---
section: Library
booktitle: "The Hidden Harmony"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "HARMON"
dategiven: "24 December 1974 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #4"
chaptertitle: "God is Day and Night"
acode: "7412240"
shorttitle: "HARMON04"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "72mins"
displaytitle: "The Hidden Harmony: Chapter #4"
---

```style
.sutra {
  font-style: italic;
  white-space: pre-wrap !important;
}
```
<!--This file is automatically generated. Do not edit!-->
<p class="sutra">GOD IS DAY AND NIGHT, WINTER AND SUMMER,
WAR AND PEACE, SATIETY AND WANT.</p>
<p class="sutra">SEA WATER IS AT ONCE VERY PURE AND VERY FOUL:
IT IS DRINKABLE AND HEALTHFUL FOR FISHES,
BUT UNDRINKABLE AND DEADLY FOR MEN.</p>
<p class="sutra">THE NATURE OF DAY AND NIGHT IS ONE.</p>
<p class="sutra">THE WAY UP AND THE WAY DOWN
ARE ONE AND THE SAME.</p>
<p class="sutra">EVEN SLEEPERS ARE WORKERS AND COLLABORATORS
IN WHAT GOES ON IN THE UNIVERSE.</p>
<p class="sutra">IN THE CIRCLE
THE BEGINNING AND THE END ARE COMMON.</p>


God is not a person. Because man has always taken God as a person, a thousand and one difficulties have arisen. All the problems that theology deals with are simply futile exercises -- and the base is that God is taken as a person.


God is not a person and cannot be. Let it go as deep in you as possible, because that will become a door, an opening. And particularly for those who have been raised as Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, it is very difficult to take God as anything else but a person -- that becomes a closing. To think about God as a person is anthropocentric. In The Bible it is said God created man in his own image, but just the contrary seems to be the case -- man has created God in his own image. And men differ, that's why there are so many gods in the world.


It happened that when for the first time Christian missionaries reached Africa, they were in trouble -- because they painted God as white and the Devil as black, and the negroes felt very much offended. They wouldn't listen to them, because from the very beginning the image was in conflict. Then one missionary simply got the idea: he changed the colors. He made God black and the Devil white, and the negroes were very happy -- they could accept. A negro is bound to paint his God in his own image, a Chinese in his own, an Indian in his own. We paint God as our own reflection -- of course, perfect -- but your image cannot be God. You are just a part, a very tiny part, one atom in existence. How can the whole be conceived in the image of the part? The whole transcends the part, the whole is infinitely vast. If you cling to the atom, if you cling to the part, you will miss the whole.


God is not to be conceived in your image; rather, on the contrary, you have to drop your image, you have to become imageless. Then, and only then, you become a mirror and the whole reflects in you.


As man has been seeking more and more, this has become clearer and clearer -- that God as a person creates troubles, because then you are always in conflict with other gods. That's why the Jewish god, the Hindu god, the Mohammedan god, the Christian god exist. This is sheer nonsense! How can God be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan? But there are different gods because Jews have their own idea of god, Hindus have their own idea of god, and the conflict is bound to be there. Hindus think that God speaks the Sanskrit language; the English always think that he is an English gentleman.


It is said that one German and one Englishman were talking, and the German said, "We plan in every way, but why, every time, are we defeated?"


The Englishman said, "You have to be defeated, because whenever we start fighting, first we pray to God and he looks after us. You are to be defeated; you can never be victorious."


The German said, "But that we also do, we also pray."


Then the Englishman laughed. He said, "But who understands German?" To an Englishman, God is an Englishman. To Adolf Hitler he must be a Nordic, has to be because we create our own image.


I was just reading a memoir of an army priest. This priest was attached to Montgomery's wing, and one day, when they were ready to attack, it was so cloudy and there was so much mist and so much cold that it seemed impossible to move. So the priest has written in the memoir that the general, Montgomery, called him and he said, "You pray to God and tell him immediately that we, his soldiers, are on the march, and what is he doing? Is he in conspiracy with the enemy? Tell him immediately to stop all this!"


