The Beloved, Vol 1

Talks on the Baul Mystics

Talks given from 21/06/76 am to 30/06/76 am

English Discourse series

10 Chapters

Year published: 1976

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #1

Chapter title: Submission is the secret of knowledge

21 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606210

ShortTitle:

BELOV101

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

97

mins

ONLY A CONNOISSEUR OF THE FLAVOURS OF LOVE CAN

COMPREHEND THE LANGUAGE OF A LOVER'S HEART,

OTHERS HAVE NO CLUE.

THE TASTE OF LIME RESTS IN THE CORE OF THE FRUIT,

AND EVEN EXPERTS KNOW OF NO EASY WAY TO REACH IT.

HONEY IS HIDDEN WITHIN THE LOTUS BLOOM -- BUT THE

BEE KNOWS IT.

DUNG-BEETLES NESTLE IN DUNG, DISCOUNTING HONEY.

SUBMISSION IS THE SECRET OF KNOWLEDGE.

I'M TREMENDOUSLY HAPPY TO INTRODUCE YOU TO THE WORLD OF THE

BAULS. I hope you will be nourished by it, enriched by it. It is a very bizarre world, eccentric, in-sane. It has to be so. It is unfortunate but it has to be so, because the world of the so-called sane people is so insane that if you really want to be sane in it you will have to be insane. You will have to choose a path of your own. It is going to be diametrically opposite to the ordinary path of the world.

The Bauls are called Bauls because they are mad people. The word 'Baul' comes from the Sanskrit root VATUL. It means: mad, affected by wind. The Baul belongs to no religion.

He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian nor Buddhist. He is a simple human being. His rebellion is total. He does not belong to anybody; he only belongs to himself.

He lives in a no man's land: no country is his, no religion is his, no scripture is his. His rebellion goes even deeper than the rebellion of the Zen Masters -- because at least formally, they belong to Buddhism; at least formally, they worship Buddha. Formally they have scriptures -- scriptures denouncing scriptures, of course -- but still they have.

At least they have a few scriptures to burn.

Bauls have nothing -- no scripture, not even to burn; no church, no temple, no mosque --

nothing whatsoever. A Baul is a man always on the road. He has no house, no abode.

God is his only abode, and the whole sky is his shelter. He possesses nothing except a poor man's quilt, a small, hand-made one-stringed instrument called AEKTARA, and a small drum, a kettle-drum. That's all that he possesses. He possesses only a musical instrument and a drum. He plays with one hand on the instrument and he goes on beating the drum with the other. The drum hangs by the side of his body, and he dances. That is all of his religion.

Dance is his religion; singing is his worship. He does not even use the word 'God'. The Baul word for God is ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man. He worships man. He says, inside you and me, inside everybody, there is an essential being. That essential being is all. To find that ADHAR MANUSH, that essential man, is the whole search.

So there is no God somewhere outside you, and there is no need to create any temple because you are His temple already. The whole search is withinwards. And on the waves of song and on the waves of dancing, he moves withinwards. He goes on moving like a beggar, singing songs. He has nothing to preach; his whole preaching is his poetry. And his poetry is also not ordinary poetry, not mere poetry. He's not consciously a poet; he sings because his heart is singing. Poetry follows him like a shadow, hence it is tremendously beautiful. He's not calculating it, he's not making it. He lives his poetry.

That's his passion and his very life. His dance is almost insane. He has never been trained to dance, he does not know anything about the art of dancing. He dances like a madman, like a whirlwind. And he lives very spontaneously, because the Baul says, "If you want to reach to the ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man, then the way, the way goes through SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man."

To reach to the essential man, you have to go through the spontaneous man. Spontaneity is the only way to reach to the essence...so he cries when he feels like crying. You can find him standing in a village street crying, for nothing. If you ask, "Why are you crying?" he will laugh. He will say, "There is no why. I felt like, I felt like crying, so I cried." If he feels like laughing, he laughs; if he feels like singing, he sings -- but everything has to come out of deep feeling. He's not mind oriented, not in any way controlled and disciplined. He knows no rituals. He's absolutely against rituals because he says, "A ritualized person is a dead person." He cannot be spontaneous. And a person who follows rituals, formalities too much, creates so many habits around him that there is no need to be alert. Alertness is lost; habits are formed. Then the man of rituals lives through habits. If he goes to the temple he bows down, not in any way conscious and alert of what he is doing, but just because he has been taught to do so, he has learned to do so. It has become a conditioning.

So they don't follow any ritual, they don't have any technique, they don't have any habit.

So you cannot find two Bauls that are similar; they are individuals. Their rebellion leads them to become authentic individuals.

This has to be understood: the more you become a part of society, the less and less you are an individual, the less and less you are spontaneous -- because the very membership in the society will not allow you to be spontaneous. You will have to follow the rules of the game. If you enter a society, you accept to follow those rules that the society is playing, or has decided to play. That's what membership means: you enter into a certain organization; you have to play the game. Bauls have no organization, so each Baul is individual.

And that's what religion really is: it is an individual approach towards truth. One has to go alone, one has to go in his own way; one has to find one's own way. You cannot follow another, you cannot move on a readymade track. The more you search your own way, the closer you will be to God, or to truth, or to reality. In fact, the way is created by walking. You create it as you walk. It is not ready there for you, waiting to be walked on.

You walk and you create it.

It is as if you are lost in a forest. What do you do? You have no map and there is no way leading anywhere -- trees and trees and trees all around, and you are lost. What do you do? You start walking, searching, seeking. By your very walk, by your very search, a path is created.

Life is wild, and it is good that it is wild. It is good that it has no map, that it is not charted, that it is still unknown. And its unknowability is such that there is no way to make it known. Otherwise, all charm will be lost, all beauty will be lost. Then life will not surprise you; and if surprise is lost, all is lost. Then there will be no wonder, no wondering. Then your eyes will go dead and your heart will stop beating; the passion will disappear. Love will not be possible. Awe, wonder, surprise: these are the ingredients of the charisma, of the mystery of life. So it is good that there are no scriptures; it is good that there are no ritualized religions; it is good that you are not on a super-highway.

The Baul is a rebellious person, and I say 'rebellious' with great consideration. He is not a revolutionary. A revolutionary is still thinking in terms of the society. How to change the society: that is the revolutionary's continuous brooding. But he remains society-focused, society-oriented: "How to change the world?" A rebellious person does not bother about the world because he understands that the world cannot be changed by him, and who is he to change the world? -- "What's my authority to change the world? And if the world decides to be the way it is, who am I to interfere with it?" He leaves the world to itself.

He does not interfere, he does not meddle with it. He starts changing himself. His revolution is inward; his revolution is absolutely inner.

A rebellious person is a drop-out. He simply drops out of that society which doesn't suit him. He does not wait for it to be transformed so that he can fit with it. That desire is foolish, stupid. Then you will be lost. And that day, that utopia will never happen -- when the society has changed so much that you can fit with it, and the society can fit with you.

It has never happened. Revolutionaries have lived down through the centuries, and died.

The world has remained the same, more or less, but the lives of those revolutionaries were wasted in changing it.

Just think of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, coming back and looking at the world -- they will start crying. This is the world for which they wasted their whole lives? This is the world for which they hoped and staked their whole lives, gambled with their lives? They could not live their lives because they were trying to change the world. They were trying to change the world because they thought that only when the world had changed according to their wishes would they be able to live. Otherwise, how could they live? How can you live happily in an unhappy world? -- that is the revolutionary's question. Very significant:

"How can you be happy in an unhappy world?" -- so he tries to make the world happy.

The rebellious person says, "Leave the world to itself. Nobody has ever changed it." He is more practical and down to earth: "I can live my own way. I can create my own world within me." He is a drop-out. Bauls are drop-outs. They don't belong to any religion, to any society, to any nation. They are beggars, wanderers, vagabonds, hippies, gypsies, moving from one village to another, singing their song, dancing their dance, living their lives in their own way, doing their thing.

A rebellious person is one who says, "I'm not going to wait, I'm going to live right now."

The revolutionary hopes for the future. He says, "I am going to wait. I will wait for the right moment." The rebellious person says, "The right moment is here-now, and I'm not going to wait for anybody, I'm going to live right now." A rebellious person lives in the present.

And one thing more to be understood: a rebellious person is not against anybody. He may appear against because he is trying to live his own life, but he is not really against anybody. He may not go to the mosque but he is not against Mohammedans. He may not go to the temple but he is not against Hindus. He simply says, "I am not concerned; it is irrelevant." He simply says, "Please leave me alone. You do your thing and let me do my thing. Don't interfere with me and I will not interfere with you."

The vision of the rebellious mind is very realistic. Life is short. Nobody knows whether tomorrow will come or not. The future is not certain, and this is the only moment one can live. Why waste it in fighting with others? Why waste it in trying to convince others?

Enjoy it, delight in it. A Baul is a hedonist; he is epicurean. He starts living: he loves, he lives, he delights.

When a Baul dies, he is not afraid of death -- he is ready. He has lived his life. He is ripe.

The fruit is ripe and ready to fall to the ground, with no hesitation.

You will be afraid. You are already afraid of death because you have not been able to live. You have not lived yet and death has come or is coming. You have not yet had time to live and death has knocked at the door. How can you accept death? How can you welcome?

A Baul is ready to die any moment because he has not wasted a single moment of life. He has lived it as deeply as it was possible to live. He has no complaint, he has no grudge against life, and he has nothing to wait for. So if death comes, he is ready to live death also. He embraces death. He says, "Come in." He becomes a host to death also.

If you live rightly, you will be ready to die peacefully, blissfully. If you are not living rightly, if you are postponing, if you are simply putting aside your life and doing other things rather than enjoying life, doing a thousand and one things rather than delighting in life, then of course, naturally, you will be afraid of death. And when death comes, you will be a coward in front of death.

A Baul dies dancing, a Baul dies singing, a Baul dies playing his AEKTARA and his DUGGI. He knows how to live and how to die. And he is not worried about God; he's only worried about the ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man that resides in him. His whole search is to find this essential man that he is.'Who am I?' is his essential search.

And he's very respectful about other human beings because they all belong to that essential nature. All other forms are of that formless essential nature; all the waves belong to the ocean. He's very respectful, tremendously respectful. A Baul never condemns anything.

To me, that is the very criterion of a religious man: he has no condemnatory attitude. He accepts everything, his world includes everything. It does not exclude anything. Sex is accepted, SAMADHI also. His world is very rich because nothing is excluded from it. He says, "Everything comes from that essential core of your being, so why deny it? And if you deny it, how will you be able to reach to the source?" Wherever you deny something, you cling there, you stop there. Then the journey cannot move to the very core.

Life, as it is, is totally accepted. That does not mean that a Baul is a man of mere indulgence, no. He knows the alchemy of how to transform the baser into the higher. He knows how to transform iron into gold. He knows how to transform sex into SAMADHI; he knows the secret. And what is the secret of transforming life into eternal life, time into eternity? The secret is love. Between sex and SAMADHI, the bridge is love. Love is participated in by both: on the one hand sex, on the other hand SAMADHI. It is the bridge. One bank is sex, the other bank is SAMADHI. Love includes both, comprehends both. Through love, the Bauls say, one reaches to the eternal home.

So that is the only provision for the path: love. Love is their worship, love is their prayer, love is their meditation. The path of the Baul is the path of love. He loves tremendously.

There are two traditions in India: one is the tradition of the Vedas, the other is the tradition of the Tantras. Vedas are more formal, more of the nature of rituals. Vedas are more social, organizational. Tantras are more individual -- less concerned with rituals, forms, habits, more concerned with the essential; less concerned with the forms, more concerned with the soul.

Vedas are not all-inclusive. Much is excluded; it is more puritan, more moralistic. Tantras are non-puritan, allinclusive, more human, more earthly. Tantras say that everything has to be used and nothing is to be denied.

Bauls belong more to the Tantras than to the Vedas. There is only one improvement on Tantras; that is the only difference. Tantra is all-inclusive, more feminine than male. The Vedas are more male-oriented, the Tantras are more feminine. Of course, woman is more inclusive than man. Man is included in woman, but woman is not included in man. Man seems to be a sort of specialization. Woman seems to be more general, more fluid, more round. Tantra is the way of the feminine, just like Tao.

But the Bauls have improved upon Tantra also. Tantra is too technical. The very word

'Tantra' means technique. It is a little harsh, more scientific. Bauls are more poetic; Bauls are more soft -- singers and dancers.

Tantra uses sex to rise higher than it, but it uses it. Sex becomes instrumental. Bauls say that is not very respectful: "How can you USE some energy? How can you use some energy as a means?" They don't use sex as a means; they delight in it, they enjoy it. They make a worship out of it, but without any technique. It is not technological. They love it, and through love the transformation happens on its own accord.

In Tantra, you are to remain unattached. Even while using sex as a means to go towards SAMADHI, you have to remain unattached to sex, absolutely neutral, absolutely like an observer, a witness, just like a scientist working in his lab. In fact, Tantras say that Tantra techniques cannot be used with the woman you love, because love will be a disturbance.

You will be too attached. You will not be able to remain detached and outside it. So Tantrics will find women with whom they are not in love at all so the attitude can remain absolutely of the observer.

That's where Bauls differ. They say it is too cruel; this passionless attitude is too cruel.

There is no need to be so hard and so harsh. Through love, the transformation is possible.

That's why I call their attitude more poetic, more human, and more worthy. The Bauls say you can live attached in the world and yet be unattached; you can love a woman and yet be a witness; you can be in the marketplace and yet be beyond it. You can live in the world and be not of it.

This vision is my vision also. That is the meaning of my SANNYAS: be in the world but don't be of it. And, nothing is of worth if it is not done through love.

That's where Tantra lacks something; it lacks humanity. If you love a woman, Tantra is not possible. If you love a man, Tantra is not possible. You should be completely aloof.

Then sex becomes very scientific. It becomes a technique, something to be manipulated, something to be done -- not something to be in, not something that absorbs you, not something oceanic, orgasmic, but something that you are doing. The very idea of doing something to a man or to a woman because you want to achieve SAMADHI, the very idea of using the other as an instrument, as a means, is ugly and immoral.

That's where Bauls have a totally different fragrance. They say, "There is no need to be so hard. There is no need to be so means-oriented. Love will do." And we will try to understand what they mean by love.

The first poem....

These poems belong to different Bauls, but I'm not going to use their names. That is irrelevant. They all belong to the same vision. Different poems, but they remain, deep down, as the same poem; different words, different forms, but running through them is the same current. It is just like in a garland, many flowers are held together, but only one thread runs inside and holds them all. We will insist on that thread. We will not be bothered about who has written this poem. In fact, many of the poems are anonymous.

Nobody has ever known who wrote them, because in fact, they were never written.

Bauls are illiterate; maybe that's why they have such purity. They are not very cultured people, educated in the ways of the world. Maybe that's why there is such innocence.

They are children of the earth: uneducated, poor, humble, but very sincere. So, I will not be telling you who has sung this song, or the other songs that will follow in the coming twenty days. That is irrelevant. They come out of the same vision. They have a certain melody, so individual that it is called BAULSUR, the melody of the Baul; so special, the taste is so special and the fragrance is so individual that whenever you hear a song from the Bauls, you will immediately recognize it. It has its own individuality, its own style: wild, illiterate, uncultured, but very individualistic. Just as the ocean tastes the same --

from anywhere you taste it, and it is salty -- in these songs, immediately you will feel that they come from one vision, one attitude, one passion, one experience. And they were never written. Bauls have been singing them down through the centuries. Each Baul has dropped something, added something, made his own songs or used the old songs that he had heard from his Masters, but the vision is so clear that you can never miss when you hear a Baul song.

The first song:

ONLY A CONNOISSEUR OF THE FLAVORS OF LOVE CAN

COMPREHEND THE LANGUAGE OF A LOVER'S HEART,

OTHERS HAVE NO CLUE..

THE TASTE OF LIME RESTS IN THE CORE OF THE FRUIT

AND EVEN EXPERTS KNOW OF NO EASY WAY TO REACH IT.

HONEY IS HIDDEN WITHIN THE LOTUS BLOOM BUT THE BEE

KNOWS IT.

DUNG BEETLES NESTLE IN DUNG DISCOUNTING HONEY.

SUBMISSION IS THE SECRET OF KNOWLEDGE.

The first thing is: that love can be known only by loving. It is not something that can be made comprehensible by intellectual discussion about it. Love is not a theory. If you try to make a theory out of it, it remains incomprehensible. That is the first Baul standpoint: there are things which you can know only by doing them, by being them.

If you don't know swimming you don't know what it is, and there is no way to know about it. You may go and hear a thousand and one swimmers talking about it, but still you will never know it, what it is. It is incomprehensible in every other way; you will have to learn swimming. You will have to go down to the river; you will have to take the risk, the danger of being drowned. If you are very, very clever, you may say, "I will not step into the river unless I know swimming first" -- it is logical -- "How can I step into the river when I don't know swimming? So, first I must know swimming; only then can I step into the river." But then you will never be able to know swimming, because even to learn swimming, you will have to step into the river.

Swimming is known only by swimming; love is known only by loving; prayer is known only by praying. There is no other way. There are things which can be known without moving into them -- those are the futile things, those are intellectual things: philosophies, dogmas, creeds. But all that is real has to be lived, and all that is existential has to be penetrated, and the risk has to be taken. One has to be courageous, one has to be daring.

And it is a great daring, because when you love somebody you start losing yourself. To love somebody is to ]ose the ego; to love somebody is to be lost; to love somebody is to give power to somebody over you; to love somebody is to be possessed. To love somebody means surrendering...

... SUBMISSION IS THE SECRET OF KNOWLEDGE...

... because to the Baul, love is the only knowledge there is. You can read the Vedas: there is no need to submit, there is no need to surrender. You can read the Bible; there is no need to surrender. You can become very proficient, very skilled, very learned, but there is no need to surrender. If there is no need to surrender, it is not knowledge for the Baul.

The Baul criterion is this: that when something demands surrender, only then is there a possibility of real knowledge, otherwise not.

If you come to me and I just impart knowledge to you....

Many people come to me and they say, "Is there any difficulty if we don't become SANNYASINS, if we are not surrendered to you? And still, we love what you say. Still we want to listen to it. Is there any problem? Can't we do that?"

I say, "You can do that; the problem is not there. But then you will collect only the superficial. You will collect the words. Then you will collect only the fallen dregs from the table. You will not really be a guest to me. You will miss all that is essential; only the non-essential wi!l be your fate. You have to decide."

Once you are surrendered, a totally different world opens between me and you. The heart-to-heart communication starts. Then you can listen to my words, but you listen in such a different way, with such deep sympathy and love, with such gratitude and receptivity, that those words are no longer words; they start becoming alive. You have made them alive with your receptivity. You become pregnant with what I am saying to you, with what I am communicating to you. Then, there happens a transfer; then words are just excuses. Hanging around the word, I send you something which cannot be managed in the word. Then not only is the word reaching you, but the climate that it carries through my heart.

If you are in love with me, then there is a totally different kind of understanding between me and you. If you are not in love with me, then we are far apart. Then you are on some other planet, thousands and thousands of miles away from me. I may shout: you may hear a few words, but nothing special is going to happen that way. You may become more knowledgeable, but that is not the point. You should have more being, not more knowledge. If you are really becoming richer here, in close contact with me, then your being is growing. Then you are becoming more and more crystallized, more and more authentic, more and more alive, more and more divine. That is not possible without love.

And what is surrender? Surrender means surrendering the ego, surrender means surrendering all that you know. Surrender means surrendering your knowledge, your mind, your intellect. Surrender is a suicide, a suicide of the past. If you carry your past within you in a secret way, then your gesture of SANNYAS is impotent. You can take SANNYAS and still go on carrying your past, hiding and guarding it like a treasure. Then just on the surface you will be a SANNYASIN, but not surrendered to me. And then if you are not fulfilled, nobody else is responsible but you.

The first Baul standpoint is that existential things can be known only through existential ways. Love can be known only by loving.

Somebody asked Jesus, "How to pray?" and he said, "Pray." But he said, "That's what I am asking. I don't know how to pray." So Jesus said, "I will pray. You sit by my side and you also try."

How to teach prayer? It can be caught but it cannot be taught. If you are open to me, you can catch many things. If you are not open to me, nothing can be taught.

A prayer is like an infection. Love is also like an infection: it can be caught but not taught. You can catch it. It is flowing all around you, but if you remain like an island, closed, then there is no way to teach it to you.

The Bauls say,

GOD IS DESERTING YOUR TEMPLE AS YOU AMUSE YOURSELF BY

BLOWING CONCH SHELLS AND RINGING BELLS. THE ROAD TO YOU IS

BLOCKED BY TEMPLES AND MOSQUES. I HEAR YOU CALL, MY LORD, BUT I CANNOT ADVANCE. MASTERS AND TEACHERS BAR THE WAY.

God is all around you, but you are so full of scriptures, knowledge, so full of your own ego that there is no space left inside you where God can penetrate and enter into you. It has become impossible. It is becoming impossible only because of you.

Jesus is right when he says, "Pray, if you want to know what prayer is"; and the man is also right. He says, "How to pray? That is my problem. You have not answered it." And Jesus says, "The only way is, I will pray. I will kneel down in prayer. You just sit by my side, open, vulnerable; you may catch it."

