the-hidden-harmony-09/

This universe,
which is the same for all,
has not been made by any god or man,
but it has always been, is, and will be –
an ever-living fire,
kindling itself by regular measures
and going out by regular measures.

The phases of fire are craving and satiety.

The sun is new each day.
There is no God as a separate creator of the world. There cannot be because the creation, the creator and the creativity are the same; they are not separate. Existence is one, so how can the creator and the created be separate? Existence itself is divine. There is no creator creating it; it itself is the creator, it itself is the creativity.
Heraclitus is a non-dualist. All those who have known are bound to know that duality exists because of the mind; the mind cannot see the one, it can only see the two. The moment it perceives anything, it divides. With the mind, the other is necessary. If it sees creation, it immediately thinks of the creator because how is creation possible without a creator? But if you encounter the creator with this mind, it will see that there must be some other creator; otherwise how can this creator be?
Mind is an infinite regress; it goes on and on dividing. That’s why the mind never reaches any conclusive state. Philosophy believes in the mind; that’s why philosophy never reaches any conclusion. One has to see the totality without bringing the mind in because the mind is the factor of duality; it divides. Division is the nature of mind. If you say “day” the mind immediately brings night because how can the day be without the night? If you say “love” the mind brings hate because how can love be without hate? If you bring life, the mind brings death because how can life be without death? But life and death are one. One phenomenon, one energy. Life is the manifestation of that energy and death is again relaxation. Life is coming to a form, death is moving into the formless again. The end and the beginning meet. Life is not separate from death, death is not separate from life; they meet and mingle. Even to say that they meet is not right because the mind immediately comes in and says that if there is a meeting there must be two. It is not a meeting, it is one phenomenon.
Heraclitus says desire and satiety are two phases of fire. You feel hungry, you eat and you feel satisfied. Have you ever noticed that hunger and satiety are one? They have to be one because the same thing, food, changes both. Food becomes a bridge between hunger and satiety, desire and desirelessness. If they are really separate they cannot be bridged. If they are really different there is no possibility of any bridge. Hunger will remain hunger and satiety will remain satiety. Where and how will they meet? But they meet. The mind thinks hunger is against satiety. Just try to understand it. Move a little deeper in it. The mind says that hunger is different from satiety, but when you are satisfied again a circle has started which will bring hunger; when you are hungry a circle has started which will bring satiety. Are they two or just a single phenomenon? When you eat, hunger disappears, but the moment hunger disappears a new circle starts.
A new morning is a beginning of the evening. A new birth is a beginning of death. You cannot see so far away. Every morning you become hungry, you eat and you become satisfied. In the evening you are hungry again; you eat and achieve satiety and never see that they are both one. One helps to bring the other. Can you be satisfied if you are never hungry? Is there a possibility of satiety if you are never hungry? If you are never hungry, don’t think that you will be in a state of satiety; the satiety cannot come without hunger. If there is no morning, don’t think that there will always and always be evening. There will be no evening at all. If there is no death, don’t think that there will be life eternal; there will be no life at all because death creates the situation, sets an energy phenomenon. Every life brings death, every death brings life again.
To the mind, these appear as two because the mind cannot see through opposites. When you don’t see from the mind, from the logical standpoint; when you simply look into the phenomenon itself, the totality of it, the two disappears and only one remains.
That is the thing with God as creator and the universe as his creation. Not only are ordinary people deceived by the mind, great theologians are also deceived by it. They say, “God created the world.” This statement is juvenile, it is childish. Nobody has created existence; it is, it is simply there because if you bring in creation, millions of problems arise. That’s why theology brings more problems and no solution. They create a theory, a hypothesis, to solve many problems. Nothing is solved. On the contrary, new questions arise around the hypothesis. They tried to solve the problem of existence by bringing God in, that he created it. They created millions of problems and have not been able to solve them. Once you start on the wrong track you go on missing because one thing leads to another. There is a relatedness; if one thing is wrong, it will lead to another wrong proposition. Unless you start from the very beginning toward the truth, you will never reach because the beginning is the end.
Theology brings in God to solve a few problems because there are problems such as, “Who created the world?” The curiosity arises and says, “Such a beautiful phenomenon! Who created it?” The mind has an itching sensation that it should be answered. “Who created it?” The first thing is to ask whether the question is right. Never raise a question without asking first if the question is relevant. What’s the criterion for a question being relevant? If a question is such that whatever answer is given, the same question can be raised again, the question is irrelevant, it is not right.
You ask, “Who created the world?”
Someone replies, “God.”
You can ask the same question again, “Who created God?” The question hasn’t changed, not a bit. The same question is still relevant. So someone replies, “God A created the world,”
You ask, “Who created God A?”
He says, “God B created God A,”
You ask, “Who created God B?”
He says, “God C created God B.”
The question remains the same so all the answers are false. If the question isn’t changing a little bit, you are not progressing toward truth at all. If all the answers to a question are false, please meditate on the question again. The very basis of the question itself must be wrong; otherwise how can all the answers be wrong? At least one answer must be true, but no answer has proved to be true. Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians have all provided answers, but the question remains. Thousands of years working on the question, “Who created the world?” and not a single answer has been given which satisfied. This means that at the very base, from the very beginning, you have taken the wrong line of research, the wrong attitude. So the first thing is to question the question itself, whether it is relevant.
