The East has never bothered about birthdays. The East simply laughs at the whole absurdity of it. What has chronological time to do with Krishna's birth? We don't have any record. Or we have many records, contradictory, contradicting each other.
But, see, I was born on eleventh December. If it can be proved that I was not born on eleventh December, will it be enough proof that I was never born? yoga907
I was incarnated into this body on this day. This is the day I saw for the first time the green of the trees and the blue of the skies. This was the day I for the first time opened my eyes and saw God all around. Of course the word 'God' didn't exist at that moment, but what I saw was God. body01
You can ask my mother something.... After my birth, for three days I didn't take any milk, and they were all worried, concerned. The doctors were concerned, because how was this child going to survive if he simply refused to take milk? But they had no idea of my difficulty, of what difficulty they were creating for me. They were trying to force me in every possible way. And there was no way I could explain to them, or that they could find out by themselves.
In my past life, before I died, I was on a fast. I wanted to complete a twenty-one day fast, but I was murdered before my fast was complete, three days before. Those three days remained in my awareness even in this birth; I had to complete my fast. I am really stubborn! Otherwise, people don't carry things from one life to another life; once a chapter is closed, it is closed.
But for three days they could not manage to put anything in my mouth; I simply rejected it. But after three days I was perfectly okay and they were all surprised: "Why was he refusing for three days? There was no sickness, no problem--and after three days he is perfectly normal." It remained a mystery to them.
But these things I don't want to talk about because to you they will all be hypothetical, and there is no way for me to prove them scientifically. And I don't want to give you any belief, so I go on cutting all that may create any belief system in your mind.
You love me, you trust me, so whatever I say you may trust it. But I insist, again and again, that anything that is not based on your experience, accept it only hypothetically. Don't make it your belief. If sometimes I give an example, that is sheer necessity--because the person has asked, "How did you manage to be so courageous and sharp in your childhood?"
I have not done anything, I have simply continued what I was doing in my past life. And that's why in my childhood I was thought to be crazy, eccentric--because I would not give any explanation of why I wanted to do something. I would simply say, "I want to do it. There are reasons for me, why I am doing it, but I cannot give you those reasons because you cannot understand."... misery09
I am reminded again of the small village where I was born. Why existence should have chosen that small village in the first place is unexplainable. It is as it should be. The village was beautiful. I have traveled far and wide but I have never come across that same beauty. One never comes again to the same. Things come and go, but it is never the same.
I can see that still, small village. Just a few huts near a pond, and a few tall trees where I used to play. There was no school in the village. That is of great importance, because I remained uneducated for almost nine years, and those are the most formative years. After that, even if you try, you cannot be educated. So in a way I am still uneducated, although I hold many degrees. Any uneducated man could have done it. And not any degree, but a first-class master's degree--that too can be done by any fool. So many fools do it every year that it has no significance. What is significant is that for my first years I remained without education. There was no school, no road, no railway, no post office. What a blessing! That small village was a world unto itself. Even in my times away from that village I remained in that world, uneducated.
I have read Ruskin's famous book, Unto This Last, and when I was reading it I was thinking of that village. Unto This Last...that village is still unaltered. No road connects it, no railway passes by, even now after almost fifty years; no post office, no police station, no doctor--in fact nobody falls ill in that village, it is so pure and so unpolluted. I have known people in that village who have not seen a railway train, who wonder what it looks like, who have not even seen a bus or a car. They have never left the village. They live so blissfully and silently.
My birthplace, Kuchwada, was a village with no railway line and no post office. It had small hills, hillocks rather, but a beautiful lake, and a few huts, just straw huts. The only brick house was the one I was born in, and that too was not much of a brick house. It was just a little house.
I can see it now, and can describe its every detail...but more than the house or the village, I remember the people. I have come across millions of people, but the people of that village were more innocent than any, because they were very primitive. They knew nothing of the world. Not even a single newspaper had ever entered that village. You can now understand why there was no school, not even a primary school...what a blessing! No modern child can afford it.
I remained uneducated for those years and they were the most beautiful years....
Kuchwada was surrounded by small hills and there was a small pond. Nobody could describe that pond except Basho. Even he does not describe the pond, he simply says:
The ancient pond
Frog jumps in
Plop!
Is this a description? The pond is only mentioned, the frog too. No description of the pond or the frog...and plop!
