If you want to escape, escape totally

Escape is not at all a dirty word, if it is total escape. Total escape is liberation.

What most of us do is that we don’t escape ‘away’, we escape ‘to’. We don’t escape away from all, we escape to something. So when you hear a teacher saying that all is nonsense then you don’t say “all is nonsense.” Then you say — okay that means my responsibilities are nonsense, my studies are nonsense, my commitments are nonsense but fun is not nonsense, sex isn’t nonsense — all that which gives me pleasure isn’t nonsense, so let me escape away to that.

When you say you are escaping, are you ever escaping totally from everything? You are escaping from something and going to something else. That is what you call escape. Our escape is never total.

Total escape, I repeat, is liberation. The saint escapes totally. Totally whatever you do is divine.

The word is total. The stress is on total. You never escape totally. You only reject that which your ego doesn’t like and that you call as escape. Don’t escape that way — this is partial escape and anything partial is ego. Partial love is ego, partial escape is ego and partial hatred is ego. Ego lies in parts.

Whatever you do, if you can do totally then that is the Self. Escape totally. When you reject something, also reject its opposite — when you reject the world, also reject an escape from the world; when you reject attachment, also reject detachment; when you reject professional life also reject spiritual life — that is total escape. That is complete liberation.

But what do we do? We use spiritual life as an escape from our personal and professional and worldly life. Now this is nonsense. Now this is self deceit.

What are we doing? We have begun another life here by quitting the life that we were living somewhere else. Is this an escape? No, this is just partial. Yes? Escape but escape totally. Don’t go to the opposite where you are. It is very easy to go become your own opposite and that is no transformation. Or let me say that is just transformation only and transformation doesn’t help.

Because in transformation all you get is another form, ‘trans-form’. What you need is the dissolution of form, not a transformation.