mohammedan, Christian God, all exist. This is sheer nonsense! How can God be Christian, Hindu, or Mohammedan? There are different Gods because Jews have their own idea of God, and Hindus have their own idea, so the conflict is bound to be there. Hindus think that God speaks the Sanskrit language; the English think that he is an English gentleman.
It is said that a German and an Englishman were talking. The German said, “We plan in every way, but why are we defeated every time?”
The Englishman replied, “You have to be defeated because whenever we start fighting, first we pray to God and he looks after us. You are to be defeated; you can never be victorious.”
The German said, “But we also pray.”
The Englishman laughed and said, “But who understands German?”
To an Englishman, God is an Englishman. To Adolf Hitler he must be Nordic. He has to be because we create our own image.
I was just reading a memoir of an army priest. This priest was attached to Montgomery’s wing. One day, when they were ready to attack, it was so cloudy and cold with so much mist that it seemed impossible to move. So the priest has written that Montgomery called him and said, “Pray to God immediately and tell him that we, his soldiers, are on the march and what is he doing? Is he in conspiracy with the enemy? Tell him to stop all this immediately!”
The priest was surprised: “A man like Montgomery – what is he talking about?” He said, “But this won’t look good. It doesn’t look good to say to God, ‘What are you doing? Stop this immediately because we are on the move and we are your soldiers.’”
The priest felt a little embarrassed, but Montgomery said, “Listen to my order! You are my priest, attached to my army, so whatever I say you have to do. Go and pray immediately!”
This happens. It looks absurd and foolish, but this is happening all the time, to everyone, to all people. If you take God as a person this is bound to happen. You start communicating with him as a person. He is not a person. There are millions of atheists because you have taken God to be a person. The atheist is not against God, but he is against your conception of God as a person because the whole concept is foolish. Think about what anguish you must be putting your God in because Germans are praying for victory, the English are praying for victory, and everybody thinks that God is with them, on their side.
I have heard…
Once Junnaid, a Sufi mystic, dreamed that he saw himself as dead, and the greatest sinner of the town was also dead; both reached God’s door and knocked. The sinner was received and the saint was rejected. He felt very, very hurt. He had always expected that he would be received, welcomed, so what was happening? – just the opposite. He knew this man who was being received with such ceremony. When the ceremony was over and the sinner was sent to his abode, the saint said, “I have to ask God just one question. What are you doing? I have been continuously praying twenty-four hours, day and night, calling your name. Even in my sleep I have been calling your name and chanting!”
God replied, “Precisely because of that – you have pestered me so much that now that you have come to heaven I am really afraid of you. What will you do here? On earth, from so far away, for twenty-four hours a day you have not left me a single moment of peace! This man is good, that’s why we are celebrating. He never bored me, never pestered me; he never used my name, never created any trouble for me.”
God as a person is just foolish, the whole concept is foolish. He cannot be a person because he has to be every person – how can he be a person himself? He cannot be someone because he is everyone, and he cannot be anywhere because he is everywhere. You cannot define him, and personality is a definition. You cannot limit him, and as a person he becomes limited. Personality is just like a wave that comes and goes, and he is like an ocean. He is immense – he abides. Personalities come and go, they are forms; they are there and then they are no longer there. Forms change; forms change continuously into the opposites, and he is the formless. He cannot be defined, it cannot be said who he is. He is all. The moment you say, “He is all,” the problem of how to communicate arises. There is no need; you cannot communicate with him like a person. You have to communicate with him in a totally different dimension – that dimension is of energy, of consciousness, not of personality. God is energy and absolute awareness. God is bliss, ecstasy; indefinable, unlimited; no beginning, no end; always and always, eternal, timeless, beyond space – because God means the total.
The total cannot have a personality – this is the first thing to be understood, very, very deeply; not only intellectually, but as totally as possible because if you conceive, feel, grope toward God as totality, your prayer will be different. Your prayer will not be a foolish prayer, and he cannot be on your side – he is on every side. He is with your enemy as much as with you, and he is as much in the saint as in the sinner – because he is all. He is as much in the dark as in the light. He comprehends all. All opposites meet and mingle and become one in him. Because of the concept of God as a person we have to create a Devil against God because where will you put all the negativity! You have to create someone to throw all the negativity on. Your God then becomes false, your Devil too because negatives and positives exist together, not separately. All that you like you put on God’s side. It is your division. God cannot be divided – he is undivided.