That's what I'm trying to do here. Just be open to me; you may catch it. There is every possibility once you are not barring your own path, once you start getting out of your own way. There is no problem -- because the essential man that is speaking to you is also hearing through you. Then the essential can meet with the essential. The ADHAR

MANUSH can meet with the ADHAR MANUSH. Just put your ego aside, because that is the non-essential. Face me with your essence, encounter me with your essence. Then suddenly you will see a new fire arising in you. A new love is born.

Yes, submission is the secret of knowledge, surrender is the secret of knowledge. It is not an intellectual effort, but a total submersion, a merging of the self. That's why Bauls talk more about love and less about knowledge, because love is the only thing in the world which cannot be attained in any other way than by loving.

Now, it is possible some day that even swimming can be taught to you without taking you to the river. They have invented ways to teach driving without ever taking you to the road. You simply sit in a car in a room: nothing moves, because there is nowhere, no place to move. You simply sit in the car behind the wheel, and a film is shown on the walls. The road moves, so you feel as if you are moving on the road. On both sides, the street is moving. A movie is shown fast; it goes on moving fast. There are turns and things, and you have to do the right things at the wheel. The teacher can show you whether you are doing wrong or right, and you are simply sitting in the car. The car is not moving, the road is moving in the movie, just on the sides. You can learn it. It seems to be safer. I think someday or other you can just lie down on your mattress, and a movie of a river will be all around, and you can start. It is possible. At least a rudimentary knowledge may become possible.

But love? -- there seems to be no way. Many people are trying movies to learn about love. Many people go on trying pornographic literature to know about love. Many people go on reading novels and poetry and others' love letters in order to know about love. Yes, there is a danger that you may come to know many things about love, but to know about love is not to know love. In fact, the more you know about love, the less will be the possibility to know love. You will be lost in your knowledge. You will start thinking that you know.

Have you observed the fact that movie actors who are in the business of love are almost always failures in their own love lives? They never succeed. Even a Marilyn Monroe commits suicide. She was at the top; even President Kennedy was in love with her. The whole world was in love with her. But somehow, her whole life was empty. She committed suicide at the very peak of her career, of her fame; such a beautiful woman.

What happened? Why are actors and actresses always failures in their real love lives?

They have learned so much about love that they cannot be real about love. They go on acting the same roles, they go on playing the same games. As they are playing on the stage, they go on playing in life. On the stage it is okay because nothing is involved. But in real life, it is empty. So they go on making empty gestures.

Remember, you can know much about love, but that cannot help to know love. Love can be known only by loving. It means you have to move into love without knowing anything about it. That's why it needs courage. You have to move in the dark, with no map, nobody to guide, not even a torch. You have to move in the dark not knowing where you are moving, not knowing whether you are on the right track or not, not knowing whether you will find the path or you will fall in a ditch and be lost forever.

This is the courage.

Bauls are very courageous people. They say:

ONLY A CONNOISSEUR OF THE FLAVORS OF LOVE..

Love has many flavors... Love has many dimensions, many nuances. Love is not one single thing. It is very rich, tremendously rich. It has many aspects to it; it is multi-faceted. It is like a diamond: it has many facets and every facet gives it richness.

Only a connoisseur -- one who has loved in many ways, one who has loved, lived courageously, dangerously, one who knows all the flavors of love.

Have you watched? -- ' love' does not express all. It is a single word. All the ancient languages had many words for love, because there are so many loves. The English language is poor in that way, hmm?. -- because you love a car also, and you love your woman and you love your house and you love your country and you love your child and you love your mother. Only one word! You love a particular brand of cigarettes. It is very poor, because love has so many facets.

When you love a child, you love differently. It is not the same love as when you love a woman. It has no passion. It has compassion, but it has no passion. When you love your mother, it is totally different: it has reverence, it has deep gratitude. But when you love a woman it is totally different: it has great intensity, almost maddening -- but it is not the way you love your mother. You love your friend: that is totally different. It is affection, but not in the same way.

If you watch, you will find many nuances of love. The single word 'love' has many words hidden in it. And one has to know all about love by moving in all the dimensions. If you have not known any facet of love, your understanding about love will lack that much.

One has to know all the aspects and all the subtle differences. That's what the Bauls mean when they say,

ONLY A CONNOISSEUR OF THE FLAVORS OF LOVE CAN

COMPREHEND THE LANGUAGE OF A LOVER'S HEART,

OTHERS HAVE NO CLUE.

Yes, it is a language. A single word will not do; it is a complete language. And once you know, you will be simply surprised. You can touch somebody's hand like a friend, and then the touch has a different flavor. And you can touch somebody's hand like a lover, then the touch has again a different flavor.

A connoisseur, with closed eyes, can just feel your hand and see...and understand the language.

Have you not watched it sometimes: when somebody looks at you with a deep lust in his eyes, you can immediately feel? When somebody looks with deep love, you can see the difference. When somebody looks with affection, you can feel the difference. But these are very rudimentary things because compassion also has many layers.

When a Buddha is there, his compassion has a totally different quality. When you have compassion it is more like sympathy, less like compassion. When a Buddha has compassion, it has nothing of sympathy in it. It is pure.

When Buddha has love showering on you, it has nothing that you have known about love up to now. Only a Buddha can know that. It has no passion in it; it is very cool. It is not hot -- not that it has no warmth; it has warmth, but still it is very cool. It will cool you down if you come close to a Buddha. It will help you to become less excited, more collected. It will not create a turmoil within you. It will subside all turmoil; it will be a soothing force. It will surround you like a subtle climate and soothe you. It will be like a lullaby. You will start feeling, falling asleep, as if just close to your mother's heart. It has something of the mother, something of the father, something of the beloved, something of the child. It has every subtle nuance in it. It has all the dimensions of love in a great harmony. When you come around Buddha, it is an orchestra of all the flavors of love.

Sometimes he looks like a child; you can play with him. His smile or his being simply gives you a feeling that he is just a child -- you can mother him. Sometimes he is like a mother and you are like a small child. Sometimes he looks like a beloved -- you can love him, only him, and nobody else. But sometimes he is just like a friend. He is all.

These changes happen because of you: your outlook changes, your vision changes. Your eyes are not yet clear and fixed. You cannot see his totality. You circum-locate him. At one time you see one aspect, at another time you see another aspect -- because you cannot comprehend the whole.

ONLY A CONNOISSEUR OF THE FLAVORS OF LOVE CAN

COMPREHEND THE LANGUAGE OF A LOVER'S HEART,

OTHERS HAVE NO CLUE.

Not even a clue is possible for others. You will have to move into the world of love; and don't ask how. You will have to move into the dark; And don't ask for a map -- because that very asking is against love. That's why trust is needed, SHRADDHA. If you trust a person, you say, "Okay. If you send me in the dark, I will go. If you send me into death, I will go."

On the path of love, trust is the most essential thing. On the path of meditation, you can move without trust. On the path of meditation you can move without surrender, but on the path of love, without surrender, without trust, there is no go because it is the very first door. Love demands so much. It demands almost the impossible, and on the first step.

Love is easy but very demanding. That's why even though the path is so easy, very few people travel it. The path of meditation is very difficult but not so demanding. That's why the path is difficult and arduous, yet still, many people travel it.

When you hear about love it seems very simple and easy; but look at the demands. On the path of meditation, that which will be demanded on the last step, is demanded on the first step on the path of love.

The meditator will be asked to surrender his ego only at the last step: when he moves from SAVIKALPA SAMADHI to NIRVIKALPA SAMADHI, when he moves from the mind to no mind; only at the last step. First he goes on purifying his mind, he goes on purifying his ego. He goes on making it more and more subtle, more and more subtle, refined, cultured. Then just a trace remains. On the last step, he has to drop that trace.

Love demands the impossible. It says: on the first step you have to drop the ego. There is no need to refine it and there is no need to work on it. Because one has to drop it, so why bother carrying it? Drop it here, now.

Trust arises on the path of meditation at the last stage. Trust arises only when you are arriving home. When the arrival is so close and when you are almost approaching, and you can see the door and you can see the house and you can see that you have reached, then trust arises -- you say, "Yes."

But on the path of love, trust is asked on the first step. The first step of love is the same as the last step of meditation. The path is very easy if you are daring, if you are almost a dare-devil. If you are almost mad and ready to risk all without any condition, the path is very easy -- because it completes on the first step. The first step becomes the last step.

Here you surrender, and not even a split second is lost and you have arrived.

...THE LANGUAGE OF A LOVER'S HEART,

OTHERS HAVE NO CLUE.

People who are very learned in the ways of meditation, in the ways of intellectual comprehension, contemplation, concentration, have no clue about love. They simply don't know that language.

THE TASTE OF TIME RESTS IN THE CORE OF THE FRUIT, AND EVEN

EXPERTS KNOW OF NO EASY WAY TO REACH IT.

And this love the Bauls talk about, or rather, sing about, dance about, is just hidden inside you at the very core of your being. It is already there. You have just to find a way to reach to your own innermost core -- the ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man. It is not something that has to be achieved, it is already there. It is not something that has to be earned, it is a gift of God.

The moment you were created, that very same moment that treasure was handed over to you -- because who has ever known somebody to live without love? Have you known anybody to live without breathing? Love is the very breath of the soul.

Bauls say, "As the body cannot exist without breathing, the soul cannot exist without love." So you may know it, you may not know it, but continuously love is happening inside. It is throbbing there; it is your very beat. You just have to find a way to reach there, because you have gone out in search of other treasures that don't belong to you, in search of other treasures that can NEVER belong to you.

That's why a Baul lives like a beggar. That is simply symbolic. He says, "I am not searching for any other treasure. I am enough unto myself. My treasure is too much. I am a king already. I don't need any other kingdom; my kingdom is already here." He lives like a beggar, but if you come across a Baul you will see that he lives like a king. Even kings are not so kingly. Even-kings are not so blissful as a Baul is. His whole life consists of bliss. He knows no other taste: he knows no anxiety, he knows no worry. He lives in some unknown dimension with tremendous grace. Having nothing, he has everything.

Possessing nothing, he possesses the whole world.

The Bauls sing,

THE MIRROR OF THE SKY REFLECTS MY SOUL. OH BAUL OF THE ROAD, OH

BAUL, MY HEART! THE MIRROR OF THE SKY REFLECTS MY SOUL.

OH, MY SENSELESS HEART, YOU HAVE FAILED TO CULTIVATE THE HUMAN

LAND. CULTIVATED, IT COULD HAVE YIELDED A HARVEST OF GOLD.

WHEN THE LIFE, THE MIND AND THE EYES ARE IN AGREEMENT, THE

TARGET IS WITHIN YOUR REACH. YOU CAN SEE THE FORMLESS ONE WITH

BARE EYES.

"When the life, the mind and the eyes are in agreement", hmm? -- that is the way to find the inside. When you are in agreement, when there is no conflict inside you, that is the way. That is why Bauls insist on being without conflict, on being natural, spontaneous.

Don't create any division within yourself, otherwise you will never be able to reach --

because a tremendous quality of agreement is needed. When you fall into harmony, the door is open. "When the life, the mind and the eyes are in agreement, the target is within your reach. You can see the formless one with bare eyes."

"Forget not," they say, "that your body contains the whole of existence." "I am fulfilled,"

they sing, "being a blow of your own breath on your flute. What more can I wish for me than to be blown away with such melody?"

A Baul is fulfilled the moment he comes to a deep agreement within himself. His singing and his dancing is nothing but an effort to fall into agreement with himself. Have you watched somebody dancing? What happens? Have you observed yourself sometimes dancing? What happens? Dance seems to be one of the most penetrating things, in which one falls into a harmony. Your body, your mind, your soul all fall into a harmony in dancing. Dancing is one of the most spiritual things there is. If you really dance, you cannot think. If you really dance, the body is used so deeply that the whole energy becomes fluid. A dancer loses shape, fixity. A dancer becomes a movement, a process. A dancer is not an entity: he's movement, he's energy. He melts. Great dancers, by and by, melt. And a dancer cannot retain his ego because if he retains the ego, that will be a jarring note in his dance. A real dancer loses his ego in it. He forgets that he is. The dancer is lost; only the dance remains. Then the door opens because you are one unity.

Now the soul is not separate, the mind is not separate, the body is not separate. All have fallen in one line. All have become one, melting into each other, merging into each other.

It is said about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers in the world, that there were moments when he would take jumps, and he would come back so slowly that it was almost impossible. He would fall back featherlike, as if gravitation had lost its power over him. Scientists were worried: "This should not happen, it cannot happen" -- but it was happening. No other dancer has been capable in that way.

And of course, Nijinsky went mad; he became a Baul. His is one of the madnesses which has not yet been understood. And because he was in the West, it was impossible to comprehend what had happened to him. He was confined to a psychiatric hospital, forced, given electric shocks, insulin shots. Had he been in the East he would have become one of the greatest Bauls. His madness was nothing to be treated, it was something to be revered.

But how did he become mad? He became mad through his dancing. When he was asked what happens to him, he said, "It happens only when I am lost, so I cannot say anything about it. If I am, then it never happens. I have tried it. If I am there, deliberately trying it, consciously trying, it never happens. But there are moments when I am lost. Then simply, I don't know who jumps -- and then it happens. I am also surprised. I have no explanation for it, but it happens only when I am lost."

That is what Bauls say: when you dance and you become a whirlwind and, by and by, you are completely lost in your dancing, it happens. Something breaks down inside you.

The barriers are lost. You become one unity. A great orgasm spreads all over your being.

You are in tune with existence in those moments. These moments are the SATORIS of Zen, but Bauls have a better way to attain them. Zen has to be worked on for twelve, fifteen, twenty, thirty years. It is a very slow process. It is the path of meditation.

Bauls can attain to it more easily. Just the day you decide that, "I am ready to drop my ego," you become available to God and God becomes available to you. The essential man suddenly arises over the non-essential; there is a mutation. And this is the moment when you are full of love, when you are love, when your energy is love. This is the moment when you can bless the whole existence. When there is no conflict within you, there cannot be any conflict between you and the existence. That is the secret: drop all conflict within you, and your conflict with the existence is also dropped simultaneously. Become one within you and you have become one with the existence.

THE TASTE OF TIME RESTS IN THE CORE OF THE FRUIT,

AND EVEN EXPERTS KNOW OF NO EASY WAY TO REACH IT.

In fact, there is no easy way to reach it, because it is hard to drop the ego. And that is the only way.

HONEY IS HIDDEN WITHIN THE LOTUS BLOOM -- BUT THE BEE KNOWS IT.

DUNG-BEETLES NESTLE IN DUNG, DISCOUNTING HONEY.

Bauls say that intellectuals are dung-beetles. The PUNDITS, the scholars, are dung-beetles. They will never find the way to the lotus...only the bee.

Become a bee; become a lover. Because the bee LOVES honey, it finds the way. Why cannot the dung-beetle find the way? It finds a certain way; it finds the way to the dung.

Because love is the way.

Bauls say, "Whatsoever you love you become, and whatsoever is your love you will find." So be alert about your love: don't love a car, don't love a house, don't love a bank balance -- because you will become like that. You will become a dung-beetle. Don't love dung.

If you are to love, then love something of the divine, something...something that transcends things, something that transcends forms, something for which you will have to raise your eyes to the sky. Love a GOURISHANKAR; love the Himalayan peaks. If you love something like dung, you will move into dung because we always find the way.

Wherever our love moves, we move behind it. The bee loves the lotus; it finds it. The very love is the path. Howsoever the lotus is hiding, the bee will find it.

There is a story about Solomon:

A woman came; the woman was the queen of Ethiopia. She wanted to love Solomon, she wanted to become his beloved. She was very beautiful, but she wanted to love the wisest man in the world. So she tried a few tests on Solomon, about whether he was really as wise as he was said to be. She did many experiments; one of the experiments was this: she brought one false flower made of paper, but made so beautifully that it was almost impossible to detect that it was false. She went into the court of Solomon, she stood far away from Solomon, and she said, "I have a flower in my hand. Can you say from that far away whether it is real or unreal?"

Solomon said, "Light is not enough, and I'm an old man, and I cannot see rightly. Please open the windows." The windows were opened. He waited for two minutes and said,

"No, it is false."

Then the woman brought another flower from her bag and she said, "What about this?" It was exactly like the first, but it was real. Solomon pretended to look at it and then he said, "Yes, this is a real flower."

The woman was astounded. The whole court was astounded: "What has happened?" They asked him, "How could you find it?" He said, "Easy -- I opened the windows for the bees to come in. They decided. For the first flower, no bee came in; for the second they immediately rushed in."

When you love something, you have a supra-sense about where it is. Your love monitors you, it leads you, it becomes your guide.

A bee can smell from miles far away where the flowers are. Much experiment and research has been done with bees about how they find their way. Miles away the flowers have bloomed, and bees will come rushing. Almost a supra-sense exists in them; that supra-sense is-nothing but love.

You will find your way to the object you love, so be very cautious about your object of love because that is going to decide your destiny. Your love is your destiny. Love something superb; love something of the supra-existence; love something of the divine, and you will find your way.

Bauls say, "When there is no fear, just the love is enough; it will monitor you and it will guide you."

HONEY IS HIDDEN WITHIN THE LOTUS BLOOM -- BUT THE

BEE KNOWS IT.

DUNG-BEETLES NESTLE IN DUNG, DISCOUNTING HONEY.

SUBMISSION IS THE SECRET OF KNOWLEDGE.

Surrender is the secret of knowledge, because surrender is the secret of love-and love is the only knowledge of worth.

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #2

Chapter title: I am just a midwife

22 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606220

ShortTitle:

BELOV102

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

104

mins

The first question.

Question 1

I ALWAYS YEARN TO BE HERE, BUT WHY, ON SEEING YOU, AM I FILLED

WITH AWE?

THAT'S HOW IT SHOULD BE. One should feel blessed, because awe is the only quality that can make man, religious. That is the only door. Through awe, you start feeling the divine around you. Eyes filled with awe cannot deny God; it is impossible.

And people who have forgotten how to be filled with awe cannot accept God. God is not the question. If you are still capable of being in a tremendous state of wonder, so tremendous, so penetrating that thinking stops, everything stops -- suddenly time is not there, space is not there, and you cannot figure it out, what it is -- some sublime presence is felt in those moments.

But man has become afraid of awe. That's why in language, in the ancient days, 'awful'

was a religious word, very sacred. Now, when you are feeling terrible you say you are feeling awful. Even the word has changed its meaning. People used to be awful when they were deep in prayer, when they were in close contact with the divine. When the divine was revealed to them, then they used to be awful. Now when they are feeling terrible, horrible, very bad, they say, "I am feeling awful." The word has completely been destroyed. It used to be at the peak; now it is at the bottom. It used to be the most positive feeling; now it is the most negative feeling. How has it happened? There are some reasons for it.

Whenever people used to feel awe, they also used to feel fear. That is natural, because through awe you come in contact with the unknown, unfamiliar, the strange, the mysterious. You cannot control it, you cannot manipulate, you cannot possess it.

Suddenly, something bigger than you, something vaster than you surrounds you, and you are at a loss. Fear arises; you start feeling afraid.

All the old religions describe God as both 'the mysterium' and 'the tremendum' --

mysterium because He is the mystery, a mystery that can never be solved, and tremendum because one feels terrible before Him. These two feelings arise together, but you should pay attention to the first feeling more. Otherwise, the doors of the temple will be closed for you. Emphasize the positivity of it, and learn how to be in the presence of the unknown, how to be in the presence of something that you cannot manipulate, how to be in the presence of something where you have to surrender, where surrender is the only thing that you can do, that can be done -- that's all that's possible.

You should feel blessed; but you must be feeling afraid, hence the question. You must be paying more attention to the negative part, to the shadow part. If you do that, by and by, you will become closed. Then you will not feel awe, and if you cannot feel awe you cannot feel God.

They say philosophy arises out of wonder. It is right, absolutely right. Philosophy arises out of wonder; and religion? -- religion arises out of awe. And what is the difference between wonder and awe?

When you are full of wonder, you try to find a clue; how to dissolve that wonder? You try to think about it, figure out what it is. Wonder creates a question-mark in you, and you start struggling with it -- so philosophy is a fight with wonder. It arises out of wonder, then it tries to dissolve the wonder, to dissolve the inexpressible, the unexplainable, to find an explanation so the wonder can be dropped. Wonder is felt like a dis-ease, a tension. So the philosopher is continuously trying ways and means to be again at ease. He is trying to find some answer so the questions can be dropped, so the mystery is no more a mystery. Philosophy is against wonder.

Religion arises out of awe. Awe is also wonder with one different quality: that is, it does not create a question mark in you. Rather,.it creates deep love, it creates deep gratitude, it creates humbleness. It creates such a state in your consciousness that you would like to bow down before it. It is not a question to be solved, but a deep mystery to be respected.

You would like to kneel down and pray. You would not like to think about it because it is so vast; it is impossible to think about it. You would like to pray; you would like to fall into it in deep love.

Wonder becomes awe when it does not create a question-mark in you; awe becomes wonder if it creates a question-mark in you. That's the difference between philosophy and religion, and then the paths go diametrically opposite. A philosopher goes on thinking and thinking, and a religious person goes on dropping thinking.

God enters into you through awe.

"I always yearn to be here, but why, on seeing you, am I filled with awe?"

That's how it should be. If you are not filled with awe, then your coming to me is pointless. If you don't feel like praying, if you don't feel like bowing down, surrendering, then you have not come to me. Physically you may be here; spiritually we exist far apart.

