the-hidden-harmony-11/

Into the same rivers we step and do not step.
You cannot step twice in the same river.

Everything flows and nothing abides.
Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool.
The moist dries, the parched becomes moist.

It is by disease that health is pleasant;
by evil that good is pleasant,
by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.

It is one and the same thing to be living or dead,
awake or asleep, young or old.
The former aspect in each case becomes the latter,
and the latter again the former,
by sudden unexpected reversal.

It throws apart
and then brings together again.

All things come in their due seasons.
Into the same rivers we step and do not step.
Remember, the appearance and only the appearance remains the same. Otherwise, everything changes and flows. Here is the basic difference between the ordinary religious and the really religious conception. Hindus say, “That which changes is the appearance, the maya; that which never changes, is permanent, is brahman.” Heraclitus says just the opposite. He says, “That which appears permanent is the appearance, the maya and that which changes is the brahman.” Buddha’s understanding is the same. He says, “Change is the only permanence, the only eternal phenomenon. Only change abides, nothing else.” My feeling is the same.
In search of a permanent truth you are searching for nothing but your own ego. In search of a permanent God, what are you seeking? ? you are seeking permanence in some way or other. You would like to abide so that if this world changes there is nothing to worry about. Your mind says, “Seek the divine and there will be no change and you will live forever and ever.”
The ordinary religious conception – Hindu, Jewish or Christian – is basically an ego trip. Why do you say that change is appearance? – because you are afraid of change. Change looks like death. You would like something absolutely permanent to stand upon. You would like a house that will be always and always there. You cannot find a house that abides in this world. You cannot find any relationship that abides in this world. You project a relationship with God because God abides and with God you will abide. This search, this desire, this seeking to abide forever ? this is the problem! Why do you want to be? Why not, not be? Why are you so afraid of not being? If you are afraid of nonbeing, nothingness, emptiness, death, you cannot know truth. One knows the true when one is ready to drop oneself utterly and totally.
That’s why Buddha says, “There is no soul. You are not a self, not an atma. You are an anatta, a no-self. There is nothing permanent in you, nothing substantial; you are a flow, a river.” Why does Buddha insist on a no-self? ? he insists because if you accept nonbeing, if you accept nothingness, there is no fear of death and you can drop yourself completely. When you drop yourself completely, the vision arises; you are capable of knowing. You cannot know with your ego. Only in an egolessness, in a deep abyss, in the absence of the ego, does the perception happen; you become a mirror. With the ego you will always interpret, you cannot know the truth. With the ego you will always be there interpreting in subtle ways and your interpretation is not the truth. You are the medium of all falsification. Through you everything becomes false. When you are not there, the true reflects.
Somehow, you have to come to an understanding; the understanding of the no-self, of a changeless flux. No substance as such; just a river flowing and flowing. You are a mirror, a clarity. There is nobody to disturb, to interpret and nobody to distract. Existence mirrors in you as it is. That mirroring of existence as it is, is the truth.
Another thing; if you want to abide forever, you have not lived the moment. One who has lived his life truly, authentically, one who has enjoyed it, is always ready to die, is always ready to leave. One who has not enjoyed and celebrated, one who has not lived the moment, the life, is always afraid to leave because he thinks that the time has come to leave and he is yet unfulfilled. The fear of death is not the fear of death, it is a fear of remaining unfulfilled. You are going to die and you couldn’t experience anything at all through life; no maturity, no growth, no flowering. Empty-handed you came, empty-handed you are going. This is the fear!
One who has lived is always ready to die. His readiness is not a forced attitude. His readiness is just like a flower. When the flower has flowered and has sent its perfume to the infinite corners of existence; when it has enjoyed the moment, lived it, danced through the breeze, risen against the wind, looked at the sky, watched the sunrise, lived it. A fulfillment comes by the evening and the flower is ready to drop to the earth, to go back, to rest. It is always beautiful; when you have lived, rest is beautiful. It is the thing! The flower simply drops to the earth and goes to sleep. There is no tension, no anguish, no crying, no effort to cling.
You cling to life because your life is unfulfilled. You have not risen against a strong wind. You have not known the morning and the evening has come. You have never been young and old age is knocking at the door. You never loved and death is coming. This unfulfilled state and the coming of death creates the fear.
Buddha says, “If you have lived you will always be ready to die.” That readiness will not be something forced upon you. It will be the thing, it will be a natural thing. As you are born, you die. As you come, you go. This is the wheel of existence. You lived the being part, now you will live the nonbeing part. You existed, now you will not exist. You rose, you manifested, now you will move into the unmanifested. You were visible, embodied, now you will move without the body to the invisible. You had your day; now you will take rest in the night. What is wrong in it?
The search for the permanent shows that you remain unfulfilled. The search to have a permanent self is a clinging. You know that death is there, so what to do? The body will disintegrate, disappear; now you have hopes that some permanent self will be there which will go on and on and on. Remember, those who are afraid always believe in the eternal soul.