The first thing: God is not a person. And remember, you are also not a person. It is ignorance, self-ignorance; that’s why you appear like a person. If you move deeper, soon the personality becomes blurred; a moment comes when you don’t know who you are. You may have noticed many times that if someone wakes you suddenly, you don’t know where you are – whether it is morning or evening, whether it is your house or somewhere else; you may not know what town it is. For a single moment everything is blurred, no time sense, no space sense, and you don’t know who you are. Why does it happen? – it happens because in deep sleep you move toward the center, of course unconsciously, but at the center there is no personality, an impersonal energy exists. If someone suddenly wakes you, you have to move from the center to the periphery in such a rush that there is no time to gather your personality. In a sudden rush you simply lose identity – and this is your reality, this is in fact, who you are.
When you are in deep meditation you will become more and more aware of the indefinable, the unlimited. First, it will look like a blurred phenomenon, and you may even become afraid, scared: “What is happening to me? Am I losing my mind? Am I going mad?” If you become afraid you will miss. Don’t worry, it is natural. You are moving to the indefinable from the defined; in between there will be ground where everything will become blurred.
That’s why Zen masters have said: “Before one enters the path, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains. When one enters the path, rivers are no longer rivers, mountains are no longer mountains. When one has achieved the goal, again rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains.” What do they mean? ? they mean that there comes a moment when everything becomes blurred. That is the time a school, a master, will be needed because when everything is blurred you are again like a small child – helpless, not knowing who you are, identity lost, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what is happening; a school is needed. This is the meaning of an ashram, a monastery, where many people exist on many levels and they can help each other. A master exists on the ultimate level – you need not be afraid, you can always look toward him.
When your identity is lost the master is your only source of sanity – you will be insane. Many people work alone and many people go mad. If you move in the East, you will find many people who are just hanging ? they have worked without a master; they came to the blurred territory, and now they don’t know where to go. They have forgotten from where they came and now they don’t know where to go. They don’t know who they are. They are absolutely mad. They are better than you, but mad. Now they cannot take any step because who will take the step and where? At this moment a master is needed.
One of the greatest works Meher Baba did in his life and it has never been done before – he lived just near Pune and he is one of the greatest masters – he traveled all over India for years, just making contact with such mad people. Not doing anything else, just doing this one thing. He moved from one village to another, making contact with such people who had gone mad, who were on a better ground than you but some help was needed – just a push. Just a push so that again rivers become rivers, mountains become mountains. And they achieve a new identity again.
The old identity was with the form, the new identity will be with the formless. The old identity was with the name, the new identity will be with the nameless. The old identity was of this world, the new identity will be of that world. You can hang suspended between the two if there is no school, if there is no master to help you and bring it out. You can enter this wilderness, but coming out will be difficult on your own. Sometimes, accidentally, somebody does come out – that’s not the point – but as a rule it is almost impossible for you to come out.
I have seen many mad people. Whenever somebody comes to me and wants to do everything on his own, I feel very much for him because he doesn’t know what he is talking about. This is the problem. I cannot force anything because the more you force the more he will escape. I can simply say, “Okay, do whatever you like” – but I feel deeply because I know where he is unknowingly moving. God is energy, and if you are not prepared it can be destructive. God is such vital, infinite energy, that if your vehicle is not ready you will simply crack. So the question is not just to know God. A deeper question is how to be ready before you can say, “Now you can come,” before you can invite him – because you are so small and he is so vast. It is as if a drop of water is calling the ocean to come in. The ocean can come in any time, but what will happen to the drop? The drop has to attain a capacity, a receptivity so infinite that the ocean drops into the drop and disappears, and the drop is not shattered. That art is the greatest, and that art is religion, Yoga, Tantra, or whatever name you want to give it.
Don’t look at God according to your conceptions: Jewish, Christian, Hindu. Drop them! That is clinging to the periphery, to knowledge. You cling to whatever you have been taught and God cannot be taught, nobody can teach him – of course, indicated, shown in subtle and indirect ways, but he cannot be taught. Whatever you know about God is wrong – and I say “whatever” unconditionally. Whatever you know is wrong because that has come from teachings; someone has taught you a conception, a theory, and God is not a conception, not a theory; he is not a hypothesis. It is nothing like that – it is absolutely different.
Drop all conceptions, only then are you ready to take the first step. You go to him naked, with no conception, with no clothes about you. You go to him vacant, with no ideas about him in your mind. You go to him empty because that is the only way to go; empty, you become a door, he can enter. Only receptivity is needed, not concepts, not philosophies, doctrines – this is what Heraclitus means. These words are very, very wonderful.