The village had an ancient pond, very ancient, and very ancient trees surrounding it--they were perhaps hundreds of years old--and beautiful rocks all around...and certainly the frogs jumped. Day in and day out you could hear "plop," again and again. The sound of frogs jumping really helped the prevailing silence. That sound made the silence richer, more meaningful.
This is the beauty of Basho: he could describe something without actually describing it. He could say something without even mentioning a word. "Plop!" Now, is this a word? No word could do justice to the sound of a frog jumping into the ancient pond, but Basho did it justice.
I am not a Basho, and that village needed a Basho. Perhaps he would have made beautiful sketches, paintings, and haikus.... I have not done anything about that village--you will wonder why--I have not even visited it again. Once is enough. I never go to a place twice. For me number two does not exist. I have left many villages, many towns, never to return again. Once gone, gone forever, that's my way; so I have not returned to that village. The villagers have sent messages to me to come at least once more. I told them through a messenger, "I have been there once already, twice is not my way."
But the silence of that ancient pond stays with me. glimps01
I was a lonely child because I was brought up by my maternal grandfather and grandmother; I was not with my father and mother. Those two old people were alone and they wanted a child who would be the joy of their last days. So my father and mother agreed: I was their eldest child, the first-born; they sent me.
I don't remember any relationship with my father's family in the early years of my childhood. With these two old men--my grandfather and his old servant, who was really a beautiful man--and my old grandmother...these three people. And the gap was so big...I was absolutely alone. It was not company, it could not be company. They tried their hardest to be as friendly to me as possible but it was just not possible.
I was left to myself. I could not say things to them. I had nobody else, because in that small village my family were the richest; and it was such a small village--not more than two hundred people in all--and so poor that my grandparents would not allow me to mix with the village children. They were dirty, and of course they were almost beggars. So there was no way to have friends. That caused a great impact. In my whole life I have never been a friend, I have never known anybody to be a friend. Yes, acquaintances I had.
In those first, early years I was so lonely that I started enjoying it; and it is really a joy. So it was not a curse to me, it proved a blessing. I started enjoying it, and I started feeling self-sufficient; I was not dependent on anybody.
I have never been interested in games for the simple reason that from my very childhood there was no way to play, there was nobody to play with. I can still see myself in those earliest years, just sitting.
We had a beautiful spot where our house was, just in front of a lake. Far away for miles, the lake...and it was so beautiful and so silent. Only once in while would you see a line of white cranes flying, or making love calls, and the peace would be disturbed; otherwise, it was almost the right place for meditation. And when they would disturb the peace--a love call from a bird...after his call the peace would deepen, it would become deeper.
The lake was full of lotus flowers, and I would sit for hours so self-content, as if the world did not matter: the lotuses, the white cranes, the silence....
And my grandparents were very aware of one thing, that I enjoyed my aloneness. They had continuously been seeing that I had no desire to go to the village to meet anybody, or to talk with anybody. Even if they wanted to talk my answers were yes, or no; I was not interested in talking either. So they became aware of one thing, that I enjoyed my aloneness, and it was their sacred duty not to disturb me.
So for seven years continuously nobody tried to corrupt my innocence; there was nobody. Those three old people who lived in the house, the servant and my grandparents, were all protective in every possible way that nobody should disturb me. In fact I started feeling, as I grew up, a little embarrassed that because of me they could not talk, they could not be normal as everybody is. It was just the opposite situation....
It happens with children that you tell them, "Be silent because your father is thinking, your grandfather is resting. Be quiet, sit silently." In my childhood it happened the opposite way. Now I cannot answer why and how; it simply happened. That's why I said it simply happened--the credit does not go to me.
All those three old people were continuously making signs to each other: "Don't disturb him--he is enjoying so much." And they started loving my silence.
Silence has its vibe; it is infectious, particularly a child's silence which is not forced, which is not because you are saying, "I will beat you if you create any nuisance or noise." No, that is not silence. That will not create the joyous vibration that I am talking about, when a child is silent on his own, enjoying for no reason; his happiness is uncaused. That creates great ripples all around.
In a better world, every family will learn from children. You are in such a hurry to teach them. Nobody seems to learn from them, and they have much to teach you. And you have nothing to teach them.
Just because you are older and powerful you start making them just like you without ever thinking about what you are, where you have reached, what your status is in the inner world. You are a pauper; and you want the same for your child also?
But nobody thinks; otherwise people would learn from small children. Children bring so much from the other world because they are such fresh arrivals. They still carry the silence of the womb, the silence of the very existence.