Look at this country; everyone believes that the soul is eternal, but you cannot find a more cowardly country in the world. It is not accidental. Why are Indians so cowardly? In fact, if they know that the soul is never going to die they should be the bravest because death doesn’t exist! They go on talking about the deathless and if you watch their life they are more afraid of death than anyone else. Otherwise, how can you explain the one thousand years of slavery in this country? Very small races; England is no bigger than a small province of India. Only three crore people were able to dominate a country of fifty crore. It seems simply impossible. How did it happen? – it happened because the country is cowardly. They cannot fight, they are afraid of death. They talk about the deathless. This is not accidental, there is a reasoning behind it.
Whenever someone talks about the deathless too much, it means he is afraid of death, he is a coward. India has not lived because of the priests. India has not lived life because of the priests. They have been teaching people to renounce, so everyone is ready to renounce before he has lived; then the fear comes in. If you have lived, lived to your total capacity, to the optimum, the fear of death disappears. Only then does the fear of death disappear, never before it. If you renounce life, if you don’t love, if you don’t eat, if you don’t enjoy and dance; if you simply renounce and condemn and say, “This is all materialistic. I am against it.” Who is this “I” who says that I am against it? ? this is the ego.
You cannot find greater egoists than so-called spiritualists. They are always condemning the materialist. They are always saying, “What! You are wasting your life. Your religion is eat, drink and be merry. You are a burden on the earth. You have to be thrown into hell.” Who is condemning? What is wrong in eating, drinking and being merry? What is wrong in it? That is the first part of life. It should be so. You should eat, drink and be merry. You should celebrate. Only then, when you have celebrated to the optimum, are you ready to go, ready to leave with no grudge, with no complaint. You lived the day, now the night has come. The day was so beautiful. You rose with the waves in the sky and did whatever the moment demanded; then the rest and going back to the earth is beautiful.
India has been renouncing and a religion that renounces is false. A religion that makes you capable of celebrating to the optimum is the true religion. This is the beauty. If you live life, a renunciation comes automatically. It happens; that is the nature. If you eat well, satiety comes. If you drink well, thirst disappears. If you lived well, clinging to life disappears. It has to be so. This is the law, the logos. If you have not lived well, you will always cling and you will always dream about how to live. If you have renounced this life you have to project another one. You need a permanent self, otherwise what will you do? You missed this life and there is no other life? You need a permanent self. You have to believe and console yourself that okay, the body dies, but the self never dies.
If you listen to Buddha, Heraclitus and to me, the self dies even before the body does because the self is of a more dreamy stuff than the body. The body is more substantial; it takes at least seventy years to die and the self dies every moment. In the morning, watch, you have one self, by the afternoon another. In the morning you were happy, it was a different self; by the afternoon it has gone, already gone. Yes, Heraclitus is right: Into the same rivers we step and do not step. It simply appears that in the afternoon you are the same self. It simply appears. Where is the self in the morning when you were so happy and sang with the birds and danced with the rising sun? Where is that self? By the afternoon you are already sad; the evening has already descended on you. In the middle of the afternoon, it has already become night; you are sad. Is this the same self? When you hate and when you love, do you think it is the same self? When you are depressed and when you reach a peak of joy, is this the same self? ? it is not, it simply appears to be. It appears the same, just like if you go to the Ganges; it appears the same Ganges in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, but it is not. It is constantly flowing.
Heraclitus loves the symbol of the river, Buddha loves the symbol of the flame. That symbol of the flame is even more subtle. The flame appears to be the same, but it is not. Every moment it is disappearing; the old is going and the new is coming. Buddha says that in the evening you light a candle and in the morning you blow it out, but never think that it is the same candle. It cannot be. The whole night it was burning, burning, burning. The whole night the flame disappeared and disappeared and disappeared and a new flame was constantly being supplied. The difference between the two flames – the old going out and the new coming in, the gap – is so subtle that you cannot see it.
Buddha says, “The self that is born will not die. It has died already. The man you were born as and the man you will be when you die are not the same. It is the same continuum, but not the same thing.” The flame in the evening and the flame in the morning constitute the same continuum, the same series of flames, but not the same self. The Ganges looks the same; it is not the same. Everything is changing; the nature of reality is change.
Permanence is illusion; this is a deeper insight than the Hindus’. This is the deepest ever attained because the mind would like to have a permanent home, to have a permanent standing ground, to have permanent roots. Permanence is false; it appears because of the sameness of things. Your face remains the same in the evening and the morning, so we think you are the same person. You were here yesterday and the day before yesterday; your face appears to be the same, but are you the same? When you came to see me this morning you were different, you have already changed. When you leave you will not be the same person because you listened to me and something else has entered in you. Your self has already changed; new rivers falling into the Ganges, new rivulets, new streams. I have fallen into you. How can you be the same again? There is no way. You will never be the same. Every moment millions of streams are falling into your consciousness. You walk on the roadside and a flower smiles; the flower is changing you. A cold breeze comes and gives you a cool bath; the breeze is changing you. The sun rises and you feel a warmth; the sun is changing you. Every moment, everything is changing; there is no permanent thing.