It happens many times: every day I watch many people who yet have a living heart in them start feeling awe, but they start repressing it. It feels as if it is a kind of weakness and you are not to show it. If they want to cry, they stop their tears. They have come with many questions to ask and suddenly those questions are not there -- because in an awful mood, questioning stops. They forget their questions. And they are very worried about where their questions have gone, and they start searching hectically inside to find something to cling to so that awe does not become too overpowering. Sometimes they ask foolish questions, just to ask, so that nobody becomes aware that they have lost their grounding, that they have fallen into something deep, that they have not been strong enough to resist -- but then they miss. Then they come to me, and yet, they come not.

Coming to me, be ready. It is not a question of asking questions. In fact, there is no need.

Just being with me, just being close with me...fall in line with me, breathe with me, let your heart beat with me a little while so that you can see through my eyes, so that you can taste a little of that with which I am completely overtaken and possessed.

But fear will arise -- because whenever there is something bigger than your mind, the mind says, "Don't move; there can be danger. You may not be able to come back." And the mind says, "It is almost mad, retain your intelligence, retain your thinking capacity, retain your logic." What are you going to do? And you all have been trained for logic, and nobody has been in any way trained for love. That feeling of awe is simply trying to assert something from your heart that has been repressed by the society, by the forces that are trying to control you, by the mind.

Mind is nothing but society inside you: the priest, the politicians, the power-mad people -

- they have become your mind. They are trying to manipulate you from within. When awe arises, you are falling into an infinite ocean, not knowing what will happen next. In that moment you would like to escape, you would like to close your eyes, you would like to somehow control yourself -- because you have always been told that control is a great value. So you go on controlling everywhere, where it is not needed at all, where it is a hindrance to life. Where it is almost a suicide, there too you go on controlling. You cannot trust, because trust means losing your controlling to somebody else's hands. You cannot surrender, you cannot love, you cannot pray. Even people making love cannot surrender; they go on controlling deep down. Hence, the real peak is missed. They learn techniques of how to make love. They can become very efficient lovemakers, but love is missed -- because it has nothing to do with you.

Love happens only when you are not there. Love happens only when you are surrendered to existence. Then there is a great orgasmic experience. Then you reach to the very peak of your being, and you look at existence from the top-most peak of the Himalayas; you look from the GOURISHANKAR. Then a totally different vision arises, and that vision transforms your life.

So when you come to me, be ready to lose control, be ready to lose yourself. That is the whole purpose of coming; otherwise, don't come. Even if you ask something, don't ask out of your knowledge. Your asking should also be out of your love. Your asking should also be how to go deeper in the mystery -- not how to demystify it, not how to explain it, but how to move deeper and deeper into the eternally unexplained -- because that's what God is.

So have a little taste of God with me. Allow me to be a door.

It will be difficult for you to face God directly, the Whole, because it will be too much, too dazzling. You cannot look at the sun directly; it will destroy your eyes. That's the meaning of a Master: he gives you God in quantities that you can bear. He gives you God in homeopathic doses, and he goes on increasing the dosage, by and by. The more you become capable of absorbing, the more he gives to you. One day, when you are ready to face the sun directly, he simply disappears. He is no longer between you and God.

It is just as you start learning swimming: first you learn in shallow water, just on the bank. It's natural, it is intelligible, it is practical. Then as you are becoming more and more capable, you start moving towards the deeper parts of the river. One day you are ready to go into the ocean.

When you come to me, allow me to be there rather than insisting for your own presence.

You dissolve; let me be there. You open your doors and windows and allow me to pass through you. Much will happen that way. Nothing is going to happen through your questions because they are nothing of worth -- irritations in the mind. But I always see that whenever people feel full of awe, they start defending themselves. Then they undo the whole purpose. Don't defend. If you defend, then how am I going to help you? --

there is no way. I cannot help you against you; I can help you only with your deep cooperation. If you participate, only then can the journey start.

But many times I have felt it -- many people would like to go on the journey, but when it starts, they start clinging to the place where they are standing. They don't want to lose their ground; but then, how can the journey start? You have to go on losing that which you have to attain that which you don't have.

Jesus has said, "Those who want to follow me, they should deny everything, including themselves. They should deny themselves"...and he is right, but it takes a long time.

Between a Master and a disciple, that which can happen right this moment takes much time because the disciple goes on defending in many ways, rationalizing in many ways.

The Bauls say,

Look...

Look for Him in the temple of your limbs;

He is there as the Lord of the world --

speaking, singing in enchanting tunes.

He is an expert at hide-and-seek;

no one can see Him.

Do not try to catch Him, O my heart!

He can never be caught --

you can only hope for Him

in whole faith.

When you are deep in awe -- and if you are courageous enough to remain in it -- soon your consciousness will have a tremendous shift, a one-hundred-eighty degree turn. If you can remain in awe for a few moments without disrupting it, without corrupting it with your thoughts, your defences, your rationalizations; if you can remain purely in it --

not doing anything about it, just being in it -- there will be a turn That's what Christians call conversion. It doesn't mean that a Hindu becomes a Christian; that is foolish. It doesn't mean that a Christian becomes a Hindu.'Conversion' means: a great turning in your consciousness. If you can remain with me for a few moments, just in pure awe -- not corrupting it in any way, not doing anything whatsoever; just being in it, allowing it to be

-- there will be a shift, a one-hundred-eighty degree turn, a conversion. Suddenly, I will disappear and you will be face to face with your own being. The God is hiding within you.

Look...

Iook for Him in the temple of your limbs;

He is there as the Lord of the world --

speaking, singing in enchanting tunes.

He is an expert at hide-and-seek;

no one can see Him..

... because the very effort to see Him separates you from Him. The very effort to see Him makes Him an object, and He is not an object; He is your subjectivity. He cannot be reduced to being a thing -- He is not. He is not the sought, He is the seeker. He is your consciousness, your purity of consciousness. He is your inner sky. You cannot see Him because He is hiding within you.

There is a beautiful parable:

When God created the world, He used to live here on this earth, but there was great trouble for Him. He was not even able to sleep, because complaints and complaints. And the whole day He was trying to solve people's problems, and in the night also they were knocking on His door. And there were so many suggestions to improve upon the world that He started becoming almost insane. It looked as if nothing was going right -- millions of advisers -- and He was fed up. If He listened to one man's advice, there were a thousand and one against it. It was very difficult to do anything. He asked His counsellors, His advisers, "What to do?" He said, "I would like to hide somewhere."

Somebody suggested, "Why don't you go to GOURISHANKAR, Everest. Nobody will ever be able to come there; you can make your abode there."

He said, "You don't know the future. Just within few minutes -- for God it is only few minutes, our centuries are seconds for Him -- just within a few minutes, this man Hilary will reach, and then the same trouble will start."

And somebody said, "Why not the moon?"

He said, "That too is only a question of few minutes. Soon, man will be walking on the moon. It will not solve anything. It will at the most postpone a little."

Then one old counsellor came close to Him and told Him something in His ear. And He was very happy, and He said, "Right! This appears to be the perfect solution."

The old man suggested, "You hide in man himself. There he will never find you. And even if he finds, a man who is so wise to find you within himself will not create any trouble for you. Hilarys can create trouble, but Buddhas cannot -- because by the time they find you inside themselves they will be almost like you. They will not have any complaints, they will not have any question. They will be as silent as you are, they will be as deep as you are. By the time they reach you inside themselves, they will have been transformed. The very journey will become a mutation."

God is hiding within you, but you cannot see God there directly because you don't know how to go there.

One method, one way, is of meditation: start dropping your thoughts. One day when there is no thinking, no ripple, and you are a no-mind, you will reach there; the conversion will happen. Another way is of prayer.

The SANNYASIN who has asked is Rama Bharti. Her path is going to be that of prayer and love. That's why she feels so much awe. When she comes close to me, I have seen her almost tremble, as if some unknown breeze is passing through her. I have seen her throbbing with an unknown rhythm. Love is her path. She has to use this quality of awe; it is rare. Very few people have it; it is disappearing from the world.

People have become much too intellectual, much too hung-up in their heads. They have forgotten the language of the heart. Awe is the script, the very script of that language.

Feel it, allow it to possess you, be possessed by it. It will lead you to the innermost temple of your own being. There will be a conversion, and in that moment your consciousness will have a great shift. Suddenly, it will not be looking at me, it will start looking at itself. That is the only way to know God.

The second question:

Question 2

WHEN YOU WERE A ZEN MASTER TELLING US TO CHOOSE OUR PATH AND

STICK TO IT, I FELT SURE THAT MY PATH WAS OF THE HEAD, THAT I WOULD NEVER BE ABLE TO SURRENDER TO ANYONE. NOW, AFTER ONE

LECTURE ON THE BAUL MYSTICS, I FEEL LIKE A LOVESICK SCHOOLGIRL.

HOW TO CHOOSE A PATH WHEN YOU HAVE NONE? HOW TO BE A LIGHT

UNTO MYSELF WHEN YOUR LIGHT DAZZLES ME EVERY MORNING?

I can understand your difficulty, but it is being created knowingly. I will throw you from one path to another many times, because that is the only way for you to find out which is your path. Sometimes I will push you, pull you towards meditation; sometimes I will force you towardslove, prayer. You will need the taste of both; only then can you be decisive about it, otherwise not. Just by listening to me you cannot decide, because while you are listening to me you are too much impressed by me.

So this is part of the device: that one day I am speaking on meditation, another day I am speaking on love. I would like you to taste both because that taste will be decisive. Only that will decide which your path is where you feel really flowing, where you feel really spontaneous Where things happen on their own accord and you need not force them, that is your path -- but how to know it?

When you listen to me when I am talking about love you will be impressed by it, but that is not going to decide it. Just being impressed is not going to help. It is a sort of hypnosis.

When I am chanting and singing about love you will be hypnotized by it. You will start thinking, "Yes, this my path." But this is just a wave created by me. It may be your wave, it may not be your wave; and you cannot know it. And your whole life has been conditioned so much by others that you have become very impressionable. You immediately take the imprint from the outside. If you listen to me on meditation, you will be impressed by that. That' why ordinarily Masters have not done that which I am doing here. They only insist on one path continuously, for their whole lives. But then many people follow that path only -- because their Master has impressed them so much about it continuously and consistently that they follow. That may not be their path. Hence, my ABSOLUTELY new effort.

I will be talking on all sorts of paths and all sorts of methods In the beginning it will be very confusing, but that is meant to be so. I would like to confuse you so much that you forget all about being impressed by anybody. My whole effort is to throw you to yourself.

How long can you go on doing this? -- one day you are thinking of meditation, an then I talk about love; you start thinking about love. Again I will talk about meditation, and again the problem will arise. How long are you going to be impressed by me? One day or other you will say, "Now I have to decide. This man will drive me crazy!"

J. Krishnamurti says, "Don't be impressed by anybody," but he is a very consistent man, VERY consistent. And his consistency becomes a deep imprint on his followers. He goes on saying,'Don't be impressed by anybody," but he has been saying that for forty years so consistently that people have even become impressed about it. They say, "Because Krishnamurti says,'Don't be impressed by anybody,' we are not going to be impressed by anybody" -- but this is the impression.

What I am doing is exactly what Krishnamurti is saying. I am doing it; he is simply saying it.

I will not allow you to be impressed. Even if you want, there is no way. I will change continuously: I will plant a few seeds today, tomorrow I will take them back. I will plant something today, tomorrow it will be gone. How long are you going to wait for me? One day you will say, "Wait! Now let me decide. Enough is enough!" But by that time you will have been shifted and shunted from this to that so much that you will have had glimpses of both. You must have tasted a little of love, prayer, a little of meditation, a little of yoga; a little of Meera and Chaitanya, and a little of Buddha and Mahavir. You will have tasted both, and then decision will arise in you. And that will not be because of me, that will be because of you. And when something is because of you it is real, it is authentic; it transforms, it transfigures, it transports you into another world. If it is just an impression, because I have been consistently telling you about something again and again and again, then it becomes just a suggestion deeply implanted within your mind. You may think that you have decided, but it is not your decision.

Krishnamurti has never asserted a single contradiction. He simply goes on repeating the same thing. His note is simple, clear; there is nothing confused about him. Either you agree with him or you don't agree with him -- that is another thing -- but there is nothing to be confused about. Nobody can say that he is confusing. You can say he is right or you can say he is wrong, but not that he is confusing.

You cannot say about me whether I am right or whether I am wrong. At the most, you can say that I am confusing. But that is my whole device: to confuse you so much. How long can you allow me to shift from this to that, from that to this? One day you are going to shout, "Keep your hands away! Now I want to decide"; and that decision will come out of you. And that will come not only because of intellectual conviction, it will come because of real experiences on both the paths. When you have tasted all, you can decide easily. And then you can remain with that decision for your whole life.

If you are impressed by me and then you decide, you can be impressed by somebody else tomorrow, and then you will decide that. And if you are impressionable for me, you are impressionable for anybody else. That's how people go from one Master to another.

Here there is no need to go anywhere because I am all the Masters together. You can just remain here and the Master changes; there is no need to go anywhere. I consistently contradict myself, so there is no problem. You need not go anywhere; you can just remain where you are.

People go on changing Masters because one day something impresses you and you are over-enthusiastic about it, and then there is a honeymoon -- but honeymoons end.

Anything that begins has to end. After a few days the enthusiasm is gone. Now the thing seems to be familiar. The enthusiasm was because of the unfamiliar, because it was new.

Try to understand this mechanism.

You fall in love with a woman because she is so new: the physiology, the proportions of her body, the face, the eyes, the eyebrows, the color of her hair, the way she walks, the way she turns, the way she says hello, the way she looks. Everything is new, the whole territory unknown. You would like to investigate this territory; it is inviting, it is very inviting. You are caught, hypnotized. And when you start approaching, she starts to run away; that is part of the game. The more she runs, the more enchanting she becomes. If she simply says, "Yes, I am ready," half of the enthusiasm will be dead that very moment.

In fact, you will start thinking how to run away. So, she gives you a chance to chase her.

People are never as happy as while the courting continues -- very happy -- because it is a chase. Man is basically a hunter, so when the woman is chased, running away, trying to hide here and there, avoiding, saying no, the man gets more and more hot. The challenge becomes intense; the woman has to be conquered. Now he is ready to die for her, or do whatsoever is needed, but the woman has to be conquered. He has to prove that he is no ordinary man.

But once they are married, then everything...because the whole interest was in the chase, the whole interest was in the unfamiliar, the whole interest was that the woman was apparently unconquerable. But now she is conquered; now how can that old interest remain? At the most one can pretend, but the old interest cannot remain. Things start becoming cold. They start getting bored with each other because now there are other women who are again new territories: they attract, they invoke, they call forth.

The same happens with thoughts: you are enchanted with one sort of thinking, but by the time you become acquainted with it the honeymoon is over, the love is over. Now you would like to be interested in something else, something new that again gives you a thrill, a kick. This way one goes from one woman to another, from one man to another, from one thinking to another thinking, from one path to another path, from one Master to another Master. This sort of searching will never allow you time enough to create trust.

In one aboriginal community of India in the very primitive parts of Madhya Pradesh, in Bastar, there lives a tribe -- aboriginals, very old people, primitive, almost three or four thousand years old. They are not contemporaries at all but something can be learned from them. One thing has happened in that community that has never happened before anywhere else, and that is: once a man marries a woman there is never any divorce.

Divorce is allowed, but never has divorce happened. And once a man marries a woman, he remains truly with her, and the woman remains truly with him. He never becomes again interested in any other woman in any other way, and the woman never becomes interested in any other man. How have they managed this miracle? They have managed very psychologically.

The structure of their society is such that every boy and every girl is allowed to meet and mix with every other boy and girl. So every boy comes to know each girl of the community, and each girl comes to know each boy of the community. In fact, by the time boys and girls are getting interested in the other sex, they don't stay in their homes in the night. They have a small temple-like thing just in the middle of the village; they call it GHOTUL -- a youth house.

Once a boy becomes interested in girls he has to go to stay in the GHOTUL; once a girl starts becoming interested in the boys, she has to go to live in the GHOTUL. In the GHOTUL they live, all the boys of the village and all the girls of the village, and they make love to each other. Only one thing is insisted upon: the superintendent of the ghotul insists that no boy and girl should remain with each other more than three days. They should change, so that before their marriage time comes they have known everybody; then they can decide.

When you know all the women of your community and decide, that decision is totally different than the decision that is taken in civilized societies. You don't know other women; a better woman, a better man is always possible. Then what will you do? A more interesting personality can always be there; then there will be disruption, there will be distraction, there will be problems. These are small village communities: not many people -- two hundred, three hundred people, at the most, in one community. Every boy is allowed to know each girl. When he has known all the girls and all the girls have known all the boys, and then one girl and one boy decide to get married, before marriage happens they are given one more year to be together, to finally decide -- because to decide before knowing each other well is dangerous. The decision may be only because they want to know each other well. But once they have known each other well, then what will happen to their decision? So they have to know each other well for one year, two years; whatsoever time they need, they can be together. There is no interference on them by the society.

But once they decide to get married, of course that decision is very, very solid, absolute, unconditional -- because all conquering is gone, hunting is gone, chasing is gone. The honeymoon is before marriage in that community, and that seems to be more logical, psychological, more true to the human mind. The honeymoon is before the marriage.

Marriage has to happen only when the honeymoon is over. When two persons, knowing each other well, decide to be together, now it is not a question of conquering. It is not a question of novelty. It is not that they decide for marriage because they want to know each other; they decide for marriage because they know each other. This is totally different.

But that GHOTUL and the system of those communities is disappearing. They are being civilized by us, forced, because this seems to be immoral. At least for Christians, Hindus, Jains, it seems immoral. Their community is being destroyed; their GHOTUL is thought to be like a house of prostitution. So they are being taught against their experience: they are being taught to destroy GHOTULS and to stop this 'immoral' situation.

But man seems to be absolutely foolish. They are not immoral people; they are very moral people, very natural people. But Christians are there working and trying to convert them into Christians. They have converted many of those poor people into Christians.

Now GHOTULS are disappearing, and there, one of the most solid systems is being destroyed. In fact, we should learn something from them.

My whole device is to give you all the chances possible for spiritual growth so that you can have a feel for the right path. And that feel has to come through you. It has not to come through me, it has not to come through my, influence.

There are two ways not to influence you: one way is not to speak, to disappear somewhere so nobody can come close. Many people have done that too, but that doesn't seem to work. It has no compassion in it. The other way is to communicate to you, to say to you what I have attained, what I have known, what I have tasted. That has been done, but then people become impressed. They become so impressed that they are almost dragged out of their natures That too is dangerous. Maybe a hundred persons are influenced -- then ten, fifteen, at the most twenty, will reach to the goal. Eighty will be going against their nature.

My effort is to make you available to all possibilities and to make all possibilities available to you so you can move, you can change, you can have your own time, at your own pace. And then one day a feeling will arise, and tha. feeling will be totally yours. It will have nothing to do with me. Then you have come to a point where marriage happens: then you are married to a particular path.

I will continue talking about other paths, but from that moment you will listen to me, you will love me, you will be grateful to me, but if I am saying something which goes against your path you will not choose it, you will not be impressed by it. If something fits on your path you wil choose, but the decision will be your chosen path. Now anything that fits with it you will take in; anything tha doesn't fit you will not take in. And you will not say, "That is wrong"; you know that on some other path it fits, so I may be right for somebody else.

But once you have chosen your path, whatsoever I say, you will be able to choose. You will become a chooser you will have an inner criterion -- what fits, what does no fit.

I am here for many sorts of people. I am not one dimensional; I am here for all sorts of people, and I am speaking to all of them. By and by, listening to me, being attentive to me, you will go on deciding by your feeling. Then I will continue to speak; you will love to listen, you will love to understand, but you will not be distracted. Once you are married you will not be distracted. Then there is no divorce.

"When you were a Zen Master telling us to choose our path and stick to it, I felt that my path was of the head, that I would never be able to surrender to anyone. Now, after one lecture on the Baul mystics, I feel like a lovesick schoolgirl. How to choose a path when you have none? How to be a light unto myself when your light dazzles me every moming?"

One day you will be saturated with it. One day, one morning you will arise in your own being, alert to your needs, alert to your direction. Once that direction is understood, recognized, then there will be no problem. But one has to wait for it; it takes time. And before it happens I will have to shift you, turn you, shunt you from here and there.

Sorry, but I have to do it.

The Bauls say,

Blind one,

how can you stumble

on a straight spontaneous path?

Be spontaneous in your own self

and find the way

that is born in you.

That's what I am trying to do here -- I am a midwife. I'm not going to create something for you; it is already being created in your womb. It is already being created in your innermost shrine. At the most, I can help it to be born smoothly. At the most, if something goes wrong I can help you to remove the obstacle. But the child has been getting ready in you; I am just a midwife....

Once you have found your child, your direction, then the path is very spontaneous.

Blind one,

how can you stumble

on a straight spontaneous path?

Be spontaneous

in your own self,

and find the way

that is born in you

Words of wisdom describing God

can reveal us riches

in a darkened room.

Seeking in darkness

is confusing.

Break the barriers

and look at the sky;

the formless

is held as a beautiful form

in the arms of the moon.

I go on describing about the wealth, treasures, but your eyes are full of darkness. My description impresses you; greed arises in you. You would also like to become a possessor of great treasures -- but your eyes are full of darkness. Even if the treasure is right in front of you and I am describing it to you, you are impressed by my description but you are not aware of the treasure Iying just in front of you. My description is not going to help.

Words of wisdom describing God

can reveal us riches

in a darkened room.

Seeking in darkness

is confusing.

