And instead of Ramateertha having a red-carpet welcome, a letter was handed to him from the
highest Hindu committee of pundits, scholars. The letter said, ”Before you speak anywhere else,
first you have to face the committee, the supreme committee of the scholars of Hinduism, because
the way you have been talking about Hinduism is not orthodox, it is not traditional.” More shocking!
He was almost court-marshaled. In front of the scholars he had to answer why he said this, why he
said that. This he had never thought was going to be, but this is how it happened. He had to appear
before the scholars – and there is the point that I wanted to make to the conference in Lucknow.
As he was just going to speak, one old Hindu scholar stood up and said, ”First tell me, do you know
Sanskrit?” Unfortunately Ramateertha did not know Sanskrit at all, for the simple reason that he was born near Lahore, which is now in Pakistan. In that part even Hindi was not spoken; Urdu,
a Mohammedan language, was the spoken language. And those who wanted to become great
scholars of course had to read Persian and Arabic. They had to go to the roots of Urdu; that is,
Persian and Arabic. Sanskrit has nothing to do with Urdu.
Mohammedans or Hindus was not the question: the area where Ramateertha was born was Urdudominated;
in schools, in colleges, in universities, Persian and Arabic were the exalted languages.
So he was a scholar of Persian, Arabic and Urdu, but he had never thought that religion had anything
to do with language.
You can be a Hindu without knowing Sanskrit, you can be a great Hindu sage without knowing
Sanskrit; Sanskrit is not something absolutely necessary. And that was one of the questions those
scholars were asking him: ”While speaking around the world you were not quoting the upanishads,
the vedas, the shankaracharyas. You were quoting Sufi mystics – Jalaluddin Rumi, Farid, Sarmad.
You can befool in the West because people don’t know what you are quoting, but these are not
Hindus, these are not our people.”
The truth is Ramateertha had quoted exactly rightly. It does not matter whom he was quoting, what
matters is the meaning. He had no knowledge of Sanskrit but he understood. He had read the
upanishads in Urdu, he had read the vedas in Urdu, and naturally he had the understanding of
the essential message. And that message was so clearly expressed by Sufi mystics – Rumi, Al-
Hillaj-Mansoor, Junnaid, Rabiya Al Adabiya; they have expressed the same thing. Of course their
language was different. But here he found that he was being treated as a criminal.
Another scholar stood up and said, ”Before you speak in front of us, first go and learn Sanskrit.” And
he was completely shattered. Now, only an ego can be shattered.
If I was in his place, in the first place I would not have expected any overwhelming reception. If they
were not throwing stones at me, that would have been enough – a great reception. If they allowed
me to enter Varanasi that would have been more than one could hope. And then I would not have
gone to their scholars to be examined, interrogated. I should have torn up that letter then and there,
and thrown it on the platform and said to them, ”Tell all of them to go to hell! What business have I
got to do with your scholars? If they want to do anything, they have to come to me.
”And I have not come here to be certified that I am really a Hindu sage. I myself say that I am not a
Hindu, neither am I a sage. So what is the problem? How can you shatter me? – I don’t have any
claim. Can’t you even accept me as a human being? If even that is difficult for you, then that is your
problem, don’t accept. But that is not going to shatter me either.”
You are shattered only when you are living in a glass house. Then anybody can throw a stone and
that’s enough. But I am not living in a glass house. The ego is a glass house: it is continuously
afraid of being shattered. Somebody does not say ”Hello” to you on the road, and that’s enough. He
has not done anything, he has not even said ”Hello” – but this man used to say ”Hello” every day.
It pinches, it hurts: ”What happened? Have I fallen in his eyes, or what?” He will disturb your sleep
because he has not said ”Hello” to you.
Expectations always lead to frustrations.
Expectations are the seeds, and frustration is the crop that sooner or later you will have to reap. It
is your own doing.
So I asked the followers of Ramateertha, ”What was shattered? If there was no ego there was
nothing to be shattered. If you throw a stone into empty space, nothing will be shattered, only the
stone will look silly – falling with a thud, no obstruction, no joy of destroying something, no excitement
of shattering something; just falling with a thud on the ground like a fool.
”A man without an ego is like an empty house. You can throw stones from this side to that side, they
will go across him without finding any obstruction. Nothing can be shattered.”
So I said, ”Note this point, but this is not the whole story. Ramateertha left Varanasi and went to the
Himalayas. He had a follower and a friend who was a king of Gadhwal in the Himalayas, a small
state. He went there and told his friend, the king of Gadhwal, ‘I would like to learn Sanskrit, so
please arrange for a scholar to teach me Sanskrit.’”
Now, is this the way of a sage? Who could not say to these fools in Varanasi, ”Enlightenment does
not come through a language. It comes when all languages are left behind. It comes when even
thinking exists no more. There is no Arabic, no Hebrew, no Greek, no Sanskrit, no Latin. Only then
that light shines within yourself.”
Yes, when you start communicating of course you will have to use some language. And you will use
the language which you know best. In Ramateertha’s place I would have said, ”I will continue to use
Urdu, Persian, Arabic because those are the languages I know best, and I am not going to follow
your dictation that I should start learning Sanskrit. For what? to get your recognition? to be certified
by you that I am really a saint? Does sainthood need anybody’s recognition?”
Who recognized Gautam Buddha, that he is enlightened? Who has recognized anybody in the whole
world, in the whole of history? In fact it is impossible. The unenlightened people cannot recognize
or certify an enlightened one; he has to declare himself, there is no other way. Whether you believe
it or not, that does not matter, and that does not shatter him.
Nobody may believe it, not even a single human being. Do you think that makes any difference to
the status of a man of enlightenment? He remains still the same, his enlightenment not even a little
bit less because you have not recognized him.
Why did Ramateertha agree to learn Sanskrit?
And the story is really strange. He started learning Sanskrit – not only that, he dropped his orange
robe and started using white clothes. Asked why, he said, ”Because if Hindu scholars do not
recognize me then I am not yet capable of using the traditional robe of a Hindu sannyasin.”
When I decided to give my sannyasins the same robe, it was for one reason – to destroy this whole
idea that anybody has a monopoly.
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