The priest was surprised: "A man like Montgomery -- and what is he talking about?" He said, "But this won't look good. It doesn't look good to say to God, 'What are you doing? Stop this immediately because we are on the move and we are your soldiers.'"


The priest felt a little embarrassed, but Montgomery said, "You listen to my order! You are my priest, attached to my army, so whatsoever I say you have to do. Go and pray immediately!"


This happens. It looks absurd and foolish, but this is happening all the time, to all the people, to everybody. If you take God as a person this is bound to happen. Then you start communicating with him as a person -- and he is not a person. There are millions of atheists because you have taken God as a person. The atheist is not against God, but he is against your conception of God as a person, because the whole concept is foolish. And think in what anguish you must be putting your God, because Germans are praying for their victory, the English are praying for their victory, and everybody thinks that God is with them, at their side.


I have heard: Once Junnaid, a Sufi mystic, dreamt that he saw that he was dead and the greatest sinner of the town was also dead, and both reached God's door and knocked. The sinner was received and the saint was neglected. He felt very, very hurt. He was expecting always that he should be received, welcomed, and what was happening? -- just the opposite. And he knew this man who was being received with such ceremony. When the ceremony was over and the sinner was sent to his abode, the saint said, "Just one question I have to ask God: What are you doing? I have been praying continuously, twenty-four hours, day and night, calling your name, praying. Even in my sleep I have been calling your name and chanting!"


God said, "Precisely because of that -- you have pestered me so much that I am really afraid of you now that you have come to heaven. What will you do here? From Earth, so far away, in twenty-four hours you have not left me a single moment of peace! This man is good, that's why we are celebrating. He never bored me, he never pestered me; he never used my name; he never created any trouble for me."


God as a person is just foolish, the whole concept is foolish. And he cannot be a person because he has to be all persons -- how can he be a person himself? He cannot be somebody because he is everybody, and he cannot be anywhere because he is everywhere. You cannot define him, and personality is a definition. You cannot limit him, and as a person he becomes limited. Personality is just like a wave that comes and goes, and he is like an ocean. He is immense -- he abides. Personalities come and go, they are forms; they are there and then they are no more there. Forms change; forms change into the opposites continuously, and he is the formless. He cannot be defined, it cannot be said who he is. He is all. But the moment you say, "He is all," the problem arises: how to communicate? There is no need; you cannot communicate with him like a person. You have to communicate with him in a totally different dimension -- that dimension is of energy, that dimension is of consciousness, not of personality.
God is energy.
God is absolute awareness.


God is bliss, ecstasy; indefinable, unlimited; no beginning, no end; always and always; eternal, timeless, beyond space -- because God means the total.


The total cannot have a personality -- this is the first thing to be understood, very, very deeply; not only intellectually, but as totally as possible, because if you can conceive, can feel, grope towards God as totality, then your prayer will be different. Then your prayer will not be a foolish prayer, then he cannot be on your side -- he is on every side. He is also with your enemy as much as with you, and he is as much in the saint as in the sinner -- because he is all! He is as much in the dark as in the light. He comprehends all. All opposites meet and mingle and become one in him. Because of the concept of God as a person we have to create a Devil against God, because all the negativities! -- where will you put them? You have to create somebody to throw all the negativities onto. Then your God also becomes false, your Devil also false, because negatives and positives exist together, not separately. And all that you like you put on God's side. It is your division.
God cannot be divided -- he is undivided.


First thing: God is not a person. And remember, you are also not a person. It is ignorance, it is self-ignorance: that's why you appear like a person. If you move deeper, soon personality becomes blurred; a moment comes when you don't know who you are. Sometimes it happens that if somebody wakes you suddenly, you may have observed many times, you suddenly don't know where you are -- whether it is morning or evening, whether it is your house or somewhere else, what town it is; for a single moment everything is blurred, no time sense, no space sense, and you don't know who you are. Why does it happen? -- because in deep sleep you move towards the center, of course unconsciously, but at the center there is no personality, an impersonal energy exists. And if somebody suddenly wakes you, you have to move from the center to the periphery in such a rush that there is no time to gather personality. In a sudden rush you simply lose identity -- and this is your reality, this is who you are in fact.