Who created existence? This question is irrelevant for many reasons because then the question is possible, “Why did he create it? What was the need? Why couldn’t he live without creating it? What desire possessed him? And if God created this universe, why is there so much misery and suffering which cannot be accounted for?”
Why is a child born crippled, blind, ill? If God is the creator, can’t he correct the pattern of the world? Or is your God a little neurotic, enjoys suffering? A sadist, who enjoys this torture? Millions of people dying in a war, being killed, thrown into the fire and gas chambers; he is the creator and he is simply not worried! He can’t even stop a Hitler unnecessarily killing millions of Jews, for no reason at all. What type of creator is this? If God created the world, he must be a Devil because the world doesn’t seem so good. It cannot come out of good and seems to be inconsistent with good. God means “the good” and this world doesn’t show any sign of goodness; just exploitation, violence, war, killing, misery, anguish, tension, madness. What is the reason of this creation? If God is responsible, he is the greatest criminal.
These problems arise and theologians cannot solve them. They have to create more false theories. They say that there is a Devil and it is his work; they fall into their own trap. First they create the God that created the world and then they have to create a Devil because they cannot explain the world through goodness. The world looks so evil that they have to create a Devil. Then the question arises, “Who created the Devil?” They go on and on and get into such a desertlike effort which leads nowhere. Nobody reads their big volumes on theology – nobody! When you start you reach nowhere and they go on and on and on. It seems like a broken gramophone record; they go on repeating the same thing, you go on asking the same question and they go on round and round. All theology is beating about the bush. Not a single problem has been solved. Theology is the most useless effort that man has ever made. It starts with, “God created the world.”
Men like Heraclitus, Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, don’t talk about these things. They simply say, “Existence is God. Nobody has created it. No creator is responsible for it, so don’t raise unnecessary questions. And don’t unnecessarily waste your time in answering.” Existence is and God is not separate from it. God is existence, the totality, not a separate being, a person – the totality. It comes out of its own and dissolves.
Heraclitus says, “It is fire.” Fire is a beautiful symbol. It gives you a very dynamic energy and indicates that existence is a dynamic, dialectical energy; it moves on its own. When you say “energy” it means something. When you say “God” you have moved into something which will not lead anywhere.
Energy is truth.
You can feel it here and now. You are energy, the birds singing in the trees are energy, the trees reaching toward the sky are energy; the stars moving, the sun rising every day. Everything is energy. Energy is neither good nor bad. It is always neutral. So there is no need to create a Devil, no need to explain anything; energy is neutral.
If you are miserable, it is because of you, not because of a God or a Devil. If you are miserable, you are behaving wrongly with the energy. If you move with the energy, you will be happy and blissful. If you move against it, it is you who are responsible. Remember, if there is no God, you are responsible for whatever happens. If you are responsible there is a possibility to transform oneself. If God is responsible, how are you going to transform yourself? God seems to be a trick of the mind to throw responsibility on someone else because the mind is always throwing the responsibility on someone else. Whatever happens, you always throw the responsibility on someone else. If someone has insulted you and you are angry; he has created the anger not you. If you are sad, someone else is making you sad and unhappy. If you are frustrated, someone is blocking your way. Always someone else is responsible, never you. This is the attitude of the mind: to make someone else responsible and you are freed of the responsibility. This is why you are miserable.
The responsibility is yours. If you take it as yours, you can do something about it. What can you do if it is someone else’s? If others create the sadness, you will always remain sad because what can you do about it? There are millions of people all around and if they make you frustrated then nothing can be done. You will remain frustrated and this is your destiny because how can you change others?
If you are responsible, you become a master immediately. Now you can do something. You can change yourself and your attitudes. You can look toward the world with a different attitude and if you feel miserable, somewhere you are a misfit in the total energy system. That’s all that sin means: you are a misfit, not knowing how to move in this total energy system. The energy system is neutral. If you follow it you will be happy. If you don’t follow it, you will be miserable. This is the logos, the rit, the Tao.
For example, if you are feeling thirsty and you don’t drink water, you will be miserable because in this energy system water gives you satiety and the thirst disappears. If you are feeling cold, you move near a fire because in this energy system the fire is the source of all warmth, heat. If you move away from a fire when you feel cold, you will be miserable. Nobody is responsible. If you feel thirsty, hot and move near a fire, you will be in hell!
I have heard…

A man, a great sinner, died. Everybody knew that he was going to hell. It was so certain, obvious, no question about it. He was a great sinner, but also a very great leader. He was a very rich man because sin can be very successful; it pays in this world.
Thousands were following him; everyone being fully aware that he was going to hell, but he was still a very powerful man. As the procession was heading toward the cemetery, by accident a truck loaded with coal came on the road and started following the procession. The truck was taking its own route, but it collided with the procession.
Mulla Nasruddin, who was in the procession, exclaimed, “I was absolutely certain that this man was going to hell. But I could never have imagined that he had to provide his own coal!”

