What_Can Man Offer?

I was telling you that Jains have put Krishna into hell because he was responsible for the Mahabharat, the great Indian war. They have put him into the seventh hell - the deepest hell for the greatest sinners. But when I close my eyes and begin to think of him in hell, I cannot conceive of him except as dancing. He must be dancing there. Even if he is there he must be dancing, because even hell is 'That'. And he will not be in any hurry and he will not pray to be put out of hell. He will make no effort, because the That is present everywhere. You need not go anywhere and you need not think of conditions, that only in certain conditions He is possible.

He is possible in every condition. He is unconditionally present. When you can conceive of the Divine as being unconditionally present, then it becomes the That of the Upanishads. Then even in poison It is; then even in death It is; then even in suffering It is. And you cannot move anywhere. Or, wherever you move, you move to That. So That must be conceived of through this; otherwise the law of reverse effect will begin to work. And every religious person has to fall into this law of reverse effect.

Unless you understand totally, unless you begin to feel that this law is working everywhere, never create any polar opposites in the mind - otherwise you will be a victim of your own nonsense. The moment you choose something as opposite to something, you have created the ditch where you will fall. You will be hypnotized by the opposite.

We are all hypnotized by the opposite. A society becomes sexual if you say that sex is sin. Then sex becomes romantic; it begins to have a mysterious aura around it. A very simple fact of life, only because it is called sin, becomes the ditch - only because it is called sin! Call anything sin, and you have created a point by which you will be hypnotized. Auto-hypnosis is now possible. Deny something, and you are in the trap.

Lao Tzu says, "An inch's distinction between earth and heaven, and everything is set apart. An inch's distinction between good and bad, and everything is set apart."

No distinction should be made. That's why religion is not morality. Religion is beyond it because morality cannot exist without distinctions, and religion cannot exist with distinctions. Morality cannot exist without creating the other. It depends on polar divisions - good and evil, and so on. So God and the Devil are not part of religion but of morality. The concept of God as opposite to evil, the Devil, Satan, is not really a religious concept. It is a moral concept.

When for the first time the Upanishads were translated into Western languages, the scholars were at a loss because they were not anything like the Ten Commandments which say. "Do this, don't do that!" There was nothing like the Ten Commandments, and without the Ten Commandments, how can a religion be? How? The West couldn't conceive of it. So these books were "not really religious", because there was no discussion about what is good and what is bad and what should be done and what should not be done.

They were right in a way. If we conceive of religion as a morality, then the Upanishads are not religious. But if the Upanishads are not religious, then nothing is religious - because morality is just a convenience, and morality can differ from nation to nation, from race to race, from geography to geography, from history to history. It will differ, because every race, every nation, creates its own conveniences Religion is not a convenience, and it cannot differ from race to race. It is not dependent on geography and not dependent on history. Really, it is not dependent on human thinking. It is dependent on the very nature of Reality. So religion is, in a way, eternal.

Moralities are always temporal. They belong to some age and to some time and to some space - then they change. When time changes, they change. But religion is eternal because it is the very nature of Reality. It is not dependent on your thinking. This religion belongs to non-polar Reality. But Reality is divided into polarities. As we see it, it is divided, because the very seeing divides it, just like a ray of light, a ray of sun, is divided through a prism.

When the mind looks at things, they are divided into polarities. The moment we look we have divided. We cannot remain in undivided reality for a single moment. I see you and I have divided: beautiful-ugly, good-bad, white-black, mine-not mine. The moment I see you, division sets in. The mind works as a prism, and the prism divides reality. And if you go on choosing, then you will be a victim of your mind. The good and bad are divided as such by the mind.

Don't choose the good against the bad; otherwise you will ultimately fall into the bad against the good. Choose good through bad; know bad through good. They are one: feel this undivided oneness. See life through death; see death through life: not as opposites, but as one - as two ends of one thing. This is what is meant by 'That'.

And the sutra says:

Mind must be flowing towards That constantly, continuously, without any gap. How can the mind flow if you make your God separate from the world? You will have to eat and then you will forget: you will forget your God. You will have to sleep, and then you will forget: you will forget your God. You will have to do many, many things, and God will be coming constantly as a conflict. So a religion which lives with a God against the world creates much anguish, and so-called religious persons are not constantly arrowed towards God, but are just constantly arrowed - tense. They live in anguish. Everything becomes against God, so anguish is bound to be there. How can they laugh? How can they sing? Everything comes in between. Wherever they go to find God, something comes as a hindrance.

