Question: Whatever I understand, I know it will vanish.
Speaker: So your question rests on an assumption that you ‘do’ understand something. Should I take it any further?
Even in our humility lies only arrogance. “Whatever I understand, it will vanish, and before it vanishes I want to give it to others. But people around me are not interested in all this, so I am improving very slowly.”
Who are these people around you? What is their nature? What do you consider yourself to be? If you are given a thousand years, will you have a perfect world? What do you mean by ‘a perfect world’? The world has its ways of operating. The individual that you are – divided from the world – will never be at absolute peace with the world. Otherwise there is going to be no separation at all. Otherwise, the world will disappear and the individual too will disappear . For you to write that the world is not a pleasing place, there has to be a ‘you’. For you to write that the world is a pleasing place, there again has to be a ‘you’; a ‘you’ separate from the world. This separation is anyway going to be there.
Is it about the people around you, or is it about yourself? This friction, this strife is always going to be there, in some form or the other. Yes, you can change the form. Yes, the form can get sublimated. But because by definition you are separate, so the separation will continue. And the final separation will be – that you will be separated in the form of death.
It is never really about others, because whatever you think of others, whatever you take others to be, is just your own projection.
A food article is kept in front of you, and you find it convenient to say that you were tempted by the food. Not for a second do you consider that you at another time and another place, would not have been tempted. Or there would have been another man who would not have been tempted. Does the temptation lie in the food? And does food have a definition, sans the temptation? Does the food even have existence if you remove the temptation from it? Will you even look at the food, if there is no temptation? And if you are not even looking at it, does the food continue to exist?
So what you call as ‘others’, is first of all, your own tendencies. You say that people around me are not prepared to understand. Why are they around you? Why are they around you in the first place? They are not around you, they are ‘within’ you. The moment they are not within you, they cease to be around you. The day somebody is not ‘within’ you, you will find that he is also not around you.
You are those people, and that is why you find it so difficult to let go of them, because you are those people. When they go away, you feel as if a part of you has gone away. You cannot let go of them. The only way to be able to bid goodbye, to drop this feeling that you are nothing without them, is to get some kind of an experience of yourself, without them .
Even if for a few hours you can experience that you exist, and you exist in a full, complete and healthy manner even without those people, then you will inevitably realise that the threat you were perceiving was unreal. You would realise that even without them if you could be, and healthily be , and fully be , and joyfully be for two hours, it is possible to actually be without them. And that again is my attempt when I am with you – to just enable you to see that you do not lose anything when the world disappears from your mind. So that you can see that even without the thoughts of ‘others’, you are so peaceful, and alright, and just okay.
The one who does not have Faith in the beyond, has great trust in the world. These two go together.
Faithlessness in the beyond comes along with great belief in the reality of the world. You’ll feel that if your possessions go away, or family and friends go away, then you are nothing. Not only are you left with nothing, you are ‘nothing’. And what is Faith? To know that you are not reduced, even if all is taken away from you. That is faith.
What remains? The Faithful does not need to put a word upon it. What remains? Nothing, he is just silent. Silently he knows, that all that is valuable, does remain.
I have people coming to me, and they will come and they will sit and they will talk of the problems posed by the world. And till a point it is alright, you may be in a mood to chat, and you require a subject to chat, so it’s alright, lets chat about this and that. But when somebody starts taking it very seriously, then I know that it is no more a chat, it is now a deception. Whom are you fooling? Whom are you fooling?
People talk of situations, people talk of family members and economic constraints. Whom are you fooling? Now, we cannot really talk. Because now you have not come to seek a solution, now you are trying to prove that the problem is real. And there are no solutions, if you keep believing and asserting, that your problems are real. The only solution that anybody ever got was, that the problem itself is fake. That is the only solution.
If you keep talking of others , believing that others are the problem, then there can be no solution. If you keep complaining about situations, then there can be no solution. Solution lies in admitting that you do not see. Solution lies in admitting that you are not only mistaken, but you are maliciously mistaken. That yours is not even an innocent mistake.
Come close to the Truth, and all the rubbish will anyway fall off your body. It is like taking a bath under the skies. You keep sitting in your protected rooms, with layers and layers of dust upon your bodies. My job is to keep inviting you to the showers under the skies. And when you come there, you don’t come to talk about the dirt. It would be stupid, right? It is raining, so pleasantly, so bountifully, and you are sitting and grudging the dirt. If only you have the guts to step out, there would be no need to complain.
Does that mean that the ‘others’ will disappear? Does that mean that their attitudes will change? No, they may remain what they are and where they are, but you’ll find that you have left them far behind. And that is sufficient. The facts of the situation, in some way, may not change.
Somebody is stupid, he may still remain stupid. Somebody is possessive, he may still remain possessive. But you have now left them behind, and that is sufficient. Having left them behind, you have gone beyond, now do they exist? Do they exist? They don’t. And if they still exist for you, then a part of you is still composed of them. Go wash it.
As you hear this, many of you would be feeling bad, somebody might just be trembling in his heart, “Oh my god! We’ll have to leave our loved ones behind!” No, you won’t have to leave them behind, because you cannot leave them behind, as long as you are what you are.
The unrest that you are experiencing right now, the tremors in your mind, are proof enough that these people would always stay around you. Do you know who will leave them behind? — who is at peace while listening to these words. You very well know what your disease is. You very well know who are these people who have made your life hell. And remember, because we know that these people are what we are, hence we are not blaming them. We are stating it as a matter of fact.
You very well know, right, who has made your life hell? The moment it is said, “Go past them,” you cannot do that, because going past them would mean, going past yourself. To leave a so-called ‘loved one’ is the death of darkness that you are, and you don’t want that death. But we are not even honest to state that in so many words.
We will not say that I am afraid that a part of my personality will crumble. We will say, “I love him so much that I cannot leave him.” Seriously, you love him so much that you cannot leave him? Had he not been related to ‘you’, had you known of his actions just as a case study, objective case study, would you still have recommended somebody else, to stay with this man? Given what he has been doing, given the games that he has been playing, would you recommend your friend to stay with such a man? You won’t.
But you continue with these people around you. To go past them, is to go past your own insecurity. It is not at all about your love, or your sense of responsibility. It is not out of love or responsibility that you are with them, it is just fear that keeps you there. And the only solution to fear is – Faith. Unless you have that, you will continue to live in fear, and you will continue to live with these people inside you, and hence around you.
Are you getting it?
It is so very unthinkable for us to leave the rotten jobs that we are in, right? It is so very unthinkable for us to walk out of the rotten house that we are in. It is unthinkable for you, because you are not in the job, the job is in you . It is unthinkable for you to walk out of your rotten house, because you are not in the house, the house is in you . Your entire being smells of that house.
The day you are purged of that house, you will walk out in no time. In fact, you won’t even need to walk out, you’ll find that you are already out. The need to go back has finished. You are already out. Have you ever wondered? Have you ever asked yourself? “What is this urge to return to the same people, the same house and the same job every day? What is this need?”
This need is what ‘you’ are, this need is your name, this need is your self, your personality. Till the time you keep going back to the same people, remember that you are the same old man. Kindly do not claim any kind of progress or transformation.