What will happen if you understand this? ? if you can understand this, this becomes the greatest situation in which to drop the ego. When everything is changing, why cling? Even with your clinging you cannot make change stop. You cannot stop the river. It flows. Stopping is not possible and because we like to stop things, to make them permanent, we create a hell around us. Nothing can be stopped. I love you this morning; who knows what will happen tomorrow morning? You would like the love to stop ? as it was this morning, make it tomorrow too. If you cling and stop, you are dead. Tomorrow morning no one knows – the unknown, the unexpected.
You can only expect if things are permanent. If nothing is permanent, expectation drops. When there is no expectation because things are moving and moving, how can you be frustrated? If you expect, there is frustration. If you don’t expect, there is no frustration. You expect because you think that things are permanent. Nothing is permanent. Into the same rivers we step and do not step. Just the appearance is the same – of the river and of you also.
You cannot step twice in the same river.
You cannot because the river will never be the same again. You also will never be the same again. That’s why each moment is unique, incomparable. It has never been before and will never be again. This is beautiful. It is not a repetition, it is absolutely fresh. You will miss this freshness if you have a clinging, possessive mind and are seeking something permanent. Just try to think: if you have a permanent self, that self will be like a rock. Even rocks change. But the self cannot be like a flower. If you have a permanent self and if things have a permanent self, a substratum, the whole existence will be a boredom; it cannot be a celebration. Celebration is possible if each moment brings you something new.
If each moment brings you something from the unknown, if each moment is a penetration of the unknown into the known, then life is an excitement, without expectation. Life is a constant movement into the unknown. Nothing can frustrate you, because in the first place, you never expected that anything was going to be the same forever.
Why is there so much frustration in the world? – because everybody is expecting permanence. Permanence is not the nature of things. Nothing can be done about it. You have to grow and drop the idea of permanence. You have to grow and become a flow. Don’t be like solid rocks; be like fragile flowers. Your brahman is just a solid rock. The absolute of Hegel and Shankara is a solid rock. But the nirvana of Buddha, the understanding of Heraclitus, is like a fragile flower, changing. Enjoy it while it lasts and don’t ask for more.
You are in love; celebrate while it is there! Don’t start making arrangements so that it will always be there; otherwise in making the arrangements you will miss the moment. By the time the arrangements are ready, the flower is dead. By the time you are ready to enjoy, the moment has already gone. Nobody can bring it back, there is no going back. The river is onward and onward flowing and you are being thrown to new shores every moment.
This is the problem, the anxiety, the anguish of man; that the mind thinks of the shores that are no more. The mind wants to project the shores that are no more into the future and every moment the river is reaching to unknown, unexpected, new shores. This is beautiful. If your wish is fulfilled, you will make your whole life ugly.
Just think, Hindus, Jainas, have a conception of moksha; a state of consciousness where nothing changes. Just think for a moment: nothing changes and people who have become enlightened, according to Jainas and Hindus, will remain in that absolutely permanent moksha, with nothing changing, nothing at all. That will be absolute boredom. You cannot improve on it. That will be absolute. You cannot think of a more boring situation. God sitting there and you sitting there and nothing changing, even nothing to say. One moment will look like eternity; so boring. No, for Heraclitus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, the soul of existence is change. Change beautifies everything.
You would like a woman to always remain young and the same. If it really happens you will be bored. If it really happens that a young woman, by some biological device, or some trick of science can remain young ? it is possible! Man is so foolish that sooner or later it will be possible that you may find some biological trick, inject some hormones in the body and a person remains at the same age. A girl of twenty remains twenty and twenty and twenty. Can you love this girl? It will be a plastic girl. It will remain the same, but there will be no changing seasons: no summer, winter, spring, fall. The woman will be dead! You cannot love such a woman; it will be a nightmare. You will want to escape from her to the far corners of the world.
Seasons are beautiful and through seasons every moment becomes new. Every moment a new mood, a new nuance of being; every moment new eyes and a new face. Who has told you that an old woman is ugly? The old woman will be ugly if she is still trying to look young; then she will be ugly. Her face painted with lipstick and this and that, she will be ugly. But if an old woman accepts old age as natural, as it should be, you cannot find a more beautiful face than an old wrinkled face. Wrinkled through many seasons, seasoned; many experiences, mature, grown-up.
An old person becomes beautiful if he has lived life. This same man is ugly if he hasn’t lived and wants to cling to some past moment which is no longer there. Youth has passed and he is still trying to show that he is young. But when sex has passed ? and should have passed if you have lived ? and you are still seeking things which are good in their season, which are beautiful in certain moments of life… But an old man falling in love is ridiculous! He is as ridiculous as a young man not falling in love; out of season, out of step with life.
