The Second thing that Pythagoras also introduced into Western consciousness was the idea of reincarnation. That too is somehow related with vegetarianism. You will be surprised again: all the vegetarian religions believe in reincarnation, and all the non-vegetarian religions believe only in one life. This can't be just a coincidence. In India, Brahminism, Jainism, Buddhism are the three great religions. They differ in every possible way -- their ideologies are so different that you cannot find more different ideologies anywhere. Hindus believe in God, they believe in the soul. Jainas don't believe in God -- a tremendously fundamental thing -- a religion without God.
Buddhists don't even believe in the soul -- no God, no soul. You cannot imagine a religion without God and without the soul. Such are their differences. But about one thing they are all agreed, and that one thing is the idea of reincarnation, rebirth. Even Buddha, who does not believe in the soul, agrees with it. It looks very absurd -- how can there be rebirth if there is no soul? He does not believe in a soul but he believes in a continuum.
He says: Just as you light a candle in the evening in the morning when you are blowing it out can you say it is the same flame that you had started in the evening? It is not the same -- and YET somehow it is connected. The flame has been changing the whole night. The flame was disappearing the whole night -- it was disappearing into smoke and a new flame was replacing it each moment. In fact the movement was so quick, that's why you couldn't see the gaps. There has been a continuum -- a constant change, but very quick and fast -- one flame being replaced by another, the whole night.
So when in the morning you are putting the candle out, it is not the same flame that you had started -- although it looks almost the same. The first flame and the last ARE connected -- they are part of one chain, one process -- but you cannot say that there has been one flame, one soul. That is the Buddhist idea of reincarnation: the continuity continues but individuals disappear -- there is no individual soul. But still Buddha believed in reincarnation. Jainas believe in reincarnation, Brahmins believe in reincarnation.
But Jews, Christians and Mohammedans don't believe. Those are the three great religions which were born outside India. How did it happen that all three Indian religions stumbled upon the fact of reincarnation? -- although they don't agree in ANY other matter. Why do they agree about one thing? They COULD not disagree. From where did this experience come to them? And you will be surprised -- the answer is vegetarianism.
When a person is utterly vegetarian he can easily remember his past lives. His clarity is such that he can look into his past lives. He is not gross, his energy is not blocked, his energy moves easily. His river of consciousness can penetrate to the ancient most times; he can go backwards as much as he wants. The consciousness of a non-vegetarian is blocked -- in many ways. He has been accumulating gross matter in himself. That gross matter functions as a barrier. That's why all the three religions that were born outside India, and have remained non-vegetarian, could not come to the idea of reincarnation. They could not experience it.
Pythagoras lived in India, lived the life of a vegetarian, meditated deeply, became aware of the past lives, and could see him moving backwards. He could understand what Buddha means when he says, "Once I was an elephant, once I was a fish, once I was a tree."
The idea of evolution has been here in the East for ever -- and in a far more subtle way than it has been given to Western science by Darwin. Darwin's idea is very raw: he says monkeys have become man -- although Darwinians have not yet been able to prove it, because they are still searching for the link between the monkey and the man. And the problem arises: why did only a few monkeys become men? What happened to other monkeys? And monkeys are basically imitators -- if a few monkeys had become men then all the monkeys would have imitated. What happened to the other monkeys? Great imitators they are -- why only a few men?
And the monkeys are still there! Thousands and thousands of years have passed and monkeys are still monkeys. And you don't come across a monkey suddenly becoming a man... one fine morning he wakes up and he is a man. Nobody has ever seen this miracle happen. The question is: where are the links between monkey and man? -- And the difference is great, it is not small.
Just the other day somebody asked, John Lilly has said that man is not the only being on the earth who has consciousness; there are other beings too who have more consciousness than man." The questioner has asked, "Is it true? Is John Lilly right?"
But those other animals have not discovered man yet -- it is John Lilly who discovers those other animals. It is man who goes on discovering. Certainly the discoverer has more consciousness than the discovered. Even if we find some day that some animal has a great, evolved brain, WE are the discoverers. That great brain has not discovered us just.
There are animals that are much evolved, but nobody is as evolved as man. And the difference is big! John Lilly has been working on dolphins, and he thinks that dolphins have a far better evolved consciousness. If you just meet John Lilly some time, tell him that dolphins have not discovered him -- he has discovered dolphins. And the discoverer has more consciousness, obviously. Dolphins are not saying anything about themselves -- it is a man who is saying something about dolphins. They cannot even prove something about themselves. Dolphins are beautiful people, and Lilly is on the right track, but dolphins don't have a higher consciousness than man. They have not produced Buddhas, Patanjalis, Pythagorases -- not even a John Lilly.