Hell is fire, hot. But I tell you that you are providing your own coal. This is how things are; if you move against nature you will be in misery. Misery means moving against nature and if you understand it, misery is a good indication. It shows that somewhere you are going wrong, that’s all. Put things right! Misery is a help. Anguish, anxiety, tension, are indications that somewhere, something is going wrong. You are not with the total. Somewhere you have started your own private movement and you will be in misery. Heraclitus says, “Private intelligence is false.” Intelligence is with the whole. Don’t be too clever. You cannot be intelligent on your own. If you move with existence you will be intelligent, you will have a clarity of perception, you will be wise. If you move on your own you will be a fool.
An idiot is a person who is completely closed within himself, caved-in. He has no contact with the total energy system. That is his idiocy. A wise man is one who is not closed at all; the air flows through him, the cosmos flows through him. He has no barriers, no closed doors. He has no privacy of his being. He is porous. Whenever he feels miserable, he immediately makes use of the indication and puts himself right. It is a symptom. It is just like an illness where you are not behaving naturally with your body and some illness erupts. That illness is a friend. It is saying, “Behave, change your ways! Somewhere you are going against nature.” If you don’t eat for three or four days, feel dizzy, hungry, you feel sad. The whole body needs energy, so it is saying to you, “Eat some food!” Always remember, energy is neutral, so the whole quality of your being depends on you. You can be happy or unhappy; it is up to you. No one else is responsible.
When you feel hungry, eat; when you feel thirsty, drink; when you feel sleepy, sleep. Don’t force nature. For a little while you can force it because that much freedom is possible. If you want to fast, you can for a few days, but each day you will become weaker and weaker and weaker; each day you will be in more and more misery. If you don’t want to breathe, you can stop breathing for a few seconds, but only for a few seconds; that much freedom is possible. That’s not very much and if you don’t breathe well, soon you will feel that you are choking, having a dying sensation.
All misery exists as an indication to you that somewhere you have gone wrong, gone off the track. Come back immediately! If you start listening to the body, to nature, to your inner being, you will be more and more happy. Become a good listener to nature. Listen to the logos. Listen to those who have awakened to the logos and you will always find them natural. They don’t force anything, they don’t push the river. They simply flow with it; that is their blissfulness. There’s no God responsible.
We create God out of our own fear and necessity. We feel so helpless in our misery, so powerless, so impotent in our pain, that we create a God out of this fear. One to whom we can pray, to whom we can say, “Don’t give me so much trouble.” A God who we can praise and feel that if we praise him, he will become more and more favorable toward us. Do you think God can become prejudiced? If you pray, do you think he will be on your side? Or if you don’t pray, he will not be on your side?

A small child was being told by his parents, “If you don’t behave, God will punish you.” In the past the child had always been put right; whenever he was not behaving well, or doing something which the parents thought was not good and they had used this trick, “God will punish you; he will be angry.” And this had always helped.
This time the child laughed and said, “I’m not worried about God because he doesn’t know me at all.”
They said, “This is something new! You never said this before. Why do you think he doesn’t know you?”
The child replied, “For two weeks I haven’t prayed and nothing has happened. So either he thinks I’m dead, or he has completely forgotten me. So now there’s no need to be worried about it. Now I am free! Otherwise, two weeks and no sign from him?”

We have created God out of our need. God has not created you, you have created God. It is your need because you are helpless and you project everything that you miss on him. If you are powerless, you say that he is omnipotent. If you are ignorant, you say that he is all- knowing. If you are blind and move about and grope in the darkness, you say that he is omniscient. This is a trick of the mind. Whatever you miss in yourself you project on him and think the balance is recovered by saying, “Now I can pray to this omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being and he will help me.”
These are tricks. You can be helped only by yourself. Of course, nature will be with you if you are with nature. No other prayer will do. This is the only prayer. To me, prayer is a feeling, a flowing with nature. If you want to talk, talk, but remember, your talking is not going to affect existence. It will affect you and that may be good, but prayer is not going to change God’s mind. It may change you, but if it is not changing you then it is a trick. You can go on praying for years, but if it doesn’t change you, drop it, throw it away; it is rubbish. Don’t carry it any more. Prayer is not going to change God. You think that if you pray, God’s mind will change; he will be more favorable, he will be tipped a little toward your side. There is nobody listening to you. This vast sky cannot listen. This vast sky can be with you if you are with it; there is no other way to pray.
I also suggest you pray, but praying should be just an energy phenomenon; not a devotee and God phenomenon, but an energy phenomenon. You simply become silent, you simply open yourself. You raise both your hands toward the sky, palms uppermost, head up, just feeling existence flowing in you. As the energy, or prana, flows down your arms, you will feel a gentle tremor. Be like a leaf in a breeze, trembling. Allow it, help it. Let your whole body vibrate with energy and just let whatever happens happen. You will again feel a flowing with the earth. Earth and heaven, above and below, yin and yang, male and female; you float, you mix, you drop yourself completely. You are not. You become one ? merge. After two to three minutes, or whenever you feel completely filled, bow down to the earth and kiss it. You simply become a vehicle and allow the divine energy to unite with that of the earth.