That’s why the phrase “dirty old man” is used. The saying is good. Whenever an old man thinks about sex, it is dirty; it shows that he has not grown. Sex was good at its own stage, but an old man should now be getting ready to leave, should now be ready to die, should now be making arrangements because soon his ship will be ready and he will be leaving for the unknown shore. He should make arrangements for it now and he is behaving like a young man or a child. Nothing is uglier than pretending to be something which has passed ? living in the past. He is mad!
Everything is beautiful at its moment and everything has a moment for it. Never be out of step. That’s what I call being religious – never to be out of step. Be true to the moment; when young, be young; when old, be old. Don’t get mixed up, otherwise you will be in a mess and being in a mess is ugly. There is no need to do anything on your part; you simply have to follow nature. Whatever you do goes wrong. Doing itself is wrong ? just simply flowing.
Into the same rivers we step and do not step. You cannot step twice in the same river. If you are old, you cannot be young again. If you are a youth, you cannot be a child again. If you are a youth and trying to be a child, you are retarded. That shows only one thing; that when you were a child you missed it; hence the feeling is still hanging around. Even old people desire their childhood again. They miss their whole life because they missed the first step. When they were children they must have been thinking of becoming young men and women, becoming big, powerful; being like daddy, being like all the big people around. When they were children, they must have thought about it. They missed their childhood and in the end they are asking for their childhood again. They speak and write poetry stating that their childhood was beautiful, it was a paradise.
These people have missed. When you miss paradise you talk about it. When you have lived it, there is nothing to say about it. If you lived your childhood paradise, your youth will be a beautiful phenomenon. It will be based on the paradise that you lived in your childhood. It will have a grace, a beauty. When you have lived your youth, your old age becomes the peak, the Gourishankar, the Everest. White hair on an old head is just like snow on a great peak. With everything gone and everything changed, all rivers tasted, all shores known, you can rest. For the first time there is no restlessness. You can be yourself. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do. You can relax!
If an old man cannot relax, that means he has not lived life. If you cannot relax, how can you die? Those who cannot die create the desire for a permanent self, for a permanent God. Know well: only change is God. Change is the only permanence in the world. And only change is eternal. Everything else changes except change, only change is the exception; otherwise, everything is changing.
Everything flows and nothing abides.
Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
You should be ready! This is what I call meditation; you should be ready. When something goes, you should be ready. You should let it go. You should not complain, you should not create a scene. When something goes, it goes.
You loved a woman, you loved a man and the moment comes to part. This moment shows the real man. If you complain, are reluctant, not willing, angry, violent, destructive, then you have not loved that person at all. If you have loved that person, parting will be a beautiful phenomenon. You will be grateful. If you loved the person and the time has come to part, you can say good-bye with your total heart. You will be grateful. But you never loved. You were thinking about it, you were doing everything, but never loving. Now the parting moment has come and you cannot give a beautiful good-bye because you realize that you missed the point, you missed the time; you never loved and this man, this woman, is leaving. You become angry, violent, aggressive.
The parting moment shows everything because it is the culmination. You then complain about this woman for your whole life, claiming that she destroyed your life. You go on and on complaining, but always carrying a wound. A love should make you flower, but as I see it happening all over the world, all around ? it always gives you a wound.
While someone is with you, love, because nobody knows the next step, when the parting comes. If you really love a person, you will part beautifully. If you loved life, you will part with life beautifully. You will be thankful. Your last words, leaving this shore to the other, will be of gratitude. Life gave you so much and so many experiences. Life made you whatever you are. There were miseries, but blessings also. There was suffering, but happiness also. If you have lived both, you will know that the suffering exists to make you blissful. The night exists to give you a new day. It is a gestalt because bliss cannot exist without suffering, hence suffering exists.
You will be grateful, not only to the blissful moments but to the moments of suffering because without them the blissful moments cannot exist. You will be grateful to life in its totality. There will be no choice because a man who has passed through life and grown and has known life in its suffering, in its bliss, will come to know what Heraclitus says: “God is winter and summer, life and death, day and night, suffering and bliss!”
You will then not say that suffering is wrong. If someone says that suffering is wrong, he has not grown. You will not say that you would only like the blissful moments and not like the suffering ones. If you do, you are childish, you are juvenile. You are asking for the impossible. You are asking for the hills, the peaks, without the valleys. You are simply stupid. It is not possible; it is not in the nature of things. The valley has to exist with the peak. The greater the peak, the deeper the valley. One who understands this is happy with both.
There are moments when you would like to come down to the valley from the peak because the valley gives you a rest. The peak is good; it is excitement, it is a climax. After the excitement and climax one feels tired; the valley is there – to move into the darkness of the valley, to rest and be completely forgotten, as if you don’t exist. Suffering and bliss are both beautiful. If someone says, “I choose only bliss and I don’t choose suffering,” he is juvenile, he has still not known what reality is.