Deep in meditation you will become more and more aware of the indefinable, unlimited. First it will look like a blurred phenomenon, and you may even become afraid, scared: What is happening to you? Are you losing your mind? Are you going mad? If you become afraid you will miss. Don't be worried, it is natural. You are moving to the indefinable from the defined; in between there will be a ground where everything will get blurred.


That's why Zen masters have said: "Before one enters on the path, rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains. When one enters into the path, rivers are no more rivers, mountains are no more mountains. And when one has achieved the goal, again rivers are rivers, mountains are mountains." What do they mean? They mean that there comes a moment when everything becomes blurred. And that is the time a school, a master, will be needed, because when everything is blurred you are again like a small child -- helpless, not knowing who you are, identity lost, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what is happening; a school is needed. This is the meaning of an ashram, of a monastery, where many people exist on many layers and they can help each other. And a master exists on the ultimate level -- you need not be afraid, you can always look towards him.


When your identity is lost then the master is your only source of sanity -- you will be insane. Many people work alone and many people go mad. If you move in the East, you will find many people who are hanging.... They have worked without a master; they came to the blurred territory -- now they don't know where to go. They have forgotten from where they came and they don't know now where to go. They don't know who they are. They are absolutely mad. They are better than you, but mad. And now they cannot take any step, because who will take the step and where? At this moment a master is needed.


One of the greatest works Meher Baba did in his life -- he lived just near Poona and he is one of the greatest masters -- and never has it been done before: he traveled all over India for years, just making contact with such mad people. Not doing anything else, just doing one thing: moving from one village to another, making contact with such people who have gone mad, who are on a better ground than you but some help is needed -- just a push. Just a push so that again rivers become rivers, mountains become mountains; again they achieve a new identity.


The old identity was with the form, the new identity will be with the formless. The old identity was with the name, the new identity will be with the nameless. The old identity was of this world, the new identity will be of that world. But in between the two you can hang and hang if there is no school, if there is no master to help you and bring it out. You can enter this wilderness, but coming out will be difficult on your own. Sometimes, accidentally, somebody does come out -- that's not the point -- but as a rule it is almost impossible for you to come out.


I have seen many mad people. And whenever somebody comes to me and he wants to do everything on his own, I feel very much, because he does not know what he is talking about. But this is the problem. I cannot force anything, because the more you force the more he will escape. I can simply say, "Okay, do whatsoever you like" -- but I feel deeply because I know where he is moving unknowingly. God is energy, and if you are not prepared it can be destructive. And God is such vital, infinite energy, that if your vehicle is not ready you will simply crack. So the question is not just to know God. A deeper question is how to be ready before you can say: "Now come," before you can invite him -- because you are so small and he is so vast. It is as if a drop of water is calling the ocean to come in. The ocean can come in any time, but what will happen to the drop? The drop has to attain a capacity, a receptivity so infinite that the ocean drops into the drop and disappears and the drop is not shattered. Greatest is that art, and that art is religion, Yoga, Tantra, or whatever name you want to give it.


And don't look at God according to your conceptions: Jewish, Christian, Hindu. Drop them! That is clinging to the periphery, to the knowledge. Whatsoever you have been taught, you cling to it, and God cannot be taught, nobody can teach him -- indicated, of course, shown in subtle and indirect ways, of course, but he cannot be taught. Whatsoever you know about God is wrong -- and I say "whatsoever" unconditionally. Whatsoever you know is wrong because that has come from teachings; somebody has taught you a conception, a theory, and God is not a conception, not a theory; God is not a hypothesis. It is nothing like that -- it is absolutely different.


