The second question:

Question 2

WILL YOU PLEASE COMMENT ON THE FOLLOWING VERSE FROM THE UPANISHADS: 'HE IS THE ALONENESS THAT IS WITHIN YOU.... YOU ARE STANDING ALL ALONE BEFORE THE SACRED FIRE, AND FROM THIS TIME ON THE FIRE THAT WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU WILL BE LONELY, AND YOU WILL BE ALONE WITH IT. ARE YOU READY TO ACCEPT THAT ALONENESS?'

I am the Upanishad, and you ask about some rotten Upanishads? I am the fire! and I am inviting you! and you are talking about some three-thousand, four-thousand-year-old scripture? The scripture is dead and its fire is long gone; there is no fire in it any more. And the word 'fire' is not fire, remember. Don't be deceived by the word. I say to you -- forget about the Upanishad -- I say to you: He is the aloneness that is within you. God is the aloneness that is within you. When you are alone, you are God. But remember, aloneness does not mean, cannot mean, loneliness. When you are lonely you are simply miserable, not God. When you are lonely you are simply missing the other, you have not transcended the other. When you are lonely you are crying and weeping; you would like to be with the other.

And that's what happens: the people who escape from the world and go to the monasteries don't become alone, they become only lonely -- and loneliness is a very negative emptiness. It has no positivity in it, it is escape. And the mind will go on thinking of the other because the other has still not been lived. You escaped unripe. When the fruit is really ripe it falls on its own accord.

Be ripe in life, because only life and its heat can ripen you. Be ripe! Go through the other! You will have to go many times through the other, you will have to experience the other in many, many ways -- as a friend, as an enemy, as a lover, as a hater, as a brother, as a sister, as a wife, as a father, as a mother. You will have to experience the other in many, many ways -- as the son, as the daughter. When you have experienced the other in all the possible dimensions, you will come to see the point that you can be with the other but you remain alone. Your aloneness is INDESTRUCTIBLE. Even while you are making love to your woman you are alone and your woman is alone. Two alonenesses meeting, but alonenesses remain intact, untouched. And that's the dignity, the grandeur, the beauty, because that is the freedom. Otherwise your freedom would be gone.

Your inner space cannot be encroached upon by anybody else; it is unencroachable. You can be thrown into a prison cell, but your innermost aloneness remains free. Somebody can put a dagger into your heart, can kill you, but your aloneness remains untouched by the dagger. You can be thrown in fire, all will burn, but your aloneness will not burn. That aloneness is God.

God is not outside, God is your innermost core. God is you in your essential being. He is the aloneness that is within you. God is within you, not without. In fact, to say He is within you is not right -- He is your within. The within is He. And once you have known this within, you will be surprised that the within contains the without. And once you have known it as your innermost aloneness.... You will be surprised -- the very word 'aloneness' comes from all-oneness. When you have become REALLY alone, you will see that ALL IS contained by your aloneness. You have come to that all-oneness.

"HE IS THE ALONENESS THAT IS WITHIN YOU.... YOU ARE STANDING ALL ALONE BEFORE THE SACRED FIRE AND FROM THIS TIME ON...

The sacred fire is the Master, because only the Master can become the fire in which all that is useless in you will be burned. Only by passing through the fire of a Master will you become pure gold. All the impurities will be burned. This is nothing to do with the ordinary. You can find ways of protecting yourself from the ordinary fire. The only fire that you cannot protect yourself from is the Master. The very word 'upanishad' is significant. It comes through the Master-disciple relationship. 'Upanishad' means sitting by the side of the Master. The very word means sitting by the side of the Master -- just sitting, nothing else is needed, because when you sit, when you just sit, you start coming closer and closer and closer. When your activity disappears you come closest. With your activity, your ego disappears -- then you are in the fire. The Master purifies you. Fire is just an outer symbol for the Master. That's why the orange color has been chosen for sannyas down the ages: it is the color of fire. By becoming a sannyasin you are entering into fire, into the fire of a Master.