Everything flows and nothing abides.
Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.

Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool.
The moist dries, the parched becomes moist.

It is by disease that health is pleasant;
by evil that good is pleasant;
by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.
Don’t choose! If you do you will fall in the trap. Remain choiceless and let life flow in its totality. Half is not possible. That is the absurdity, but the mind clings. It wants half. You would like to be loved, you wouldn’t like to be hated, but lovers also hate. With love, hate enters. If the lover cannot hate, he cannot love. Love means coming together, hate means going away. It is a rhythm. You come together – a peak; you part and move to your own individualities. This is what the moment of hate means. This creates you again, it makes you ready to come together again. Life is a rhythm. It is just a centrifugal and centripetal rhythm. Everything falls apart and comes together, falls apart and comes together.
It happened…

In a Mohammedan country, a king was in love with a woman. The woman was in love with someone else; she was in love with a slave, a slave of the king himself. This was very difficult for the king to understand; that the woman doesn’t pay any attention to him and he is the king. And she is after a slave who is nothing! The king could kill the man immediately, he is just like dirt! But this is how it happens. Life is mysterious. You cannot be mathematical about it. Nobody knows. You may be a king, but you cannot force love. He may be a slave, but love will make a king out of him. Nobody knows. Life is mysterious. It is not arithmetical, it is not economics.
The king tried and tried, but the more he tried the more he failed. He became very, very angry. He was really in love with the woman so he was afraid to kill the slave. He could have killed him; just a word was enough. He was afraid the woman might be hurt. He really loved the woman, so this became more problematic. What to do? She may be hurt, she may commit suicide ? she was so mad. So he asked a wise man. That wise man must have been like a Heraclitus. All wise men are like Heraclitus; Heraclitus is the superb wise man. The wise man said, “What you have been doing is wrong.” The king had been trying to keep them separate in every way possible. He continued, “This is wrong. The more you keep them apart, the more they will want to be together. Keep them together and soon they’ll be finished. Keep them together in such a way that they cannot separate.”
The king said, “How do I do that?”
The wise man replied, “Bring both of them together; chain them, bind them together and force them to make love. Don’t allow them to separate.” So this was done. They were chained to a pillar, making love to each other naked. If you are chained to a woman or with a man, how long can you love that woman or that man? That’s why love disappears in marriage. You are chained, in a bondage; you cannot escape. That was the experiment.
After a few minutes they started hating each other. After a few hours they dirtied each other’s bodies because bowels have to move, urine has to be got rid of; you cannot wait. What to do? For a few hours they contained themselves because they felt that would not be a good thing to happen.
There comes a point beyond which you cannot do anything. The bowels moved, the bladder emptied itself; they dirtied each other and they hated each other even more. They closed their eyes, they did not want to see each other. All this, for twenty-four hours – a marathon! After twenty-four hours they were released. It is said that they never saw each other’s faces again. They both escaped the moment they were released from the palace. They escaped in different directions; they never saw each other’s faces again.

The whole thing became so ugly. Marriages become ugly because they follow this principle of that wise man. There should be a rhythm of coming together and parting, being together and being alone. If you can come together freely and move away again, that’s how hunger and satiety are created. If you go on eating for twenty-four hours a day, there will be no hunger and no satiety. You eat and then you fast. The English word for the morning meal, breakfast, is good. It means breaking the fast; the whole night you fasted. You have to fast if you want to enjoy food. This is the hidden harmony of opposites.
Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool. The moist dries, the parched becomes moist. It is by disease that health is pleasant… Sometimes, it is very, very good to be ill. There is nothing wrong in it. A healthy person is bound to fall ill at some time. You have different conceptions. You think a healthy person should never be ill; that is absolutely foolish. It is not possible. Only a dead person is never ill. A healthy person has to be ill sometimes. Through illness he attains health again and that health is fresh. Passing through illness, passing through the opposite, it becomes new again. Have you ever noticed? After a long fever, as you are getting well again, you have a freshness, a virginity; the whole body seems to be rejuvenated.
If you remain continuously healthy for seventy years, your health will be like an illness, a death because it was never rejuvenated, never made fresh. The opposite always gives freshness. It will be stale if you are never ill; your health will become like a burden. Sometimes falling ill is beautiful. I am not saying to remain in bed forever; that too would be bad. Always being ill is bad. Anything that becomes a permanent thing is bad. Anything that moves and flows into the other is good, it is alive.
Aristotle called Heraclitus a little defective because of such statements. He thought him defective in character, in his physiology, even biologically defective because who would say that illness is good? Aristotle is logical. He says that health is good, illness is bad; one has to avoid illness and if you can avoid it completely, that will be the best thing. That’s what science is doing: trying to remove illness completely from all over the world. It follows Aristotle. But I say to you: the more science tries to avoid illness, the more new diseases arise.
