the-hidden-harmony-10/

It would not be better
if things happened to men
just as they wish.

Unless you expect the unexpected
you will never find the truth,
for it is hard to discover
and hard to attain.

Nature loves to hide.

The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi
neither speaks nor conceals –
but gives signs.
Existence has no language and if you depend on language there can be no communication with it. It is a mystery, you cannot interpret it. If you interpret, you miss. Existence can be lived, but not thought about. It is more like poetry, less like philosophy. It is a sign, it is a door. It shows, but says nothing. That’s why you cannot approach existence through the mind. If you think about it ? and you can go on thinking and thinking about it ? you will never reach it because it’s precisely thinking that’s the barrier.
If you look, see, feel, touch you will be nearer. But don’t think. The moment thinking enters, you are thrown off the track; you live in a private world. Thinking is a private world; it belongs to you. You are enclosed, encapsulated, imprisoned within yourself. With nonthinking, you are no more, you are no longer enclosed; with nonthinking, you open, you become porous. Existence flows in you and you flow in existence.
The tendency of the mind is to interpret; before you see something you have already interpreted it. You hear me; even before I have said anything you are already thinking about it. That’s how listening becomes impossible. You will have to learn to listen. Listening means you are open, vulnerable, receptive, but you are not in any way thinking. Thinking is a positive action. Listening is passivity; you become like a valley and receive, you become like a womb and receive. If you can listen, nature speaks, but it is not a language. Nature doesn’t use words. What does nature use? Heraclitus says it uses signs. A flower is there, what is the sign? It isn’t saying anything, but can you really say it’s not saying anything? It is saying much, but it is not using any words – a wordless message.
To hear the wordless you will have to become wordless because only the same can hear the same, only the same can relate to the same. Sitting next to a flower, don’t be a man, be a flower. Sitting next to a tree, don’t be a man, be a tree. Bathing in a river, don’t be a man, be a river. Millions of signs are given to you. It is not a communication, it is a communion. Nature speaks in thousands of tongues, but not in language. It speaks through millions of directions, but you cannot consult a dictionary about it and you cannot ask a philosopher what it means. The moment you start thinking about what it means you are already on the path of going astray.
A very learned man, a critic, came to visit Picasso. He looked at Picasso’s paintings and said, “They look beautiful, but what do they mean?” There was a painting just in front of where they were standing and the critic said, “For example this painting. What does it mean?” Picasso shrugged his shoulders and replied, “Look outside the window. What does this tree mean? What’s the meaning of this bird who is singing? What is the meaning of the sun rising? If this whole exists without any meaning, why can’t my painting?”
Why do you ask what it means? ? you want to interpret it. You want to give it a linguistic pattern. You want to communicate, not commune. No, it doesn’t mean anything. It is there in its total glory. It has a meaning, but it doesn’t mean anything. The meaning is existential. Look, watch, feel, move into it; allow it to move into you, but don’t ask questions. If you want to ask questions, go to a university; you cannot enter the universe. If you want to enter the universe, don’t ask because there is no one to reply to you. You will have a totally different quality of being; only then will you be in contact with it.

It is reported that a Zen master was doing a painting in the king’s palace – a very rare phenomenon, unbelievable; the mind boggles. Again and again the king asked, “Is it complete yet?”
The Zen master would reply, “Wait a little longer, wait a little longer.”
Years passed and the king said, “It’s taking too long. Won’t you even allow me to enter the room” ? the Zen master would always lock the room and then paint – “I am getting old and becoming more and more excited about what you’re doing inside the room. Isn’t the painting ready yet?”
The master replied, “The painting is ready, but I am watching and waiting for you; you are not ready. The painting was ready long ago, but that is not the point. Unless you are ready, to whom will I show it?”
Existence is always there at every moment, waiting, ready. It is forever waiting at every turn of the road, just at the corner. It is an infinite patience, waiting, but you are not ready.
It is said that the king was ready and the painter said, “Okay, the time has come.”
They entered the room; no one else was allowed inside. The painting was really wonderful. It was difficult to say that it was a painting; it looked real. The master’s painting was of hills and valleys. They looked almost three-dimensional, as if they existed. Next to the hills was a small path leading somewhere inside. Now comes the most difficult part of the story. The king asked, “Where does this road lead?”