Listen:
God is day and night, winter and summer,
war and peace, satiety and want.
Never have such wonderful words been uttered before and never since. God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and want. Many have said many things about God, but no one is comparable to Heraclitus. There have been people who have said, “God is light,” but where do you put the dark? You then have to explain where the dark comes from. Many have said, “God is day. God is sun, light, the source of light,” but from where does the night come? Where does the dark come from ? the Devil, sin? From where? Why have people talked about God as light?
Something psychological is involved. Man is afraid of darkness; man feels very good when there is light – it is part of your fear. Why do you call God light? The Koran, the Upanishads, the Bible all say, “God is light.” There has only been a small school – in that small school where Jesus was taught and brought up to be ready to receive the divine – and that small school was known as the Essenes; they were the teachers and masters of Jesus. Only that school says, “God is dark, night.” They never say, “God is light”; they move to the other extreme. They are beautiful people.
Try to understand the symbol, light-and-dark. You are not afraid in the light because you can see. Nobody can easily attack you. You can defend, escape, fight or take flight. You can do something, everything is known. Light is the symbol of the known – with the known you don’t feel fear.
Darkness is the unknown. Fear arises in the heart, and you don’t know what is happening all around you. Anything is possible and you are indefensible. Light is security, darkness is insecurity. Light looks like life and darkness like death. Afraid, scared – not only psychologically, but also biologically because man has lived for thousands of years in the dark, in the night, in the wild, forest, caves. The night was a problem because wild animals could attack and man was indefensible. So when fire was invented, it became the first god; it became a protection, a security. With the day everything is okay, with the night you don’t know where you are; with the night everything disappears.
So man is prone to identify God with light. Light has a few beautiful things about it. It is warm, it is a source of energy – you cannot live without the sun, nothing can exist without the sun. Deep down, all life is solar energy; the energy that comes from the sun. You eat it, you drink it – you live through it. If the sun simply disappears, goes cold, within ten minutes life on this earth will disappear – within ten minutes because it takes ten minutes for the rays to reach us. If the sun dies, the old rays will come for ten minutes, but by the tenth minute new rays will not come, and everything will simply die. We will not even be aware of what is happening; nobody will know that we have died. The whole planet will die – the trees, the animals, the birds, man, everything! Life exists through the sun – it is warm, welcoming.
Darkness also has beautiful things about it; it is infinite. Light always has a limit; darkness is limitless. Deep down light is exciting, it excites you; darkness is absolutely unexciting. Light is warm, darkness is cool, cool like death, mysterious. Light comes and goes; darkness remains. That’s why the Essenes called God the dark, the night, because light comes and goes, darkness remains, and is eternal. Light seems to be an episode, it happens. You can arrange for light, but you cannot arrange for darkness; it seems beyond you. You can put the light on and off, but you cannot put the dark on and off. It seems beyond you – it is! Light is manageable. If it is dark you can bring light in, but you cannot bring darkness, you cannot manipulate darkness; it is simply beyond your control. You put your light on, but you know it is momentary. When the fuel is finished the light will go – but darkness is eternal, it is always there. It exists as if without any cause, uncaused; it was always there, it will always be there. So the Essenes chose darkness as the symbol of God, but Heraclitus alone chooses both.
To choose one extreme is still logical, rational; reason is working. To choose both together is irrational; reason is simply bewildered. God is day and night – both together, no choice – winter and summer, war and peace… It will be difficult for people like Tolstoy, Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, if God is war and peace. They think God is peace; war is created by men. War is ugly, something the Devil may have invented – God is peace. Tolstoy cannot agree, a Gandhi cannot agree that God is also war. A Hitler also cannot agree that God is peace; God is war. Nietzsche also cannot agree that God is peace; God is war.
They are choosers. Heraclitus is not a chooser, he is simply a choiceless awareness. He doesn’t choose, he simply says whatever the case is. He doesn’t bring his own morality into it, he does not bring his own mind into it, he simply reflects; he is a mirror. Gandhi, Tolstoy, Ruskin, are all choosers; they have their own idea to impose on God. They impose the idea of peace, that God is peace; then war is from the Devil. But it is not possible.
