The Last Testament Volume 6 - Chapter 1
People claim that you are a man of intellect but not of discrimination - you trust everybody and everybody betrays you.
The question is very strange because the first quality of intellect is discrimination. A man of intellect is bound to be a man of discrimination.
Intellect has no function. Its only function is to decide what is right, what is wrong. Discrimination is its whole area. So if you say that I am a man of intellect, then the second part of your question becomes inconsistent with the first part. And you can see this is discrimination; the first part of your question is inconsistent with the second part.
You say that I trust everybody and everybody betrays me. I wonder how you have come to this conclusion. I certainly trust everybody but nobody has ever betrayed me, because my trust is not conditional. This has to be understood.
Your trust can be betrayed if you have a condition in it. If I trust you without any condition there is no possibility of betraying me. Whatever you do I will still trust you. You can kill me but you cannot destroy my trust. I will die trusting you.
If you do anything that appears to others as betrayal that simply means you are betraying yourself, you are falling from your own dignity. But you cannot betray me. I have never experienced any betrayal in my life. I cannot condemn anybody of betraying. Everybody has behaved the way that he could and I had never expected him to behave in any other way. I have trusted him the way he is. My trust is not a demand that you have to behave in a certain way. So whatever you do, you are doing to yourself, not to me.
But whoever has asked the question is unaware of an unconditional trust, an unconditional love. All our love, all our trust, is conditional. And because it is conditional it is not authentic, it is not true. Then if the person behaves a little bit differently, goes in a different direction than you have been demanding, directly or indirectly, immediately you start condemning him, that he has betrayed you.
You had assumed that you had purchased the person and his future too. The future remains open. You cannot say what the other is going to do tomorrow and whatever he is going to do he is going to do to himself. You should not be affected by it. If you are affected by it then you are not a man of enlightenment.
I am not affected at all by what people do to me. My concern is that I remain the same whatever they do - whether they are for me or against me, whether they are my friends or they become my enemies, it does not matter. My love, my trust, will remain the same.
I am amazed for many reasons. First, anybody who listens to me, who has read me, will find out very easily that I am not a man of intellect, because intellectually you can find a thousand and one inconsistencies and contradictions in my statements. But I do not see any inconsistency, any self-contradiction, because to me life is not logic and to find the truth of life, intellect is not the way.
Life is a mystery, you cannot figure out what it is. You can experience it, taste it, sing it, dance it, but you cannot explain it. You cannot make a theory out of it.
The moment you start making a theory, immediately the mystery of life disappears. The function of the intellect is to theorize. Science depends on intellect. That's why it can be said that the whole effort of science is to demystify existence. Science divides existence into two categories: the known and the unknown. And what is known today was unknown yesterday, and what is unknown today may be known tomorrow so the distinction is not of any quality - it is just a question of time and man's search. Science can conceive a day when all will be known and the category of the unknown will disappear. This is the way of the intellect: to demystify, to make everything known, to destroy the unknown.
How can you say that I am a man of intellect? I am doing just the opposite. My whole effort is to make even the known unknown. To bring mystery back into your life - even in small things which you have started taking for granted, I want you to have another look.
I am reminded of one of the most beautiful persons of this century, D.H.
Lawrence. He was walking in a garden with a small boy and, just as small children are curious, the boy was asking this question and that question. At one question, even D.H. Lawrence was stunned. The small child asked, "Please forgive me. I must be tiring you by asking questions, but this is the last: I want to know why the trees are green."
And the answer that came from D.H. Lawrence is significant; it is not the answer of the intellect. He said, "The trees are green because they are green."
The boy agreed, that's perfectly right. But Lawrence went on thinking, "Is that an answer? Will anybody who approaches life intellectually be satisfied with it?"
But the reality is that whatever we know is surrounded by infinite unknowability; not only the unknown.
And that's where I make a difference. Objective science divides life, existence, into two categories - the known and the unknown. The science of the interior divides life into three categories - the known, the unknown and the unknowable. And the unknowable is the most important, because ultimately you have to face it. And the moment you face the unknowable you have to recognize your ignorance, you have to become again a small child.
Socrates is reported to have said, "When I was young I thought I knew everything." And he was a great intellectual. "When I grew a little older I was not so certain, a little older still and there was more uncertainty, a little older still and now I could not say with certainty that I know anything."
And before he died he said, "Only one thing I know, that I know nothing." This is from the man who had one of the keenest intellects; but he had something more, higher and deeper than intellect, and that is intuition.