These two stages should be repeated six more times so that each chakra can become unblocked. You can do it more times, but if you do less you will feel restless and unable to sleep. The best time to do this prayer is at night, in a darkened room, going to sleep immediately afterward; or it can be done in the morning, but it must be followed by fifteen minutes’ rest. This rest is necessary, otherwise you will feel as if you are drunk, in a stupor.
This merging with energy is prayer. It changes you. When you change, the whole of existence changes because with your attitude the whole of existence changes for you. Not that existence changes –existence remains the same – but now you are flowing with it and there is no antagonism. There is no fight, no struggle; you are surrendered to it. Otherwise, all things are tricks ? and man goes on inventing.
I have heard…

A rabbi came to a village on his horse. He was on his way to some other town and was very tired. He wanted a little rest, so he went into an inn leaving his horse under a tree with some hay to eat and to rest on. Mulla Nasruddin was sitting under another tree, drunk. The horse was beautiful and he came closer just to have a look. As he was standing near looking, a horse dealer passed by. The horse was a rare thing, really beautiful. He asked Nasruddin, “Is it your horse?”
Drunk, and feeling very good that such a beautiful horse could belong to him, he replied, “Yes.”
One thing led to another and the man said to him, “I would like to buy it. How much would you take for it?”
Now Nasruddin was caught. He simply asked an impossible price so there would be no problem. He answered, “Two thousand rupees.”
The horse was not worth more than five hundred rupees, so nobody was going to pay two thousand rupees; the matter would be settled. But as it happened the man said, “Okay, take these two thousand rupees.”
Now, he was in trouble, but two thousand rupees! He thought to himself, “The rabbi is inside and he doesn’t know. Why not take these two thousand rupees? There is no problem, nobody is looking.” So he said, “Okay.” He took the two thousand rupees and the dealer took the horse.
The moment the horse was gone the rabbi came out. Nasruddin was puzzled as what to do now. He had two thousand rupees and was so drunk he couldn’t even run away. He started working it out inside his head and found a solution. He leaned down on all fours as if he was a horse and put some hay in his mouth. The rabbi couldn’t believe what had happened. He said, “What are you doing? Are you mad?”
Nasruddin replied, “First, listen to my story.” His mind was working fast. He had become a theologian; he was working out one answer, then another question and he had stepped into his own trap. He said, “Twenty years ago, I was a young man and committed a sin with a woman. What did God do? He was so angry that he punished me and made me into a horse; your horse, rabbi. For twenty years I served you, but it seems now the punishment is over and I am again restored to being a man.”
The rabbi started trembling, seeing that a sinner had been punished. And who is not a sinner? The rabbi himself had sinned, with many women, so he started trembling seeing this phenomenon. He fell on his knees and started praying. There was a practical problem to be solved. He said, “It’s okay, but I have to go to the other town, so what to do now?”
Nasruddin made a suggestion, “The market is not very far; you can go and find a horse.”
So the rabbi went to the market. There was his own horse standing at the horse dealer’s! He started trembling again. He went near the horse’s ear, and said, “What, Nasruddin! So soon again?”

The mind goes on and on playing tricks: creating a God, praying, being punished, being sent to hell and heaven; the whole thing being just the imagination. There is no God, no hell, no heaven; only you are there and existence ? energy, infinite energy. If you are with it, it is with you. This is the state of a Buddha, a Heraclitus: totally with the total. There’s no problem. One is not there, really, to create problems. There is bliss. When you are not, there is bliss. Otherwise, you will be in trouble if you are fighting against it, moving away from it; doing things on your own, using your private intelligence, behaving like an island. Whatever explanations and rationalizations you create are futile, just imagination.
All your churches, temples and mosques stand on man’s fertile imagination. All your gods, statues, your prayers are creations of your imagination. You have created them because you are miserable. This won’t help. Your temples, mosques, churches – no! Your popes, priests, rabbis – no! They can’t help. They are exploiting your imagination. It is a good business. You have to drop imagining. You have to feel that misery comes when you are out of step with nature and happiness comes when you are not out of step.
Hell is being out of step with the logos. Heaven is being in step with the logos. That is the hidden harmony. If you can find it, you become blissful. If you cannot find it, you are miserable. Nobody else is responsible.
You have to seek and find. There is no God, but everybody is divine. The whole of existence is divine, godly, but there is no God. So don’t waste your time and don’t look upward for someone to help you. Help will come, but there is no one to give it to you; you have to take it. But this seems to be arduous, difficult because you have to change yourself. To be in step with nature you will need a radical transformation. To avoid that radical transformation, you create every type of explanation.
Now try to enter these beautiful lines.
This universe,
which is the same for all,
has not been made by any god or man,
but it has always been, is, and will be –
an ever-living fire,
kindling itself by regular measures
and going out by regular measures.
Evolution and involution; things coming to a peak and disappearing in a valley; waves rising to touch the sky and moving back to the depth of the ocean in regular measures.