There are many new diseases which were never present in the world before. If you close one door to illness, nature has to open another immediately because without illness, health is not possible; you are doing a foolish thing. You close one door; now no more malaria, no more plague and two doors have to be opened somewhere else. And if you are mad about closing doors – and science is closing all the doors – more dangerous diseases will arise because if you close a million doors of illnesses, nature has to open a very, very great door so that it balances the millions of doors. Cancer enters.
You cure diseases and you create incurable diseases. Cancer is a new phenomenon; it was never before in the world – and it is incurable. Why is it incurable? – because nature is defending its law. You go on curing every disease so something incurable has to be created, otherwise man will be dead. Without illness nobody will be healthy. And this is going to happen. It seems that someday cancer will be cured and nature will immediately create something more incurable.
Remember, in this fight, science cannot win and should not win. Nature should always be the winner. Nature is wiser than all your scientists put together.
Look, go to a primitive community where no medicine exists, where there are no doctors, no science to cure them. They are less ill and healthier. Illness is common, but not incurable. There are a few primitive communities still alive which don’t believe in medicine at all. They don’t really do anything, in fact, whatever they do is just to console the patient. Mantras, magical tricks; they are not medicines. They are just to help the patient pass the time because nature cures itself. It is said that if you take a medicine for a common cold, it will be cured in seven days; if you don’t take anything, in a week.
Nature cures itself. In fact, nature cures. One has to give it time; patience is needed. The English word for an ill person, patient, is beautiful. It means patience is needed; one has to wait. In fact, the function of the doctor is to help the patient to be patient. By giving medicine he is consoled. He thinks that now something is being done and soon he will be cured. He is helped in waiting. The doctor cannot do anything else.
That’s why so many “pathies” work – homeopathy, allopathy, Ayurveda. Thousands of pathies work; even naturopathy works. Naturopathy means not doing anything, or doing something which is actually nothing. That’s why even Satya Sai Baba succeeds. Consolation is needed and the work is done by nature itself.
Heraclitus is not defective, Aristotle is defective. Something is lacking in Aristotle’s physiology and biology. The whole Western mind has followed Aristotle. If you go to the very logical end, which is to make the human body completely healthy, without any disease; the logical end will be to have plastic parts. This natural heart is bound to be ill sometimes, tired, wearied, needs a rest. A plastic heart needs no rest; it is never tired. If something goes wrong you can simply change the part. You can go to the garage and change the part, you can even carry spare parts with you. Sooner or later, the whole body – if Aristotle succeeds to the very logical end and Heraclitus is not listened to and not taken back into the human consciousness ? will be a plastic body with spare parts; not blood flowing in the veins, but some chemical which can be immediately pumped out and refilled.
What type of man will that be? Of course no illness, but no health either. Imagine that type of man as yourself, with all things plastic. Plastic kidneys, heart, skin and you being totally plastic inside; plastic everything. Will you be healthy? Will you ever be able to feel well-being? No, you will not be ill, that’s right. The mosquitoes will not affect you; you can meditate without being disturbed, they cannot bite you. You will be enclosed in a shell and completely cut off from nature. No need to breathe because the whole thing can be run by a battery. Just imagine yourself completely encapsulated in a mechanical phenomenon. Will you ever be healthy? You will never be ill, that’s right, but you will never be healthy either. Whenever you fall in love, you will not be able to put your hand on your heart because there is nothing but plastic. This will happen if Heraclitus is not listened to.
Aristotle is defective, not Heraclitus. Aristotle is wrong, not Heraclitus. It is by disease that health is pleasant; by evil that good is pleasant… He becomes more and more difficult. We can even agree, reluctantly, that okay, without illness there will be no health, but then he says that it is by evil that good is pleasant, by the Devil that God is pleasant, by the sinners that saints are so beautiful. If sinners disappear, the saints disappear. If there really is a saint, he is bound to be a sinner also. There are only two possibilities to do this. One is that I become a saint and you become a sinner. This is what religions have done. Just a division of labor. You do the work of the sinner and I do the work of a saint. But in a better world, in a more logos-oriented world – not logical – is it good to force someone else to be a sinner and force myself to be a saint? Is it good to be a saint at somebody else’s cost? ? no, it is not. In a better world the saint will also be the sinner. Of course, that’s right, he will sin in a very saintly way, but this becomes more and more difficult. He will be like Gurdjieff, a sinner and a saint.
Gurdjieff is a turning point in the history of human consciousness. After Gurdjieff, the concept of a saint should be completely different; it can never be the same, be the old. Gurdjieff stands at a crisis point from where a new saint is to arise. That’s why Gurdjieff was very misunderstood because the concepts were that a saint should be a saint and he was both. It was difficult to understand how a man can be both. Either you are a saint or you are a sinner.