I am not a man of intellect, because my whole work is with the unknowable. The method of science is intellect, the method of the inner world is intuition. Intellect is absolutely meaningless.
When you start moving inwards, deeper into meditation, awareness, consciousness, you will become more and more aware of the mysterious, the miraculous, and you will become aware of the fact that existence basically is unknowable. We can know little bits and pieces here and there and it is enough for our practical life but the deeper you move you always come across a wall.
There was a time one century before that scientists were very optimistic because science was coming to know more and more every day. But after Albert Einstein things have changed totally. Albert Einstein came to the deepest, the very inside of matter, and was puzzled because what he came to understand was so mysterious, so illogical, that even to make a scientific theory from it appeared impossible.
One thing was that as the atom was divided into electrons Einstein became aware that electrons don't travel from one place to another. They simply, from point A, disappear and appear at point B - they don't travel between. You have no trace at all of their traveling, no footprints. How to explain it? It comes closer to magic than to science; it comes closer to the great experiences of the meditators than to science.
When I read this I remembered one of the great meditators: Basho says, "On the way to truth there is no path. It is like a bird flying in the sky, it leaves no footprints behind it." Of course in the air no footprints can be left. I simply remembered the words `it leaves no footprints behind it.'
And Albert Einstein finds electrons moving from point A to point B and in between no footprints. No trace. As if they disappear from one point and appear at another point - which is absolutely illogical. It troubled Albert Einstein for many days to declare to his scientific friends that he had come across a phenomenon which was beyond intellect. But what could he do? This is the way existence is behaving and existence has no obligation to fulfill our requirements of intellect, logic, consistency. We have to go with existence; existence is not going to go with us.
The latest scientific researches have become more and more mystical and this is one of the greatest hopes, that soon we can make a single science. There is no need of religions and there is no need of science - a single science with two wings. The interior wing which is mysterious and the outside wing which is also mysterious. Now it is possible because both are entering into the area of mystery.
It has happened many times but people don't take note of it because it is so rare.
You must have heard the name of Madame Curie - she was one of the Nobel Prize winner scientists - and she was working on a scientific problem for years and was not getting anywhere. One night she worked late and was really getting tired and fed up with the problem - she was almost going to drop the idea and start some other project. What is the point of wasting time on something which has taken four or five years of her life and she is still just where she was at the beginning - not a single glimpse, not a single clue. And life is short; you cannot waste your whole life on a single scientific problem.
That night she went to sleep thinking, "Tomorrow I am going to burn all the papers that I have written these five years - I am finished with it." In the morning when she woke up she was surprised, she could not believe it. On her table, in her open notebook that she had left the night before, the answer was written. And the most puzzling thing was that the room was locked from within; nobody had entered. Her husband was also a scientist but if Madame Curie could not solve the problem in five years then he could not manage in just one night. And moreover, he was not at home, he had gone on a trip.
As she watched closely it became more and more mysterious - the handwriting was hers. Then she closed her eyes and tried to remember what had happened, and then the whole scene revealed itself...
Now she remembered that in the night she had had a dream. She had gone to the table, written the answer, went back to her bed and forgotten all about it. It was not a dream, it was a reality, because the notebook and the answer was the proof that she had not dreamt, but from where did this answer come? Because there was nothing else on the page, only the answer.
It was not from her intellect - from her intellect she had been working for five years. But because she got tired the intellect said, "it is beyond me." She slept with this idea that "I am finished with it" - this was the decision of the intellect and in such moments intuition takes over. Intuition takes over only when intellect is finished. Intellect is for a lower reality - for the mundane world.
Intuition is for the higher reality, for the mysterious, for the miraculous.
Then she worked out backwards from the answer the whole process and found that the answer was right. This is similar, exactly similar to the case of Gautam Buddha. But nobody has even compared the two processes.
Gautam Buddha became enlightened on the night when he had decided to drop all efforts. He was tired, he has done everything that was told by the masters, teachers, scriptures and he did everything to his best and nothing had happened.
Twelve years had passed since he had left his palace and his hands were as empty as ever. It was a full moon night, sitting under a tree he decided that the whole search was futile - `I am finished with it.'
With the same attitude in which Madame Curie went to her bed, Buddha went to sleep under the tree. And in the morning when he opened his eyes, as the sun was rising, he was amazed to look at the world. It was not the world he had slept in. These were not the eyes that he had gone to sleep with - he had new eyes and a new world. It was luminous, it was mystery all over. And all his anxiety had disappeared, all his questioning had disappeared - there was absolute silence and immense tranquillity.