Break the barriers

and look at the sky;

the formless is held as a beautiful form

in the arms of the moon.

So don't be too impressed by my words, and don't start feeling very sure while listening to me. But I know it is natural, it is human. Many times you will feel sure: "This is my path"; but next day it will change. So become a little unsure about your sureness. Hesitate a little. When I was talking on Zen you felt sure: "This is my path." Now I am talking about Bauls -- remember, tomorrow I may be talking about something else, so this time at least don't feel so sure. Listen to me, but don't give surety to what is heard. Wait, there is no hurry. Be patient, go on listening and trying, but don't feel sure because your surety is dangerous. Feel sure only when your child is born, when you have a sense of direction.

And you will be able to see the difference, because it is so tremendously different. It will not be because of me. You will be able to see now that it is not that you are impressed by me; there is nothing like impression. Suddenly a great upsurge, a great energy has happened in you, and it is absolutely certain. But you will be able to see that it is not because of any influence from my side. Sometimes it may even happen contrary to what I am saying. Sometimes -- it is possible if you have been shifted too many times from one path to another -- I am talking about love, and listening to me about love a great certainty will arise in you that, "This is not my path; my path is meditation," or vice versa. It is difficult to say how you will be able to make sure that this is not the surety coming by influence, but your own. But I know that you will be able to do it.

It is exactly like when you have a headache: you know. You don't ask anybody, "Please tell me when I have a headache. How am I going to know that it is a headache, that I am really having it?" No, you will know. When the real certainty arises, it is so clear, so crystal-clear -- like a pillar of light; and just by its arising you are washed clean.

Just by its arising you feel a new being, altogether new, a new birth. It is not intellectual, it is not in the head. You will feel it all over your body, all over your body, all over your mind, all over your heart. Your totality will feel it. When that certainty arises, then it is faith, then it is trust. By being influenced, whatsoever you get is nothing but a belief. A belief is a very impotent thing;.it never changes anybody.

The third question:

Question 3

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FOLLOWING: THINKING AND

UNDERSTANDING, REACTION AND RESPONSE, BELIEF AND FAITH, SYMPATHY AND COMPASSION, COMMUNICATION AND COMMUNION?

Thinking is the absence of understanding. You think because you don't understand. When understanding arises, thinking disappears. It is like a blind man groping his way; when eyes are there you don't grope for the way, you see it. Understanding is like eyes; you see it, you don't grope. Thinking is groping. Not knowing what is what, you go on thinking, guessing. Thinking cannot give you the right answer because thinking can only repeat that which is known. Thinking has no vision for the unknown.

Have you ever tried thinking about the unknown? How will you think? You can think only that which you know; it is repetitive. You can go on thinking it again and again, you can make new combinations of old thoughts, but nothing really is new.

Understanding is fresh, new. It has nothing to do with the past. Understanding is here, now. It is an insight into reality.

With thinking there are questions and questions and no answers. Even sometimes when you feel that you have found an answer, it is just because one has to decide some way or other. It is not really the answer, but you have to decide for action so some answer has to be clung to. And if you look deeply into your answer, you will see a thousand and one questions arising out of it. Understanding has no questions but only answers, because it has eyes.

Thinking is borrowed. All your thoughts are given by others to you. Watch -- can you find a single thought that is yours, authentically yours, that you have given birth to? They are all borrowed. The sources may be known or unknown, but they are all borrowed. The mind functions like a computer, but before the computer can give you any answer you have to feed it. You have to supply all the information; then it will give you the answer.

That's what mind has been doing.

Mind is a biocomputer. You go on collecting data, knowledge, information, and then when a certain question arises your mind supplies the answer out of that collection. It is not a real response; it is just out of the dead past.

What is understanding? -- understanding is pure intelligence. That pure intelligence is originally yours; you are born with it. Nobody can give you intelligence. Knowledge can be given to you, not intelligence. Intelligence is your own sharpened being. Through deep meditation one sharpens one's being; through meditation one drops borrowed thoughts, reclaims one's own being, reclaims one's originality, redaims one's childhood, innocence, freshness. Out of that freshness, when you act, you act out of understanding. And then the response is total, here-now; and the response is because of the challenge, not because of the past.

For example: somebody asks you a question -- what do you do? You immediately go inside the mind and find out the answer. You immediately go into the basement of the rnind where you have collected all knowledge, and find the answer there. Then it is thinking. Somebody asks a question and you become silent; you look into the question with penetrating eyes; not into the memory, but into the question. You face the question, you encounter the question. If you don't know you say you don't know.

For example: somebody asks whether God exists or not. You immediately say, "Yes, God exists." From where is this answer coming? -- from your memory? Christian memory, Hindu memory, Muslim memory? Then it is almost useless, futile. If you have a communist memory you will say, "No, there is no God." If you have a Catholic memory you will say, "Yes, there is God." If you have a Buddhist memory you will say, "There is no God." But these answers are coming from the memory. If you are a man of understanding you will simply listen to the question, you will go deep into the question, you will simply watch. If you don't know, you will say, "I don't know." If you know, only then will you say you know. And when I say 'if you know', I mean, if you have realized.

A man of understanding is true. Even if he says, "I don't know," his ignorance is more valuable than the knowledge of the mind, because at least his ignorance, his acceptance of the ignorance is closer to truth. At least he is not trying to pretend, he is not a hypocrite.

Watch, and you will see that all your answers come from your memory. Then try to find out a way where memory does not function and pure consciousness functions. That is what understanding is.

I have heard....

A doctor stepped into the patient's room. Five minutes later he came out and asked for a corkscrew, then he went back to his patient. In another five minutes he was out again and demanded a chisel and hammer.

The distraught husband couldn't stand it any longer. He pleaded, "For heaven's sake, doctor, what is wrong with my wife?"

"I don't know yet," the doctor replied. "I can't get my bag opened."

Even sometimes when you say, "I don't know," it is not necessary that it may be coming out of understanding. It may be simply that you can't open your bag. It may be that you cannot open your memories, or you are not able to find something in the memory; you need time. You say, "I don't know"; you say "Give me time, let me think about it." What will you do by thinking? If you know, you know; if you don't know, you don't know.

What are you going to think about? But you say, "Give me time, I will think about it."

What are you saying? You are saying, "Give me a little, time; I will have to go into the basement of my mind and search. And there is such rubbish accumulated through the years that it is difficult to find, but I will try."

Meditate, and become free from this basement. It is not that the basement is not useful; it can be used. But it should not become a substitute for your understanding.

A man of understanding looks into things directly. His insight is direct, but he can use all his accumulation to help the insight to reach you. He can use all his accumulation to make everything that he is trying to convey to you clear. But that which he is trying to convey is his own. Words may be borrowed, language may be borrowed -- has to be borrowed -- concepts may be borrowed, but not what he is trying to convey to you. The container will come from the memory, but the contents will be his insight.

And of course, a man who has no understanding is continuously a victim of so many thoughts, because he has no one insight to give him a center. He has a crowd of thoughts, unrelated to each other, even diametrically opposite to each other, contradicting each other, with deep antagonism towards each other. He has a crowd -- not even a group, not even a society, but a mob of thoughts buzzing inside the mind. So if you go on with your thinking too far, one day you will become mad. Too much thought can create insanity.

In primitive societies madness is rare. The more civilized a society is, the more people go insane. Even in civilized societies, more people go insane who work with their intellects.

This is unfortunate but this is a fact: that more psychoanalysts go mad than in any other profession. Why? -- too much thinking. It is very difficult to manage so many contradictory thoughts together. In managing them, your whole being becomes unmanaged, becomes a chaos.

Understanding is single, understanding is central. It is simple; thoughts are very complex.

A henpecked husband visited a psychiatrist and said he had a recurring nightmare.

"Every night," he said. "I dream I am shipwreck with twelve beautiful women."

"What is so terrible about that?" asked the psychiatrist

"Have you ever tried cooing for twelve women?"

That was his problem: how to 'coo' twelve women Even to coo one woman is difficult.

Thinking is like cooing for thousands and thousands of women around you. One naturally goes mad. Understanding is very simple: you are married to one insight, but that insight works like a light, a torch. Wherever you focus your torch, mysteries are revealed.

Wherever you focus your torch, darkness disappears.

Try to find your hidden understanding, and the way is to drop thinking. And to drop thinking two are the possibilities: either meditation or love.

The second: 'reaction and response'.

Reaction is from the thoughts and response is understanding. Reaction comes from the past; response is always in the present. But ordinarily we react -- we have everything already ready inside.

Somebody is doing something and we react as if button has been pushed. Somebody insults you -- you be come angry. That has happened before. It has been happening the same all the while. It has become almost like a button: somebody pushes it, you become angry. There is not a single moment of waiting, not a single moment where you look at the situation -- because the situation may be different. The person who is insulting you may be right. He may have simply revealed a truth to you; that's why you feel insulted.

Or, he may be absolutely wrong, or he may be nasty person -- but you have to look into the person. If he is right, you have to thank him because he has shown some thing to you

-- he has shown compassion towards you. He has been friendly by bringing a truth to your heart. Maybe it hurts, but that is not his fault. Or, he is simply stupid ignorant: not knowing anything about you he has blurted something out. Then there is no need to be angry; he is simply wrong. Nobody is worried about something which is absolutely wrong. Unless it has some truth in it, you are never irritated by it. You can laugh at it, at the whole absurdity of it. It is ridiculous.

Or, the person is nasty and that is his way. He is being insulting to everybody. So he is not doing anything to you in particular; he is simply being himself -- that's all. So in fact, nothing is needed to be done. That man is that type.

Somebody insulted Buddha. His disciple Ananda asked him, "I was getting very angry and you kept quiet. You should have at least allowed me; I would have put him right."

Buddha said, "You surprise me. First he surprised me, now you surprise me. Whatsoever he was saying is simply irrelevant. It is unconnected with us, so why get into it? But you surprise me more: you have become very annoyed, you look angry. This is foolish. To punish oneself for somebody else's error is foolish. You are punishing yourself. Cool down. There is no need to be angry -- because anger is fire. Why are you burning your own soul? If he has committed some mistake, why do you punish yourself? It is stupid"...but we react.

I have heard....

One man was saying to one of his friends, "To please my wife, I have given up smoking, drinking, and playing cards."

"That must make her very happy," said his friend.

"No, it has not. Now, every time she begins to talk to me, she can't think of anything to say."

People live mechanical,-robot-like lives. If your wife has been continuously nagging you to stop smoking, and you think that she will be happy if you stop, you are wrong. If you smoke she is unhappy, if you stop smoking she will be unhappy, because then she will not find any excuse to nag you.

One woman has said to me that she doesn't want her husband to be perfect. I asked,

"Why?" She said, "Because I love nagging." If the husband is perfect what are you going to do? You will be simply at a loss.

Watch yourself, watch others, and see how they are behaving in a mechanical way: unconscious, like somnambulists, sleepwalkers.

Reaction is of the mind; response is of the no-mind.

Belief and faith? -- again the same: belief is of the mind, of the thinking; faith is of no-mind, of awareness, understanding.

It happened in a hillside village: the hunter said to his guide, "This seems to be a very dangerous cliff. It is a wonder they don't put up a warning sign."

"They had one up for two years," the native guide admitted, "but no one fell over so they took it down."

Belief is blind -- you believe because you have been taught to believe -- but it never goes very deep because it has no understanding of the situation. It is just a superfluous tag, just something added to you. It has not grown from you, it has not been a growth. It is just borrowed, so it never penetrates your being. A few days you carry it, and then seeing that it is useless, nothing is happening, you put it aside. There are Christians who are not Christians; there are Hindus who are not Hindus. They are Hindus only because of those beliefs that they have never used, those beliefs that have never been given any respect by them. They think they are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, but how can you be a Mohammedan if you have not lived your belief?

But belief cannot be lived. If one starts becoming more alert, watching life, responding, then by and by a faith arises. Faith is yours; belief is somebody else's. Drop beliefs so that faith can arise. And don't be satisfied with beliefs, otherwise faith will never arise.

Sympathy and compassion....

The same; the questioner has asked the same thing again and again.

Sympathy is of the mind: you feel somebody is in trouble, somebody is in misery; you think somebody is in misery and you have to help. You have been taught to help, to be of service, to be dutiful, to be a good human being, to be a good citizen, to be this and that.

You have been taught; you feel sympathy. Compassion has nothing to do with your teachings. Compassion arises as an empathy, not as a sympathy. Compassion arises when you can see the other person as he is, and when you can see him so totally that you start feeling him. You start feeling in the same situation.

It happened: A few people were beating a fisherman. Ramakrishna was moving from one bank to another of the Ganges, near Dakshineshwar. On the other shore a few people were beating a man. Ramakrishna was in the middle of the stream. He started crying and weeping, and he started shouting, "Stop, don't beat me!" People who were sitting around him, his disciples, could not believe what was happening: "Who is beating you? Who can beat him?" They said, "What are you saying, PARAMAHANSADEVA? Have you gone mad?" He said, "Look! They are beating me there on the other side." Then they looked; a few persons were beating a man, and Ramakrishna said, "Look at my back." He uncovered his back -- there were marks, blood was coming out. It was impossible to believe. They went, they rushed to the other shore, caught hold of the man who was beaten. They uncovered his back: exactly the same marks.

This is empathy -- putting oneself into somebody else's place so totally that what is happening to him starts happening to you. Then compassion arises. But these states are all of no-mind.

Communication and communion....

Communication is of the mind: verbal, intellectual, conceptual. Communion is of no-mind, of deep silence; a transfer of energy, non-verbal; a jump from one heart to another -

- immediate, without any medium.

The basic, most essential thing to remember is -- because it divides your life, it divides the whole world into two worlds -- that if you are looking through a screen of thoughts, then you live in one world: the world of belief, thinking, sympathy. If you are looking with clean eyes, unclouded eyes, your perception has a clarity: pure, just seeing into things as they are, not projecting anything upon them. Then you have understanding, then you have meditation. Then the whole world changes. And the problem is that mind can deceive you. It creates sympathy. It creates pseudo coins: for compassion it creates sympathy. Sympathy is a pseudo coin. For communion, it has only communication, which is a pseudo coin. For faith, it has belief, which is a pseudo coin.

Remember it -- mind tries to substitute. You are lacking something? -- mind tries to substitute it. Be very alert, because whatsoever mind can do is going to be false. Mind is the great falsifier, the greatest deceiver there is. It helps, it tries to console you, it gives you something.

For example: if in the day you have fasted, in the night you dream of foods, resting in great hotels, or being invited to the palaces of the kings and eating beautiful food. Why? -

- the whole day you have been hungry, now it is difficult to sleep because of hunger; the mind creates a substitute, a dream. Have you not watched?

In the night your bladder is full and you would like to go to the bathroom, but sleep will be disturbed -- the mind immediately creates a dream that you are in the bathroom. Then you can go on sleeping. It gives you a substitute. The substitute is conciliatory; it is not real -- but for the time being it helps.

So beware of mind's consolations. Seek reality, because only reality can fulfill.

Consolations will only post-pone; they can never be fulfilling. You can eat as much food as you like in the night in your dream, you can enjoy the fragrance of it, the taste of it, the color of it, everything, but it is not going to be nourishing. The one thing that is not going to happen: it cannot nourish. Belief can give you the whole fragrance of faith, the taste, the color. You can enjoy it but it will not nourish you. Only faith can nourish.

Always remember: that which nourishes you is real, and that which simply gives you a consolation is very dangerous. Because of this consolation you will not seek the real food. If you start living in dreams and you don't eat real food, then by and by, you will dissipate, disappear, become dry, and you will be dead.

So take immediate action: whenever mind is trying to give you a substitute, don't listen to it. It is a great salesman, a great seducer. It convinces you, and it says, "Those things are very cheap. Faith is very difficult to find because you will have to risk your life; belief is very easy, very cheap. You can get it for nothing." In fact, so many people are ready -- if you accept their belief they are ready to give you something more with it: become a Christian, become a Hindu, become a Mohammedan. People are ready to give you a great welcome and respect, respectability. Everything is available; just accept their belief.

Belief is not only cheap, it can even bring many more things with it.

Faith is dangerous, never cheap. You will have to put your whole life at stake. It needs courage, but only a courageous person can be religious.

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #3

Chapter title: What is there, is there

23 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606230

ShortTitle:

BELOV103

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

90

mins

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

I SAT ON THE THRONE RULING LIKE A LION,

LIVING A HAPPY LIFE.

THE WORLD OBEYED ME.

AS I TURNED IN MY BED

ALL WAS CLEAR:

I WAS NOT A LION

BUT A LION'S UNCLE,

A JACKASS,

THE VILLAGE IDIOT....

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ASSERTIONS EVER MADE. It is so: the reality remains in its suchness. Nothing changes, nothing can change. But we see many changes happening all around. For us, everything is changing. Life is a flux.

Then something is wrong with us. Then the change appears not because it is there, but because we cannot see the eternal. Our inability to see the real, the eternal, creates a flux-like phenomenon all around us. It is our flickering consciousness.

Have you watched sometimes in a dark room? -- a small candle burns, and it goes on flickering. Because of its flickering the whole room seems to be moving, waving, changing. If the flame is constant, the room stops changing -- it becomes constant. Our consciousness creates the mirage, the illusion, the dream-like world that surrounds us.

This has to be understood very deeply, because this is the very base of all essential religions.

It is true as far as ordinary understanding goes: everything seems to be changing, nothing seems to be permanent. Nothing seems to be the same even for two moments, two consecutive moments. Nothing seems to be the same, everything goes on like a river. To think of anything permanent is almost impossible. To think of anything that has remained the same forever and ever is incomprehensible to the mind. The mind knows only the world of change. The mind knows only the dream, the illusion. A life lived through the mind is a life of dreams. That is the meaning of the concept of MAYA. It does not say anything about the reality, remember: it does not say that the reality is not real, it does not say that the existence is dream. It simply says that the way you look at it is so unconscious, the way you look at it is so wavering, unstable, that your inner wavering gives you a world of flux, dreams. Attain to inner integrity, attain to inner crystallization, and suddenly all flux-like phenomena disappear -- and suddenly you are face to face with the real, the substantial, the permanent; call it God. The world and God are not two things but the same reality looked at in two ways. One is through the mind, the other is through no-mind -- because if mind is there, there is going to remain, more or less, the flickering.

The mind cannot be constant. Have you watched? Even for a few seconds the mind cannot be constant. Just look at your watch someday, and just remember that you are looking at the watch, and you will not be able to retain this remembrance that you are looking at the watch even for a few seconds. Your mind will slip somewhere else: some memory, some imagination, some work that is incomplete, some worry, some plan; you must go somewhere. Again you will realize and you will see that for a few seconds you have not been here. Try again; again the mind will go away.

Mind cannot be stable, so all efforts to make mind stable are impossible. That is not in the nature of the mind. The only way to be stable is to drop the whole mind as such. To look into reality without any thinking, to look so directly that the medium of the mind is not there; look immediately, then suddenly God is revealed. Then in all the forms the formless is revealed. Then you see that which the Bauls say: Nothing has happened, and nothing will happen. What is there, is there; and what is not there, is not there. But the mind goes on seeing that which is not there, and because of that which is not there, we cannot see that which is there. Because of the false, because of the projected, because of the dreamed, we cannot see the real, we cannot see the true. When the false is dropped, reality is revealed. There is no other way to seek reality. One has to drop the very mechanism that creates falseness.

Mind is a projector. You sit in a movie house and you see a thousand and one things passing on the screen, and the screen is empty; nothing is really passing except shadows.

You go on looking at the screen and there is every possibility that you may not even think of the projector behind you which is projecting all those shadows, pictures. You can start fighting with those shadows but that is not the way to stop them. The way is to look back, to turn a one hundred-eighty-degree turn and go and stop the projector. Once the projector is stopped, the screen is empty. Suddenly there is nothing, or, only the whiteness of the screen is left. Only the eternal is there and the changing has disappeared.

But one has to stop the projector.

There are many people who become interested in meditation, but in a wrong way. They start fighting with the mind, they start struggling and wrestling with the mind. Then they are not ever going to be victorious. Then they are fighting a losing battle. It is not possible because they have forgotten the projector. Where is the projector?. -- one has to find the projector hidden behind your back. Hidden deep in the unconscious is the projector, hidden in the unconscious: becoming, desiring. It is what Buddhists call TRISHNA. The constant desire to be somebody, to be someone, to be somewhere else, is the cause of the mind; then the mind continues.

How to stop the projector? BE HERENOW. Don't try in any way to become somebody else; accept that which you are. Drop all ideas of improvement. Drop all ideas of bettering yourself. Drop all ideas of achieving something; there is nothing to be achieved.

Empty-handed we come, empty-handed we go, and in the meanwhile, empty-handed we remain. And if you think your hands are full then you are befooling yourself. Then you are taking dreams as real. Your hands may be full of dreams.

You must have heard about the Japanese discipline of KARATE. The word 'karate' is very meaningful. It comes from a root which means empty hand. It says: a man can become a great warrior if he understands totally the meaning of being empty. If somebody understands that, "Empty-handed I have come, empty-handed I will go, and empty-handed I am here," then there is nothing to lose. Who can conquer a person who has nothing to lose? Who can defeat a person who has nothing to lose? Who can frighten a person who has nothing to lose? By understanding this emptiness he becomes a great warrior. It is impossible to defeat him, it is impossible to rob him; it is impossible to kill him -- because he is already empty. He holds nothing in his hands. By not holding anything, he goes beyond life and death.