The whole world becomes inimical. Friends are not friends. They come in between, they become enemies. Love becomes poison because it comes in between. Everything goes on coming in the way. You are hindered from everywhere. How can you live in peace? You cannot. Even a very ordinary man, a worldly man, can live in more peace than you. If your God is something opposite to the world, you cannot live in peace. You will be in a constant torture.

Of course, when the torture is self-imposed, the ego is fulfilled and strengthened so you can enjoy it. And when someone begins to enjoy his own imposed tortures, he is mad, insane. Now he is not in his senses. So you may become a martyr to your own nonsense, and you can even be worshipped by others because there are persons who feel very happy when someone tortures himself. They enjoy it. They are sadists and you begin to be a masochist. One tortures oneself. You can torture yourself continuously, and you will torture yourself when the whole world is against God. Then the life is bound to be a constant torture. Everything is sin, and everything will create guilt and fear and anxiety, and you will be constantly in a chaos.

You will torture yourself and become a masochist. And whenever there is a masochist, sadists will come around and worship. There are people who feel good when someone is suffering. They would like to make you suffer, but you have even saved them the trouble: you are torturing yourself. They feel very good. So out of one hundred, ninety-nine so-called saints are just ill, existentially diseased: they are masochists. You can worship them, but they will lead you into a hell. And this is not religion at all. Religion is basically to create an ecstatic life, a life which is a benediction, which is absolute bliss. So how is this anxiety and bliss related? They are poles apart.

The Upanishads say, "Offer your mind to That through this, through everything." Don't create any hindrance, don't create the opposite. Whatsoever is, is That. And, really, a miracle happens. When I say see good through the evil, evil disappears. When I say see That through this, this disappears. It becomes transparent and only That remains. The world is not there, but we are not yet capable of knowing the That which is there.

The world disappears. That's why Shankara could say it is an illusion. By illusion or by maya it is not meant that the world is not. Only this much is meant: that the world is not a reality, but only a transparency. If you can look deep, the Brahma is revealed and the world disappears.

If you cannot see That, then the world becomes very much real. This reality comes because you cannot find the Real. The moment you find the Real, the world disappears. That doesn't mean there will not be houses and there will not be nations and there will not be roads; this is not what is meant. When Shankara says that the world is an illusion and it disappears when That is revealed, it is not meant that it will disappear like a dream - no! It will disappear in a very different sense.

It will disappear when the hidden is revealed, when the Total is revealed. The gestalt changes, the whole gestalt changes. In a new pattern you begin to look differently. The same tree for a woodcutter is one thing, and the pattern, the gestalt for a painter is something else. For a woodcutter it may not be green at all because he is concerned with the wood, with the texture of the wood - whether the wood can be used in furniture or not. This mind has a gestalt; in that gestalt, in that pattern, the tree may not be green at all. He may not have seen the greenness of it.

A painter is standing nearby. For him the tree is green, and I wonder whether you know or not that when a painter looks at a tree it is not just green, because there are a thousand types of greens. When you look ordinarily, every tree is green, but no two greens resemble each other. Two greens are two colours. Every green has its own greenness. So for a painter, it is not simply green. It is green A, green B, green C - many shades, many individualities.

A lover who is sad, who has lost his beloved, may not look at the tree at all - the green may look very sad and will have a different colour and shades. He cannot feel the texture, or it may even be that he will remember the body of his beloved, not the texture of the tree. And a child playing there and an old man dying there - are they looking at one reality? Their gestalts are different. A different tree evolves, a different tree is there.

Is it not possible for a Shankara not to see the tree at all but only the That? Not the texture of the tree, not the greenness of the tree, not the sadness of the lover, not the play of the child, not the sorrow of the dying man - nothing? Is it not possible for a Shankara not to see the tree at all, but only the That? Then the tree becomes transparent. In a new gestalt the tree disappears and the Brahma is revealed. This is what is meant when I say look, find out, penetrate everywhere for That. And when you begin to feel That everywhere, your mind cannot move - the opposite is not.