"YOU ARE STANDING ALL ALONE BEFORE THE SACRED FIRE AND FROM THIS TIME ON, THE FIRE THAT WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU WILL BE LONELY...."

Somebody must have translated it wrongly. It can't be lonely, it can only be alone. But people translate literally: that's what I mean when I say 'a teacher'. Now anybody who has translated this passage from the Upanishads knows nothing. He knows words. He may be a scholar -- he knows Sanskrit, he knows English. The translation is literal but not spiritual, and literal translations have done much harm. People go on translating ancient treatises: they can be translated ONLY by a Master because those words are not used in an ordinary sense. You cannot find those words in the dictionary. They are found only in inner experience. Of course outer words have to be used, but a Master goes on giving new meanings to those words.

I liked Pradeepa's suggestion: she wants to make a dictionary of my words, of the meaning that I give to them. I speak my own language. I don't care about grammar, about the form. My only concern is that what I say should correspond as closely as possible, as approximately as possible, to the experience that I have come to know.

"YOU ARE STANDING ALL ALONE BEFORE THE SACRED FIRE, AND FROM THIS TIME ON THE FIRE THAT WILL BE GIVEN TO YOU WILL BE LONELY, AND YOU WILL BE ALONE WITH IT."

Once you enter into the fire of a Master, the duality is dropped: the disciple and the Master become one. A new kind of aloneness arises.

There is a Tibetan saying of immense significance which says: To be with the Master is to be alone. Strange.... It also says that when you can be with somebody and absolutely alone, then only can you be certain that he is your Master. It has much pregnant meaning in it. If you can be with your Master, absolutely alone, nude -- as you can be only when you are alone -- only then are you with the Master, only then have you trusted. If you go on hiding something from the Master, then you remain separate.

That is the meaning of 'surrender'. Surrender means that from this moment on you will not hide, you will not have any secret of your own. Surrender means surrendering the secrets. Surrender means surrendering the privacies. Surrendering means that now you will not be in any way defending yourself.

Why do you keep secrets? -- because you are afraid. You are afraid that if those secrets are known by others they may manipulate you, they may blackmail you, or they may start exploiting you because of those secrets. You feel afraid, you feel vulnerable. You can surrender your secrets only when you have trust, when you know that no harm is going to happen.

To be with the Master is to be in such a space where you are alone. The closer you come to the Master, the more and more the disciple and the Master meet and mingle and disappear, the more aloneness is left -- that purity, that freedom, that silence.

"ARE YOU READY TO ACCEPT THAT ALONENESS?"

Are you ready to become an initiate? Are you ready to enter into the temple of fire?

The questioner is Dady C. Dady.

Here you are facing the fire, and you are talking about some old scriptures. I ask you: Are you ready to accept that aloneness? Are you ready to accept that fire? The fire is available, and one knows not for how long it will be available. Tomorrow it may be gone. It is either now or never. Don't waste your time in bringing scholarly questions. Open your existence to me. I'm not a commentator, I am saying what I have seen. I'm not supporting any Upanishad, any Bible, any Koran. I am talking from the same source from where the Upanishads were born, from where the Koran came, from where the Bible arose. I am at that very source.

Now this is stupid, to ask me such questions. You should be more intelligent. But people think if they can ask scriptural questions they are asking great questions.

Be existential. Ask something that is troubling you, ask about something that has become a barrier to your growth. Ask about you. How is this passage going to help you? And this has been so again and again, down the ages. And I tell you, Dady C. Dady, you may have been there in those days when the Upanishads were written, and then you must have been asking the teachers, those Masters, those seers, something about the Vedas. And you must have been there when the Vedas were written, but then you were asking something about more ancient scriptures. Now you are asking about the Upanishads; when I am gone you will ask about me!

It is better to relate with me.

A little ant was racing round and round a medium-sized cracker-box. His pal, another ant, observing the first ant, couldn't understand what the furious hurry was, so he asked his running friend, "Just what is your hurry, pal?"

The first ant replied, "Well, there is a sign here that says: Tear Along the Dotted Line."