The master replied, “I haven’t traveled on this road yet, but wait, I will go and take a look.” He started walking on the path, disappeared beyond the hills and never came back.

This is what a mystery means ? it says many things without saying anything. If you move into nature to find where it leads, don’t stand outside it and ask because then nothing can be done; you have to move into it. If you move you will never come back because with the very movement into existence you are losing your ego, you are disappearing. You will reach the goal, but you will never come back to relate the story. The Zen master never came back. Nobody comes back. Nobody can come back because the more existential you become, the more you are lost.
Existence opens millions of doors for you, but you stand outside wanting to know something about it from the outside. There is no outside in nature. I would like to repeat these words: there is no outside in nature, everything is inside.
How can anything exist outside nature? The whole is the inner. The mind is trying the impossible; it is trying to stand outside, to watch, to see what it means. No, you have to participate. You have to move in it, become one and disperse like a cloud – whereabouts unknown.
Now listen to these words of Heraclitus:
It would not be better
if things happened to men
just as they wish.
Why? Why wouldn’t it be better? – because whatever you wish will be wrong because you are wrong! How can you wish, or desire, something to be right? To desire something right, you have to be right in the first place. Out of ignorance, whatever is desired will lead you to a deeper and deeper hell because a desire is part of you, it comes out of you. How can anything else come? All that comes will be you. That’s why, more and more, your desires create problems. The more you desire, the more problems you create. The more you achieve your desires, the more you are in difficulty. There is no going back, you have to go on and on and on. Hence the insistence of all the knowers that to meet existence, the first point is to become desireless.
Nothing is wrong in desiring; desiring in itself is beautiful – if a Buddha desires. But you desiring: how can you desire something which will lead you toward bliss? No, because desire comes out of you, it is part of you, it is a continuity. If you are wrong, the desire is going to be wrong. You will repeat it again and again; of course, in different situations, in different worlds, on different planets, in different lives, but your desires will repeat. Your desires cannot transform you. That’s why I say to people, “If you want to take sannyas, if you want to take a jump into the unknown, don’t think about it. Leave it to me!” Why the emphasis on leaving it to me? ? just so you don’t desire it. Let it be something which has not come from you because whatever comes out of you, will be you; modified, colored in different ways, but it will be you.
If you are a businessman and desire moksha, it will be a business; it cannot be otherwise. Of course, you will be looking for profit in the other world, but whatever comes out of your mind will be out of your past. A break is needed, a complete rift is needed; a rift which is unbridgeable. That is the meaning of going to a master and surrendering. What do you surrender? ? you surrender your desiring. What else can you surrender? You haven’t got anything else.
You say, “Now I won’t desire. Now you say something to me and I will do it.” You are allowing something else to enter your past. If you say, “Yes, I’m convinced. I’m ready to take sannyas,” the sannyas will be futile. If sannyas happens out of your conviction, it is meaningless. But this is the trouble. You would like to be convinced first; you would like to argue about it first. Your mind would like to have it settled.
People come to me and say, “How can we take the jump, unless the desire comes?” This is precisely the problem. You have been continuously desiring for many lives. It leads nowhere, it cannot. Can you see the point? You are wrong, you desire; the desire goes wrong. You are wrong, you believe; the belief goes wrong. Have you heard about King Midas? Whatever he touched became gold. Whatever you touch, even if it is gold, is immediately turned into dust. The question is not of a right or wrong desire, the question is of a right being or a wrong being. The question is not of a right act or a wrong act. There are no right or wrong acts, there are no right or wrong desires. There is only a desiring being. If it is ignorant, whatever comes out of it is going to be wrong. If the desiring being is not ignorant, something totally different is born out of him.
Remember, being matters and only being matters – nothing else. It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. Stop wishing! You have been living in hell because you have been wishing. Stop desiring! Stop desiring and the doors are open. Desiring brings your mind into existence. Try to understand the nature of desire. Desiring means projecting your past into the future and the future is unknown; whatever you ask will be from the past. All desiring will just repeat the past again and again. How can you desire the unknown? How can you desire anything in the future? You don’t know it; the future is the unknown, the past is the known. If you desire, it will be from the past.

Mulla Nasruddin was on his deathbed. Someone asked him, “If you were born again, would you like to make any changes or would you like to live the same life again?”