Heraclitus says, “The world is energy, existence is fire. In regular measures it manifests and unmanifests itself.” Just like day and night; during the day, awake you work and in the night you rest. So there are periods when existence is in the day and there are periods when existence moves into the night; creation and uncreation, evolution and involution, day and night, summer and winter, life and death.
This is a creation period. Soon there will be a decreation period. Hindus call that pralaya, when everything disappears. Hindus have a beautiful theory for it. Heraclitus would have nodded assent. Hindus say that the Brahma, the creator, has his own day; a twenty-four hour day, a twenty-four hour circle; a twelve-hour day and a twelve-hour night. His twelve-hour day is our creation; millions and millions of years, eons and eons of time. Then comes the night of Brahma, where everything disappears, sleeps, rests – tired, of course. To rejuvenate itself, to come back, it goes into nonexistence. Existence is the day, nonexistence is the night. In a regular measure, for the same time, existence disappears, energy rests. When it has rested, the day comes again; the sun rises and things appear again, everything starts again. It is a circle. Half the circle is of manifestation and half is unmanifestation.
Just like a tree grows and grows and grows and dies, but it does not die completely. It collects itself into seeds, becomes unmanifest, moves into the subtle. Seeds fall down onto the ground, the tree disappears, but in the right season the seeds will sprout again and the whole tree will come again. It happens, not because there is some controller, a God or a man or somebody; there is nobody. Energy itself is enough. It needs no control, it needs no one there. Energy has its own intrinsic discipline. This seems to be exactly right because if you watch you will feel this is how it happens. You feel hungry, you eat and hunger disappears. Where’s the hunger gone? ? it has become unmanifest, moved to the seeds, to the subtle. It is not on the periphery; it has gone to the center again. After a few hours you feel hungry again, the hunger has returned. You eat, hunger disappears. Where does it go? If it disappears completely, it cannot come back. It comes again and again and again, in the same measure.
During the day you are awake. Where has the sleep gone? ? it has moved to the seeds, become subtle; it is there inside you watching for the right time to become manifest. By the night it becomes manifest again, so where does your day disappear? While asleep, have you ever noticed where the whole world of the day has gone? The market, the politics, the identity, everything disappears; you have gone to the seeds. In the morning the sun rises and you rise again. From where do you come? ? from the unmanifest to the manifest again. It is a centrifugal and centripetal movement. The lotus closes and opens, in a regular measure.
This is an energy phenomenon; no personality in it, it is impersonal. It is beautiful impersonal; if it is personal it will become ugly. All religions have become ugly because they make it personal, they create a person in it. That person is just an imaginary phenomenon you have created. That’s why thousands of gods exist and everybody has his own notion about God. When you have a notion about God, others’ notions look wrong; there is conflict, argument. Your notion of God cannot be right because you are not right. A person who is right needs no God.
Look at Buddha, Heraclitus, they don’t need any God. H. G. Wells has written about Buddha stating, “He is the most godless and yet the most godly man.” Can you find a man more godly or more godless than Buddha? He never talks about God because he doesn’t project. He has no fear inside to create a projection; he is fearless. God disappears; your fear is the cause. When God disappears, this whole existence is for you to enjoy and celebrate. Energy is delight. Blake has said that energy is delight.
When there is no God, you are free, totally free. With a God up there manipulating, you can never be free; you can only be puppets with all the strings in his hand. All religious people become puppets because someone else is responsible for everything.
A really religious person is totally free.
Religiousness is freedom. With God, there can be no freedom. How can there be freedom if there is a creator? And he seems a little crazy. Any moment he can change his mind and say, “Okay, disappear!” Just as it is said in the Bible, “Let there be light” and light was born. Any moment he can say, “Let there be no light.” Then what happens? Does light disappear? You must simply be puppets. It seems that he is playing chess and you are on the chessboard, so whatever he wants to make of you he can. The whole thing looks ugly.
If there is no freedom, there cannot be any consciousness because consciousness grows with more freedom. Total freedom is possible only if there is no person controlling, manipulating; no boss in existence. Only then is there freedom. But freedom makes you afraid. You don’t want to be free. You want to be slaves; that’s why you create God. If there is no God ? the communists for example, tried a religion without a God. But man is so afraid, he cannot live without gods; so communism has created its own gods. Lenin has become a god; now they worship him. Now Lenin is no ordinary mortal; he is a god. You cannot escape because you are afraid.
Only a man who is totally unafraid, fearless ? one who has come to terms with existence, one who has understood that to be with existence and to flow with it is to be blissful ? can live without God. Only this man can live without any person being projected on existence, can live without imagination – can live with truth. It is hard to live with truth. It is very easy to live with lies. That’s why you create lies around you. Ninety-nine percent of the things around you are lies. But you feel cozy, comfortable with them; they are comfortable lies. Truth is uncomfortable because it requires a radical change. This is the most radical change that can happen to a man – that he lives without God. If you can live without God, you become a god, you become godly. If you go on imagining a God, you remain a slave. With a boss overhead you will be a slave. When the boss is no longer there, you yourself have become a god.