Drop all conceptions and only then are you ready to take the first step. Naked you go to him, with no conception, no clothes around you. Vacant you go to him, with no ideas about him in your mind. Empty you go to him, because that is the only way to go: empty you become a door, he can enter. Only receptivity is needed, not concepts, not philosophies, doctrines -- this is what Heraclitus means. These words are very, very wonderful.
Listen:
<p class="sutra">GOD IS DAY AND NIGHT, WINTER AND SUMMER,
WAR AND PEACE, SATIETY AND WANT.</p>


Never have such wonderful words been uttered before, and never since.
<p class="sutra">GOD IS DAY AND NIGHT, WINTER AND SUMMER,
WAR AND PEACE, SATIETY AND WANT.</p>


Many have said many things about God, but no one is comparable to Heraclitus. There have been people who said: "God is light," but then where do you put the dark? Then you have to explain from where the dark comes. "God is day," many have said, "God is sun, light, the source of light," but then from where does the night come? From where does the dark come, the Devil, sin? From where? And why have people talked about God as light?


Something psychological is involved. Man is afraid of darkness; man feels very good when there is light -- it is part of your fear. Why do you call God light? The Koran says God is light, the Upanishads say God is light, The Bible says God is light. There has only been a small school -- in that small school Jesus was taught and brought up to be ready to receive the divine -- that small school was known as the Essenes; they were the teachers and masters of Jesus. Only that school says God is dark, night. But then they never say God is light; they move to the other extreme. But they are beautiful people.


Try to understand the symbol: light-and-dark. You are not afraid in light because you can see. Nobody can attack you so easily. You can defend, you can escape, you can fight or you can take flight. You can do something, everything is known. Light is the symbol of the known -- with the known you don't feel fear.


Darkness is the unknown. Fear arises in the heart; you don't know what is happening all around. Anything is possible -- and you are indefensible. Light is security, darkness is insecurity. Light looks like life and darkness like death. Afraid, scared -- not only psychologically, but biologically also, because man has lived for thousands of years in the dark, in the night, in the wild, forest, caves, and the night was the problem because wild animals would attack and man was indefensible. So when fire was invented, fire became the first god; it became a protection, a security. With the day everything is okay, with the night you don't know where you are -- with the night everything disappears.


So man is prone to identify God with light. Light has a few beautiful things about it. It is warm, it is a source of energy -- you cannot live without the sun, nothing can exist without the sun. All life, deep down, is solar energy, the energy that comes from the sun. You eat it, you drink it -- you live through it. If the sun simply disappears, goes cold, within ten minutes life on this earth will disappear -- within ten minutes, because it takes ten minutes for the rays to reach us. If the sun dies, then for ten minutes old rays will be coming, but by the tenth minute new rays will not be coming, and everything will simply go dead. We will not even be aware of what is happening; nobody will know that we have died. The whole planet will die -- the trees, the animals, the birds, man, everything! Life exists through the sun -- it is warm, welcoming.


Darkness also has beautiful things about it. It is infinite. Light has always a limit; darkness is limitless. And light is, deep down, an excitement, it excites you; darkness is absolutely unexciting. Light is warm, darkness is cool, cool like death, mysterious. Light comes and goes; darkness remains. That's why the Essenes called God the dark, the night, because light comes and goes, darkness remains, darkness is eternal. Light seems to be an episode, it happens. You can arrange for light, but you cannot arrange for darkness; it seems beyond you. You can put on the light, you can put off the light, but you cannot put on the dark and you cannot put off the dark. It seems beyond you -- it is! Light is manageable. If it is dark you can bring light in, but you cannot bring darkness, you cannot manipulate darkness; it is simply beyond control. And you put your light on, but you know that light is momentary. When the fuel is finished the light will go -- but darkness is eternal, it is always there. It exists as if without any cause, uncaused; it was always, it will be always. So the Essenes chose darkness as the symbol of God, but Heraclitus alone chooses both.