Mulla brooded for a long while, opened his eyes and replied, “One change. I’ve always wanted to part my hair in the middle; that’s the only change. I’ve always parted my hair on the right and I always wanted to part it in the middle. Otherwise, everything would be repeated as it is.”

It looks stupid, but this is how it is. If you think about it and another chance is given to you, what will you do? All the changes that you will want to make will not be more than what Mulla is asking; they will be just the parting of the hair in the middle. You would like to have another woman, but what difference would it make? You would like another profession, but what difference would it make? It will not be more than parting the hair in the middle.
You can’t ask from the past and the future is unknown. You go on asking from the past and move in a vicious circle. That circle is the world, the samsara; the coming and going, being born and dying again. You do the same again and again. Not a single basic change! There cannot be because whatever you think, you do out of the known. The known is your past. What to do? ? don’t desire. Let the future come without you desiring it. The future will come, it need not be desired. It is already coming. You need not force your projections on it. Be passive, don’t be active about it. Let it come. Don’t ask anything about it; that’s the meaning of desirelessness. It is not moving from the world, not renouncing it and going to the Himalayas; all those things are immature.
Leaving, renouncing, means not desiring; waiting without any desire. Just waiting, “Whatever happens we will be a witness to it.” If you can wait without desiring, everything will happen to you. It happens from the totality, from the whole, from God itself. If you ask, desire, it will happen, but it will happen out of you. You move within yourself, enclosed, never allowing existence to happen to you. It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.
Heraclitus says, “It is good that things don’t happen as you wish them.” That is the only possibility of your awakening. That’s why he says, “It is good.” If every desire is fulfilled, you will be completely in a coma because there will be no disturbance. You wanted riches and they are there. You wanted beautiful women and they are there. You wanted success and success is there. You wanted a ladder to reach to heaven and the ladder is there. You will be in a coma, you will be in a dream. If everything is fulfilled, you will never try to seek the truth, there will be no gap for you; only misery, dukkha, unhappiness. The hell that you create around you helps you to awaken. It shocks you toward waking.
In Hindu mythology they say that in heaven, where the gods exist, every wish is fulfilled immediately, with no time gap. In the Hindu conception of heaven, there are wish-fulfilling trees, kalpatarus. You just sit under them and wish anything and without any time gap your wish is there. Not a single moment is lost. You ask for a beautiful woman and there she is. But these gods must be living in a dream, they must be living in a drugged, stoned state.
Hindus say that from heaven there is no way toward truth. This is very beautiful. They say that if a god wishes to be liberated completely, he will have to come to earth. Why? – because in heaven there is no unhappiness, there is no misery to wake anyone up. It is a long peaceful sleep where dreams are continuously fulfilled. When every dream is fulfilled, why should you open your eyes? Even gods have to come to earth; only then can they be liberated. This is a rare conception. Christians don’t have that type of conception; their heaven is the last thing. But Hindus say that it is not the last thing. It is just a beautiful, good, very long, dream state; it can last for thousands of years, but it is a dream state. If the gods are to be liberated they have to fall back to earth. Why to earth? – because on earth there is misery, pain, anguish; only anguish is needed, only that can shock you out of your slumber.
Heraclitus is right: It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish. Something or other always goes wrong. That’s beautiful! If nothing goes wrong, if everything is as it is, is as you would like it to be, then who wants truth? Who seeks existence? Who wants freedom, total freedom, moksha? ? nobody!
Through using drugs, man is trying to be like the gods in the Hindu heaven. You take marijuana, hashish, or LSD and you are in a dream state, a beautiful dream state; you are under a wish-fulfilling tree. Drugs are against truth because truth needs an awakening. An awakening from the past, an awakening from the dreams, an awakening from your desires. To see the whole fallacy that you have created around you and to drop it. To drop it without any effort; just to see that it is wrong and to drop it.
Remember, if you make so much effort to drop it, the very effort makes you ugly. Really, understanding needs no effort. You understand a thing, you see the reality and drop it. Can’t you see that you are miserable because of your desires? Is it something to be argued, something to be convinced of? Can’t you see? It is so clear that you have created a hell out of desires; then why make an effort? In a sheer, intense moment of understanding, why not drop it immediately? If you can drop it immediately, you will have a beauty, a grace.
