The Importance of Innovation in Management

Begin With Yourself

To know the Truth – Do not begin with God. That is a false beginning. It always leads to nonsense. So all metaphysics is nonsense. It goes on thinking about things about which nothing can be thought. It goes on giving statements about the existence about which no statements can be given. Only silence can be a statement about it. But if you begin with yourself, then much that is solid can be said. If you begin with yourself, then something scientific can be done. If you begin with yourself, then you begin with the right beginning.

Religion means to begin with oneself, and metaphysics means to begin with God. So metaphysics is madness – of course, with a method. All madmen are metaphysicians without method and all metaphysicians are mad but with methodology. Because of their methodology they seem to be talking sense, and they go on talking nonsense.

Begin with yourself. Do not ask whether God exists. Ask whether “I” exists. Do not ask whether love is an attribute of the divine. Ask whether love is an attribute of mine, whether I have ever loved. Do not ask about grace. Ask whether I have ever felt gratitude, because that is the pole which is just nearby, which is just a step from us. We can know it.

Always begin from the beginning. Never begin from the end because then it is no beginning at all. One who begins from the beginning always reaches the end and one who begins from the end does not even reach the beginning, because to begin from the end is impossible. You can just go on and on.

Immortal And Opulent

There are only two things which are the greatest illusions in the world: one is the ego and the other is death. And both are joined together, in fact, are two aspects of the same coin. It is because of the ego that the other illusion of death is created. Because we think we are separate from the whole, the fear arises: ‘We will die.’ The moment we know we are not separate from the whole, who is going to die? There is nobody to die, the whole has continued.

The moment the wave thinks itself separate from the ocean, the fear will arrive that sooner or later it will die, because it will see other waves dying and disappearing. But the moment the wave recognises the fact that it is not separate – it is part of the ocean, and those waves which have disappeared have not really disappeared; they have gone back into the source, they will come again…. Another season, another wind, and they will be born. And the game continues. It is an eternal play of consciousness.

Our word aishwarya for opulence comes from the word Ishwar for godliness. Such a meaning given to godliness does not exist in any other language of the world.

Existence is opulent but there is no hint of any intoxication, any ego, in that opulence. This is a bridging of the opposites.