That is the meaning when Jesus says again and again, "Lose yourself." Those who are not going to lose themselves, they will lose; and those who are ready to lose, they will gain.

The losers will become winners, and the winners will become losers. Those who are empty will be fulfilled, and those who are trying to fulfill themselves will remain empty.

This is the paradox.

Understand the very motivation of all ideas, thoughts, desires. It is a seed-like thing.

Watch inside -- why can't you be herenow? Why is it always that you are thinking of somewhere else? Why can't you be happy as you are? Why are you thinking that tomorrow you will be happy? How can you be happy tomorrow if you are not happy today?. -- because tomorrow is going to be born out of the moment. Out of this moment the next moment is going to be born. Today is going to become the parent of tomorrow.

If you are unhappy today, you will be more unhappy tomorrow. You will have learned, by that time, many more tricks to be unhappy. You are practicing it, and you hope tomorrow to be happy? Then you are in a hopeless rut. You desire for tomorrow? -- then you are continuously missing all that is here, and that is the only reality there is. If you can even for a single moment put aside desiring, then the projector stops, and the dreaming stops, and you are able to face reality.

Nothing has happened. The reality is as it has always been from the very beginning.

Nothing has happened and nothing will happen, so all your desiring is futile, because you are trying for something to happen. Your whole effort is to make something happen: riches, wealth, power, prestige. Your whole effort is for something to happen, but, NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

This is a tremendously significant sutra. All the scriptures can be condensed in such a sutra. If you can understand only these three lines, there is no need to understand anything else. Look at your life from your childhood up to now. What has happened?

Many things appear to happen, but what has really happened? You remain the same, the consciousness remains the same, and all that happens is just superficial, like a dream. If it has not happened up to now, how is it going to happen in the future? Only the present is; past and future are dreams. Even for a single moment, if you can penetrate into reality and you can see what is, face to face, you will laugh at the whole absurdity of your efforts. What are you trying? -- you are trying something impossible: you are fighting against reality. The reality is; it knows no becoming, it is being. It knows no future; it is already here. It has always been already here. You have just to see it -- and once you can see it, all worry, all anxiety disappears. Then you stop trying, pulling yourself up by your shoestrings. Then you simply relax. Then there is no tension. Then rather, you start delighting, you start being blissful as you are.

Before we can understand it, a few things will be helpful.

One: ordinarily the Eastern psychology divides the human mind into three divisions. The first is deep sleep, very deep sleep when there are no more dreams: SUSHUPTI, dreamless sleep. In this state, ninety-nine percent unconsciousness and only one percent consciousness exists. A very small fragment of consciousness exists -- the whole continent is dark, just one ray. Because of that ray, in the morning you can say, "I had a very good sleep. It was absolutely silent and peaceful. There was not any dream."

Because of that one ray of consciousness, you can say this in the morning. If there were no consciousness at all, then who would remember? Then who would say that the sleep was beautiful, nourishing? Just a small ray, a very small ray exists in dreams.

That is the second stage -- dreaming -- a little more consciousness comes into existence.

You remember in a general way that you slept well. You can even remember dreams, details of the dreams. You can remember even the colors, the story, the pattern, the motif of the dream. You can relate the whole dream. You were a little more conscious.

Then you are awake in the morning; that is the third stage: wakefulness, a little more consciousness. But the greater continent of your soul remains dark. Even while you are awake, you are not totally awake. Just deep down in your wakefulness, dreams are floating. You can watch that.

Any moment close your eyes, rest for a single minute, and you will see that dreams are floating there. So just underneath your consciousness, a great world of dreams continues, and that goes on affecting your consciousness. Dreams are powerful things. They are projections; they go on shadowing your consciousness. And deep down in your dreams you will find again a sort of sleep. That's what happens when you fall asleep in the night.

When you have fallen asleep, first dreams start. That is the second stage. Then only rarely do you go deep. Then, dreams stop and you are in deep sleep. Again you start floating towards the surface, and this goes on continuously, the whole night -- up and down, up and down you move. In the whole night if you can touch the deep layer of sleep for only fifteen minutes, that will be enough rest. That's why people who meditate don't need much sleep, because in deep meditation they can easily move into the depth of their beings. The rest of the night is wasted in dreaming. These three states are the ordinary states.

The East says, "Unless you attain to a greater awareness, your life will never know what the reality is, what God is." That greater awareness means becoming totally aware, not leaving a single corner of your consciousness dark, dropping all unconsciousness. What the Freudians call the unconscious disappears by and by. By methods of meditation, prayer, love, it disappears; more and more, you become conscious. One moment comes when your whole being becomes conscious, full of light, luminous. Then there is no dreaming and no sleep. Just awareness is the stuff you are made of. In that moment you will become able to know what this Baul is singing:

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED AND

NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

And if you understand this, even a glimpse of it, then how can you remain in an agonized existence, how can you worry, and how can you remain tense and feeding illnesses?

Henry Thoreau used to say that what man thinks is wealth -- when man thinks that he is becoming by and by wealthy -- is more like 'illth' than wealth. We become more and more ill. Well-being does not happen through it, so why call it wealth? Man thinks he is becoming more and more powerful, and deep down, more and more impotence happens.

On the outside you think you are achieving many things, but deep down you remain empty, hollow. The sooner you realize this hollowness the better because then you will not waste your time and energy. Then your whole life will be of a totally different quality: the search will begin. Then you will not be chasing dreams.

And dreams look very real. They are not, but they look very real. To an unconscious mind, dreams look as if they are the only reality. Have you not watched that deep in sleep, dreaming, every night again you become a victim? You again start thinking that this is real. In the morning you realize it was false, just a dream, but in the night, again and again you are a victim and you start thinking it is real.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, "Unless you realize in your dreams that they are dreams, you will not be able to awake." So he used to give them techniques of how to realize while dreaming that it is a dream, how to recognize that it is a dream. But the moment you recognize a dream as a dream, it stops. It immediately stops. It cannot be there then. With your recognition of the dream as dream, the dream dies. It exists only through your cooperation and recognition; you give it reality. Pull your hands away and it drops flat, and it has nothing in it. The dream has power only because you impart power to it.

Watch people on the street, in the marketplace. Just stand by the side and just look at people -- you will be surprised. It is so obvious that they are sleepwalkers. They are walking like somnambulists. Somehow, they are managing, but they are walking fast asleep. You can watch their lips moving as if they are talking with somebody, and there is nobody. They can even be found making gestures to somebody who is not present. Watch their faces; their faces have not the aura of awareness -- a dullness, a dark shadow, as if somehow they are forcing themselves to be aware, ready to fall any moment into dreaming, into sleep. Drunk with their dreams, people go on moving.

First watch others, because it will be easy for you to watch others. Then start watching yourself. Then start catching yourself red-handed. Then sometimes, just walking on the road, suddenly stop and see whether you are here or you are moving somewhere in a dream.

The more you become alert about your dreams, the more you will see gaps arising in your consciousness when dreams are not there and reality can be approached. But we have great investments in our dreams. We may be afraid of nightmares, but we are not yet fed-up with dreaming. We still go on cherishing sweet dreams.

I have heard....

A man was talking to one of his friends. "I had a dream the other night," said Casey to his pal McGinn, "and it taught me a great lesson."

"What was it?" asked McGinn.

"I dreamed I was in Rome and I had an audience with the Pope. Would I have a drink, he asked me. Thinks I, 'Would a duck swim?' And seein' the whisky and lemons and sugar on the sideboard, I told him that I wouldn't mind a drop of punch.'Cold or hot?' he asked me. 'Hot, your Holiness,' said I, an' that's where I made me mistake!"

"I don't see anything wrong," said the friend.

"His Holiness stepped toward the kitchen to boil the water, and before he got back I woke up."

"What lesson did you learn?" asked McGinn.

"Next time," swore Casey, "I will say, 'I will take it cold, your Holiness, while the water is getting hot.'"

We have investments in our dreams. They don't exist without our help; we make them exist. Sweet dreams, golden dreams; we have a romance with them, a very long romance of many lives. We go on courting dreams, and of course when we court them they are there, and they bring nothing but frustration. Because they are against reality, they can never bring fulfillment. There is no way to make two plus two equal five; there is no way.

Whatsoever you do, two plus two will always be four, and you go on hoping that someday it is going to be five. Then you are simply in a mathematical error. Dreams can never be real; your thoughts can never be real; your hopes can never be realized; your desires can never be fulfilled. The only outcome can be more and more frustration.

That's why children look so beautiful: because they are yet full of hope, full of dreams, and they have not yet known frustration. Old people start looking very very dead. Hopes have leaked out, by and by, and only frustration -- a very bad taste on the tongue.

Experience makes people bitter. Experience makes people lose their innocence, lose their hope, lose their trust. But it is not experience really -- because they wanted to make their dreams real, that's why. Otherwise you could remain as innocent to the very end of your life as in the beginning -- in fact, even more -- because the innocence that happens in childhood is just natural. It has not been tested against fire; it is very fragile. It has no crystallization in it. It is just a gift; it has not been earned. But when an old man is childlike, innocent, then nothing can destroy it. Then it has a solidity to it, then it is substantial; he has earned it.

But how does one earn innocence? -- by learning from frustration, by going deep into frustrations and realizing the fact that each frustration is an outcome of a certain dream. If you don't want frustrations, drop dreaming. Life is not frustrating, dreaming is frustrating.

I have heard Mulla Nasrudin say to his son, "It is none of your business to know or enquire how I first met your mother, but I can tell you one thing: it sure cured me of whistling."

If your life can cure you of whistling and dreaming, it will be enough, more than enough, more than life can give to you. It will be a great realization.

But what happens? The moment one dream is frustrated, we immediately replace it, substitute it with another dream, maybe an even bigger dream. We never look into the reality. We go on saying that man proposes and God disposes. God has never disposed anything. It is you, in your very dream, who both proposes and disposes. It is your own proposal that carries the seeds of disposal, because it is not in tune with reality. It is your expectation that carries the seeds of frustration.

God, or call it reality, has never frustrated anybody. It is always showering on you; it is always ready to fulfill you to the deepest core of your being. But you won't listen to reality. You are too much with dreams.

This is what I call religious conversion: listening to reality and dropping the dreams is religious conversion. It will be difficult, hard, arduous in the beginning, because the dreams persuade you so easily, and they show you such wonderful visions, fantasies.

Dreams are great poets: they paint, they poetize, they fantasize; they create such beautiful hopes in you, paradises, heavens. They are all dreams. But you can live hoping, and today's misery can be tolerated because of tomorrow's dream.

It is very difficult to drop tomorrow's dream because then suddenly you become aware of the misery that is here today. But remember, that misery is created by yesterday's dream.

It has nothing to do with today. Yesterday's dream has created misery today; tomorrow's dream will create misery again. So when you drop tomorrow's dream, you will not suddenly become happy, because yesterday's dream will still linger on. You have sown the seeds -- who is going to reap the crop? But half is done when you drop tomorrow's dream. Yesterday's dream, its frustration, has to be passed through. That's what in India we call TAPAS, austerity. "Yesterday's dream was my dream. I have sown it, so I have to go through the suffering. I have to pass through the frustration. I accept it; it is my own doing. Nobody else is responsible, but now I am not going to sow any more seeds."

First, drop tomorrow's dream, then by and by yesterday's dream and its hang-ups and hangovers disappear. Then a man becomes aware. When your eyes are not full of dreams, your eyes are full of awareness.

It happened: MacGonigal was staggering up the street from telephone pole to lamp-post and back again. Father Daly stopped him and said, "Drunk again?"

"Are you?" said MacGonigal. "So am I, Father."

"This is no time for levity," admonished the priest. "After taking the pledge and promising me two weeks ago that you would never drink again! It is a sin against God and the church, and I am sorry to be saying so."

"You are sorry to see me so?"

"Indeed I am!"

"Are you sure you are sorry?"

"Yes, very, very sorry."

"Then if you are so sorry," said the drunkard, "I will forgive you Father."

Drunk, in our dreams, we go on interpreting in our own ways. We go on seeing things which are not. We go on listening to things which have not been said. We go on pretending what we are not, and we go on holding a dream-world around ourselves.

The befuddled group was hanging around a bar, when the door opened and a voice shouted, "McGuire, your house is on fire!"

One fellow rushed out, and after running a block at breakneck speed, suddenly skidded to a halt.

"Hell," he said to nobody in particular, "my name isn't McGuire."

This is what is happening to everybody: you don't know your name, you don't know your essence, you don't know who you are, you don't know why you are here, you don't know why you are running so fast. Where are you going? Why are you in such a hurry? Reality is here. Where are you going? But some conditioning -- what Hindus call SAMSKAR, from many lives of dreaming, desiring: that has become your only reality. You go on after it, not knowing why. It has become a habit. You cannot resist it; you are always on the move. The reality is here and you are always on the move, hence there happens no meeting. Unless that meeting happens, you will never be happy.

Happiness is when you are in tune with reality. Happiness is a harmony between you and the real. So if you are unhappy, remember, you must be going away from reality. Be aware that you must be somehow not falling in line with reality. There must be a conflict between you and the real, and of course you cannot win against the real; there is no way.

You have tried all the ways. The whole humanity has tried all the ways possible, but there is no way to win over reality and against reality.

You have to follow reality, you have to come into a deep accordance with reality, in tune with it. You have to become a note in the great orchestra that reality is -- not fighting but surrendering, submitting to it, ready to dissolve into it. That is what Bauls call love: the readiness to dissolve into reality, the readiness to merge, melt, the readiness to be one with reality. You will be losing something -- your dreams, your individuality, your ego; you will be losing that separation. You will disappear as a drop of water, but it is nothing to be worried about, because you will become the ocean. You will not be what you have been up to now: your ego, confined in a form, in a name. Your fences will disappear. You will not be an island, you will become part of the continent but you will become the continent.

Nothing is lost by losing yourself; everything is lost by resisting. But we go on misunderstanding reality. If reality tries to absorb us, it looks like death.

So many times, almost every day, somebody or other comes to me. Meditating deeply, when reality starts absorbing you, you become frightened because it looks like death. It is like death, but it is not death. It is the door to life more abundant, to life infinite and eternal. But yes, in a way it is death -- death to the past, death to you as you are. But then, what are you? Why are you so afraid of dying? You have nothing to lose -- only a miserable self, only an imprisonment will be burned down, only the structure of misery and agony will be burned down. You have nothing to lose. Why do you go on clinging to it? But you have become very familiar with it, and you become afraid. Whenever in deep meditation sometimes, by chance, coincidence, you come close to reality and the reality starts spreading in you, you become afraid and you escape.

Your interpretation has to be dropped. You have to learn how to listen to the real -- so when reality approaches you, welcome it. If God comes towards you, if you cannot move towards Him, at least don't run away. And He IS coming towards you in millions of ways. He wants to overpower you, to reclaim you. It is not only that you are seeking Him; He is also seeking you. In fact, your seeking is just pseudo. You talk about seeking God but you don't really mean it. You would like to find Him by the way. You don't want to stake anything. You don't want to pay for it. You don't want to earn Him. You would like to get Him free; that is not the way.

You will have to lose yourself; you will have to lose all. People don't mean it, and when God approaches them -- and He approaches you; I have seen His hands many times coming close to you -- I have seen you running away. And again, when you are far away you start seeking Him and you say, "How to find God?" Now this game has continued for too long, and it has become almost a habit that when He is far away you seek, when He comes close you escape. This pattern has to be broken.

I have heard....

It was a Sunday morning when the clarinet player who had recently moved next to the small church started practicing some hot licks that brought the minister over on a run.

"See here," said the minister, "did you ever hear 'keep holy thy sabbath'?"

"No," said the cat, "but if you whistle a few notes, I will do my best."

Our understanding is our understanding; our interpretation is our interpretation. Beware --

when reality approaches you, don't try to interpret. Just wait, be patient; the reality that is coming closer to you will reveal itself to you. But before it reveals, if you take some interpretation to your heart, then you are again closed. You close your doors and then there is no way to know what was really going to happen.

Just the other night a SANNYASIN was crying, weeping: she had become so afraid of Dynamic Meditation, because she saw one SANNYASIN almost going mad in it. So she became very afraid. The fear arose in her that if this could happen to one person, this could happen to her also. The very words 'dynamic meditation', she could not utter, because the moment she would say 'dynamic meditation', she would start shaking and crying. She could not relate it accurately, what had happened, because the very words

'dynamic meditation'...She became so much afraid of the very word that she was not able to relate the whole thing, what had happened. Only in fragments could she say that somebody was becoming almost mad, and not only that, but the one who was becoming mad just by her side started pulling her hand also. That became very symbolic. This madman was going mad himself, and trying to pull her in also. But a deep fear of madness is in everybody.

If you are too afraid of madness you cannot be in love, you cannot meditate, you cannot pray, because all of these dimensions are, in a way, mad dimensions -- you wi]l be going beyond the normal boundary of humanity. The normal, routine, workaday world, the normal logic, reason, the so-called normal humanity -- you will be going beyond it, you will be transcending it. It will look like madness.

Bauls say,

Mad, mad, we are all mad!

Why is this word

so derogatory then?

Diving deep

into the heart's stream,

you will find that no one is better

than, the one who is mad.

Madness is possible in two ways: either you fall below the normal, or you go above the normal. In both ways you become mad. If you fall below the normal you are ill; you need psychiatric treatment to be pulled back to normality. If you go beyond the normal you are not ill. For the first time you are becoming really healthy, because for the first time you are filled with wholeness. Then don't be afraid. If your madness brings you more sanity in life, then don't be afraid. And remember, the madness that is below the normal is always involuntary; that is the symptom: it is involuntary. You cannot do it, it happens; you are pulled into it. And the madness that is above the normal is voluntary -- you can do it --

and because you can do it, you remain the master of it. You can stop it at any moment. If you don't want to go further, you can stop it; if you want to go further, you can go on --

but you remain always in control.

In these meditations here, our whole effort is to give you a taste of the madness that is beyond the normal, but you remain the master. Any moment you want to come back, you can come back. This is the indication that you don't need any psychiatric help. This is totally different from ordinary madness: you are going on your own. And remember, if you go on your own, you will never be neurotic because you will release all possibilities of madness. You will not go on accumulating them. Ordinarily, we go on repressing.

The SANNYASIN who was so afraid had repressed much madness in herself. Now she was afraid to do meditation. That can create trouble someday. One day, the cup can be too full and overflowing; then she will not be able to control it. Right now is the moment to allow it, to move into catharsis, to throw it out, to act it out, so you are cleaned of it and your system is cleaned of it. But then you interpret, and fear arises.

Whenever God approaches you, you will see that you are going mad. You will vibrate into a new rhythm; your whole body will be full of shivering, shaking; you will feel a new energy pouring into you, and the energy is so tremendous that your capacity is not that much. By and by, your capacity will grow. By and by, you will be able to absorb it.

By and by, the shaking and trembling will disappear. By and by, you will become perfectly silent -- but it takes time.

The Bauls say,

That enchanting river

reflects the very form

of the formless one.

Sense the essence

of matter....

You see only a little bit of life and remain involved in it in drunken stupor. You are satisfied with very, very little, with a very small fragment. While you could have been a king, you are content with being a beggar. You are born to be a king, but you have become habituated to being a beggar -- and you think this is your vocation, to be a beggar. In sleep, we are dreaming something which we are not.

Today's poem says,

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

I SAT ON A THRONE

RULING LIKE A LION,

LIVING A HAPPY LIFE.

THE WORLD OBEYED ME.

AS I TURNED IN MY BED

ALL WAS CLEAR:

I WAS NOT A LION,

BUT A LION'S UNCLE,

A JACKASS,

THE VILLAGE IDIOT....

Turn in your sleep and you will see; immediately the dream changes. That is what I call SANNYAS -- turning in your sleep. Take a turn, and you will see the dream changes.

Just a small turn from this side to that, and you can never catch hold of the same dream again -- because dreams are not real. You cannot re-continue a broken dream. Once broken, it is broken forever. It is...there is no way to catch hold of it. You cannot re-connect yourself with the dream. And in dreams we are many things.

Chuang Tzu says, "In dream, I saw myself becoming a butterfly. In the morning I was very worried because a great problem arose: if I can become a butterfly in the dream, if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly in the dream, then the reverse is also possible. Now the butterfly may be dreaming, and dreaming that she has become a Chuang Tzu. If Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly, why can't a butterfly become a Chuang Tzu?"

So Chuang Tzu gathered together his disciples and asked, "Please tell me, who am I -- the butterfly dreaming?"

In fact, he was giving a koan to his disciples. I know that he had never dreamt. Men like Chuang Tzu don't dream. When dreaming stops, then a man becomes like Chuang Tzu.

He was giving a koan, and a very beautiful koan, a great puzzle to be solved and meditated over. Those who meditate over it will find: you are neither Chuang Tzu, nor a butterfly; both are dreams. You are neither the lion nor the lion's uncle; both are dreams.

You are the one who recognizes the dream; you are the witness.

Only the witness is the real.

In the day, you are awake, doing a thousand and one things. In the night, you fall asleep and you forget all about the day: your wife, your husband, your children -- so close to you -- even they are no more there. You forget all about the world. You enter into a totally different dimension. You forget your degrees, your riches, your bank balance; you forget everything, even your name. Another world opens. You take another name, another identity, another wife, other children, another profession. In the morning again you are back in the old dream, and this goes on. If a person lives ninety years, he will dream for thirty years. It is not a small time. One-third of the time you are dreaming, in sleep. Thirty years out of ninety years is as big as your so-called world. The world is also a dream, maybe a common dream -- we dream together; and in the night the dream is private -- you dream alone, but it makes no difference: private or common, a dream is a dream.