To choose one extreme is still logical, rational; reason is working. To choose both together is irrational; reason is simply bewildered. God is day and night -- both together, no choice -- winter and summer, war and peace. It will be difficult for people like Tolstoy, Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, if God is war AND peace. They think God is peace; war is created by men. War is ugly, something the Devil may have invented -- God is peace. Tolstoy cannot agree, a Gandhi cannot agree that God is war also. A Hitler cannot agree that God is peace also; God is war. Nietzsche cannot agree that God is peace also; God is war.


There are choosers. Heraclitus is not a chooser, he is simply a choiceless awareness. He is not to choose, he is simply to say whatsoever is the case. He doesn't bring his own morality into it, he does not bring his own mind into it, he simply reflects; he is a mirror. Gandhi, Tolstoy, Ruskin, they are choosers; they have their own idea to impose on God. They impose the idea of peace, that God is peace; then war is from the Devil. But it is not possible.


What is peace without war? Is there any possibility of peace without war? And will not that peace be simply dead if there is no war? Just think: no war in the world, just peace -- what type of peace will it be? It will be cold, it will be a dark night, dead. War gives intensity, tone, sharpness, life. But if there is only war and no peace, then too death will happen. If you choose one opposite of the polarity, if you choose one polarity, everything will be dead because life exists between polarities -- war and peace, both; satiety and want; contentment and discontentment, both; hunger, want, desire, passion, peace, satiety, contentment; the way and the goal, both. Difficult to comprehend, but this is the truth.


It is God who desires in you and it is God who becomes desireless in you. This is total acceptance. It is God who is a passion in you and it is God who becomes enlightenment in you. It is God who is anger in you and it is God who becomes compassion in you. There is nothing to choose! But just look at the fact: if there is nothing to choose and everything is God, your ego simply disappears -- because it exists with choosing. If there is nothing to choose and everything is just as it is, nothing can be done and God is both. With the chooser, with the choice, the ego disappears. Then you accept, then you simply accept! When you are hungry and when you are satisfied both are beautiful.


This is difficult for the mind. The mind staggers, feels bewildered, loses ground, feels dizzy -- as if you are standing on the edge of an abyss. Why does it happen? -- because mind wants a clearcut choice: "Either this or that." And Heraclitus says: "Neither this nor that -- or both." Ask Mahavira, ask Buddha, they will say: "Desire? Leave desire! Become desireless! -- choose! Become content, deeply content; leave discontent!" Heraclitus penetrates even deeper. He says: "Who is there to leave? Who will leave? God is both!" And if you can feel this, that God is both, everything is hallowed, everything becomes holy. Then in hunger also there is a contentment. Then in desire also there is a desirelessness. Then in anger also there is compassion. And if you have not known anger which is compassionate, anger which is compassion, you have not known life at all. If you have not known darkness which is light also, coolness which is warmth also -- if you have not known that, you have missed the greatest climax.


Where opposites meet, there happens the ecstasy, the ultimate, the ultimate orgasm with the universe -- where opposites meet. God is both man and woman, war and peace.


And man has been in difficulty because he has always been choosing. The society has always remained lopsided, all societies and civilizations have remained lopsided, because everything depends on choice. We have created a society in the world which is male-oriented, war-oriented. The woman has been cut out, she has no contribution to make -- she is dark, she is peace, she is silence, she is passivity, compassion, not war; woman is satiety, not desire. Man is desire -- the excitement, the adventure, war; always going somewhere, always reaching somewhere, finding something, seeking, searching. Man is the vagabond, woman is the home. But when they both meet -- when the vagabond meets the home, where desire and satiety meet, where activity and passivity meet -- there arises the greatest harmony, the hidden harmony.


We created the society male-oriented, so there is war -- and the peace is not true. Our peace is just a gap between two wars; it is not true, it is just a preparation for another war. Go back and look at history: the first world war and the second world war -- the gap between is not peace. The gap between is just getting ready for another war. It is not real peace, it is just a preparation. And if peace is not real, the war will also be unreal.