For the first time he felt he was at home, he had arrived - now there was nowhere to go, the goal was achieved. The intellect had been working for twelve years - tired, it dropped out of the way, gave space for intuition to move in; and what is impossible for the intellect is not impossible for intuition.
For intuition is a totally different approach, it is an innocent approach with no logic. It is the approach of the child when he is born and opens his eyes for the first time. He knows nothing but he sees everything, although he cannot say, "what are the walls and what are the pillars and what are people and what are animals?" - he cannot discriminate. But he is seeing everything. He cannot describe, he has no words, but that does not mean that he is not seeing.
Intuition is pure seeing - it is not a process, it is a quantum leap.
I am not a man of intellect. I have left it far, far away. Whatever I am saying to you is my intuitive experience. That's why you can find in my statements many inconsistencies because intuition knows no inconsistencies, no contradictions; but when you think about those realities with intellect you are looking from a totally different angle, with a totally different methodology - that creates the trouble. You immediately see this is inconsistent, this is contradictory. Whoever has asked the question knows nothing about intellect and knows nothing about discrimination either. Because to know about intellect and to know about discrimination you have to be higher than both - only from a sunlit peak can you see the lower realities.
This question was given yesterday too and I had chosen to answer it but because the time was up I had left it. I was surprised that today it is different - it is not exactly the same question as it was yesterday. You cannot deceive me and you should never try it: yesterday it was more stupid and the person must have thought over and over again how to put it in a better way so it is less stupid. But stupidity is stupidity. It makes no difference.
Yesterday it was, "Osho, you are a giant of the intellect but you don't know discrimination."
The man must have thought `a giant of the intellect' and `is unable to discriminate' looks obviously nonsense, because intellect's function is discrimination. And if you are a giant of intellect, then your whole work is discrimination; very delicate and very refined discrimination.
But you did well to remove that word `giant' because I am not a giant, I am a simple human being. It would have been even nicer of you if you had removed the word `intellect' too. If you had said, "Osho, you are not a man of intellect," I would have appreciated your understanding. I am not.
But you had to put in the word 'intellect' because you wanted to make the point about discrimination. If you accept me as not a man of intellect then there is no question that I am not a man of discrimination - the question cannot be made.
Just to declare that I am not a man of discrimination, unwillingly you had to accept me as a man of intellect.
There is no need. You could have simply said , "Osho, you are not a man of discrimination," and I am not. I don't discriminate between friends and enemies, between men and women, between white and black, between Hindu and Mohammedan, between one nation and another nation; I don't discriminate in any way. All these discriminations are crimes.
All these discriminations have to be dropped and this is not the first time that this point has been made to me. On different occasions, by different people, for different reasons, it has been pointed out to me.
I would like to tell you a few points so that you can understand what is boiling in your unconscious.
One of the Congress presidents in India, U.N. Dhebar, was attending my camps and there should have been no difficulty, but one day he told me, "Osho, you are the real inheritor of Mahatma Gandhi's ideology, although you have never been with Mahatma Gandhi. You have never been associated with Gandhism, but if you start teaching Gandhism, then it can be saved from dying."
I said, "It would have been better if you had not said this, because I hate to be anybody's successor and I hate to propagate anyone else's philosophy."
And that day I criticized Mahatma Gandhi on many points. I would never have bothered because there are millions of people in the world; I am not going to criticize everybody, there is not time for that. But U.N. Dhebar just pointed me towards Mahatma Gandhi, so he was responsible, he was present.
After the meeting I asked him, "If you have anything to say you can say it to me now or you can say in the next meeting before everybody. I am willing to have an open discussion about it because I think that Gandhism should die if India has to live. If Gandhism continues then India will have to die. And if I have to choose between the two I would choose that India live - Gandhi is already dead. It does not matter if Gandhism also dies. Who cares?"
He said, "No I cannot discuss it publicly. I understand what you say is right, but you should be more discriminative."
I said, "You are a politician, I am not a politician. A politician has to be discriminative, but why should I be?"
He said, "I am simply telling you that you have such a great following in the Gandhians that if you say things against Gandhi all these people will leave. They will not leave Gandhism, they will leave you. That's why I am saying you should be more discriminative. When you make any statement you should wait and see whether it is going in favor of you or against you." And he was giving friendly advice. But what he actually meant by discrimination was diplomacy.
