From the Bombay satsangs we have one tape, two tapes in fact…
H: Of silence?!

(Great laughter)

There was much talk even in that tape.
Pb: Most of it was about the tape-recorder!

(Again great laughter)
It is true, isn’t it? You can never tape Silence.
And yet I wonder…
You can perceive Silence, you can hear Silence.
It is everywhere –
you can see it with your eyes, you can hear it.
It is the Silence of the Self, that is you!
Then you perceive your Self everywhere,
in all things – and beyond all things.
You can hear it in the sound, your own Self.
It is sensible, it is visible, it is Bliss – Ananda.
And that is the true Freedom.

(To the tape-recorder operator:)

Was it good?

(Great laughter)

And that is how life is, it is spontaneous.
That is how the Self is: it is free, it is fluid –
it is not an ‘interview’.
The other day in Mahabaleswar D. came to interview me.
She wanted to make a video film…
When you are your own Self, you are natural.
Then you have the inter-view, right view.

When you find your Self
everything comes alive, everything!
That is when life is a magic and a wonder, every moment.
Every moment is an Enlightenment.
Then you live life enlightened.
For then life is a fullness and a delight and a celebration.
You hear it in the song of the birds,
you see it in the rustling of the leaves.
And then you have a relationship that is profound and free,
that lives in Eternity –
a rapture and an ecstasy!
Then it is like a flow of rivers,
like in the valleys of Kashmir.
Life is a flow, an eternal flow!
It is in abundance all the time,
when it is founded in the Self.
Then there is music
and that music lives in Eternity.
Then you are intoxicated;
every moment you are intoxicated.
Then you truly have found your Freedom –
and it is everywhere.
Not just here, or there, but everywhere!
Silence is not a condition, but a Freedom.
It lives free, beyond all conditions.
And so too, life is not a condition,
but founded in Freedom;
and comes forth from a Freedom, lives in Freedom,
and grows in Freedom.
In the Silence of your Self you will find everything.
Then every moment is a magic and a wonder
that is life.

(Someone begins to sob softly)

And Silence is compassion.
In that we are one, in that we are free.
Life is a Freedom song, it is a song of the Self,

it is a song of Freedom.
It is a Self-Delight, a Self-Celebration.
When you live life you celebrate your own Self.
And therein is no conflict.
And such a life can never be held back,
can never be in chains.
How can you bind that which lives in Eternity?
There is so much that is still closed and needs to open out.
There are still corners in the consciousness
that are like that.
Therefore it is a process: opening, and finding.
You have to open out
and be able to free yourself.
Nature is like that down there.
R: When you say ‘down there’ you mean…
I mean lower existences –
there are levels of consciousness and levels of existences.
And life has lived like that as it evolved.
But if you want the complete Reality
then you should open out in all completeness.

Panchmadhi
18 February 1992
Morning Satsang