What is peace without war? Is there any possibility of peace without war? Won’t that peace be simply dead if there is no war? Just think: no war in the world, just peace. What type of peace will it be? ? it will be cold, it will be a dark night, dead. War gives intensity, tone, sharpness, life. But if there is only war and no peace, then too death will happen. If you choose one opposite of the polarity, if you choose one polarity, everything will be dead because life exists between polarities: war and peace; satiety and want; contentment and discontentment; hunger, want, desire, passion, peace, satiety, contentment; the way and the goal. Difficult to comprehend, but this is the truth.
It is God who desires in you and it is God who becomes desireless in you. This is total acceptance. It is God who is a passion in you and it is God who becomes enlightenment in you. It is God who is anger in you and it is God who becomes compassion in you. There is nothing to choose! But just look at the fact: if there is nothing to choose and everything is God, your ego simply disappears – because it exists with choosing. If there is nothing to choose and everything is just as it is, nothing can be done and God is both. With the chooser, with the choice, the ego disappears. You accept, you simply accept. When you are hungry and when you are satisfied, both are beautiful.
This is difficult for the mind. The mind staggers, feels bewildered, loses ground, feels dizzy – as if you are standing on the edge of an abyss. Why does it happen? – it happens because the mind wants a clear-cut choice: “Either this or that.” Heraclitus says, “Neither this nor that – or both.” Ask Mahavira, Buddha and they will say, “Desire? Leave desire. Become desireless – choose! Become content, deeply content; leave discontent!” Heraclitus penetrates even deeper. He says, “Who is there to leave? Who will leave? God is both!” And if you feel this, that God is both, everything is hallowed, everything becomes holy. Then in hunger also there is a contentment; in desire there is also a desirelessness; in anger there is also compassion. If you haven’t known compassionate anger, anger which is compassion, you have not known life at all. You have missed the greatest climax, if you haven’t known darkness which is also light, coolness which is also warmth.
Where opposites meet, ecstasy happens; where opposites meet, the ultimate, the ultimate orgasm with the universe. God is both man and woman, war and peace.
Man has been in difficulty because he has always been choosing. Society has always remained lopsided, all societies and civilizations have remained lopsided because everything depends on choice. We have created a society in the world which is male-oriented, war-oriented. The woman has been cut out, she has no contribution to make – she is dark, peace, silence, passivity, compassion, not war; woman is satiety, not desire. Man is desire – the excitement, the adventure, war; always going somewhere, always reaching somewhere, finding something, seeking, searching. Man is the vagabond, woman is the home. But when they both meet – when the vagabond meets the home, where desire and satiety meet, where activity and passivity meet – there arises the greatest harmony, the hidden harmony.
We created the male-oriented society, so there is war, and the peace is not true. Our peace is just a gap between two wars; it is not true, it is just a preparation for another war. Go back and look at history ? the gap between the World Wars I and II is not peace. The gap is just the getting ready for another war. It is not real peace, it is just a preparation. If peace is not real, the war will also be unreal.
In the past, war was beautiful; now it is ugly because it has no opposite to it. In the past, warriors were beautiful people; now warriors are just ugly. War doesn’t give you anything; otherwise, it is an adventure, it brings you to a peak of existence, you put yourself totally into it. Warriors were beautiful; they encountered death, they went to meet death on the front. Now a warrior is nowhere to be seen – he is hidden behind the tanks, throwing bombs, not knowing who is going to be destroyed. Can you call this man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima a warrior? What type of warrior is he? He drops the atom bomb, immediately kills one lakh people, not knowing whom he is killing, who the enemy is – small children…
I was looking at a picture someone sent me from Japan. A small child is going upstairs to his room where he would study and go to sleep; a very small child, carrying his bag of books and thinking of his homework. First he would do his homework and then go to sleep. He was just on the staircase when the bomb fell. He was totally burned and became just a dot on the wall, still clinging to his bag with the books inside; his mind thinking about the homework, of the next day, tomorrow morning – everything is burned. The man who dropped the bomb was not even aware of who died; he went back home and had a good sleep. Hiding himself, he had done his duty. What type of war is this? It has become ugly. In the old days, to be a warrior was one of the greatest possibilities – bringing your potential to a peak. But now it is nothing, it is just like an ordinary mechanical duty; you push the button and the bomb falls and kills – you are not confronting anybody. War without real peace becomes false. When war is false, how can peace be real?
