Death happens only on the without, it never happens within. Death happens on the outside, never on the inside; the inside is eternal. Your interiority is beyond death – it has always been here, will always be here, but you are unaware of it. You go on running after shadows, and the real waits for you to look in, to turn in, to tune in.

So the first thing: seek that which is deathless, and sooner or later you will knock on the doors of heaven.

The second thing is: why in the first place do you run after spurious pleasures? This woman, that man…why do you run after spurious pleasures? What is the rationale behind it? The rationale is that you are already in sorrow. You want somehow to forget all about it; you want to drown yourself in alcohol, in sex, in money, in power politics – you want somewhere to drown yourself.

Politicians can easily say that prohibition is needed, because they have a far more dangerous intoxicant available to them. Morarji Desai can insist for prohibition, because he is drinking out of his power politics; he is drowning himself in a very subtle kind of intoxicant. In fact, no alcohol is more dangerous than politics.

If anything has to be prohibited from the world, it is not alcohol, it is politics. And how many people drink alcohol in India? Not more than seven percent. And how many more people are political? I don’t think you can find any person who is not political – very difficult.

You may not be actually in politics, but politics is far more subtle. The husband is trying to dominate the wife – this is politics. The wife is trying to manipulate the husband in her own way – this is politics. The child is in a tantrum and wants a toy immediately – this is politics. Politics means an effort to dominate the other. And it is very intoxicating; it is the worst kind of alcohol available in the world.

A few people drown in power politics, a few seek shelter in sexuality, a few go to the pub, but many more simply go on searching spurious comforts, from one comfort to another. When they have achieved one and found that it gives nothing, no nourishment, immediately they start seeking something else. Their life becomes a constant occupation so they need not look at the inner sorrow that is gathering like a cloud, a dark cloud.

So the second meaning of the sutra is: rather than seeking spurious comforts, the best way is to go into your sorrow. Meditate, go deep into it. Don’t escape from your misery, because by escaping you will never learn what it is and you will never learn how to transcend it. And the beauty is: if you really know the cause of your misery, in that very knowing misery is transcended – because the cause is always and always ignorance and nothing else.

Jesus says: Truth liberates.

This is one of the most important statements ever made, very fundamental for every seeker to understand. Truth liberates – not the truth that you gather from scriptures but the truth that you come across through your own experiencing.