This grace you will not find in so-called monks. All over the world, you will not find this grace in Catholic, Hindu, Jaina monks because they are trying to drop it. The very effort to drop it shows that they are still clinging; otherwise, why make any effort? They would like to stop desiring, but this is again a desiring. That’s why there is effort. They cling and they would like to drop it. They haven’t come to a moment of understanding, a moment of truth.
My whole effort with you is to bring you to a moment of understanding where effort is useless. The understanding is so intense, so fiery, that everything simply burns. You see and your very seeing becomes the dropping.
This is possible; it has happened to me, it can happen to you. I am in no way exceptional, just an ordinary man. If it happens to an ordinary man like me, why not to you? Just make an intense search toward understanding. Understanding is transformation, mutation, a revelation. Understanding liberates.
Listen to these words:
It would not be better
if things happened to men
just as they wish.

Unless you expect the unexpected
you will never find the truth,
for it is hard to discover
and hard to attain.
Let these words enter your heart: Unless you expect the unexpected, you will never find the truth… Truth cannot be your expectation. Whatever you expect will be a lie. Whatever you expect will be a projection. Whatever you expect will be a part of your mind. No, truth cannot be expected. It takes you unawares. In fact, it comes when you were not even waiting for it. It is a sudden enlightenment.
Expectation means your known projecting itself into the future, into the unknown. That’s why I say that if you are a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or a Jaina, you will miss because what does it mean to be a Christian? ? it means a Christian expectation. It means a god seen through Christian eyes. It means a conception, a philosophy. What does it mean to be a Hindu? ? it means a system of belief. It gives an expectation. You expect a god, you expect the truth. The truth will be like this, the god will be like this; the face, the figure, the form, the name you expect.
Your expectation is the barrier because God is the unexpected, the truth is the unexpected. It has never been theorized about, it has never been brought into language; it cannot be forced into words. Nobody has ever been able to and nobody ever will. It remains the unexpected. It is a stranger. Whenever God knocks at your door, you will not find a familiar face, no. It is the unfamiliar, the stranger. You never thought about it, you never heard about it, you never read about it. Just the stranger. If you cannot accept the stranger and ask for the familiar ? truth is not for you.
Truth is a stranger.
It comes without giving any intimation that it is coming. It comes when you are not expecting, not waiting for it. Remember this, people meditate and meditate and meditate – that’s a must – but truth never happens in meditation. It happens outside. But meditation helps; it makes you alert, it makes you watchful, it makes you more aware and conscious. Suddenly somewhere, it happens in such unexpected moments, you cannot believe why God chooses such unexpected moments.
A nun is carrying water; the bamboo breaks, the earthen pot falls on the ground and the water runs out ? suddenly she is awakened. What happened? For forty, fifty years she was meditating and it never knocked. Meditation means you are expecting, you are watching out for something that is going to happen. Your mind is there, very, very, very subtly working; you may not even be able to detect where it is. You may think that now everything is silent, no thoughts, but this is also a thought. You feel absolute silence, but even this feeling that now there is absolute silence, now soon the door is going to open; this is a thought. When you become absolutely silent, even the thought that I am silent is not there. If it is there, that means you mustn’t be meditating. This is the paradox: meditate as much as you can to bring a moment of a non-meditative meditation.
That happened to that nun. Carrying water, she was not worried about God; the bamboo was old and she was worried about the bamboo. She was holding it this way and that way, worried that it may break any moment. It was an earthen pot and it would break! She wasn’t at all at the door and the door was open because she had meditated for forty years. So the door was open and she was not there at all. Suddenly the bamboo breaks, the pot falls, breaks and the water runs out. It is a shock! For a moment even this worry dissolves. Now whatever was going to happen has happened. Now she is in a non-meditative moment – God is there. It happened.
It has always happened that way; in such moments one never expects it. When you expect, you miss because you are there in your expectation. When you don’t expect it, it happens because you are not there, nobody is there. When your house is totally empty, so empty that you are not even aware that, “I am empty.” That will be enough of a disturbance and when even emptiness is thrown out, he comes.