I am not a diplomat.
I said, "I will say whatever feels to me to be the right thing, whatever the consequences."
I have lost many followers in these thirty years in the same way. When I criticized Gandhi, all the communists and socialists started coming closer to me; they thought that I must be a communist. Who else is going to criticize Gandhi?
The president of the communist party told me, "We can be immensely helped by you because we don't have any person of your charisma who can influence the masses."
But I said, "Wait. I did not speak against Gandhism because I am a communist - now you have created another trouble, I will have to speak against communism."
And again the same advice: "No, Osho, you have to be very discriminative. These people can be of immense help to you. The communist party is the most organized party in the country and if they are behind you, your work..."
I said, "Forget all about work. First let me finish the communists because they have come under a misunderstanding and I don't want anybody to be with me under any misunderstanding." And I had to criticize communism just because of their desire.
And this has been happening politically, socially, religiously... I have got people who love me in every religion. There are rabbis who have written letters to me, that "You have made us understand our own religion, you have given us new insight, but then strangely sometimes you start criticizing. You should be more discriminative, say only good things about people then you will have millions of followers. And what is the point of bringing things up which are not right."
Their intention is good but what they are telling me is that I have to be basically a politician.
On my way to Nepal, in Delhi, friends gathered and said, "Before you leave for Nepal we have to say a few things: one, don't speak against Hinduism there!"
I said, "Why?" I was not aware, I may not have spoken about Hinduism at all.
They said, "It is a Hindu kingdom and the constitution is based on Hinduism.
The constitution declares this is the only Hindu kingdom in the world. So avoid that."
I said, "Now it is going to be difficult. If you wanted me to avoid it you should not have mentioned it. You should be more discriminative - I cannot be!"
I have never been diplomatic, I have never been political. I say only that which feels right in the moment to be said. I don't think about the next moment.
I have spoken on all religions. I have spoken on their beauties, on their greatness, on their high flights of ecstasy, and from every religion people have come to me; but the moment I showed them that there is a darker side also, that these small moments of ecstasy and flight into the higher regions of consciousness are very few... Your whole history is full of bloodshed, killing, murdering, burning people alive. I cannot just go on praising those few good points which are to do with only a few good people. I will have to say the whole thing. And ninety-nine percent is rubbish. If I don't say it then I am committing a crime against truth itself.
So I am not a man of intellect - you are right. And I don't know how to discriminate - you are right. But I am perfectly happy and content as I am, and you are not. Before saying anything of advice always think to whom you are saying it.
I am absolutely fulfilled. I don't need even a single moment more to live. Even death will be welcome right now because I know there is no death. There is only truth. And once you have experienced it, it does not matter what happens to you, what happens to your body, because nothing can change your inner climate, the inner blissfulness, the inner beautitude. The inner dance continues in spite of it all.
How can a meditator know that he is going higher and deeper, or if he is stuck somewhere?
It is very simple. First, there are qualities which grow as meditation deepens. For example, you start feeling loving for no reason at all. Not the love that you know, in which you have to fall - not falling in love. But just a quality of lovingness, not only to human beings. As your meditation deepens, your lovingness will start spreading beyond humanity to animals, to trees, even to the rocks, to the mountains.
If you feel that something is left out of your love - that means you are stuck.
Your lovingness should spread to the whole existence. As your meditation goes higher, your lower qualities will start dropping. You cannot manage both. You cannot be angry as easily as you have always been. Slowly, slowly, it becomes impossible to be angry. You cannot deceive, cheat, exploit, in any way. You cannot hurt. Your behavior pattern will be changing with your inner consciousness change.
You will not fall into those sad moments that you usually fall into - frustrations, failures, sadness, a feeling of meaninglessness, anxieties, anguish; all these are slowly, slowly, going to become foreigners.
A moment comes when even if you want to be angry, you will find it impossible; you have forgotten the language of anger. Laughter will become easier. Your face, your eyes, will be aglow with some inner light. You will feel yourself that you have become light, as if gravitation does not function as it used to function before. You have lost heaviness, because all these qualities are very heavy - anger, sadness, frustration, cunningness. All these feelings are very heavy. You don't know, but they are making you heavy-hearted and they also make you hard.
As meditation grows you will feel yourself becoming soft, vulnerable - just as laughter will become easy to you, tears will also become easy to you. But these tears will not be of sadness or sorrow. These tears will be of joy, blissfulness; these tears will be of gratitude, of thankfulness. These tears will say what words cannot; these tears will be your prayers.