The Western concept of evolution, the Darwinian concept of evolution, is very gross. The Eastern idea of evolution is very subtle. It is not a question of the body of a monkey becoming the body of man -- it has never happened; of the body of a fish becoming the body of man -- it has never happened. But the inside of the fish goes on growing; it goes on changing from one body to another.
The growth, the evolution, has not happened from body to body: the growth has been happening in consciousness. When a monkey attains to a certain consciousness, the next birth will be that of man not of a monkey. He will die as a monkey and will be born as a man. The evolution is not going to happen in the body of the monkey itself. That body has been used by the soul -- or whatever you call it, the continuum -- the body of the monkey has been used, now the soul is ready to take a better body, a body where more possibilities of growth will become available.
The soul moves from one animal to another animal. The bodies are not evolving, but souls are evolving. The candles are not evolving, but the flames go on jumping from one candle to another. The flame goes on rising higher and higher. The evolution is of consciousness, not of the material, physiological body. That is where Darwin missed the whole point. But in the East for at least ten thousand years we have been aware of it. The awareness came through meditation and the awareness was based in vegetarianism -- because people started remembering their past lives.
It was a basic technique with both Buddha and Mahavira: whenever a disciple was to be initiated, the first thing that both Buddha and Mahavira required was that he had to go into his past lives. Great methods were developed so that one could move into past lives. And once you start moving into past lives, this life will be utterly transformed. Why? Because once you see that all the stupid things that you are doing now, or wanting to do, you have been doing for many many lives... you have done those same things many times, and each time nothing was attained.
For example, if you are mad after money and then you remember that in the past life also you were mad after money and then you had succeeded, and you had become a rich man, a very rich man, and then you died... and all that richness and all that wealth was of no use. It was taken away by death, and you died as empty as ever, as poor as ever. And you remember even before that: you were a king and you had a great kingdom. And still you were frustrated, and still you lived in misery, and you died in misery. And again you are doing the same and hankering for more money? It will become impossible. The longing will simply fall flat on the ground. How can you go on repeating the same stupid thing again and again if YOU CAN REMEMBER? YOU can go on repeating the same stupidity again and again if you CANNOT remember.
The idea of reincarnation is not a philosophical idea: it is an experience, it is utterly scientific. People have remembered their lives. When you have grown a little deeper into meditation... we are going to do all those techniques here too. But those techniques will require that you be absolutely vegetarian, otherwise you will not be able to go beyond THIS life. Your mind cannot move -- it has to be so light, feather light, that it can simply pass from one existence into another. And the lighter it is, the deeper it goes.
It can not only remember that you were a man in the past life -- slowly slowly, you will remember that you have been animals. AND, sometimes, when the depth gross, you will remember that you have been trees, rocks. You have lived for millennia in many forms. And if you remember that once you were a fish, it will become difficult for you to eat fish. Vegetarianism leads you into remembering your past lives. And KNOWING your past lives, you become more and more a vegetarian -- because seeing that all are brothers and sisters, the whole existence, you cannot kill animals. It becomes simply impossible! Not that you have to prevent yourself: it simply becomes impossible.
Pythagoras was a REAL adventurer. Alexander the Great also came to India, he also took away many things from India, but they were useless things -- diamonds and emeralds and gold. That's what Alexander the Great took away from India -- useless things. Pythagoras was a real seeker. He gathered real diamonds, real emeralds: diamonds of consciousness, emeralds of consciousness. And these were two tremendously significant, tremendously pregnant approaches -- that of vegetarianism and the idea of reincarnation.
Once it happened: Pythagoras saw somebody hitting a dog. He said, "Do not hit him!" to the man who was beating the dog. "It is the soul of a friend of mine. I recognized it when I heard it cry out."
Now this looks utterly ridiculous to a Western mind, to the Western scientific attitude. Even in those old days, people must have laughed: "What nonsense he is talking about! -- 'Don't beat the dog because I have recognized a friend.'" He was simply trying to teach the idea of reincarnation in every way possible.
And the third thing: he was, again, the first to introduce the concept that life is a wheel -- a wheel of birth and death. The wheel goes on moving and we go on clinging to the wheel. And the wheel is repetitive; again and again it will move on the same track. Nothing new will ever happen. Birth will come, you will become young, you will be full of sex and great desires, and then you will be spent and you will be old, diseased, ill sick, frustrated, tired. And then death... and again birth... and so on and so forth.
Each birth brings a death, each death brings a birth. It is a vicious circle, and the wheel goes on moving. In India the word for the world is SAMSARA. SAMSARA means 'the wheel'. Youth or childhood or old age is just spokes of the wheel. And we go on clinging to the wheel and the wheel goes on moving -- as everything else moves in the world. The earth moves around the sun, and the sun also moves around some unknown sun. And the moon moves around the earth and earth and moon both move around the sun, and the sun around some other sun, and so on and so forth. And all the stars are moving.... And EVERYTHING IS moving in a circle! Seasons move in a circle.