In the past, war was beautiful; now it is ugly, because it has no opposite to it. In the past warriors were beautiful people; now warriors are just ugly. War doesn't give you anything; otherwise, it is an adventure, it brings you to a peak of existence, you put yourself totally into it. Warriors were beautiful: they encountered death, they went to meet death on the front. Now a warrior is nowhere to be seen -- he is hidden behind the tanks, throwing bombs, not knowing who is going to be destroyed. Can you call this man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima a warrior? What type of warrior is he? He drops the atom bomb, kills one lakh people immediately, not knowing whom he is killing, who the enemy is -- small children....


I was looking at a picture somebody sent me from Japan. A small child was going upstairs to his room where he would study and go to sleep; a very small child, carrying his bag of books and thinking of his homework, and he was going to do homework and then he would go to sleep. He was just on the staircase when the bomb fell. He was totally burnt and became just a dot on the wall, with the books, with the bag, burnt, still clinging, the mind thinking about the homework, of the next day, tomorrow morning -- everything burnt there. And the man who dropped the bomb, he was not aware who was going to die; and then he went back home and had a good sleep. He had done his duty, hiding himself. What type of war is this? It has become ugly. In the old days, to be a warrior was one of the greatest possibilities -- bringing your potential to a peak. But now it is nothing, it is just like an ordinary mechanical duty: you push the button and the bomb falls and kills -- you are not confronting anybody. War without real peace also becomes false. And when war is false, how can peace be real?


We have been choosing. We have been creating society according to a male pattern. The man has become the center, the woman has been thrown off center. It is lopsided. Now there are women who are thinking of creating a society according to the pattern of the woman, where man has to be thrown off the center. That too will be lopsided. God is both male and female; there is no choice. And male and female are opposites: dark and light, life and death. And opposites are there. A hidden harmony has to be sought. Those who come to know the hidden harmony, they have realized the truth.
<p class="sutra">GOD IS DAY AND NIGHT, WINTER AND SUMMER,
WAR AND PEACE, SATIETY AND WANT.</p>
<p class="sutra">SEA WATER IS AT ONCE VERY PURE AND VERY FOUL:
IT IS DRINKABLE AND HEALTHFUL FOR FISHES,
BUT UNDRINKABLE AND DEADLY FOR MEN.</p>


And everything is good and everything is bad -- it depends. War is good sometimes, peace is bad sometimes -- it depends. Sometimes peace is nothing but impotence, then it is not good; it may be peace, but it is not good. Sometimes war is nothing but madness, then it is not good. And one has to watch and see, without any prejudice. Not every war is bad and not every peace is good, and one should not become addicted. For Nietzsche, every war is good; for Gandhi, every peace is good -- both are addicted. And God is both.
Says Heraclitus:
<p class="sutra">SEA WATER IS AT ONCE VERY PURE AND VERY FOUL....</p>


For fishes it is life; for you it can become death. So don't create absolute ideas, remain flexible. And remember: something may be good for you today and tomorrow may not be good, because life goes on changing and you cannot step in the same river twice. And even if you do step, you are not the same and yet you are the same. Everything is moving, a flux, so don't remain fixed. This is one of the diseases of the human mind: you become fixed, you lose flexibility -- and flexibility is life.


Look at a child, he is flexible; look at an old man, he has become inflexible. The more flexible you are, the more alive and fresh and young. The more inflexible you become... already you are dead. And what is flexibility? Flexibility is to respond to the moment without any preconceived idea; to respond to the moment, not through any preconceived idea -- directly, immediately. Immediacy is flexibility. You look to the situation, you become aware to the situation, you are sensitive to the situation -- and then you act. The action comes through the encounter of the situation and you, not from a past mind.
<p class="sutra">THE NATURE OF DAY AND NIGHT IS ONE.</p>


War and peace are one; and desire and desirelessness are one. The phenomenon is the same: peace is war inactive; war is peace active. The nature of man and woman is one: woman is inactive, passive man; man is active woman. That's why they attract each other, because if you take them in themselves they are halves. If they become one then the whole is created; both meet and become one. That oneness is the search.