I say to you, “There is no God.” Everybody is God, everything is godly. There is no person controlling because the whole existence would be ugly, a slavery, a great concentration camp; it would be a prison. No God, life is freedom. You can choose! If you want to be miserable, be miserable; that’s your choice. If you want to be happy, be happy; that’s your choice. If you feel happy being miserable, it’s okay. There are people who feel very, very happy being miserable because through their misery they attract compassion. Through their misery they ask for sympathy; through their misery, they are begging for love.
But who can love a miserable person? Unless one is a buddha, it is impossible to love any miserable person. You are on a suicidal path. If you are asking for love through being miserable, you can get a little sympathy, but not love. That little sympathy will be given to you very grudgingly because who is ready to give love to a miserable person? He himself is in need, he himself is miserable. That’s why people talk so much about their miseries. Listen to their conversation, ninety-nine percent is about their miseries; they magnify their miseries, make them look as great as possible. It’s not possible because you are so tiny you cannot carry such big miseries; you are asking for sympathy.
Man is afraid of freedom. There is a deep-rooted fear of freedom because with freedom comes insecurity; with freedom comes the unknown, with freedom you don’t know beforehand what is going to happen. With a God and a destiny everything is certain. You can ask an astrologer or a palmist and they can tell you about your future. With no God, there is no destiny. The astrologers are useless. Nothing can be said about the future. The future remains an open situation – nothing fixed, everything flexible and fluid. With freedom you become a fluidity. With God bossing you, you are secure; somebody is looking after you and he knows better what to do and what not to do.
In this sense, Heraclitus’s insight is deeper than Jesus. In this sense, Heraclitus comes through better than Jesus or Mohammed; his insight is exactly as deep as Zarathustra, Buddha, Mahavira because Jesus goes on talking in terms of God, creation, father, son. Maybe he has to talk in those terms because of the juvenile attitude of the Jews and the people around him. Heraclitus doesn’t bother about you; he says exactly what is true. He doesn’t bother whether you understand or not; he simply states the truth. If you want to understand, you have to grow. He will not come down to you, you will have to go to him.
This is exactly my attitude. I say exactly what I feel. If you want to understand me you have to grow toward me. I’m not going to come down and talk to you on your terms because that never helps. Jesus did that and missed the whole thing and Christianity was born, which is nothing but a new edition of the Jewish religion, nothing new. Jews modified a little here and there, nothing new because Jesus used the whole Jewish terminology. How can you create a new world out of the old? He compromised; Jesus never thought that there was going to be a new religion. He remained a Jew, died a Jew; he was never a Christian. He never imagined that there was going to be something new; he lived in the fold. He used past, rotten words; hence the ugly face of Christianity.
Heraclitus is absolutely fresh. That’s why the Greek mind couldn’t understand him at all; he has no roots in the past.
When I am dead, where will you put me? You will not find any roots for me in India. I was born a Jaina, but you will not find any roots in Jainism for me; simply, you cannot find any roots. If you say exactly what you have understood, what you have realized, there are no roots because truth has no roots in society; it has roots in existence, but not in society. That’s why a man like Heraclitus becomes puzzling and even a genius like Aristotle says, “Heraclitus is absurd. He creates puzzles and philosophy is to solve something, not to create puzzles.”
He is not creating any puzzle. He looks puzzling because he is stating a fresh phenomenon that he has encountered. He is not using old, used, secondhand terms for it. He says: This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it has always been, is, and will be – an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.
This energy has its own intrinsic system. It is a cosmos not a chaos, and without a boss. Energy plus freedom and yet there is a discipline. That discipline is the inner harmony, the hidden harmony. No boss and yet there is no chaos; no one managing and yet everything is managed so beautifully; you cannot improve upon it. This is the hidden harmony. If there is a manager, you can be certain that the things he manages will go wrong here and there. It is such a beautiful cosmos because there is no manager in it.
This will be difficult to understand. Religious people say, “How can this world become a cosmos if there is nobody in control? Without a controller everything will fall apart!” Heraclitus says, “Exactly, precisely because there is no controller, things cannot fall apart.” When you control, you mismanage. You cannot find greater mismanagers than managers; they mismanage. That’s what Lao Tzu says. He says, “When there were no rulers everything was beautiful; when there was no law there was no crime and when there were no wise men there were no fools.” Things moved in their cosmic beauty. The rulers entered and said that rules are needed. With rules, misrule entered because the opposite is always there. Wise men came and said that man must be disciplined; man became rebellious and everything went wrong. More and more laws were introduced and man became more and more criminal.
This is what Heraclitus says: “Precisely, if there is no one in control, how can things go out of control?” Energy itself has an intrinsic, inner guide. Listen to this concerning your life also. If you are guided by your insight, if you listen to your heart, there will be no need for any discipline. You move completely in trust and everything will be good. But because you cannot listen to your own heart you have to listen to the many manipulators who go on manipulating. They say, “Do this!” and “Don’t do this!” You are confused, you don’t know what to do. One religion teaches one thing, another one something else. One morality says that this is moral, another morality says that this is immoral. You are simply confused and cannot find your own heart from where the intrinsic, the natural, the spontaneous guide comes. The more you have been taught, the more confused you have become.