Life is a wheel and the wheel is repetitive. You will never reach anywhere if you go on clinging to the wheel. In the East it has been a known fact that we have to jump out of the wheel -- only then are we free. To be free from this wheel of birth and death is to have freedom. Then you simply ARE. Then you are not moving. Then there is no past and no future but only the present. Then NOW IS the only time and here the only space.
That is the state of nirvana, MOKSHA -- freedom. That is the real kingdom of God. One simply is... all turmoil gone, all storms finished, and there is absolute silence. In that silence there is a song, in that silence there is music -- unheard music, unstuck music. In that silence is joy, in that silence is bliss. And that bliss is eternal, it never changes. All change is if you are clinging to the wheel.
If you drop out of the wheel, all change disappears. Then you are here and always here. That state is the real search of all true seekers: how to get out of this wheel of birth and death, how to enter into life eternal where no birth ever happens and no death either, where nothing begins and nothing ends, where all simply is -- how to enter into this God. Just the other day, I was saying God means 'that which is'... how to enter into that which is? These are the sutras by which to enter into that which is.
Ikkyu is one of the greatest masters, a very rare, revolutionary, nonconformist. Once he stayed in a temple. The night was very cold and there were three wooden Buddhas in the temple, so he burned one Buddha to warm himself. The priest became aware -- he was fast asleep, it was in the middle of the night and the night was very cold -- he became aware that something was going on, so he looked.
Buddha was burning! -- and this man Ikkyu was sitting, happy, warming his hands. The priest became mad; he said, "What are you doing? Are you a madman? -- and I thought you to be a Buddhist monk, that's why I allowed you to stay in the temple. And you have done the most sacrilegious act."
Ikkyu looked at the priest and said, "But the buddha within me was feeling very cold. So it was a question whether to sacrifice the living Buddha to the wooden one, or to sacrifice the wooden one to the living one. And I decided for life."
But the priest was so mad with anger, he couldn't listen to what Ikkyu was saying. He said, "You are a madman. You simply get out of here! You have burned Buddha."
So Ikkyu started to poke the burned Buddha -- ashes were there, the statue was almost completely finished. He started to poke with a stick. The priest asked, "What are you doing?"
He said, "I am trying to find the bones of Buddha."
So the priest laughed, he said, "You are either a fool or a madman. And you are absolutely mad! You cannot find bones there, because it is just a wooden Buddha."
Ikkyu laughed, he said, "Then bring the other two. The night is still very cold and the morning is still far away."
This Ikkyu was a very rare man. He was turned out immediately, out of the temple. In the morning he was sitting just on the side of the street outside the temple -- worshipping a milestone, putting flowers, doing his prayers. So the priest said, "You fool! In the night you misbehaved with Buddha. What have you done? You have committed a sin, and now what are you doing with this milestone? This is not a statue."
Ikkyu said, "When you want to pray, everything is a statue. At that time the buddha within was feeling very cold. At this time the buddha within is feeling very prayerful."
This man Ikkyu had thousands of disciples all over the country, and he used to wander from one place to another to help disciples.
Philosophy is a game for people who are not thirsty. Religion is the journey of those who are thirsty. Therefore philosophy plays with words; not so religion. Religion takes cognizance of the hints the words give and follows them. When the quest is for the lake, what can the word lake do? When the search is for life, the word life alone sounds hollow.
Let us understand a little about a profound question facing the philosopher. A tourist comes to India and he is given a map of India. What is the relationship between India and the map? If the map is the same as India then it must be as vast. If it is exactly like India, it would be useless, because you couldn't carry it in your car, much less put it in your pocket. If it is not like India, how can it still be useful?
The map is a symbol. It is not like India and yet by means of its lines, it conveys useful information about India. You may roam the whole of India without ever seeing a map of India. Wherever you go you will find India; the map is nowhere to be seen. But if you have the map with you and understand it and use it, the journey will be made easier. By either keeping the map in your pocket, or by looking at the map and never leaving your room, you will not learn a great deal. Both together make for the fullest understanding of the experience.
Religious people the world over hold the maps to their chests as if the maps were the actuality, the totality. Scriptures, holy books, images, temples -- all contain hidden pointers that keep the maps from being just a burden. The Hindu is carrying his load of maps, the Mohammedan his, the Christian his. The maps have become so numerous that the journey is now almost impossible, so weighted down are you by maps. The maps should be short, abridged, and they are not to be worshipped in themselves, but to be utilized on the journey.
Nanak drew his essentials from both the Hindu and the Mohammedan religions. He cannot be called Hindu nor Mohammedan; he is both or neither. It was very difficult for people to understand Nanak. There was a saying: "Baba Nanak is the king of the fakirs. He is the guru of the Hindus and the saint of the Mohammedans."