If you take them apart, as all the religions have done in the past -- Catholics, Jainas, Buddhists, they have separated men and women totally. And all these religions have remained halfhearted; they cannot be total, they cannot accept the whole. Their circle is half, and half a circle is not a circle at all, because a circle, to be a circle, must be the whole -- half a circle is no circle. That's why the whole of Christianity turned out to be ugly, Jainism turned out to be ugly, Buddhism turned out to be ugly. You cannot divide, you have to accept the totality.


Beauty is of the total and ugliness is of a torn part. Everything total is beautiful, fulfilled -- the circle has became complete.
<p class="sutra">THE NATURE OF DAY AND NIGHT IS ONE.</p>


The day itself becomes the night, the night itself turns into day. Can you divide where day is and where night is? Can you make a demarcation? There is no demarcation -- the day, by and by, turns into night; the night, by and by, turns into day. It is one wheel. And if you can see all opposites as a wheel, you will have a transcendence. Then you will be no more a man and no more a woman, because you turn into a woman and a woman turns into a man many times. If you watch yourself for twenty-four hours, you can find at which moment you were a woman and at which moment you were a man; you can find when you are passive, when you are active. When you are passive you are a woman, when you are active you are a man -- and both are hidden within you.


Now psychology accepts this, that man is bisexual: every man is woman also, and every woman is man also. The difference is only of quantity, degrees, not of quality. If you are a man that means you may be fifty-one percent man and forty-nine percent woman -- that is the difference. That's why it is possible for you to change your sex; it is a difference of degrees. Just a little hormonal change and the sex will change. No need to change the hormones even: if you simply change your psyche the change will come. It happened to Ramakrishna. He tried many paths to reach the divine. Even when he had reached, still he went on trying every path just to see whether every path leads to him.


There is a path in India, a very beautiful path, and that path is to conceive of God as the only male and you become the female, the beloved. Whether you are a man or a woman, that is not the point: God is the male and you are the female; God is Krishna and everyone is just a beloved. So those who follow this path, they start behaving like women. Clothes they cannot use like a man, they have to use feminine clothes; they sleep with a statue of Krishna. They completely forget whether they are male or female; whatsoever they are they become females. Every fourth week, for five days, they act as if their period has come. In the beginning it is just acting but, by and by, changes start happening.


To Ramakrishna it happened that he became completely a woman. It has remained a mystery. How is it possible? Menses really started! He would bleed for three or four days every month. His breasts became feminine, they grew; his voice changed, it became feminine; he started walking like a woman. For six months he was on that path -- he became completely a woman. And this is a mystery, because doctors are witnesses that he started bleeding -- the period would come. Just the mind changed the whole body. And after he reached through that path and left the path and started trying something else, even after that, for one year the body remained the same. It took one year to come back, to become a man again.


You are both inside; it is just a question of emphasis. And Heraclitus came to realize this:
<p class="sutra">THE NATURE OF DAY AND NIGHT IS ONE.</p>
<p class="sutra">THE WAY UP AND THE WAY DOWN
ARE ONE AND THE SAME.</p>


Heaven and hell are one, God and Devil are one because it has to be so: two poles of the same phenomenon.
<p class="sutra">EVEN SLEEPERS ARE WORKERS AND COLLABORATORS
IN WHAT GOES ON IN THE UNIVERSE.</p>


Even sleepers are responsible. What is Heraclitus wanting to say? He is saying that responsibility is not individual, karma is not individual -- it is total.