Heraclitus says, “Everything moves by an inner harmony.” Who is controlling these trees? Who teaches them that now it’s the right time to produce their flowers? Who says to the clouds that the time is coming near and you have to shower and bring the rain? ? nobody. Remember, if there is someone, things will go wrong because how can such a vast thing be managed? Even if there were a God, he would probably have cracked up by now! Just think of the immensity, the tremendousness, the vastness of things. Yes, God would have already cracked up long ago, gone mad and simply disappeared from the world, or the world would have fallen apart. It can remain a cosmos only because the harmony is not being forced from above; it grows from within.
There are two types of discipline. One that is forced from without where someone says “Do this!” The other that comes from within. You feel what will be natural; you feel where your being is flowing and move with your feeling and an inner discipline enters. Outer discipline is a deception and creates confusion and a rift in you. The inner and outer are opposed, they become antagonistic.

Just a few days ago, a man came to me and said – as all religious people will agree: “Again and again I’m a victim of outer things, again and again I forget the inner.”
I asked him, “What do you mean? Please give me a concrete example.”
He replied, “Well for example, my inner knows that I should remain faithful to my wife, but I fall in love with other women again and again.”
So I had to tell him, “You seem to be confused. You don’t know which is the inner and which is the outer. Your wife is the outer and you think that is the inner. Do you love your wife?”
He said, “Of course not. If I was in love with her, why would I fall for other women?”

The wife is the outer; forced by society, by your own ego, by pretensions you would like to keep an image of in society ? that you are a good husband. This is the outer and he is saying that this is the inner. When you fall in love with another woman – whom nobody is forcing you to do, on the contrary, everybody is preventing you – that is inner! But society has confused you completely, it has made you disoriented. It says that the outer is the inner; it has deceived you completely. It says that the inner is the outer.
You go on a fast and you think that this is the inner voice; this is your religion, your scriptures, your priests. Your inner says, “You are hungry, eat!” You think that this is the outer, the Devil tempting you. What foolishness! The priest has tempted you to fast. The Devil is not there! The priests are the only devilish forces in the world. Hunger comes, this is the inner. The whole body, every cell of it says, “Eat!” You say, “This is the outer. Someone, some evil force is tempting me” or “This is desire, this is the body and the body is the enemy; my soul is on a fast.”
Your soul, on a fast? The soul never needs any food, so how can it go on a fast? You are forcing your poor body. There is also a natural fast; it happens in animals. There’s no preacher, no priest teaching them, but it happens. If you watch a dog, if he is not feeling well he won’t eat – this is the inner. A dog’s fast is inner. What absurdity! A man’s fast is almost always outer. Only a dog can fast inwardly because he is still in contact with nature, you are not.
No animal can be forced to eat when its body is ill. If you force him to eat he will vomit. This is beautiful. The body doesn’t need it; it is ill. The whole energy is needed for the body to cure itself; that energy will be diverted if you eat because the energy will be needed to digest food. It will be a burden. When the body is not in good condition, the whole energy is needed for the body to cure itself and if food is forced into it, that will be a division. Now the whole of the energy will move toward curing, but it will be prevented because first the food has to be digested.
If during your illness you simply listen inward and don’t eat, that’s beautiful. Sometimes you don’t feel hungry, so don’t eat. But don’t take a vow that you will fast for a few days because who knows? In the evening you may feel hungry. Move with nature. When nature wants you to fast, fast. When nature wants you to eat, eat.
The inner has to be found because society has completely confused you. There is a vast confusion about what is inner and what is outer. Almost always, whatever you think is the outer is likely to be the inner and whatever you think is the inner is bound to be the outer because priests have done that. They are the destructive forces.
To me, there is only one religion and that is to find the inner voice, the inner guide. The person who helps you to find your inner guide is the master. He helps you not to give yourself an outer discipline, he simply helps you to find the inner harmony which gives discipline. That discipline has a grace because it is not forced; that discipline has a beauty of its own because it is always fresh. You cannot go astray because you cannot revolt with that discipline. It is you, your very innermost core. The same thing is happening on a vaster scale in the whole cosmos.
The phases of fire are craving and satiety.
The fire has two phases. First craving, when you are hungry. Hindus call it jatharagni, the fire of hunger. If you are really hungry your stomach feels really fiery. Because you are in such a bad shape, you don’t know when you’re hungry and when you’re not. Every day, you eat at one o’clock and you feel hungry at one o’clock every day. That hunger is psychological; you won’t feel any fire in the stomach because that is just according to the clock. The clock says that it’s one o’clock and the mind says that now the time has come to be hungry. Immediately you feel hungry; this is a projection. This is a false hunger. If you wait for half an hour, it will disappear automatically. How can real hunger disappear so easily? The real hunger will grow more and more. The fire will become more and more of a fire in the stomach. You will start feeling pain there, a burning sensation all over the body. You will feel feverish. The body needs satiety, the body is demanding; energy is needed. But if it is a false hunger, it will disappear. When the clock has moved to two o’clock, the hunger disappears.