But what is the definition of a dream then? How to define dream, how to make it distinct, and how to distinguish it from reality? The Eastern definition is: if in your mind there is any thought, then it is dream. If the mind is thoughtless, then whatsoever is, is real --

because the thought process creates the flux-like life. It gives an appearance to the permanent, as if it is momentary.

The Bauls say,

A man unknown to me, and I,

we both live together,

but with a gap

of millions of miles

between us.

That is what they call the essential man.

You are two: one is the essential man at the center, and one is the acquired man at the periphery. And these two exist far apart, and you have become too identified with the periphery. How to fall back to the center, to the essential man, the ADHAR MANUSH?

Witnessing is the way. Do whatsoever you are doing but remain a witness. Watch it, observe it, continue to remember yourself. Walking on the road, remember that there is a point inside you which is not walking, which has never walked, which cannot walk with you. It has no legs to walk. That point is your center. Through that center you will come to know the reality, the reality that Bauls sing of:

NOTHING HAS HAPPENED,

AND NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

WHAT IS THERE, IS THERE.

Once you touch your source of permanence, your eternity, you have touched the eternity of life also. Parallel to you, things happen. If you are at the center, you are capable of looking into the very center of life. If you are on the periphery, you are capable of only looking at the periphery of life. The periphery goes on changing.

Have you seen a bullock-cart moving? The wheel moves, goes on moving, but at the center of the wheel something remains permanent. On that permanent hub the wheel moves. On that unmoving hub the wheel's movement exists. Exactly like that, you have a hub -- that hub is unmoving; and you have a wheel-like personality that goes on moving.

You have travelled far, thousands of miles and thousands of lives, and the wheel knows many roads and many paths, but the hub has remained where it is. Now you can look at reality in two ways: either from the wheel -- then everything is changing every moment; or from the hub -- then nothing is changing.

"Nothing has happened and nothing will happen. What is there, is there."

How to find this hub of life? -- by becoming a witness, one finds it. Eating, eat -- but remember that there is a point inside you which has never eaten. Food goes into the body; your consciousness remains watching. Somebody insults you, anger arises; you remain a witness. The insult comes from outside, the anger arises on the periphery, and you remain at the center, watching. Yes, somebody has done something, provoked your periphery, and there is anger on the periphery, and the anger is surrounding you like a smoke cloud, but you are at the hub, watching. You are not identified with the periphery. Then the insult is outside, and the anger is also outside of you. Both are separate and far away.

Both are different from you.

When this awareness grows, dreaming stops, by and by. When this awareness grows, the wheel moves slower and slower, because there is no point. You never move, so what is the point of travelling the whole earth? You remain the same; then desires slow down.

One day it happens: the wheel is as silent, as unmoving as the hub. That is the point when enlightenment happens.

The Bauls say,

Scanning the cosmos

you waste your hours.

He is present

in this little vessel.

In this little body

He has made His abode.

He is here

in this little vessel;

in you.

He is there,

the God of Gods,

the King of Kings,

the Beloved.

Scanning the cosmos you waste your hours. Moving from this point to that you are unnecessarily troubling yourself, creating misery. Look, see into your being; penetrate into the hub. And the Bauls say this is possible only if you become very humble.

That's why they say,

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM,

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

The dream is always egoistic; the ego is the dream.

I BECAME A KING

IN MY DREAM

AND MY SUBJECTS

OCCUPIED THE ENTIRE EARTH.

I SAT ON THE THRONE

RULING LIKE A LION,

LIVING A HAPPY LIFE.

THE WORLD OBEYED ME.

This is what ego is....

AS I TURNED IN MY BED

ALL WAS CLEAR:

I WAS NOT A LION

BUT A LION'S UNCLE,

A JACKASS,

THE VILLAGE IDIOT....

When one understands, one becomes humble. Then one says, "I am just an idiot, a jackass.'' One laughs at one's own ridiculousness.

The Bauls sing,

The act of finding

is not for the highest.

By being humble

you can reach life's goal.

Clouds pour down

on the hollow of the earth,

but the lowest of the wells

guards the water

as a blessing.

Become humble. If you start becoming humble, dreams will start disappearing because dreams are possible only with the ego. The ego is the dreamer, the creator of the dreams, the projector. That's why all the religions insist on humbleness. Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, "Be poor in spirit...blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Nobody has ever seen the poor inheriting the earth. Nobody has ever seen the meek inheriting the earth. Then why does Jesus go on repeating it? He himself was crucified; even he was not able to inherit the earth. But he is talking about some other earth, about some other reality -- a separate reality. He is not talking about this earth. This earth is the battlefield of the egos, great competition of the egos: struggle, fight, war. But when he says, "Blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth," he means, they shall inherit the real. People who are in their egos may inherit kingdoms in dreams, but their kingdoms are futile because they are just their own dreams, nothing else.

The act of finding

is not for the highest.

By being humble

you can reach life's goal.

Clouds pour down

on the hollow of the earth,

but the lowest of the wells

guards the water

as a blessing.

I have heard a story: Willy Jones dreamed that he had died. After the funeral, he found himself in a gigantic room, lavishly furnished. He rested on an overstuffed couch for a while, but after an hour or so he began to get bored. "Is there anybody here?" he shouted.

In a minute, a white robed attendant appeared.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"What can I have?" Willy asked.

The attendant shrugged, "Anything you want." Willy asked for something to eat.

"What do you want to eat?" the attendant asked. "You can have anything you want." And so they brought him just what he wanted, and he went on eating and sleeping and having a fine time.

He began to feel bored after a while, and finally he shouted for the attendant and insisted,

"I want something to do!"

"I'm sorry," the attendant told him, "but that is the one thing that we can't provide."

Willy looked around him. "I am sick and tired of it," he said. "I would rather go to hell."

"Well," said the attendant, "where do you think you are?"

The hell is a place where you cannot do anything, because doing is possible only in reality. Dreaming is possible in hell, doing is not possible. If you are living in your dreaming, you are living in a hell. You may dream a thousand and one things, but you cannot DO anything.

Watch...you want to be happy, but why can't you be happy? Suddenly, you are impotent.

You want to be happy, you dream about it, but who is preventing you? Be happy? -- then suddenly you feel impotent. You want peace, silence; you desire your dream. But who is preventing you? -- just be silent; then suddenly you feel powerless. Doing is possible only when you are in contact with reality. Dreaming is possible on your own; you can go on dreaming.

So let this be your criterion: if you really want to be happy, then find out a way to be in contact with reality, and you will be happy. Just go on dreaming and don't try to find a way to reality -- then you will be dreaming, and you will become more and more unhappy, because again and again you will find that happiness is not happening.

Doing is a function of the real; dreaming is the function of the unreal.

The Bauls say,

You must be single-minded

to visit the court

of my beloved.

If your mind is torn in two,

you will swim in a quandary

and never reach the shore.

The dreamer's mind is divided in two: in witnessing and dreaming. Then you are not one; you are split. While you are simply witnessing you are one. There is no duality in you.

You are -- that's all. So try to become one, single-minded. Whatsoever you are doing, try to become one. To say that you are dual is not true -- you are many, you are a crowd. It is not only that you are two, you are many. Bring these fragments together. Any one thing, continuously followed, will help you to crystallize.

For example: meditators try to meditate continuously. They do a thousand and one things, other things, but one thing continues as a current, as a thread running underground. They eat, but they make a meditation out of eating. They walk, but they make a meditation out of walking. They talk, but they make a meditation out of talking. They listen, but they listen meditatively. They do many things, but they connect everything with meditation.

That becomes their one-mindedness.

Lovers, the followers of the path of love, Bauls, make love their undercurrent. They eat, but they eat with love. The walk, but they walk with love -- because the earth is holy ground. They sit under a tree; they sit with love -- because the tree is divine. They look at somebody; they look with love -- because there also is divinity. Everywhere they see their beloved, in each movement they remember their beloved. It becomes their constant remembrance.

But whether on the path of meditation or on the path of love, one thing has to be done.

Doing a thousand and one things, you have to connect them with one thing. That connection, that running thread will make you one-pointed, one-minded. It will give you integration. In that integration, dreams dissolve. It is the crowd within you which dreams, it is the split that dreams. When the split is bridged, dreams disappear -- because then you start enjoying being here and now so tremendously that who bothers to desire? Who has time to think about the tomorrow? Today is more than enough. A single moment of undivided being is so big, bigger than eternity.

Then nobody thinks about the past -- the gone is gone; and nobody thinks about the future

-- that which has not come yet, has not come yet. One simply goes deeper and deeper into the present, and that is the door of God.

The present is the door, and your single-mindedness is the key.

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #4

Chapter title: The only criterion is your thirst

24 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606240

ShortTitle:

BELOV104

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

98

mins

The first question:

Question 1

HOW TO START THE JOURNEY? WHAT DOES IT EXACTLY MEAN TO

TRANSCEND SEX?

THE JOURNEY HAS ALREADY STARTED; you are in the journey. This has to be recognized. Unconsciously, you are inthe journey: that's why it feels as if you have to start it. Recognize it, become conscious about it; the very recognition becomes the beginning. The moment you recognize that you are always moving going somewhere-knowingly, unknowingly, willingly, unwillingly-but you are going...some great force is constantly working within you: God is evolving. He is constantly creating something within you, so it is not how to start it. The right question will be, how to recognize it. It is there, but recognition is not there.

For example, trees die, but they don't know; birds and animals die, but they don't know.

Only man knows that he has to die. That knowledge is also very cloudy, not clear -- and the same is so with life. The birds are alive, but they don't know that they are alive --

because how can you know life if you don't know death? How can you know that you are alive if you don't know that you are going to die? Both recognitions come together. They are alive, but they don't recognize that they are alive. Man recognizes, a little, that he is going to die, but that recognition remains very cloudy, hidden in deep smoke. And the same is true about life: you are alive, but you don't know exactly what being alive means.

That too is cloudy, not clear. When I say recognition, I mean becoming alert to what this life energy is, that is already on the way. To become aware of one's own being is the beginning of the journey. To come to a point where you are so absolutely alert that not even a fragment of darkness exists around you is the end of the journey. But in fact, the journey never starts and never ends. You will continue even after that, but then the journey will have a totally different meaning, a totally different quality to it -- it will be sheer delight. Right now it is near misery.

"How to start the journey?" -- become more alert about your actions, about your relationships, about your movements. Whatsoever you do -- even an ordinary thing like walking on the street -- try to become alert, try to take steps with full awareness. Buddha used to say to his disciples, "When you take a step with the right foot, remember, now this is the right foot; when you take a step with the left, remember, now this is the left.

When you breathe in, remember, "Now I am breathing in"; when you breathe out, remember, "Now I am breathing out." Not that you have to verbalize it. Not that you have to say in words "I am breathing in", but just becoming alert that now the breath is going in. I am saying it to you so I have to use words, but when you are becoming alert you need not use words because words are like smoke. Don't use words -- just feel the breath going in and filling your lungs then being emptied. Just watch, and soon you will come to a recognition, a great recognition. that it is not simply breathing that goes in and out, it is life itself. Each breath in is life infusing its energy into you. Each breath out is a short death. With each breath, you die and you are reborn. Each breath is a crucifixion and a resurrection.

And when you watch it, you will come to know a beautiful feeling of trust. When you breathe out, there is no certainty that you wiil ever be able to breathe in again. What is the certainty? Who has guaranteed it? Who CAN guarantee that you will be able to breathe in again? But somehow, a deep trust; you know that "I will breathe again". Otherwise breathing would become impossible. If you become so afraid that, "Who knows if I let my breath out, and if I go through this small death, what is the certainty that I will be able to breathe in again? If I can't breathe, then it is better not to breathe out", then you will die immediately. If you stop breathing out, you will die. But a deep trust exists -- that trust is part of life. Nobody has taught you.

When a child starts walking for the first time, tremendous trust exists in him that he will be able to walk. Nobody has taught him. He has just seen other people walk, that's all.

But how can he come to a conclusion that "I will be able to walk"? He is so tiny. People are so big, giants compared to him, and he knows that whenever he stands he falls down -

- but still he tries. Trust is in-built. It is in your every cell of life. He tries, many times he will fall; he will try again and again and again. And one day, trust wins over and he starts walking.

If you watch your breath you will become aware of a deep layer of trust, a subtle trust in life -- no doubt, no hesitation. If you walk, and walk alert, by and by you will become aware that you are not walking, you are 'being walked by'. That's a very subtle feeling: that life is moving through you, not that you are moving. When you feel hungry, if you are aware you will see life is feeling hungry within you, not you.

Becoming more alert will make you conscious of the fact that there is only one thing you have got that you can call yours and that is witnessing. Everything else belongs to the universe; only witnessing belongs to you. But when you become aware of witnessing, even the idea of being I is dissolved. That too does not belong to you. That was part of darkness, part of the clouds that had gathered around you. In the clear light, when the sky is open and the clouds have disappeared and the sun is bright, there is no possibility of any idea of being I. Then simply witnessing is; nothing belongs to you. That witnessing is the goal of the journey.

How to start the journey? -- start becoming more and more a witness. Whatsoever you do, do it with deep alertness; then even small things become sacred. Then cooking or cleaning become sacred; they become worship. It is not a question of what you are doing, the question is how you are doing it. You can clean the floor like a robot, a mechanical thing; you have to clean it, so you clean it. Then you miss something beautiful. Then you waste those moments in only cleaning the floor. Cleaning the floor could have been a great experience; you missed it. The floor is cleaned but something that could have happened within you has not happened. If you were aware, not only the floor but YOU

would have felt a deep cleansing. Clean the floor full of awareness, luminous with awareness. Work or sit or walk, but one thing has to be a continuous thread: make more and more moments of your life luminous with awareness. Let the candle of awareness burn in each moment, in each act. The cumulative effect is what enlightenment is. The cumulative effect, all the moments together, all small candles together, become a great source of light.

And the second part of the question is: "WHAT DOES IT EXACTLY MEAN TO

TRANSCEND SEX?"

Sex is a subtle subject, delicate, because centuries of exploitation, corruption, centuries of perverted ideas, conditioning, are associated with the word 'sex'. The word is very loaded.

It is one of the most loaded words in existence. You say 'God'; it seems empty. You say

'sex'; it seems too loaded. A thousand and one things arise in the mind: fear, perversion, attraction, a tremendous desire, and a tremendous anti-desire also. They all arise together.

Sex -- the very word creates confusion, a chaos. It is as if somebody has thrown a rock in a silent pool; millions of ripples arise -- just the word 'sex'! Humanity has lived under very wrong ideas.

So the first thing: why do you ask how to transcend sex? Why do you want in the first place to transcend sex? You are using a beautiful word, 'transcend', but out of a hundred, ninety-nine are the possibilities that you mean, 'How to repress sex?'

A person who has understood that sex has to be transcended is not even worried about transcending it, because transcendence comes through experience. You cannot manage it.

It is not something that you have to do. You simply pass through many experiences, and those experiences make you more and more mature.

Have you watched that at a certain age, sex becomes important? Not that you make it important. It is not something that you make happen; it happens. At the age of fourteen, somewhere near there, suddenly the energy is flooded with sex. It happens as if the flood-gates have been opened in you. Subtle sources of energy which were not yet open have become open, and your whole energy becomes sexual, colored with sex. You think sex, you sing sex, you walk sex -- everything becomes sexual. Every act is colored. This happens; you have not done anything about it. It is natural; transcendence is also natural.

If sex is lived totally, with no condemnation, with no idea of getting rid of it, then at the age of forty-two -- just as at the age of fourteen sex gets opened and the whole energy becomes sexual, at the age of forty-two or near about -- those flood-gates close again.

And that too is as natural as sex becoming alive; it starts disappearing.

Sex is transcended not by any effort on your part. If you make any effort that will be repressive, because it has nothing to do with you. It is in-built in your body, in your biology. You are born as sexual beings; nothing is wrong in it. That is the only way to be born. To be human is to be sexual. When you were conceived, your mother and your father were not praying, they were not listening to a priest's sermon. They were not in the church, they were making love. Even to think that your mother and father were making love when you were conceived seems to be difficult. They were making love; their sexual energies were meeting and merging into each other. Then you were conceived; in a deep sexual act you were conceived. The first cell was a sex cell, and then out of that cell other cells have arisen. But each cell remains sexual, basically. Your whole body is sexual, made of sex cells. Now they are millions.

Remember it: you exist as a sexual being. Once you accept it, the conflict that has been created down through the centuries dissolves. Once you accept it deeply, with no ideas in between, when sex is thought of as simply natural, you live it. You don't ask me how to transcend eating, you don't ask me how to transcend breathing -- because no religion has taught you to transcend breathing, that's why. Otherwise, you would be asking, "How to transcend breathing?" You breathe! You are a breathing animal; you are a sexual animal also. But there is a difference. Fourteen years of your life, in the beginning, are almost non-sexual, or at the most, just rudimentary sexual play which is not really sexual -- just preparing, rehearsing, that's all. At the age of fourteen, suddenly the energy is ripe.

Watch...a child is born -- immediately, within three seconds the child has to breathe, otherwise he will die. Then breathing is to remain the whole of his life, because it has come at the first step of life. It cannot be transcended. Maybe before you die then, just three seconds before, it will stop, but not before it. Always remember: both ends of life, the beginning and end, are exactly similar, symmetrical. The child is born, he starts breathing in three seconds. When the child is old and dying, the moment he stops breathing, within three seconds he will be dead.

Sex enters at a very late stage: for fourteen years the child has lived without sex. And if the society is not too repressed and hence obsessed with sex, a child can live completely oblivious to the fact that sex, or that anything like sex, exists. The child can remain absolutely innocent. That innocence is also not possible, because people are so repressed.

When repression happens, then side by side, obsession also happens.

So priests go on repressing; and there are anti-priests, Hefners and others -- they go on creating more and more pornography. So on one side there are priests who go on repressing, and then there are others, anti-priests, who go on making sexuality more and more glamorous. They both exist together -- aspects of the same coin. When churches disappear, only then Playboy magazines will disappear, not before it. They are partners in the business. They look enemies, but don't be deceived by that. They talk against each other, but that's how things work.

I have heard about two men who were out of business, had gone broke, so they decided for a business, a very simple business. They started journeying, touring from one town to another town. First one would enter, and in the night he would throw coal tar on people's windows and doors. After two or three days the other would come to clean. He would advise that he could clean any coal tar, or anything that had gone wrong, and he would clean the windows. In that time the other would be doing half of the business in another town. This way, they started earning much money. This is what is happening between the church and Hugh Hefners and people who are continuously creating pornography.

I have heard....

Pretty Miss Keneen sat in the confessional. "Father," she said, "I want to confess that I let my boyfriend kiss me."

"Is that all you did?" asked the priest, very interested.

"Well, no. I let him put his hand on my leg too."

"And then what?"

"And then I let him pull down my panties."

"And then, and then...?"

"And then me mother walked into the room."

"Oh shit," sighed the priest.

It is together; they are partners in a conspiracy. Whenever you are too repressed, you start finding a perverse interest. A perverted interest is the problem, not sex. Now this priest is neurotic. Sex is not the problem, but this man is in trouble.

Sisters Margaret Alice and Francis Catherine were out walking along a side-street.

Suddenly they were grabbed by two men, dragged into a dark alley, and raped. "Father, forgive them," said Sister Margaret Alice, "for they know not what they do."

"Shut up!" cried Sister Catherine," this one does."

This is bound to be so. So never carry a single idea against sex in your mind, otherwise you will never be able to transcend it. People who transcend sex are people who accept it very naturally. It is difficult, I know, because you are born in a society which is neurotic about sex. Either this way or that, but it is neurotic all the same. It is very difficult to get out of this neurosis, but if you are a little alert, you can get out of it. So the real thing is not how to transcend sex, but how to transcend this perverted ideology of the society: this fear of sex, this repression of sex, this obsession with sex.

Sex is beautiful. Sex in itself is a natural rhythmic phenomenon. It happens when the child is ready to be conceived, and it is good that it happens -- otherwise life would not exist. Life exists through sex; sex is its medium. If you understand life, if you love life, you will know sex is sacred, holy. Then you live it, then you delight in it; and as naturally as it has come it goes, on its own accord. By the age of forty-two, or somewhere near there, sex starts disappearing as naturally as it had come into being. But it doesn't happen that way.

You will be surprised when I say near about forty two. You know people who are seventy, eighty, and yet they have not gone beyond. You know 'dirty old people'. They are victims of the society. Because they could not be natural, it is a hangover -- because they repressed when they should have enjoyed and delighted. In those moments of delight they were not totally in it. They were not orgasmic, they were half-hearted.

So whenever you are half-hearted in anything, it lingers longer. If you are sitting at your table and eating, and if you eat only half-heartedly and your hunger remains, then you will continue to think about food the whole day. You can try fasting and you will see: you will continuously think about food. But if you have eaten well -- and when I say eaten well, I don't mean only that you have stuffed your stomach. Then it is not necessarily so that you have eaten well. You could have stuffed yourself, but eating well is an art. It is not just stuffing. It is great art: to taste the food, to smell the food, to touch the food, to chew the food, to digest the food, and to digest it as divine. It is divine; it is God's gift.

Hindus say, ANAM BRAHMA: food is divine. So with deep respect you eat, and while eating you forget everything, because it is prayer. It is existential prayer. You are eating God, and God is going to give you nourishment. It is a gift to be accepted with deep love and gratitude. And you don't stuff the body, because stuffing the body is being anti-body.