Unless you expect the unexpected… Drop all your notions about God. All notions are false. You may have heard Hindus say that Christian notions are false and Christians say that Hindu notions are false. Jainas say that Christians and Hindus are false, Buddhists say Jainas, Hindus, Christians are false. I say that all notions are false. Not that my notion is right – no! Notion as such is false because it makes a theory out of the unknown, which is not possible. Without any exception, all theories are false. They are absolutely, categorically false – mine included ? because the unexpected remains the unexpected.
Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find the truth, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain. In fact, it is not hard to attain and not hard to discover. It is because of you that it is hard because how to put this mind aside? The mind is subtle; even when you put it aside it remains. The mind says, “Okay, I will not be here,” but this is also the mind. The mind says, “Now, let God knock at the door. I am not,” but this is also the mind. The mind says, “I will meditate; I will drop all thoughts.” And then says, “Look! I have dropped all thoughts. Look! I am empty.” This is also the mind and this is the problem; whatever you do the mind stands there.
See the point; no effort will help. Just see the point that the mind exists through claims. See the point! Why do I say, “See the point?” – because if you see the point there is no claim. If you don’t see the point, the mind can claim, “I am here without any claim.” See the point! Emptiness is needed, not the claim, “I am empty.” Awareness is needed, not the claim, “I am awareness.” Wherever the “I” comes in, you have entered the dark night of the mind. When the “I” is not there, it is light, everything is clear; a clarity, a perception, infinite. You can see far and wide, you can see the whole.
The only thing that can be done is to watch the trickiness of the mind. Don’t try to do the opposite. For example, your mind is filled with thoughts. Don’t try to fight with them because this fighter is the mind. If you fight, the mind will claim the opposite. He will say, “Look! I have dropped all thoughts. Now, where is your God? Where is enlightenment?”
Don’t do the opposite, don’t create a fight because with the fight comes the claim. Simply watch and relax. Simply watch and enjoy the trickiness of the mind. Just enjoy it; how it comes again and again. So beautiful, deceptive, elusive. Hindus have always said that it is just like the tail of the dog; you can keep it straight for twelve years or so, but the moment you stop the effort, it is crooked again.

One day, a small child was talking to me and said, “We are trying so hard to straighten out a friend because he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.” Some days later he said, “After seven days of trying, he has yielded and said, ‘Okay, I believe.’” The next day the boy came again and said, “Now we need even more effort.”
So I asked, “What’s the matter? Just the other day you said you had straightened him out. Why do you need more effort?”
He replied, “He is crooked again. We straightened him out, but he has become crooked again and again.”

This is the nature of the mind. You cannot do anything about it because this is the nature of the mind. Understand it, that’s all. Understanding is enough. Otherwise it is a hard thing to attain. You can go on and on and the mind will go with you like a shadow; whatever you claim will be the mind’s claim. That’s why all the knowers have said, “Those who claim that they have known, have not known. Those who say that they have achieved, have not achieved.” Why? – because the very claim is dangerous.
Unless you expect the unexpected
you will never find the truth,
for it is hard to discover
and hard to attain.

Nature loves to hide.
It is a game of hide-and-seek. It is beautiful as it is. Nature is not on the surface, it is hidden in the center. Nature is like the roots of the trees, deep underground; the most essential is hidden. Never think that the tree is the most essential. The tree is just the periphery where the flowers, leaves, and fruits appear; it is the periphery. The real tree exists underground in the dark. It is hidden in the dark womb of the earth. You can cut down the tree and a new one will come. Cut the roots and everything disappears.
You are not on the surface of your skin; that is the periphery. You are deep, hidden underground. God is not on the surface. Science goes on learning more and more about the surface, learning more and more about the skin. However deep science goes, it never really goes that deep because it learns from the outside. You can only learn about the skin from the outside. The real is hidden on the inside, in the innermost shrine. It is hidden in the innermost shrine of you also. You live on the periphery, you miss it. Existence has a center; that center is hidden.
Nature loves to hide. Why? Why does nature love to hide? – because it is a game. You must have played hide-and-seek when you were young. For Heraclitus, existence is a game; it is a leela, a play. It hides and it is beautiful; you have to discover it. With the very effort to discover, you grow.