Many rumors have been going around about Gurdjieff. Some think that he was the most devilish person possible, a devil’s agent; some think he was the greatest sage ever born. He was both and both rumors are true, but both are wrong also. Followers think that he was a sage and they try to hide the sinner part because they also cannot comprehend how he could be both. So they simply say that it’s a rumor; that these people don’t understand who they are talking about. There are people who are against him and cannot believe his sage part because they say that how can such a sinner be a sage? Impossible! Both cannot exist in one man. This is the whole point ? they do both exist in one man.
You can do only one thing; you can suppress one and pretend the other. You can suppress one in the unconscious and the other you can bring to the surface, but your saint will be skin-deep and your sinner will be very, very deep in the roots. Or you can do just the opposite; you can bring the sinner to the surface, to the skin and suppress the saint. That’s what the criminals are doing. One possibility is that you suppress your sinner, but that sinner will affect somebody somewhere because we are one.
Heraclitus says, “Private intelligence is false.” We are one. Consciousness is a community, we exist in one net. If I suppress my sinner, somewhere at some weaker point the sinner will pop up. Rama is a saint; Ravana pops up as the sinner. They are both together, one phenomenon. Jesus is a saint; Judas, the disciple who loved him the most, becomes the sinner. Saints are responsible for sinners and sinners help saints to be saints.
This is not good. If I suppress something in my consciousness so deeply that it moves into the collective unconscious… This is how the mind is: the conscious mind is just the first layer which looks private, appears private. There is a deeper layer of unconsciousness; that, too, has a certain flavor of privacy because it is so near the conscious mind. There is a third layer of collective unconsciousness which is not private at all, which is public, which is in fact universal.
So if I suppress something, first it goes into my unconscious and creates trouble for me. If I suppress it even more deeply and go on suppressing it ? if I use methods and tricks to suppress it so much that it simply drops from my unconscious and moves into the collective unconscious, then somewhere, someone, a weak person will get it. If I force it too much, it has to pop to the surface, somewhere. Then I am Rama and somebody becomes a Ravana; I am a Christ and someone becomes a Judas.
Just the other day a sannyasin wrote me a letter saying, “You are Christ and I am a Judas.” I can tell him that that is not possible because I am both. With Christ it was possible, not with me. I don’t allow that possibility.
What type of saint do I have in my mind? ? a saint who doesn’t suppress the opposite, but uses it; who is not against anything, but makes a new arrangement of things. In his greater harmony even evil becomes good. In that harmony, he uses even discarded parts. It is a great art to be both together. It is the greatest art because you have to seek the hidden harmony between the opposites – you are neither this nor that, but both. Even poison can be used as elixir, but you have to be very, very careful. Much awareness is needed to use poison as elixir, to use evil as good, to use the Devil as God. This is also what Heraclitus means by the hidden harmony. He says:
…by evil that good is pleasant;
by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.

It is one and the same thing…
The good and the bad, the illness and health, the sinner and the saint.
It is one and the same thing to be living or dead,
awake or asleep, young or old.
The former aspect in each case becomes the latter,
and the latter again the former,
by sudden unexpected reversal.
It is a wheel – yin and yang, good and bad, male and female, day and night, summer and winter. It is a wheel; everything moves into the other and comes back to itself again. It is an eternal recurrence.
It throws apart
and then brings together again.
We have met before, now we are meeting again. We have met before! Nature …throws apart, then brings together again. That is the meaning of the first fragment: Into the same rivers we step and do not step. We are meeting again, but we are not the same. We have met before. This idea caught hold of one of the greatest geniuses of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche. It possessed him so totally that he became completely mad – the idea of recurrence, eternal recurrence. He says that everything has happened before, is happening again, will happen again; not exactly the same, but still the same. It looks very weird if you think about it. You have also listened before to me many times and you are listening again. It looks very weird, strange; you feel uncomfortable with the very idea. It is so because nature brings people together and parts them, just to bring them together again.
No departure is ultimate. No coming together is final. Coming together is just a preparation for parting. Parting is just a preparation for coming together again. It is beautiful! It is beautiful.
Into the same rivers we step and do not step.

It throws apart
and then brings together again.

All things come in their due seasons.
This is the peak of Heraclitus’ consciousness. Let it go deep in you. Let it circulate in your blood and in your heart. Let it become a beat. All things come in their due seasons. Many things are implied here. One is that you need not make so much effort. Making much effort may be a barrier because nothing can come before its season. All things come in their due seasons. Too much effort can be dangerous. Too much effort may be an effort to bring things when the season is not ripe. That doesn’t mean don’t make any effort because if you don’t make any effort, they may not come even in their due season.
Just the right amount of effort is needed. What does a farmer do? ? he watches the seasons in the sky; now is the time to sow. He sows; never before it, never after it. A farmer simply watches for the right moment, then he sows; he waits, he sings. In the night he sleeps, watches and waits. Whatever is to be done, he does it, but there is no hurry. That’s why countries which have lived long with agriculture are never in a hurry. Countries which have become technological are always in a hurry because with technology you can bring things without their season. Countries which are agriculturist and have remained agriculturist for thousands of years, are never in a hurry; they are not time conscious.