It is the other pole. There are people who are obsessed with fasting, and there are people who are obsessed with stuffing themselves. Both are wrong because in both the ways the body loses balance.

A real lover of the body eats only to the point where body feels perfectly quiet, balanced, tranquil; where body feels to be neither leaning to the left nor to the right, but just in the middle. It is an art to understand the language of the body, to understand the language of your stomach, to understand what is needed, to give only that which is needed, and to give that in an artistic way, in an aesthetic way.

Animals eat, man eats. Then what is the difference? Man makes a great aesthetic experience out of eating. What is the point of having a beautiful dining table? What is the point of having candles burning there? What is the point of incense? What is the point of asking friends to come and participate? It is to make it an art, not just stuffing. But these are outward signs of the art; the inward signs are to understand the language of your body: to listen to it, to be sensitive to its needs. And then you eat, and then the whole day you will not remember food at all. Only when the body is hungry again will the remembrance come. Then it is natural.

With sex the same happens. If you have no anti-attitude about it, you take it as a natural, divine gift, with great gratitude. You enjoy it; with prayer you enjoy it.

Tantra says that before you make love to a woman or to a man, first pray -- because it is going to be a divine meeting of energies. God will surround you. Wherever two lovers are, there is God. Wherever two lovers' energies are meeting and mingling, there is life, alive, at its best; God surrounds you. Churches are empty; love-chambers are full of God.

If you have tasted love the way Tantra says to taste it, if you have known love the way Tao says to know it, then by the time you reach forty-two, love starts disappearing on its own accord. And you say goodbye to it with deep gratitude, because you are fulfilled. It has been delightful, it has been a blessing; you say good-bye to it.

And forty-two is the age for meditation, the right age. Sex disappears; that overflowing energy is no more there. One becomes more tranquil. Passion has gone, compassion arises. Now there is no more fever; one is not interested in the other. With sex disappearing, the other is no more the focus. One starts returning towards one's own source -- the return journey starts.

Sex is transcended not by your effort. It happens if you have lived it totally. So my suggestion is, drop all anti-attitudes, anti-life attitudes and accept the facticity: sex is, so who are you to drop it? And who is trying to drop it? -- it is just the ego. Remember, sex creates the greatest problem for the ego.

So there are two types of people: very egoistic people are always against sex; humble people are never against sex. But who listens to humble people? In fact, humble people don't go preaching, only egoists. Why is there a conflict between sex and ego? -- because sex is something in your life where you cannot be egoistic, where the other becomes more important than you. Your woman, your man, becomes more important than you. In every other case, you remain the most important. In a love relationship the other becomes very, very important, tremendously important. You become a satellite and the other becomes the nucleus; and the same is happening for the other: you become the nucleus and he becomes a satellite. It is a reciprocal surrender. Both are surrendering to the God of love, and both become humble.

Sex is the only energy that gives you hints that there is something which you cannot control. Money you can control, politics you can control, the market you can control, knowledge you can control, science you can control, morality you can control.

Somewhere, sex brings in a totally different world: you cannot control it. And the ego is the great controller. It is happy if it can control; it is unhappy if it cannot control. So there starts a conflict between ego and sex. Remember, it is a losing battle. The ego cannot win it because ego is just superficial. Sex is very deep-rooted. Sex is your life; ego is just your mind, your head. Sex has roots all over you; ego has roots only in your ideas -- very superficial, just in the head.

So who is trying to transcend sex? -- the head is trying to transcend sex. If you are too much in the head then you want to transcend sex, because sex brings you down to the guts. It does not allow you to remain hanging in the head. Everything else you can manage from there; sex you cannot manage from there. You cannot make love with your heads. You have to come down, you have to descend from your heights, you have to come closer to earth. Sex is humiliating to the ego, so egoist people are against, always against sex. They go on finding ways and means to transcend it. They can never transcend it. They can, at the most, become perverted. Their whole effort from the very beginning is doomed to failure.

I have heard....

A boss was interviewing applicants to replace his private secretary who was resigning because of expectant motherhood. The boss's right-hand man sat with him as he looked the applicants over. The first girl was a beautiful buxom blond. She turned out to be intelligent, and had excellent secretarial skills. The second was a dark-haired beauty who was even more intelligent and proficient than the first. The third one was cross-eyed, had buck teeth, and weighed one hundred and ninety pounds. After interviewing all three candidates, the boss informed his associate that he was hiring the third applicant.

"But why?" asked the astonished employee.

"Well," boomed the boss, "in the first place, she looks very intelligent to me! In the second place, it is none of your damned business, and in the third place, she is my wife's sister."

So you may pretend that you have won over sex, but an undercurrent.... You may rationalize, you may find reasons, you may pretend, you may create a very hard shell around you, but deep down the real reason, the reality, wi]l stand untouched: "She is my wife's sister" -- that is the real reason. "She looks intelligent"; that is just a rationalization.

"And it is none of your damned business"; that too is getting annoyed and irritated --

because the person is afraid that the other is poking his nose and may find the real cause.

But the real cause will explode; you cannot hide it, it is not possible.

So you can try to control sex, but an undercurrent of sexuality will run and it will show itself in many ways. Out of all your rationalizations, it will again and again raise its head.

I will not suggest that you make any effort to transcend it. What I suggest is just the contrary: forget about transcending it. Move into it as deeply as you can. While the energy is there, move as deeply as you can, love as deeply as you can, and make an art of it. It is not just to be done. That is the whole meaning of Tantra: making an art of lovemaking. There are subtle nuances which only people who enter with a great aesthetic sense will be able to know. Otherwise, you can make love for your whole life and still remain unsatisfied -- because you don't know that satisfaction is something very aesthetic. It is like a subtle music arising in your soul. If through sex you fall into harmony, if through love you become non-tense and relaxed, if love is not just throwing energy because you don't know what to do with it, if it is not just a relief but a relaxation, if you relax into your woman and your woman relaxes into you, if for a few seconds, for a few moments or a few hours you forget who you are and you are completely lost in oblivion, you will come out of it purer, more innocent, more virgin. And you will have a different type of being -- at ease, centered, rooted.

If this happens, one day suddenly you will see that the flood has gone and it has left you very, very rich. You will not be sorry that it has gone. You will be thankful, because now richer worlds open. When sex leaves you, the doors of meditation open. When sex leaves you, then you are not trying to lose yourself in the other. You become capable of losing yourself in yourself.

Now another world of orgasm, inner orgasm, of being with oneself, arises. But that arises only through being with the other; one grows, matures through the other. Then a moment comes when you can be alone, tremendously happy. There is no need for any other. The need has disappeared but you have learned much through it -- you have learned much about yourself. The other became the mirror, and you have not broken the mirror. You have learned so much about yourself. Now there is no need to look into the mirror. You can close your eyes and you can see your face there. But that face you would not be able to see if there had been no mirror from the very beginning.

Let your woman be your mirror; let your man be your mirror. Look into her eyes and see your face; move into her to know yourself. Then one day the mirror will not be needed.

But you will not be against the mirror; you will be so grateful to it -- how can you be against it? You will be so thankful -- how can you be against it? Then, transcendence.

Transcendence is not repression. Transcendence is a natural outgrowing -- you grow above, you go beyond -- just as a seed breaks and a sprout starts rising above the ground.

When sex disappears, the seed disappears. In sex, you were able to give birth to somebody else, a child. When sex disappears, the whole energy starts giving birth to yourself. This is what Hindus have called DWIJA, the twice-born. One birth has been given to you by your parents, the other birth is waiting. It has to be given to you by yourself. You have to father and mother yourself. Then your whole energy is turning in --

it becomes an inner circle.

Right now it will be difficult for you to make an inner circle. It will be easier to connect it with another pole -- a woman or a man -- and then the circle becomes complete. Then you can enjoy the blessings of the circle. But by and by you will be able to make the inner circle, because inside you also you are man and woman, woman and man. Nobody is just man and nobody is just woman -- because you come from man and woman's communion. Both have participated; your mother has given something to you, you father has given something to you. Fifty-fifty, they have contributed to you. Both are there.

There is a possibility that both can meet inside you. Again your father and mother can love inside you. Then your reality will be born. Once they met when your body was born; now if they can meet inside you, your soul will be born. That's what transcendence of sex is: it is a higher sex.

Let me tell you this: when you transcend sex, you reach to a higher sex. Ordinary sex is gross, higher sex is not gross at all. Ordinary sex is outward-moving, higher sex is inward-moving. In ordinary sex, two bodies meet, and the meeting happens on the outside. In higher sex, your own inner energies meet. It is not physical, it is spiritual -- it is Tantra. Tantra is transcendence. If you don't understand this and you go on fighting with sex....

The question has been asked by Prageeta. I know she is passing through some critical moments in her mind. She would like to be independent, but it is too early. She would like not to be bothered by anybody else, but it is too early, and it is too egoistic. Right now transcendence is not possible, repression is possible. And if you repress now, in your old age you will repent -- because then things become very messed up. Each thing has its own right time. Each thing has to be done in its moment. While young, don't be afraid of love. If you are afraid of love while young, in old age you will become obsessed; and then it will be difficult to move deeply in love, and the mind will be obsessed.

This is my understanding: that people, if they have lived rightly, lovingly, naturally, then by the forty-second year they start transcending sex. If they have not lived naturally and they have been fighting with sex, then forty two becomes their most dangerous time --

because by the time they are forty-two their energies are declining. When you are young you can repress something because you are very energetic. Look at the irony of the fact: a young man can repress sexuality very easily because he has energy to repress it. He can just put it down and sit upon it. When the energies are going, declining, then sex will assert itself and you will not be able to control it.

I have heard an anecdote: Stein, aged sixty-five, visited the office of his son, Dr. Stein, and asked for something that would increase his sexual potential. The M.D. gave his father a shot, and then refused to accept a fee. Nevertheless, Stein insisted on giving him ten dollars. A week later Stein was back for another injection, and this time handed his son twenty dollars.

"But Pop, shots are only ten dollars."

"Take it!" said Stein, "the extra ten is from Momma."

That will continue...so before you become a poppa or a momma, please be finished with it. Don't wait for old age, because then things go ugly. Then everything goes out of season.

The second question:

Question 2

IT IS SAID THAT UNLESS ONE IS IN CONTACT WITH ONE WHO IS

AWAKENED, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO COME OUT OF ONE'S IGNORANCE OR

DEEP SLEEP. HOW TO FIND OUT THAT ONE IS AWAKENED?

It is a difficult question. Not that it is difficult to find out -- the question is difficult because if you don't yet have the urge to find out, then there is no way to help you to find.

If you have the urge, that very urge helps. There is no other help needed. Your very urge becomes your path.

How do you find if you are thirsty, in a desert; how will you find water, how will you find an oasis? You will run hither and thither; you will do all that you can do because thirst will be killing. And your thirst will decide whether you have come across real water or not, because your thirst will be quenched whenever you come across real water. If it is a mirage and from far away it looked like water and you ran to it, when you come face to face with it you will know it is not water.

But the only criterion is your thirst.

How do you know that something is food? -- if you are hungry and it satisfies you, you know. It is very difficult for a man who has no appetite to find out what food is.

Psychologists have come across a very significant fact: that if small children are left to themselves, they always choose the right thing to eat. You put everything around, you leave it on the dining table, don't force anything, and don't say what to eat and what not to eat. It has been a tremendous discovery that children eat only the right thing in the right time. If a child is suffering from something and a certain thing is needed which will be helpful for it, he will choose to eat it. By the time that suffering disappears he will stop eating that. We confuse them. We tell them to eat this and don't eat that. Then by and by, their natural instinct functions no more.

Have you seen animals eating? They are not dieticians, and they never go to any dietician, but a buffalo or a cow just chooses the right grass for itself, instinctively. They will leave other grasses; they will eat only the grass that is right for them. You cannot deceive. Somehow their inner nature, their appetite, decides.

The problem arises: how to find whether someone is enlightened, awakened, or not? If you have an appetite there will be no problem. If you don't have an appetite then I say the problem is very difficult, almost impossible to solve. If you have appetite and hunger, then something around an enlightened person will start fulfilling your desire. Something will start falling in harmony and in line. Your chaos will start subsiding. You will see a silence arising -- a new being is born. That is the only way. But if you don't have a real thirst, or if you have been confused by the society, and if you cling to outer symptoms....

For example, a JAINA thinks an enlightened person should be naked. Now if you come across a person who is not naked, even Buddha or Jesus, the JAINA will not be satisfied.

He will say, "He is not an enlightened person because an enlightened person is always naked." This is foolish. He has no appetite. He has learned only through scriptures, he has learned only through tradition. Now if you have been a Christian, brought up as a Christian, and you know only that a Christ is one who is crucified, then what will you do if you come across Krishna playing on his flute? You will say, "This man looks like a clown. How can he be an enlightened person? An enlightened person is always on the cross suffering for others, trying to take everybody's sin on his own head, and this man is singing and dancing." No, with the mind that is too conditioned by the cross, a flute will not suit. It will be simply impossible to believe that a flute can also be a symbol of enlightenment. A cross, of course, is.

And the same happens with the follower of Krishna. He knows the flute, singing, dancing. He cannot believe for what Jesus was on the cross. If you ask him he will say,

"He must have done some very wrong deeds in his past life. Otherwise, how is he crucified? Crucifixion happens only to great sinners. He must have done something great, a very great sin. That is why he is suffering -- because no Hindu AVATAR has ever suffered like this. This is not possible."

Hindus have the theory of KARMA; whatsoever happens is your karma: Krishna is playing on the flute because he has beautiful KARMAS which sing in him, and Jesus must have been a sinner. It is not a question that others have forced him on the cross.

Nobody can force anybody except your KARMAS. It is not that Judas has betrayed him; it is his own past. Nobody can betray anybody. If your KARMAS are good, nobody can make you suffer.

Now this is problematic. These people listen only to the scriptures, the tradition, the society they were born into -- accidental things. They don't have real thirst.

If you have real thirst, you will find that where Krishna is playing on his flute, you will be satisfied. And if you have real thirst, you will find the same satisfaction near Jesus also. Maybe he is on the cross and Krishna is playing on his flute, but you will find that both are food. Jesus says so many times to his disciples, "Eat me; make me your food.

Drink my blood and eat my body." He is food; that's what he is saying.

The questioner asked, "It is said that unless one is in contact with one who is awakened, it is impossible to come out of one's ignorance and deep sleep. How to find out that one is awakened?"

I have heard....

A man walked into the police station to report that his wife was missing. The sergeant began writing up the case.

"How tall is she?"

"About so high, give or take a little."

"How much does she weigh?"

"About average, I guess."

"Color of eyes?"

"I would say they were neutral. I'm not too sure."

"Color of hair?"

"I don't know, it changes."

"What was she wearing?"

"I suppose a hat and coat."

"Was she carrying anything?"

"Yes, she had a dog on a leash."

"What kind of dog?"

"A pedigreed brindle-and-white German shepherd, weighing forty pounds, six hands high, licence No. 401278976 C.D.7, wearing a brown collar, slightly deaf in the right ear, and answers to the name Rover."

When it was a question of the dog, then the man came alive. When it was a question of his wife: how tall is she? -- about so high, give or take a little; and how much does she weigh? -- about average, I guess; and color of eyes? -- I would say they were neutral. I'm not too sure.

Whenever it is your desire, you know. If it is not your desire, then it is difficult. So the person who has asked the question may be greedy, but he has no desire yet.

And I know the man, and he has been to Sivananda ashram, to the Aurobindo ashram, to Shri Ramana Maharshi's ashram, to Satya Sai Baba, and to this and that; he has been everywhere. Now I am his last victim, and he cannot find anything anywhere that is satisfying. He has not asked the basic question: are you hungry? Just by going to this restaurant and that is not going to help; appetite is needed. The man is greedy but he has no appetite. The man is very learned but is not very aware. He knows the scriptures, he can repeat them parrot-like, but he has no understanding. He goes on asking such questions again and again. This is for the first time that I am answering, because when the appetite is not there it is futile to talk about. It is better that he should go and live in the world and forget all about religion. Let the appetite come, this life or next. There is no hurry; God can wait. But let it come. It should be authentic. His appetite is just false. He has listened to talks about food, or he has listened to advertisements on the television about food, and he has become greedy. But he never looks inside to see that he has no appetite, so nothing happens.

Once he came to me and he said, "I have been to Shri Aurobindo ashram, I have been to Ramana ashram, to Sivananda, to Rishikesh, to Arunachal, to here and there, and nothing happens. Now I am here."

I said, "Before you say about me also that nothing happens, let me say to you that nothing will happen -- because I don't see any desire in you. I don't see any flicker, any passionate urge."

He has money so he can go anywhere. He is fed-up with his life, bored with his life, so he goes on finding, trying to find at least some thrill, some kick somewhere. And he is a very egoistic man, so he cannot try to find non-spiritual kicks. He tries to find spiritual kicks and nothing happens.

Watch... the basic thing to be remembered is whether you have an appetite. If you don't have, why bother? It is not for you. Let these people talk about God; it is not for you. You don't go to a musical concert if you don't have an ear for music, and you don't get bothered about it. You don't go to listen to some musician, you don't go to see a dancer, you don't go to visit an art gallery to look at paintings if you don't have any sense, artistic sense; you don't go there.

But this is one of the problems about religion: people who don't have any sense of religiousness, they also become greedy about religion. And now he is getting old, and death is approaching. Now he wants to achieve something which he can carry beyond death. He is simply afraid. He has not lived his life -- and unless you have lived your life, you cannot move into religion.

Only one who lives his life truly, one day comes to the point where a new desire for life beyond arises. See the difference between the two. You can be afraid of death; then your desire will be false. If you have lived life and loved life, and loved it so much that you would now like to know the unknown life also -- it is not out of fear of death, it is out of love for life -- then, you will recognize immediately whenever you come across an enlightened person. It is impossible to miss. You will recognize immediately. This recognition needs no knowledge. It will simply happen.

How do you recognize when a beautiful woman passes by? Have you any criterion? But if you have desire, suddenly you recognize that the woman is beautiful. If somebody asks you and tries to force you to confess to what exactly beauty is, you will be in trouble.

You will not be able to define. Nobody has yet been able to define. Centuries and centuries of philosophers have been working on it, trying to define what beauty is, and ultimately they decide that it is indefinable. But still you feel beauty. If you talk to a small child whose desire has not yet ripened, and you say, "This woman is beautiful," he will look at you surprised, shrug his shoulders, and go on his way -- "Gone mad. All women are alike." For a small child, it makes no difference. He cannot see why one woman should be thought beautiful and another not.

In fact, he knows only one woman who is beautiful: she is his mother -- and that too, for some other reasons, not for beauty. She is his nourishment, his life, so she is beautiful.

But one day when his desire arises and his love ripens, he will start looking with different eyes. Then all women are not alike. Then certainly there are women who are beautiful; then certainly there are men who are tremendously appealing and magnetic. But one day again, when one becomes very alert, understanding, again all men and women are alike.

Then again beauty or ugliness don't matter. Then again duality is transcended.

When you come across an enlightened man, if you don't have desire, nothing will happen.

You will just shrug your shoulders -- "Why are people so attracted to this man?" You can't see anything; there is nothing. He is as ordinary as you, or maybe even more ordinary than you. You can't see why people are mad. But if the desire is there, if the search has started, if you have lived this life rightly and deeply, then you have earned that desire for another life. Then immediately, when you come across such a one, you will start feeling.

It is said, a beautiful myth about Mahavir, that people who had desire would become aware of Mahavir from a very faraway distance, twenty-four miles. The area of twenty four miles around Mahavir was so filled with his being that people who would come into that area, if they had some desire, would be pulled by Mahavir, against themselves. They might have been going somewhere else, but they would not be able to go. They would be pulled. They would have to come; they would find this man in some unknown way. And he would be sitting under some tree or hiding in a cave, and they would find him. And there were people who would pass just in front of him and would be thinking that he was mad -- not only mad, but like a criminal, standing there naked. Either he was a criminal or he was a fool, and they would beat him, they would throw him out of their town, they would force him to leave their place. And both were people: one sort of person throws him away, beats him; the other sort of person is pulled. It depends on you.

I have heard one anecdote:

"Well my man, what is on your mind?" the worldly matron asked the marriage broker.

"I have picked out a wife for your son," he announced triumphantly. "She is the Princess Sessusi Wilnanee, the richest young woman in the world," said the marriage broker.

"The richest woman in the world?" snapped the mother. "Why have I never heard of her?"

"But she is a wonderful girl," insisted the marriage broker. "She is gorgeous, a terrific skin-diver and skier, and golfs in the low seventies. She is royalty all the way."

"It does not make sense to me, but all right, I will give you my consent. I will let my son marry the princess."

"Well," sighed the marriage broker, "that's half the battle. "

Half the battle about religion starts with you. If you have the desire, that is half the battle

-- and the other half is very easy. Then you have the eyes. But if you don't have an appetite, then it is almost impossible to recognize: you are blind, you cannot see. If a blind man comes and asks, "When I come across light, how am I to recognize it?" what to say to him? How can he recognize? -- he will need eyes. You always find that which you REALLY desire; it never happens otherwise. In fact, let me tell you: whatsoever you have found is that which you had desired passionately -- maybe it is hell, but you desired it -- and whatsoever you have not found, you have not desired passionately.