Then the offering - only then! Then you have been, then you have given. You cannot give yourself. You can give only your mind because you can take away your mind. You are in That, but your mind is not. It can be! And you are free: the choice is yours. So you will be responsible - no one else. The responsibility is yours, so to be religious or not is your decision. Don't go into unnecessary things - whether God is or not. It is your decision! It is meaningless to go on discussing whether God is or is not: it is your choice. You can say He is not, but by saying that you are denying a greater Reality and the opening towards it. You can say he is, and, by saying that, you are open to a greater Reality.

This cannot be proven - whether He is or not. This cannot be proven as a scientific fact, because if it is proven then there will be no freedom. Then offering will be impossible. If it becomes a fact, as secular as any, if it becomes a fact like the moon or the sun or the earth, if it becomes a common, objective fact, then you will not be free to choose. So God can never become a scientific fact, and it cannot be proven whether He is or not. Only this much can be said: if you choose Him you become different; if you don't choose Him you will be different again. If you don't choose Him you will create a hell for yourself; if you choose Him, then you can create an ecstatic existence.

He is irrelevant. It is your choice that counts. Whether God is or is not is meaningless. It is not even worth discussing. The basic, relevant thing is that if you choose you become different, if you don't choose you are again different. And it depends on you! It depends on you whether you want an existence which is just a trembling and a fear, just an anguish and death, just a long suffering - or a bliss, a moment-to-moment opening into greater and greater bliss. So it is not a question of whether God is or not. It is a question whether you want to be transformed and transported into another Existence or not. And it will always be your choice.

If the whole world says God is and I deny, I can deny and it cannot be forced on me. That's why it is an offering. It is an offering! You can offer; you can withhold. You are offered already, so that is not the question. But your mind is not offered, and this is the riddle: that you live in That, but you suffer. You are in That, but you suffer. Why? Because your mind is not in That. And, really, your mind suffers - not you. You have never suffered, you cannot suffer. You have never died, you cannot die. But your mind suffers, your mind dies and is born, and it dies and suffers and goes on suffering. This mind is an "overgrowth". Offer it to That and you will come to the point where you have always been. You will come to realize That which is your nature.

Buddha was asked, "What have you achieved?" When he had achieved Nirvana, achieved Enlightenment, he was asked, "What have you achieved?" Buddha said, "I have not achieved anything, only that which was always with me. Rather, on the contrary, I have lost something. I have not achieved anything. I have lost the mind that was with me, and I have achieved That which was always with me, but because of the mind I could not penetrate to it, could not see it."

It is our choice. The screen on Reality is our choice. The covering on Reality is the mind. This life of misery is our decision, and no one else is responsible. And you can continue for lives together. You have continued, and you can continue still for lives together. And no one can break through and no one can pull you out, because that is your freedom. Only you can jump out of it, and you can jump the moment you decide. So don't think in the terms that "Because I have lived for so many lives in this ignorance, how can I jump in a moment? When I have lived for so many, many lives in ignorance, how can I?" You can jump in a moment because all these lives were your decision. Change the decision and the whole thing changes.

It is just like this: if in this room for years together there has been darkness, will you say: "How can we light a candle this very moment? The darkness has been so long! For years it has been here, so how can a candle burned at this moment dispel it? We will have to struggle for years and years, and the candle will have to struggle for years and years. Only then can the darkness be dispelled, because the darkness has a past, a history. It is long, deep-rooted."

But put on the flame and the darkness is not there. Darkness really has no time: it has only duration. But by "duration" I mean that it is not piled one upon another, so it cannot become thick. So one moment's darkness is as thick as one year's or one century's. It cannot be any more thick. It cannot be piled one upon another; it is not being piled up every moment. It cannot become thick and dense so that candlelight cannot penetrate it. It remains the same. It has only duration - a simple duration without any thickness being gathered.

Ignorance is just like darkness - a duration. You can be in it for centuries, for millennia, and in a single moment's decision it is not there. It is just like light. The moment light is present the darkness is not there. And the darkness cannot say, "This is not as it should be. I have been here for many, many centuries and this is not good. I have a hold on this place and I have the possession; I have been in possession."

Nothing can be said. When the light is there, darkness simply drops. Just like this comes the Enlightenment, comes the offering. You can offer any moment - you decide. But the offer must be total, and it can be total only if you do not divide Reality. Affirm life as Divine; affirm both the polar opposites as That. Then, if you move or don't move, you cannot go anywhere. Or, anywhere you go you will encounter That. This is a continuously arrowed mind, and this the Upanishads say is the only offering. All else is just false substitutes.