He is both. Of his two special disciples, Mardana and Bala, one was Hindu and the other a Mohammedan. Yet Nanak has no place in the Hindu temple or in the Mohammedan mosque. Both doubt his position and do not know where to place him. Nanak is the confluence of the two rivers, of Hinduism and Islam. He harvested the essence from both. Therefore the Sikh is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan; they must be both or none since their religion arises out of their junction.
Now it is difficult to understand this confluence; when there is a river on the map it is clear-cut, but here two rivers have become one. Some words relate to Islam while others reflect Hinduism, and together they became hazy, but gradually the fog clears when you enter into the experience. If you keep Nanak's words on your chest as you do other scriptures, it becomes like any other holy book -- and we do find the Sikh worshipping his words as if they were the guru. Does it not astonish how we repeat our mistakes?
Nanak went to Mecca. The priests there told him to be careful not to point his feet toward Kaaba while he slept. As the story goes, Nanak's reply was that they should turn his feet where God was not, and, it is said, the holy stone of Mecca turned wherever they turned his feet. The symbolism means only this: wherever you turn your feet, there God is. Where will you put your feet if He is omnipresent?
I was invited to the Golden Temple at Amritsar. When I went they stopped me at the entrance saying I must cover my head before entering the place of God. I reminded them of the incident with Nanak at Kaaba and asked them, "Does it mean that right here where I stand with my head uncovered, there is no God, no temple?" We keep on repeating our mistakes. I further asked, "Then please show me a place where I can be without a head-covering. And don't you remove your turbans while bathing, and while sleeping? Then isn't that also an affront to the Lord?"
Man's foolishness is the same everywhere. Whatever Buddha says, his followers paint with their own brush to suit them. And so also with Nanak. The same web is woven once a master has pronounced his words, because man's foolishness has not changed, nor has his deafness improved. He hears, but he draws his own individual conclusions which he then follows accordingly, never putting into practice what he actually hears.
Nanak says, no matter how many songs are sung about the lord, nobody has covered it completely. Different people sing different songs because there are many paths to reach Him. However antithetical their songs may seem there is no contradiction anywhere because they all contain the same message. The Vedas say exactly what the Koran says, but the method by which Mohammed reached is different from Patanjali's approach. Buddha also says the same thing but his method is entirely different.
Infinite are the gates to His abode. Whichever way you go leads to His gate. Once arrived you can begin to define the gate through which you entered, and describe the path you have trodden. Another person will likewise describe his own door and his road. Besides, it is not only the path that differs, but your understanding, your perception, your emotional attitude all play a significant part.
When a poet enters a garden, he sings in ecstasy; an artist would paint a picture; if a flower-merchant comes along, he will think in terms of sale and profit; a scientist will analyze the flowers or soil to find out their chemical composition and why they grow; a drunk will be oblivious to the beauty around him, he will not even know that he went through a garden. Whatever you see passes through the windows of your own eyes which impose their own color on everything.
Says Nanak: Some sing the praise of His power -- He is all powerful, omnipotent. Some sing of His benefaction and munificence -- He is the supreme giver. Some sing of the glory of His attributes, His beauty -- He is the most beautiful. Some call Him truth, some call Him Shiva, some call Him the beautiful."
Rabindranath has written: "I found Him in beauty." This says nothing of God; rather, it tells of Rabindranath. Gandhi says: "For me, He is truth -- truth is God." This speaks of Gandhi rather than of God. Rabindranath is a poet; for a poet God resides in beauty, supreme beauty. Gandhi was no poet, he is practical, and it is natural that such a mind sees God as truth. From the point of a lover -- He is the beloved.
How we see Him reflects our insight. He is everything simultaneously and also -- none of these. In this context Mahavira's reflection is wonderful. He says, "Unless and until your sense of vision drops, you cannot know Him." For whatever you will know, you will know through your own seeing; it will be your view of knowing. Mahavira calls his method no-view. Seeing only occurs when all vision drops.
But then you will lapse into silence, because how will you speak without a viewpoint? When you are freed of your vision, you will become like Him; because you will be so extensive, so comprehensive, you will be one with the open skies. How will you speak? You will no longer be separate unto yourself, but one with the absolute. A viewpoint means that you stand apart from what you see; to have a viewpoint means that you are separate from Him.
Therefore Nanak says that all the viewpoints are correct but none is complete; when the partial is proclaimed as complete and perfect, the illusions begin. Any sect or organization claims one particular incomplete vision as perfect. One sect stands against another, whereas all sects are different aspects of religion, and no one sect is a religion. If we were to amalgamate all possible sects that have been, that are and that will be, then religion would be born. No sect on its own can be called religion.
The word for sect in Hindi, sampradaya, also means the path, that which takes you to the goal; whereas religion, dharma, means the destination. The destination is one, the paths, many.