We have been choosing. We have been creating a society according to a male pattern. The man has become the center, the woman has been thrown off center. It is lopsided. Now there are women who think of creating a society according to a woman’s pattern, where man has to be thrown out of the center. That too will be lopsided. God is both male and female; there is no choice. Male and female are opposites: dark and light, life and death. Opposites are there. A hidden harmony has to be sought. Those who come to know the hidden harmony have realized the truth.
God is day and night, winter and summer,
war and peace, satiety and want.
Seawater is at once very pure and very foul:
it is drinkable and healthful for fishes,
but undrinkable and deadly for men.
Everything is good and everything is bad – it depends. War is good sometimes, peace is bad sometimes – it depends. Sometimes peace is nothing but impotence, then it is not good; it may be peace, but it is not good. Sometimes war is nothing but madness, then it is not good. One has to watch and see, without any prejudice. Not every war is bad and not every peace is good; one should not become addicted. For Nietzsche, every war is good; for Gandhi, all times of peace are good – both are addicted. God is both.
Heraclitus says: Seawater is at once very pure and very foul… For fish it is life; for you it can be death. So don’t create absolute ideas, remain flexible. Remember, something may be good for you today and not good tomorrow because life goes on changing and you cannot step in the same river twice. Even if you do, you are not the same and yet you are the same. Everything is moving, a flux, so don’t remain fixed. This is one of the diseases of the human mind; you become fixed, you lose flexibility – and flexibility is life.
Look at a child, he is flexible; look at an old man, he has become inflexible. The more flexible you are, the more alive and fresh and young. The more inflexible you become, you are dead already. What is flexibility? ? it is to respond to the moment without any preconceived idea; to respond to the moment, not through any preconceived idea – directly, immediately. Immediacy is flexibility. You look at the situation, you become aware, and sensitive to it – and then you act. The action comes through the encounter of the situation and you, not from a past mind.
The nature of day and night is one.
War and peace are one; and desire and desirelessness are one. The phenomenon is the same: peace is war inactive; war is peace active. The nature of man and woman is one: woman is inactive, passive man; man is active woman. That’s why they attract each other, because if you take them just in themselves, they are halves. If they become one then the whole is created; both meet and become one. That oneness is the search.
If you take them apart, as all the religions have done in the past – Catholics, Jainas, Buddhists, have totally separated men and women. All these religions have remained halfhearted; they cannot be total, they cannot accept the whole. Their circle is half, and half a circle is not a circle at all because a circle, to be a circle, must be the whole – half a circle is no circle. That’s why the whole of Christianity turned out to be ugly, Jainism turned out to be ugly, Buddhism turned out to be ugly. You cannot divide, you have to accept the totality.
Beauty is of the total and ugliness is of a torn part. Everything total is beautiful, fulfilled – the circle has become complete. The nature of day and night is one. The day itself becomes the night, the night itself turns into day. Can you find the divide between day and night? Can you make a demarcation? There is no demarcation – by and by, day turns into night; night turns into day. It is one wheel. If you see all opposites as a wheel, you will have transcendence. You will no longer be a man and no longer be a woman because many times you turn into a woman and a woman turns into a man. If you watch yourself for twenty-four hours, you can find at which moment you were a woman and at which moment you were a man; you can find when you are passive, when you are active. When you are passive you are a woman, when you are active you are a man – and both are hidden within you.
Now psychology accepts that man is bisexual; every man is woman also, and every woman is also man. The difference is only of quantity, degrees, not of quality. If you are a man that means you may be fifty-one percent man and forty-nine percent woman – that is the difference. That’s why it is possible for you to change your sex; it is a difference of degrees. Just a little hormonal change and the sex will change. No need to even change the hormones; if you simply change your psyche the change will come. It happened to Ramakrishna. He tried many paths to reach the divine. Even when he had reached, he still went on trying every path just to see whether every path leads to him.
There is a very beautiful path in India; that path is to conceive God as the only male and you become the female, the beloved. Whether you are a man or a woman is not the point. God is the male and you are the female; God is Krishna and everyone is just a beloved. Those who follow this path start behaving like women. They cannot use male clothes, they have to use feminine ones; they sleep with a statue of Krishna. They completely forget whether they are male or female; whatever they are, they become female. Every fourth week, for five days, they act as if their period has come. In the beginning it is just acting but, by and by, changes start happening.
It happened to Ramakrishna; he completely became a woman. It has remained a mystery. How is it possible? Menstruation really started! He would bleed for three or four days every month. His breasts became feminine, they grew; his voice changed, it became feminine; he started walking like a woman. He was on that path for six months – he completely became a woman. And this is a mystery because doctors are the witnesses that he started bleeding – the period would come. Just the mind changed the whole body. After he reached through that path and left it, he started trying something else. Even after that, the body remained the same for one year. It took one year to come back, to become a man again.