And for the first time you will know that tears are not only to express your pain, your misery, your suffering; that's how we have used them. But they have a far greater purpose to fulfill: they are immensely beautiful when they come as an expression of ecstasy.
And you will find, on the whole, expansion - that you are expanding, you are becoming bigger and bigger. Not in the sense of the ego but in the sense that your consciousness is spreading, that it is taking people within its area, that your hands are becoming bigger and hugging far away people, that distances are falling away, that even far away stars are close, because your consciousness now has wings.
And these things are so clear and so certain that a question or doubt never arises.
If a doubt arises that means you are stuck; then be more alert, then put forth your energy more intensively in meditation. But if these things come without any question...
This is a strange world: if you are miserable, if you are suffering, nobody says to you that somebody has brainwashed you, somebody has hypnotized you. But if you are smiling, joyously dancing on the street, singing a song, people will be shocked. They will say, "What are you doing? Somebody has brainwashed you - are you hypnotized, or have you gone mad?"
In this strange world suffering is accepted as natural. Anguish is accepted as natural. Why? Because whenever you are in suffering and whenever you are miserable you make the other person feel happy that he is not so miserable, he is not so unhappy. You give him a chance to show sympathy to you, and sympathy costs nothing.
But if you are so blissful, so happy, then that man cannot feel himself happier than you; you are putting him down. He feels something is wrong with him. He has to condemn you, otherwise he has to think about himself, which he is afraid to do. Everybody is afraid to think about himself because that means changing, transforming, going through some processes.
It is easy to accept people with sad faces, it is very difficult to accept people with laughter. It should not be so. In a better world, in a world with more conscious people, it should not be so, it should be just the opposite - that when you are suffering people will start asking you, "What is the matter, what has gone wrong?" And when you are happy and you are dancing by the side of the road, if somebody passes by he may join you, he may dance with you, or he may at least feel happy seeing you dance. But he will not say you are mad, because dancing is not mad, singing is not mad, joy is not mad; misery is mad. But madness is accepted.
With your meditation developing you have to be aware that you will be creating so many critics around you who will say, "Something is going wrong with you.
We have seen you smiling when you were sitting alone. Why were you smiling?
This is not sane. "To be sad is sane, but to be smiling, that is not sane.
People will find it hard if they insult you and you don't react. You simply say `thank you' and go on your way. This is hard to take because it deeply insults the person's ego. He wanted to drag you down into the gutter and you refused; now he is alone in the gutter. He cannot forgive you.
So if these things start happening you can be certain you are on the right path.
And soon people of understanding, people of experience, will start finding the changes in you. They will start asking you what has happened to you, how it has happened to you. "We would also like it to happen to us." Who wants to be miserable? Who wants to remain continuously in inner torture?
As your meditation deepens all these things are going to happen: somebody will condemn you, somebody will think you are mad, somebody who has some understanding will ask you, "What has happened to you and how can it happen to me?"
You remain centered, rooted, grounded in your being - whatsoever happens around does not matter. You have to become the center of the cyclone. And you will know when you have become the center of the cyclone. There is no need to ask, "How will we know?" How do you know when you have a headache? You simply know.
One of my teachers in school was a very strange man. The first day in his class he said to us, "Remember one thing: headache I don't believe, stomachache I don't believe, I believe only things which I can see. So if you want freedom from school any day, don't make the excuse of a headache, a stomachache, et cetera; you have to bring something real to show me."
And he was thought to be a very strict man. It was very difficult to get even one hour's leave. Just in front of his house there were two kadamba trees - very beautiful trees. At evening time he used to go for a walk and it would be almost dark when he was returning.
So the first day I said, "It has to be settled." I climbed one of the trees and when he came underneath the tree, I dropped a stone on his head. He screamed, shouted. I came down. I said, "What is the matter?"
He said, "It hurts, and you are asking what is the matter" I said, "You have to show it. Unless you show it to me I am not going to believe it. I am your student! And never mention this to anybody - I don't want you tomorrow to call me to the principle's office because you will be in trouble. You will have to show your hurt, you will have to put it on the table, otherwise it is just fiction; you have invented it; it is imagination. Why should I climb the tree in front of your house? I have never done that in my whole life. Suddenly have I gone mad?"
He said, "Listen, I understand what you want me to understand, but don't tell anybody. If you have a headache I will accept it, but don't tell anybody because that is my lifelong principle. I am making an exception."