This is a rare insight. I absolutely agree with him. This is a rare insight because in India they have believed that karma is individual -- but that, too, is clinging to the ego. Why? When there is no ego, and you insist that there is no ego, why should karma be individual? If karma is individual, then you cannot leave the ego. In fact it will cling in a subtle way: I have to fulfill my karma and you have to fulfill your karma -- where do we meet? I will become enlightened, you will remain ignorant -- where do we meet?


If Heraclitus' insight is to be understood, it means there are no individuals, there are no islands; man is not an island, we are part of one whole. Then even karma is not individual. And that has many implications then; then a vast dimension opens. That means that if somebody murders somewhere, I have a part in it. Even if I am a sleeper -- I was sleeping, I don't know about the man, I will never hear about him -- and somebody somewhere, in the Himalayas, commits a murder, if we are not individuals I have a part in it, I am also responsible. It is not so easy to throw the responsibility: "I am not committing a murder, I am a saint."


No saint is a saint because every sinner is implied in him. And this is foolish to claim: "I am a saint because I am not committing any murder, any robbery, any sin." But there are sinners in the world, and if we are one part, one vast continent, not islands but connected, then how can you commit a sin without me? No, it is not possible. Then how can I become enlightened without you also becoming enlightened? No, that is not possible. It means that whenever there is a sin committed, the whole is involved. And whenever there is a phenomenon like enlightenment, the whole is involved.


That's why it happens that whenever a man becomes enlightened, many immediately follow in his wake, become enlightened, because he creates a possibility for the whole. It is just like this: if my head aches, it is not only the head that is ill, my whole organism becomes ill -- my legs also feel it, my heart also feels it, my hand also, because I am one. It may be focused in the head, that's okay, but the whole body feels ill. A buddha becomes enlightened -- it is focused there, that's all, because no individual is there. It is just a focusing, but he will vibrate all over. Existence is just like a spider's web. You touch the web from anywhere and the whole vibrates. Somewhere the touch is focused, that's right, but the whole vibrates. That's the meaning, and you have to understand it. Whenever you do something, it is not only you who is involved -- the whole is involved. Your responsibility is great. It is not only that you have to be finished with your own karma; the whole history of the world is your biography.


Even while asleep I am collaborating, cooperating, so each step has to be very, very responsible and alert. If you commit sin it is the whole that you drag into sin, not only you because you are not separate. If you meditate, if you become aware, if you feel blissful, it is the whole that you are taking towards a peak. Focused you may be, but the whole is always involved.


Remember this, that whatsoever you do, God is doing it; and whatsoever you are, God is that; and whatsoever you will become, God will be becoming. You are not alone, you are the destiny of the whole.
<p class="sutra">EVEN SLEEPERS ARE WORKERS AND COLLABORATORS
IN WHAT GOES ON IN THE UNIVERSE.</p>
<p class="sutra">IN THE CIRCLE
THE BEGINNING AND THE END ARE COMMON.</p>


If you make a circle, the end and beginning meet -- only then is the circle complete. If you become a circle, whole, total, in you will meet the beginning and the end. You will be the very source of the world and you will be the very climax of the world. You will be both the alpha and the omega. And unless you become that, something is incomplete; and when something is incomplete you will remain miserable. The only misery that I know is being incomplete. The whole being tends to be complete, needs to be complete, and the incomplete becomes a torture. The incompletion is the only problem. And when you become complete, the end and the beginning meet in you. God as the source and God as the ultimate flowering meet in you.


Ponder over these small fragments. Each fragment can become a vast contemplation, and each fragment can give you an insight into yourself and into the reality. And these are not philosophical statements, these are Heraclitus' insights -- he knows, he has come to see. He is not theorizing; he has touched the reality, penetrated into it. And each fragment is complete in itself, it is not a system. These fragments are like gems, individually cut; every gem is complete in itself. You simply penetrate one fragment, and through that one fragment you can become totally different -- that one fragment can become the door for the infinite.


Meditate, ponder over Heraclitus, what he is saying. He can have a tremendous impact on you. He can become a transformation for you.
			

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