Inside you are both; it is just a question of emphasis. Heraclitus came to realize this:
The nature of day and night is one.
The way up and the way down
are one and the same.
Heaven and hell are one, God and the Devil are one because it has to be so: two poles of the same phenomenon.
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators
in what goes on in the universe.
Even sleepers are responsible. What does Heraclitus want to say? ? he is saying that responsibility is not individual, karma is not individual; it is total. This is a rare insight. I absolutely agree with him. This is a rare insight because in India they have believed that karma is individual – that is also clinging to the ego. Why? When there is no ego, and you insist that there is no ego, why should karma be individual? If karma is individual, you cannot leave the ego. In fact it will cling in a subtle way: “I have to fulfill my karma and you have to fulfill your karma.” Where do we meet? I will become enlightened, you will remain ignorant. Where do we meet?
If Heraclitus’ insight is to be understood, it means that there are no individuals, no islands; man is not an island, we are part of one whole. Even karma is not individual. That has many implications; a vast dimension opens. That means that if someone somewhere murders, I have a part in it. Even if I am asleep – I was sleeping, I don’t know anything about the man, I have never heard of him – and somebody somewhere, in the Himalayas, commits a murder, if we are not individuals I have a part in it, I am also responsible. It is not so easy to throw the responsibility: “I am not committing a murder, I am a saint.”
No saint is a saint because every sinner is implied in him. It is foolish to claim: “I am a saint because I am not committing any murder, robbery, sin.” But there are sinners in the world, and if we are one part, one vast continent, not islands but connected, then how can you commit a sin without me? No, it is not possible. How can I become enlightened without you also becoming enlightened? No, that is not possible. It means that whenever a sin is committed, the whole is involved. Whenever there is a phenomenon like enlightenment, the whole is involved.
That’s why whenever a man becomes enlightened, immediately many follow in his wake and become enlightened because he creates a possibility for the whole. It is just like this: if my head aches, it is not only the head that is ill, my whole organism becomes ill – my legs, my heart, my hand also feels it because I am one. It may be focused in the head, that’s okay, but the whole body feels ill. A buddha becomes enlightened – it is focused there, that’s all, because no individual is there. It is just a focusing, but he will vibrate all over. Existence is just like a spider’s web. You touch the web from anywhere and the whole vibrates. Somewhere the touch is focused, that’s right, but the whole vibrates. That’s the meaning, and you have to understand it. Whenever you do something, it is not only you who is involved – the whole is involved. Your responsibility is great. It is not only that you have to be finished with your own karma; the whole history of the world is your biography.
Even while asleep I am collaborating, cooperating, so each step has to be very, very responsible and alert. If you commit a sin it is the whole that you drag into the sin, not only you because you are not separate. If you meditate, become aware, and feel blissful, it is the whole that you are taking toward a peak. You may be focused, but the whole is always involved.
Remember, whatever you do, God is doing it; whatever you are, God is that; whatever you will become, God will be becoming. You are not alone, you are the destiny of the whole.
Even sleepers are workers and collaborators
in what goes on in the universe.
In the circle
the beginning and the end are common.
If you make a circle, the end and beginning meet – only then is the circle complete. If you become a circle, whole, total, you will meet the beginning and the end. You will be the very source and the very climax of the world. You will be both the alpha and the omega. Unless you become that, something is incomplete; when something is incomplete you will remain miserable. The only misery that I know is being incomplete. The whole being tends toward being complete, needs to be complete; the incomplete becomes a torture. The incompletion is the only problem. When you become complete, the end and the beginning meet in you. God as the source and God as the ultimate flowering meet in you.
Ponder over these small fragments. Each fragment can become a vast contemplation, and each fragment can give you an insight into yourself and into the reality. These are not philosophical statements, these are Heraclitus’ insights – he knows, he has come to see. He is not theorizing; he has touched the reality, penetrated it. Each fragment is complete in itself, it is not a system. These fragments are like gems, individually cut; every gem is complete in itself. You simply penetrate one fragment, and through that one fragment you can become totally different – that one fragment can become the door for the infinite.
Meditate, ponder over what Heraclitus is saying. He can have a tremendous impact on you. He can become a transformation for you.
Enough for today.