I said, "That's okay. I don't bother about anybody else. Just understand that when I raise my hand, either it is a headache, or it is a stomachache - something invisible. You have to let me go."
The whole class was surprised: "What is the matter? The moment you move your hand, he simply says 'Get out! Get out immediately!' And the whole day you are free from his torture. But what is the significance of that hand movement, what does it mean? And why does he get so affected?"
You will know; it is far deeper than a headache, and far deeper than a stomachache, far deeper than heartache. It is soul-ache; you will know it.
Are witnessing and sensitivity two sides of the same coin?
They are not two sides of the same coin - witnessing and sensitivity. But sensitivity is one of the qualities that develops in you with witnessing. Other qualities also develop. With witnessing you become almost a garden - many flowers and many fragrances develop in you.
Witnessing becomes your very base of transformation. The more you see your mind, the more you witness it, the less you will find it. It needs unconsciousness to be there. It is an animal that exists only in darkness. As you bring the light in, the mind with its thoughts starts disappearing.
And it is the thickness of thoughts that makes you insensitive. When there are no thoughts and you are simply a witness, just a mirror, then your sensitivity is infinite. Then anything that comes in front of you is reflected totally. Then you see the same rose flower with a totally different vision: then it becomes radiant, then it radiates not only color but rays. Then it becomes not only just matter but an energy phenomenon.
In the Soviet Union one scientist photographer, Kirlian, has been taking photographs of the energy that surrounds everything. He has developed such sensitive plates that when you take the photograph of a rose flower you also find in the photograph an aura of light surrounding it. It is the same with photographs of man, and every man has a different color aura. So the ancient idea of auras is now finding a scientific support.
The enlightened man will have a white aura. A man like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin will have a black aura, and between these two - black and white auras - will be the whole humanity. Different colors, sometimes mixed colors, and all those colors show where you are, where you are inside.
When you become a witness you become a sensitive mirror, more sensitive than Kirlian's photoplates. You will see things in a totally new light - the same things, the same world, but in a totally different light. Ordinary things start having extraordinary beauty. Just pebbles on the shore become more valuable, more charming, than any Kohinoor - because it all depends how you see them. If you can see their aura, their light, their color, their beauty, then they are no more just stones - they have become flowers.
And as you become more and more sensitive you will have an understanding of people which you never had before. Just seeing the face of a man you will be seeing much more than the man himself knows about. Just holding the hand of a man you will know much more of his energy than he has ever known. Being with someone you will find that your energy is being sucked and you feel tired - - just being with him. And with somebody else you feel you are nourished, you feel healthier, you feel more well-being.
Different people will give you different experiences, and different people will become attracted to you as your awareness grows. Then only the better quality people will be coming closer to you.
It is true that a man can be known by his friends, by the company he keeps. It is absolutely true, because you cannot keep company which is not in tune with your inner being.
With your witnessing there will be a few difficulties: your old friends may not remain your friends any more, not that you have done any harm to them but simply you have changed and now you no longer fit with their state, with their consciousness. So don't be worried about that. If you are married and you find that your wife is falling far away from you then it is better to tell her what you are doing: that if she wants to be with you, if she loves you the way you love her, you would like her also to be a companion on the path of meditation. Otherwise, soon you will be so far away from each other that everything will be misunderstood.
Your children will find that you are a different person - you are no more the same old papa. It is better to help your children to learn a little bit of witnessing.
And don't think that they cannot learn; they can learn better than grown up people because they are fresh, they are not loaded with any past. Just you have to be more friendly with them than fatherly. And before the rift happens it is better to make it clear to them, "It will not be my fault if the family falls apart. I have chosen a path which is going to give me something and I would like it to be shared by you all."
I don't want any family to be disturbed by anybody in the name of spirituality, and if we can be a little more loving and compassionate and make them understand - and they will be able to see that you are less angry, you are less tired, you are less frustrated, you are more loving, more compassionate - they will surely come with you.
The old religions have been teaching 'renounce the family'. This was one of the reasons - because there is going to be difficulty sooner or later - but I don't think that even giving it a try, you renounce the family.
I say to you it is a good training school - the family - and if you cannot change your children and your wife who love you, then whom are you going to change in this world? You will find more and more strangers everywhere.
Start wherever you are. And if you are finding something of tremendous value, share it with everybody.
None of my sannyasins has renounced the family. And every sannyasin has found a tremendous support by the family. They have become closer, they have become friends, they have become fellow travelers.