Watch! When you feel really hungry, eat. Watch! When you feel really sleepy, sleep. It will take a few months to settle because the whole of civilization, culture, society, education, have all helped to push you from the right path. The right path is always natural – the logos. The phases of fire are craving and satiety. These are the two phases of fire, the inner biofire, the bioenergy. You feel hungry, you eat and you feel satisfied. That satisfaction is also a phase of fire. The fire has subsided, now there are no flames; it has disappeared. It is a pralaya, a de-creation, an involution. The other phase comes again. The circle moves, the wheel moves; the hunger phase comes again and again satiety. You feel sexual, lust, then satiety. You feel love and satiety.
You cannot love for the whole twenty-four hours because the fire has two phases. Husbands and wives try to do the impossible. They want to love each other twenty-four hours of the day and everything goes astray. You cannot because you cannot eat twenty-four hours of the day. Love is food. Can you eat for twenty-four hours? You have to give gaps so that the food is absorbed and with the energy used, the body becomes hungry again. How can you love for twenty-four hours? If you try the impossible, you will be in bad shape. The more you force it, the more everything will become false.
That’s why husbands and wives lose the whole beauty of love. Everything becomes false and forced. When they were lovers everything was beautiful because sometimes they would meet and there would be a hunger and it would need satiety. Sometimes they would have to wait for the day to pass, the lover would be coming and there would be a hunger. When there is deep hunger, love is deeply satisfied. When husbands and wives cling to each other for twenty-four hours, hang around each other like shadows, there is no hunger. Of course, there is no satiety. The whole beauty disappears. Remember, if you love a person, let the person be alone so that the hunger arises. One has to, otherwise the love will be according to the clock.

One day Mulla Nasruddin came home and found his greatest friend kissing his wife. He said, “What! I cannot believe my eyes. I have to, but why you?”

A husband cannot believe it because love becomes a duty. When love becomes a duty it is already dead; it is an outer enforcement, the inner thing is lost. Love is a hunger, not a duty. It has a satiety phase. When love is satisfied you feel absolutely blissful; everything is okay and you can bless the whole existence and be blessed by it. Everything is simply wonderful, but it has to be through hunger.
Heraclitus is saying that man is a miniature of the whole cosmos. The same is true of the whole. The whole passes through two phases. When the whole is in hunger, there is much activity and creation. Things grow, manifestation comes in, trees flower, people love, children are born; everything is a dynamic activity. Satisfied, existence moves into a satiety phase and everything disappears. No trees, earth, stars, sun; the fire is resting.
The sun is new each day.
And this is one of the most penetrating maxims of Heraclitus. The sun is new each day. Hunger is new each day. Love is new each day. Life is new each day. To say “each day” is not good. Each movement, gesture, moment, everything is new. So where does the old come from? Why do you get bored? If everything is so new and you cannot step in the same river twice and cannot see the same sunrise again; if everything is so new and fresh, why do you become dead and bored? – because you don’t live out of the inner harmony. You live out of the mind. The mind is old.
Each sun, each morning, each hunger, each satiety is new; the mind is old. The mind is the past, the mind is the accumulated memory. If you look through the mind, it gives a deadness and oldness to everything; everything looks dusty, dirty. It is because of the mind. Put aside the mind, put aside memories. If you can put aside memories, your wife is new every day because it is only because of memories that you think that you have lived with this woman thirty years and you know her well. Who knows? Nobody ever knows. We remain strangers, strangers eternally. How can you know a person? A thing can be known, not a person, because a thing can be exhausted. Now scientists say that even things cannot be known because they cannot be exhausted either.
How can you know a person? A person is freedom. Each moment he changes. If you cannot step twice in a river, how can you encounter the same person again? If rivers are changing, the consciousness, the stream of consciousness, cannot be old. If you put aside the mind, if you don’t look with old eyes, your wife becomes new, every gesture is new. There is a continuous excitement in your life, a continuous aliveness. This day you will feel hungry; that hunger is new. This day, when you eat again the food is new because nothing can be old in existence. Existence has no past. The past is part of the mind.
Existence is always in the present, new, fresh, always moving, a dynamic force, a dialectical movement; it flows like a river. If this insight happens to you, you will never be bored. Boredom is the greatest disease; it kills deeply, it is a slow poisoning. By and by, you are so bored that you become a dead weight on yourself. The whole poetry of life disappears where no flowers flower and no birds sing. You are already entombed, you have entered your grave. It is said that people die nearabout thirty and are buried nearabout seventy. Even thirty seems too long; this proverb must be from the ancient days. Now that’s not true; it’s nearabout twenty. Even that seems to be too late. Young people come to me, still young, just eighteen or twenty and say, “We feel bored.” They have become old already. You have taught them, you have already conditioned their minds. They are already dying. Before even being young they are dying.
Remember, youth is a quality of being.
If you can look at the world without the mind you will remain young forever and ever. Even in your death you will be young, excited that death is approaching. A great, exciting, adventure; a culmination. Now a door opens to the infinity. Hunger has passed, now comes satiety. Now you are moving into rest. You will be a seed and the seed will rest and sleep for many, many years. You will sprout again, open your eyes again; it is never the same.
Nothing is ever the same. Everything goes on changing. Only the mind is old and dead. To be capable of looking at life without the mind is meditation.
Enough for today.