There are two types of people. The first type I call non-discoverers; they remain on the periphery. The second type I call discoverers; they move toward the center. People who live on the periphery are the worldly people. The market, politics, success, achievement is the periphery. They are non-discoverers, non-adventurers. Even if they go to the moon, it is not an adventure because they remain on the periphery. The real adventure is religious. It is to move to the very center of being. First you have to move in yourself because you are a miniature world. You move to your center and from that center you have the first glimpse of how things are.
The real is hidden.
On the periphery are waves, on the periphery are dreams; being on the periphery is just a show. Deep inside, in the innermost core of existence, is the hidden one. That’s what Heraclitus calls, “the hidden harmony.”
Move toward the being, the center, the very ground. Always seek the roots. Don’t be befooled by the foliage. But you are befooled by the foliage. If a woman is beautiful on the surface, you fall in love; you have fallen in love with the foliage. But the woman may not be beautiful inside; she may be absolutely ugly. You are trapped. There is an inner grace when the light burns inside; when the light comes to the periphery, you cannot see from where it is coming. You can see a beautiful woman and yet ugly. You can see just the opposite happening: an ugly woman and yet beautiful. When an ugly woman is beautiful, you cannot find the source, you cannot find where it is coming from because on the surface the skin, structure, physiology, is not attractive, but something inner attracts you. When it happens that the woman is beautiful on the surface and also in the inner being, it is very mysterious. Charisma happens. Sometimes you feel a charisma around a particular person. Charisma means that now there is some hidden harmony between the surface and the center; the personality has a magnetism, something of the divine.
This meeting of the periphery with the center is a hidden harmony.
Nature loves to hide. Why? – because only through hiding can the play go on and on; otherwise, the play will stop. The game continues, it is an eternal game.
Remember, even if you have found, the game continues, but the game has a different quality. Never think for a moment that when you have found the innermost core, the game stops. No, the game continues. Now, knowingly, many times you move away from the hidden center; knowingly you give nature a chance to hide again, but now it is knowingly. It is just like two children playing and one knows where the other is hiding. He runs around and around everywhere, searching, just to give the game a quality. He knows where you are hiding, he can simply go and catch you, but he will go around and around.
Buddhas continue to play, but the game changes. Now they know there is no anxiety. Now there is no desire, nothing to be achieved. Now it is a simple game. There is no goal to it; it continues.
So there are two possibilities. One is an ignorant game; that is what is happening to you. You take the game very seriously because you are ignorant. Seriousness becomes a disease. You become sad about it. People come to me. They are very serious and feel frustrated because when they meditate they are not attaining anything. I say, “Don’t be frustrated because that is the whole point to be understood – it is a game! There is no hurry to finish it. It is not a business. Let it go on as long as possible. Why be in such a hurry? Why be so tense? There is no hurry; infinity and eternal time is there. You will always be there and the game will always be there; it has always been there and will always be there.”
Take it easily! Take it easy! Any moment it can be discovered; it is always by the side. Why be in such a hurry? Relax. If you can relax, you reach the center sooner. If you are in a hurry, you remain on the surface because a hurried, tense state of mind cannot move to the deeper realms of being. Only patience helps you to settle to the bottom, to the very bottom. Nature loves to hide. It is beautiful that nature loves to hide. Nature is not an exhibitionist. The expression of the foliage is just a way to hide. God is hiding in a flower, in a subtle way. If you simply see the flower, you miss.
The English poet, Tennyson, has said and said absolutely rightly, “If I can understand a flower in its totality, I will understand God.” He is right. If you can understand a pebble on the shore in its totality, you will understand God because these are all hiding places. A flower is a hiding place; a pebble is also a hiding place. He is hiding everywhere, in millions of forms. Wherever you are, he is there in all forms around you. Any form can become a door. Once you have the readiness to enter, once you are not expecting it, once you are not desiring it, once you are not asking for something, projecting something ? suddenly the door is open.
The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi
neither speaks nor conceals –
but gives signs.
At Delphi there is an old Greek shrine and people used to go there to ask a question. The oracle never said anything, it simply gave signs. Heraclitus is using that as a parable. He says, “God, the total, the whole, never speaks in terms of yes or no; he simply gives signs.” He is poetic. He gives you symbols. Don’t try to interpret them. If you interpret, you will miss. Just watch and let the sign go deeper in you and be imprinted on the heart. Don’t try to find the meaning immediately because who will find the meaning? If you find the meaning, it will be your meaning. Just let the sign, the symbol, be imprinted on your heart and someday life will reveal the meaning. You simply live with it, you simply let it be there.
