I said, ”I cannot do that; that is sin.”
He said, ”I have come for that.”
I told him, ”You may have come for that, but I cannot do it.”
He said, ”But I went to this shankaracharya and he consoled me. He said, ’Don’t bother, don’t be
worried; your son is reborn in a high heaven!’”
I knew his son also, and that is impossible because he was a politician – they all go to hell, they
never go to heaven. And not only was he a politician, but a successful politician – he was a minister
of state, with all the cunning of a politician, with all the ambition of a politician. How can he go to
heaven? And this old man was also a politician. Basically he was not disturbed because his son was
dead; the basic thing was that his ambition was dead, because through that son he was achieving
more and more and more and more. He himself had become old; he had worked continuously his
whole life, but he was a little foolish, not very cunning, a little naive. He worked hard, he sacrificed
his whole life, but he could not attain any post. And that was the deep hurt, it was a wound. And
then through the son he had been trying, and the son had been achieving. Now that his son was
dead his whole ambition was dead.
When I told him, ”This is the reason you are suffering so much; it is not your son,” he was very
disturbed. He said, ”I had come for consolation and you are disturbing me more. It may be,” he
said. ”Whatsoever you say sounds true. It may be that my ambition has been hurt and it is not for
the son that I am weeping – it may be for the ambition. But don’t say such hard things to me, I am
in such pain right now. My son is dead and you are saying such hard things to me. And I went to
this mahatma, and to that shankaracharya, and to this guru, and they all consoled me. They said,
’Don’t worry, the soul is eternal; nobody ever dies. And your son – he was no ordinary soul, he has
reached a high heaven!’”
These are consolations, and if this old man goes on listening to these consolations he is missing
a great opportunity. He is missing an opportunity in which he could face his ambition, which is his
problem. He could have encountered the fact that all ambition is useless, futile, because you work
and work and work, and then death takes everything. He could have penetrated to this. But no, he
stopped coming to me. He used to come to me, but since that time he has never come. He went to
others who would console him.
Are you here to be consoled?
Then you are in the wrong place.