That’s why every day it happens in India that somebody says, “I will be coming at five” and never comes. Or he says, “I will be coming at five sharp” and comes in the night at ten. You cannot believe what type of… No time consciousness really.
A farmer doesn’t divide the day in hours. He says, “I will be coming in the evening.” The evening can mean anything – four o’clock, six o’clock, eight o’clock. He says, “I will come in the morning.” The morning can mean anything – he may come at four o’clock in the morning or ten o’clock in the morning. He doesn’t divide it by hours. He cannot. He cannot because he has to live by the seasons. The year is divided not in months but in seasons – summer, winter – and he has to wait. He cannot be in a hurry.
What can you do with seeds? They don’t listen. You cannot send them to school, you cannot teach them. They’re not bothered, they are not in any hurry; they simply wait in the earth. When the time comes, they sprout and grow on their own. They don’t bother about you, if you are in a hurry or not, or whether something can be done. You cannot persuade them, you cannot talk to them; they take their own time. A farmer becomes a deep awaiting.
Become like a farmer. If you are sowing seeds of enlightenment, understanding, meditation, be like a farmer, not like a technician. Don’t be in a hurry. Nothing can be done about it. Whatever can be done, you do and wait. Don’t do too much. Doing too much may become a subtle undoing. Your very effort may become a barrier. All things come in their due seasons. Don’t ask for the result. They come in their due season. If it happens today it is okay. If it doesn’t happen, a man of understanding, intelligence, clarity, knows that the time is not ripe. When the time is ripe, it will happen. He waits; he is not childish.
Childishness consists of asking for things immediately. If a child wants a toy in the middle of the night, he wants it immediately. He cannot understand or follow that one has to wait for the morning to come; shops are closed. He thinks these are just excuses. He wants it immediately, right now. He thinks that these are tricks to divert his mind. What is the relevance of it being midnight and the shops not being open? Why are the shops not open at midnight? What is wrong with midnight? He knows that by the morning he will have forgotten the whole thing. These people are tricky; if he goes to sleep, by the morning he will have forgotten. He wants it immediately.
A country which is juvenile, a civilization which is juvenile and childish, also wants everything immediately – instant coffee, instant love, instant meditation. That’s what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is doing; instant, right now. Do ten minutes and within fifteen days you are enlightened ? looks foolish.
No, nature doesn’t follow you or your demands. Nature follows its own course. This is the meaning. All things come in their due seasons. Wait. Make the effort and wait. Don’t ask for the result to come immediately. If you ask, your very asking will delay the phenomenon more and more. If you can wait patiently, passively, still alert, watching, just like a farmer, you will attain it. If you are in a hurry you will miss. If you are very time conscious, you cannot move into meditation because meditation is timelessness. Always remember, it will happen whenever you are ready. The readiness comes in its due season.
A young man came to me and said, “I am very, very tense.” A young man has to be tense. He continued, “I would like to be detached.” But this is asking for something out of season. A young man has to be attached. Unless you suffer attachment you can never grow toward detachment. If you force detachment you will make a mess of your life because when the time was right for attachment you missed it. You tried to pretend and forced it. When you are old and the time for detachment comes, the suppressed part is still hanging around you like a haze. You see that death is nearing and you become afraid. The suppressed part says, “When will there be a time for me? I wanted to love, I wanted to be attached, I wanted to be involved and committed to some relationship. Now there is no time!” The suppressed part forces itself up and an old man becomes foolish; he starts asking for relationships. He has missed everything. He has missed all the seasons. Remember, be in step with the season.
When it is time to be tense, be tense. What is wrong in it? If you are not tense, how will you be able to rest? If you are not angry, how will you be compassionate? If you don’t fall in love, how will you rise out of it? Everything in its due season. It comes by itself. It has always been so and it will always be so. Existence is vast and you cannot force your own ways on it. You have to watch where it’s going and you have to follow.
This is the difference between an ignorant man and a wise man. An ignorant man is always pushing the river according to his idea. A wise man has no ideas of his own. He is simply watching where nature flows; he flows with it. He has no ego to push; he has no conflict with nature. He is not trying to conquer nature. He understands the foolishness of it; that it cannot be conquered. How can the part conquer the whole? No, he surrenders, he becomes a shadow. He moves wherever nature moves. He is like a white cloud moving in the sky, not knowing where he is going, but unworried because wherever the winds take him, that will be the goal. The goal is not a fixed phenomenon. Wherever nature leads you, if you allow it, if you remain in a let-go, wherever it leads will be blissful.
Everywhere is the goal, you only have to allow it. Every moment is the peak, you only have to allow it. Just allowing. Let go, surrender and you can rest assured. All things come in their due seasons.
Enough for today.