For example, you come to me and ask, “How is my meditation going?” You ask me, I smile; I have given you a sign. Now what will you do about it? ? you can interpret it. That is the first tendency of the mind. You will think, “Okay, he smiles; that means I am achieving something. He says ‘Yes’ so everything is okay. I am on the right path.” Your ego feels fulfilled. This will be the interpretation if you are in a positive mood. If you are in a negative mood, you will think, “He smiles; he doesn’t say ‘Yes.’ He was polite. I am going nowhere.”
Either way, you missed because if there was a yes to be said, I would have said it. I would not have put you in so much trouble finding the interpretation. If there was a yes to be said, I would have said it. If there was a no to be said, I would have said it. But I have simply smiled. I have neither said yes nor no. In fact, I haven’t said anything; I have given you a sign. Don’t interpret it. Let this smile move deeper in your heart. Let this smile be there. Remember it sometimes and put it back in your heart. Let it dissolve in you, don’t try to find the meaning; this will help your meditation. Suddenly, one day, in a deep meditative state, you will start smiling the same way I smiled because that moment will be the moment of understanding. You laugh because you will know what the meaning was.
Life is subtle. Yes and no cannot be used. Life is so subtle that if you say yes you falsify it, if you say no you falsify it. Language is very poor. It knows only two things: yes or no. Life is very rich; it knows infinite postures, positions, infinite gradations between yes and no. It is a spectrum of many, many millions of colors. Yes and no are very poor; you say nothing. Yes and no means you have divided life into black and white; life has millions of colors, it is a rainbow.
In fact black and white are not colors. All colors exist, except black and white. You must understand this; black is the absence of all colors, it is not a color. When there is no color present, the emptiness is blackness. It is not a color in itself. That’s why you don’t find black in nature. It is not much; it is an absence. White is not a color either, it is a mixture of all colors. If you mix all the colors it becomes white. It is not a color. White is one pole, black is the other. The presence of all colors is white, the absence of all colors is black. Between these two polarities real colors exist: green, red, yellow and all the shades of them, millions of shades.
When I smile, I am not saying black or white, yes or no. I am giving you a color in the spectrum, a real color. Don’t try to interpret it because if you do, you will say that it is either black or white and it is neither. It is somewhere in between and it is so subtle that words cannot express it. If words could express it, I would have given you a word. I wouldn’t unnecessarily put you in trouble.
You come to me and say something and I don’t answer. Sometimes you come to see me and I don’t even ask; I simply forget about you. I ask others and simply drop you out of the count. You will interpret it. Why? ? don’t interpret. Just let this gesture be deep in you. Someday, in a very, very meditative mood, the meaning will flower. I am sowing seeds in you, not giving you words and theories.
When I am gone, please remember me as a poet, not as a philosopher. Poetry has to be understood in a different way; you have to love poetry, not interpret it. You have to repeat the poetry many times so it mixes with your blood, your bones, with your very marrow. You have to chant poetry many times so that you can feel all the nuances and subtle shades of it. You have to simply sit and let the poetry move within you so it becomes a live force. You digest it and forget about it; it moves deeper and deeper and deeper and changes you.
Let me be remembered as a poet. Of course, I am not writing poetry in words. I am writing poetry in a more alive medium – in you. That’s what the whole of existence is doing.
Heraclitus says: The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals – but gives signs. A sign is not to be interpreted. A sign is to be lived through. The temptation of your mind is to interpret. Don’t be tempted by the mind. Just say to it, “This is not your field, this is not for you. You play with other things. Let this go deeper in my being.” That’s what I’m doing while I’m talking to you.
I am not talking to your minds; I am talking to you as beings, as luminous beings; as gods incarnate, as possibilities, as infinite potentialities. I am talking to your future, not to your past. Your past is rubbish, throw it away! Don’t carry it. I am talking to your future; the unexpected, the unknown. By and by, you will become capable of listening to this music; the music of the unknown, the music in which all the opposites disappear and a hidden harmony arises.
Yes, nature loves to hide because nature is a mystery. It is not a question, it is not a puzzle to be solved. It is a mystery to be lived, enjoyed, celebrated.
Enough for today.