So it was just a coincidence that for seven years I remained undisturbed--no one to nag me, to prepare me for the world of business, politics, diplomacy. My grandparents were more interested in leaving me as natural as possible--particularly my grandmother. She is one of the causes--these small things affect all your life patterns--she is one of the causes of my respect for the whole of womanhood.
She was a simple woman, uneducated, but immensely sensitive. She made it clear to my grandfather and the servant: "We all have lived a certain kind of life which has not led us anywhere. We are as empty as ever, and now death is coming close." She insisted, "Let this child be uninfluenced by us. What influence can we...? We can only make him like us, and we are nothing. Give him an opportunity to be himself."
My grandfather--I heard them discussing in the night, thinking that I was asleep--used to say to her, "You are telling me to do this, and I am doing it; but he is somebody else's son, and sooner or later he will have to go to his parents. What will they say?--`You have not taught him any manners, any etiquette, he is absolutely wild.'"
She said, "Don't be worried about that. In this whole world everybody is civilized, has manners, etiquette, but what is the gain? You are very civilized--what have you got out of it? At the most his parents will be angry at us. So what?--let them be angry. They can't harm us, and by that time the child will be strong enough that they cannot change his life course."
I am tremendously grateful to that old woman. My grandfather was again and again worried that sooner or later he was going to be responsible: "They will say, `We left our child with you and you have not taught him anything.'"
My grandmother did not even allow...because there was one man in the village who could at least teach me the beginnings of language, mathematics, a little geography. He was educated to the fourth grade--the lowest four; that is what was called primary education in India. But he was the most educated man in the town.
My grandfather tried hard: "He can come and he can teach him. At least he will know the alphabet, some mathematics, so when he goes to his parents they will not say that we just wasted seven years completely."
But my grandmother said, "Let them do whatsoever they want to do after seven years. For seven years he has to be just his natural self, and we are not going to interfere." And her argument was always, "You know the alphabet, so what? You know mathematics, so what? You have earned a little money; do you want him also to earn a little money and live just like you?"
That was enough to keep that old man silent. What to do? He was in a difficulty because he could not argue, and he knew that he would be held responsible, not she, because my father would ask him, "What have you done?" And actually that would have been the case, but fortunately he died before my father could ask.
But my father continuously was saying, "That old man is responsible, he has spoiled the child." But now I was strong enough, and I made it clear to him: "Before me, never say a single word against my maternal grandfather. He has saved me from being spoiled by you--that is your real anger. But you have other children--spoil them. And at the final stage you will say who IS spoiled."
He had other children, and more and more children went on coming. I used to tease him, "You please bring one child more, make it a dozen. Eleven children? People ask, "How many children?" Eleven does not look right; one dozen is more impressive."
And in later years I used to tell him, "You go on spoiling all your children; I am wild, and I will remain wild."
What you see as innocence is nothing but wildness. What you see as clarity is nothing but wildness. Somehow I remained out of the grip of civilization.
And once I was strong enough.... And that's why people insist, "Take hold of the child as quickly as possible, don't waste time because the earlier you take hold of the child, the easier it is. Once the child becomes strong enough, then to bend him according to your desires will be difficult."
And life has seven-year circles. By the seventh year the child is perfectly strong; now you cannot do anything. Now he knows where to go, what to do. He is capable of arguing. He is capable of seeing what is right and what is wrong. And his clarity will be at the climax when he is seven. If you don't disturb his earlier years, then at the seventh he is so crystal clear about everything that his whole life will be lived without any repentance.
I have lived without any repentance. I have tried to find: Have I done anything wrong, ever? Not that people have been thinking that all that I have done is right, that is not the point: I have never thought anything that I have done was wrong. The whole world may think it was wrong, but to me there is absolute certainty that it was right; it was the right thing to do.
So there is no question of repenting about the past. And when you don't have to repent about the past you are free from it. The past keeps you entangled like an octopus because you go on feeling, "That thing I should not have done," or, "That thing which I was supposed to do and did not do...." All those things go on pulling you backwards.
I don't see anything behind me, no past.
If I say something about my past, it is simply factual memory, it has no psychological involvement. I am telling you as if I am telling you about somebody else. It is just factual; it has nothing to do with my personal involvement. It might have occurred to somebody else, it might have happened to somebody else.
So remember, a factual memory is not enslaving. Psychological memory is, and psychological memory is made up of things that you think, or you have been conditioned to think, were wrong and you did them. Then there is a wound, a psychological wound. dark02
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