Every time Mulla Nasrudin came home drunk, the wife would bawl the daylights out of him. One day a kindly neighbor gave her some advice: "You should not do that. You should not call attention to his drinking. Be lovable, be kind, and you will find he is a new man. Tonight when he comes home, give him a great big kiss."

That night Mulla staggered in, but the wife remembered the advice and puckered her lips:

"Darling, give me a kiss."

He puckered his lips, staggered to her, and kissed her on the forehead. He tried again, missed, and kissed her on the ear. The third time he missed again, landing his lips on her cheek.

"You bum," she said, pointing to her mouth,''if this were a saloon you would find it."

You always find that which you really want to find. Whatsoever you desire happens. If it is not happening, look inside; somewhere you must be missing in your desire.

There is a beautiful story in Hindu annals about a great saint, Valmiki. He was a robber, a murderer. He has written the story of Rama, one of the most beautiful epics in the world.

He became converted. His conversion happened in such a way that it is almost unbelievable. He was a great sinner, but he went to a great teacher and asked him how he could purify himself of his sins. "Chant Rama a thousand times a day," advised the great teacher.

The sinner went to a solitary mountain and chanted and chanted, but in spite of his good will, he made a mistake and chanted Mara instead of Rama.

It happens that if you chant Rama Rama Rama fast, you can get messed up; it can become Mara Mara Mara. That's how it happened: he was chanting so fast, and he had never heard this name. It was almost an unknown language to him. He tried hard to remember, but somehow he forgot, and for years he chanted Mara, Mara, Mara.

After years of chanting he went back to the great teacher who immediately realized that the man was now pure -- not only pure, he was enlightened. "Did you sing the sacred name?" the teacher asked.

"Yes, great one," the ex-sinner answered, "for ten years every single day, thousands of times I have chanted Mara, Mara, Mara."

The teacher burst into a laughter that shook the mountains. As his laughter, like a pebble in the lake, vibrated farther and wider into the cosmos, the great teacher took the ex-sinner into his arms. "Your will to good, to do good, has saved you," he said, "even though you chanted Mara, Mara, Mara, millions of times: the name of the devil."

Rama is the name of God; Mara is the name of the devil -- but if the desire is there, the thirst is there, then everything is okay. Even the name of the devil will do. Just his intention, just his tremendous passion for God, to purify himself, for ten years, day in and day out, thousands of times he was continuously chanting Mara, Mara, Mara. Even a wrong technique will help if the desire is intense, and even a right technique will not be of much help if the desire is impotent.

Remember it: if you can't recognize enlightened people when you come across them, don't throw the responsibility on them. Watch inside -- are you ready yet? It has happened that people who were not enlightened have sometimes helped people to become enlightened. If the desire of the seeker is tremendous, then even an unenlightened Master is enough.

It is reported about one great mystic, Milarepa:

When he went to his Master in Tibet, he was so humble, so pure, so authentic, that other disciples became jealous of him. It was certain that he would be the successor. And of course there was politics, so they tried to kill him.

One day they said to him, "If you really believe in the Master, can you jump from the hill? If you really believe, if the trust is there, then nothing -- no harm is going to happen." And Milarepa jumped without even hesitating for a single moment. They rushed down because it was almost a three-thousand-foot deep valley. They went down to find his scattered bones, but he was sitting there in a lotus posture, very happy, tremendously happy.

He opened his eyes and said, "You are right; trust saves."

They thought it must be some coincidence, so when the house was on fire one day, they told him, "If you love your Master and you trust, you can go in." He rushed in to save the woman and the child who were left inside. He came, and the fire was too great and they were hoping that he would die, but he was not burned at all. And he became more and more radiant, because the trust....

One day they were going somewhere, they were to cross a river, and they told him, "You need not go in the boat. You have such great trust; you can walk on the river" -- and he walked.

That was the first time the Master saw him. He was not aware that he had been told to jump into the valley and told to go into the burning house; he was not aware. But that time he was there on the bank and he saw him walking, and he said, "What are you doing? It is impossible!"

And Milarepa said, "Not impossible at all! I am doing it by your power, sir."

Now the Master thought, "If my name and my power can do this to this ignorant, stupid man.... I have never tried it myself"...so he tried. He drowned. Nothing has been heard about him after that.

Even an unenlightened Master, with deep trust, can revolutionize your life. And the reverse is also true: even an enlightened Master may not be of any help. It depends on you, it depends totally on you.

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #5

Chapter title: Kali and Krishna are one

25 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

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BELOV105

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COME IF YOU WISH TO MEET

THE NOVEL MAN.

HE HAS ABANDONED

HIS WORLDLY POSSESSIONS

FOR THE BEGGAR'S SACK

THAT HANGS FROM HIS SHOULDER.

HE SPEAKS OF THE ETERNAL MOTHER

(KALI, THE GODDESS OF TIME)

EVEN AS HE ENTERS THE GANGES.

SIMPLE WORDS CAN OVERCOME

IGNORANCE AND DISBELIEF:

KALI AND KRISHNA ARE ONE.

THE WORDS MAY DIFFER --

THE MEANING IS PRECISELY THE SAME.

HE WHO HAS BROKEN

THE BARRIER OF WORDS,

HAS CONQUERED LIMITS:

ALLAH OR JESUS, MOSES OR KALI,

THE RICH OR THE POOR,

SAGE OR FOOL,

ALL ARE ONE AND THE SAME TO HIM.

LOST IN HIS OWN THOUGHTS,

HE SEEMS INSANE TO OTHERS.

HE OPENS HIS ARMS

TO WELCOME THE WORLD,

CALLING ALL TO THE FERRY BOAT

TIED TO THE COAST OF LIFE.

COME IF YOU WISH TO MEET THE NOVEL MAN

THE WHOLE BAUL SEARCH IS FOR THE SEARCH FOR THE NOVEL MAN, THE

NEW MAN. Who is this new man?

You can live your life in two ways. Either you can become a man of being, or you can become a man of having. Either you can have yourself or you can have many worldly things instead. Either you can possess many things and be possessed by them, or you can possess yourself and be not possessed by anything. The man of having has a totally different direction. That's what Bauls call 'the worldly man'. He thinks in terms of money, in terms of commodities, in terms of bank balances; he thinks in terms of things. And he thinks that the more he has, the more he is. That is one of the most fundamental fallacies.

You can have the whole world and you can remain a beggar. You can have all that the world can give and yet remain empty.

The great Alexander died. He is the very symbol of the worldly man. He wanted to conquer the whole world, and he had done it, almost. But before he died he told his generals, "Then let both my hands hang out of the coffin." They said, "We have never heard. It is not traditionally done. And why do you want to do such an absurd thing?"

Alexander said,''It is not absurd. It has a certain relevance with my life. I want people to see that I am going with empty hands. So let both my hands hang out of the coffin, so everybody can see that even Alexander is going with empty hands. I came with empty hands, I am going with empty hands, and the whole life has been a wastage."

He must have been very perceptive, because many more die still clinging, still not aware that their hands are empty, still not aware that their hearts are empty, still not aware that they have wasted their whole lives, that it has been just a nightmare.

The man of having continues to accumulate more and more. What he accumulates is not the point; his emphasis is on accumulation. His soul exists in his accumulations. What he accumulates is not important. He may accumulate money, he may accumulate knowledge; he may accumulate ego, he may accumulate humility; he may accumulate things of this world, or he may start accumulating virtues, things of the other world, but he accumulates. He exists through things. He feels good when he has much, when he feels his hands are full, at least apparently full. He feels good, he feels he is achieving, he is being successful. This is 'the old man' -- in the terminology of the Bauls, this is the old man. It has always existed. This is the rotten man, this is the diseased man. It is a sort of illness, this very idea of having too many things, wasting your time and energy and not knowing at all who you are. The Bauls call that direction noble in which you start thinking in terms of being, in terms of a certain inner solidity, of a certain inner consciousness, of a certain rootedness, centering, of a certain realization of who you are.

Have you watched it, that sometimes you come across a person who may not have anything visible, but still you feel a tremendous energy surrounding him? His impact is almost magnetic, mesmeric. He looks into your eyes and you cannot look into his eyes --

a great power. It is not the power of things; he may not have any. He may be just a beggar on the road. It is not the power that comes through politics. He may not be a prime minister or a president because that power is bogus. That power belongs to the chair, not to the man. It belongs to the chair and not to the chairman. Once he is out of the chair, he is as powerless as you.

Look at Richard Nixon: a tremendous power was there when he was the president. Now, he is just simply citizen Nixon. All power has disappeared. That power was not his; it was a reflected glory. And you can see it, it is not very difficult. You know men who have much power -- power of things, power of big palaces, power of politics, money, prestige, heritage but you can see that they are poor people. They don't have any personal power. They don't have any magnetism in their souls. If you put their things aside, t]hey are more ordinary than ordinary. All extraordinariness disappears. Kings and queens, once they are not kings and queens, are simply ordinary human beings -- almost empty, nothing in them.

But you sometimes come across a person whose power is not derived from the outside, whose power comes from some inner spring, some inner source. He is a reservoir of power. Wherever he sits, the place becomes sacred; wherever he sits, the place becomes a throne; wherever he moves, he moves like a king amongst men. But his kingdom is of the within. That's what Jesus goes on talking about: the kingdom of God is within you. He knows his within. He has come to face his own within-ness. His eyes are turned within.

He is no longer dependent on the outside world. His glory is not a reflected glory, it is his own, authentic. He can be thrown into imprisonment, but he will remain a king there.

It is said about Diogenes, one of the contemporaries of Alexander the Great, that even Alexander the Great became jealous of Diogenes. He was just a naked fakir: he had nothing. He had renounced everything; he was searching his own inner world. It is said about him that when he renounced the world, he used to carry a small begging bowl. But then one day he saw a dog drinking water from a river. He threw that begging-bowl. He said, "If the dog can do without it, then am I worse than the dog?" Then everything was thrown away. He remained naked.

Many stories, rumors, were reaching Alexander that this man had something in him.

Finally, fascinated, Alexander went to see him, and he could see that the man had something that he had not. He was just lying down -- it was a winter morning, it was cool and the sun was rising. He was lying down by the side of a river, bathing himself in the early sun, naked. Alexander said, "Can I do something for you, sir? I have much, and whatsoever you desire, I will be happy to do it for you."

Diogenes laughed and said, "The only thing that you can do is to please stand by the side.

Don't prevent the sun from coming to me. Nothing else do I need. And remember it, because you seem to be dangerous: never stand between the sun and anybody else. Don't disturb anybody else's life. That's enough; nothing else do I want from you -- because all that I want is within me."

And Alexander could feel that the man was true, literally true -- the solidity, the crystallized being, the 'vibe' of one who has attained, the surround, the climate of the person who is filled with inner light, inner realization, inner riches. He could see it. He bowed down and he said, "If next time I am to come into the world, I would ask God not to make me Alexander, but Diogenes."

Diogenes laughed and said, "There is no need to wait that long. You can become a Diogenes just now! For what are you struggling and conquering people, and moving continuously and warring? For what?"

Said Alexander, "First I want to conquer Middle Asia, then India, then the Far East..."

And Diogenes went on asking, "Then what? Then what?" Finally, when Alexander said he had conquered the whole world, he said he would then like to rest.

And Diogenes said, "You look to me almost stupid, because I am resting without conquering the world. You can rest by my side. See, the bank is so big; we can share it.

And nobody comes here. You can rest to your heart's desire. Who is preventing you? And I don't see the point, that one needs to conquer the world first just to rest in the end. You can rest any moment."

In that moment Alexander must have felt his poverty. He said, "You are right. I am mad, but now it is difficult for me to come back. I have to conquer, only then can I come."

And when he was leaving, Diogenes said, "Remember, nobody can come back unless one is aware. And if you are aware right this moment, the journey stops. If you are not aware, you will never come back." And Alexander never could go back. He died before he reached back home.

The man of being is called 'the novel man', the new man. Why call him new? -- because in a sense he is as old as humanity; but he is so rare that whenever he comes he is always new -- rarely a Buddha, rarely a Jesus, a Krishna -- very rarely. In this rotten mass of humanity, very rarely does somebody arise with an authentic being and declare that his kingdom is of the within, It happens so rarely that Bauls are right to call him 'the novel man', the new man.

So this is the distinction to be understood: the man who is after having more and more will go on losing his being -- because the only way to have more is to pay with being.

Then you have to cut your being and throw it away. Everything has to be paid for, nothing is free. Even futile things have to be paid for.

One day the man of having is almost gone. He has much but he is no more. He has bargained with his soul. He has exchanged: he has dollars, rupees, pounds, but no soul in him. Just a negative emptiness exists. He is the beggar, but he may look to you like a king. Don't be deceived by appearances. Those who look like kings are not kings. Look deeply, watch deeply. They may have achieved much which can be counted, which can be shown and exhibited, but they have lost something of the invisible, something of their being.

Have you not observed it? -- whenever you purchase something you have to pay. If you want to compete with people you will have to pay. You will become less and less loving.

A man who is a competitor cannot be loving simultaneously; it is impossible. A man who is trying to compete, a man who is ambitious, has to be non-loving. Then he is paying with love.

Politicians cannot be loving, they know only war. That's natural; they exist through conflict. So they may talk about peace, but their whole talk is. just nonsense, just gibberish. They talk about peace and they prepare for war. They never prepare for peace.

They prepare for war and they never talk about war, they talk about peace. And when the time comes, they even war and fight for peace. They say it has to be done to save peace.

But basically, the mind of the competitor is violent. One who is ambitious is violent and cannot be loving.

The hippie slogan -- Make love not war -- is very, very meaningful. If the world were more loving, war would disappear automatically, because who would be ready to fight?

For what?

No country wants its people to be very loving. No country wants its people to be deep in love -- because if they are deep in love they become incapable of war. Their sex, their love, has to be repressed. When love and sex are repressed, people are ready to jump out of their skins. They are so boiling; they are always ready to fight. That's why a poor country can fight better than a rich country. That is the story of Vietnam.

The American soldier knows a little of love -- he has the facility, he is not so repressed.

That is the problem with America now: America is not so repressed. It has tasted of love.

But when you fight with a small country like Vietnam you cannot win, because their soldiers are very repressed. It has always happened in the past: a richer country is always in danger of being invaded by a poorer country.

It has happened in India many times. For two, three thousand years, India had been continuously conquered by barbarians who were not rich, who were not affluent, who were not cultured at all. But India was defeated continuously. People were loving -- they had forgotten how to fight, they were not interested in fighting. There was no need inside for them to be continuously at war. Whenever a civilization reaches to the point where it becomes affluent, it is in danger of being invaded by barbarians. This is unfortunate, but this is so.

So every country and every politician tries not to allow love too much. It has to be given only in small quantities. If love is free, and people are very loving and they exist in an ocean of love, war is not possible. Without war, politics is not possible; without politics, presidents and premiers are not possible. They will simply disappear.

The hippie is the greatest danger signal to politicians yet. In the whole of history, for the first time a new sort of generation is arising. If this generation goes on flowering, spreading, politics is going to be just out of date. The days of presidents and premiers are gone! And the whole thing depends on love, because love is a quality of being.

Competition is for things, ambition is for things, ambition is for the kingdom without.

The inner kingdom knows no competition. You can simply delight in it this very moment.

It needs no future, it needs no achievement on your part. Already, as you are, you are ready to enjoy and delight and celebrate. Nothing is missing. Everything is absolutely available; as it should be, it is. You just have to drop your ambitious mind, and the celebration starts.

Can you see this? If you can see this you will be able to understand 'the novel man'.

The Bauls say, "The man who has understood the futility of things becomes religious." If you are running after having, you will become a manipulator: constantly in conflict with others, constantly trying to crush others, by any way and any means trying to reach to the top. You will lose all spontaneity.

The man of being, 'the novel man', is spontaneous. He lives in the moment, he lives herenow. He knows no other way to live, he is unpredictable. You can predict a man of competition. You can predict, because the mind of the competitor runs like a mathematical formula. It has a logical syllogism in it. But the mind of one who is moving inwards, the man of being, is almost dissolving. The mind of the inward traveller is dissolving; you cannot predict him. He has no mathematical formula about him -- he simply lives in the moment, he responds to the moment.

Now let me tell you one thing: the man of having is very clear. The man of having has a destination, very clear, cut. If he wants to become the president of the United States or the premier of India, he has a clear-cut destination.

What about the man of being? -- he has a direction, but he has no destination. He has a very subtle direction, but no destination. He has a quality: he has a light inside, and wherever he moves that light falls on his path. He has eyes to see, a direction, but no destination. He is enjoying and he is moving, but his movement is not prefabricated. He has no plan. He is like a river, not like a railway train. Direction is there, but not like a railway train, not running in a fixed pattern. Zig-zag his life will be. Sometimes he will be moving towards the north and sometimes he will be moving towards the south. He cannot be very consistent because consistency is part of the logical mind, it is not part of the being. He will be found many times to be inconsistent, even contradictory; but those contradictions are just on the surface. If you look deep you will find a subtle direction.

Even in contradictions the direction is there.

But to know the man of being you need very deep eyes, penetrating eyes. To know the man of having, nothing is needed -- just a little mind will do, a mediocre mind will do --

because the man of having is also of the category of mediocre minds. But when you move into the inner world, all surfaces are lost and depth is infinite.

The Bauls call this spontaneous man, SAHAJA MANUSH. The novel man, he's the new man. He is the man as everyone should be. And unless you become the novel man, you will miss -- you will miss treasures, blessings, benedictions which were showering all around you, but you were blind and you could not see it.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin was in love with a woman.

"Look darling," he said to her, "here is a diamond engagement ring for you."

"Oh, it is beautiful!" she claimed "But honey, the diamond has a flaw in it."

"You should not notice that," said the Mulla. "Why, you are in love and you know what they say -- 'love is blind'."

"Blind, yes," she said, "but not stone blind."

Even in love you continue to remain the man of the outside. Even in love you continue to think in terms of money, prestige, power. Even in love you don't allow the unpredictable to assert, you don't allow your innermost being to have its say. Even then you remain a manipulator.

Our minds are almost always interested in the very ordinary. It has to be so because mind is outward-oriented. The very orientation is towards the without. That's how Jesus was not understood; he was a Baul,'the novel man'. If he had been born in Bengal, the land of the Bauls, he would have been understood better. They would not have crucified him. For centuries they have known mad people of God. They would have understood his language.

Jews could not understand his language. His language was not of the mind, his language was not of money, of the outside. He talked about the kingdom and they asked, "Where is your kingdom? About what kingdom are you talking?" -- because they thought he was talking about the kingdom which is outside. He said, "I am the king," and they were worried. And they suspected that he was trying to sabotage the society, or that he was trying to conquer the society and become the king. They thought that he was a revolutionary.

He was a rebellious man, not a revolutionary at all. He was not planning for a revolution; he was not a politician. But the Jews were afraid: they thought that he was trying to conquer this world. And the Romans were afraid. They were afraid because it was thought that he was the king of men -- the king is born. When the king of the Romans heard that a child was going to be born who would become the king of men, he became so afraid that he ordered a massacre: to kill all the children below the age of two years.

When the three wise men of the East reached the capital in search of the child Jesus, the king heard of it. He invited them to the palace, and he asked them for what they had come. They said they were looking for the king who had been born in his country: "You should be happy that a king is born in your country, and the greatest king will walk on your earth." But the king was very afraid because he thought, "How can there exist two kings in one country? Then I will be dethroned." But he played diplomatic. He said to the wise men, "I am very happy, so if you succeed in finding him please come and inform me." But he was planning to kill the boy, and the three wise men understood it because they could see in his eyes. He was a cunning man.

Politicians are cunning.

After they had met Jesus and worshipped Jesus, they had to find another route because they were afraid that the king would be waiting, and they didn't want to become a part of this catastrophe. They didn't want to become part in killing and murdering Jesus. So they had to travel very far. They had to do a long journey because the shortcut was the one they had come by. And they were very old men, but still they took a very long route through deserts and mountains to reach back to their country. They didn't want to go back by the same route because it would pass through the capital, and the king would be waiting.

Jesus was crucified because of his terminology, but he was talking about the inner kingdom. He was not talking about the kingdom of the outside, and he was not talking about the treasures that you know, but the treasures of the unknown.

As far as the outside world is concerned, all treasures are just false.

I have heard a beautiful anecdote....

A man walking along a city street fell through an open sewer hole and broke his leg. He engaged a famous attorney, brought suit against the city for ten thousand dollars, and won the case. The city appealed the decision right on up to the Supreme Court, but again the lawyer won the decision. After the claim was settled, the lawyer sent for his client and handed him a dollar bill.

"What is this?" inquired the man, looking at the dollar.

"That's your damages after deducting my fee, the cost of appeals and other expenses,"

replied the attorney.

Out of ten thousand dollars, only one dollar!

The man looked at the dollar again, turned it over and scanned it carefully. "What is the matter with this dollar?" he said. "Is it counterfeit?"

But all money outside is counterfeit: all dollars are counterfeit, all rupees are counterfeit.

The real money does not exist that way; the real money does not exist outside. This conversion from the counterfeit to the real is what Bauls call the birth of the novel man.

COME IF YOU WISH TO MEET

THE NOVEL MAN.

HE HAS ABANDONED

HIS WORLDLY POSSESSIONS

FOR THE BEGGAR'S SACK

THAT HANGS FROM HIS SHOULDERS.

He has abandoned worldly possessions to become a beggar. Why abandon worldly possessions? The worldly possessions can be abandoned in two ways. Again you have to understand: the man who has lived his whole life in collecting possessions can abandon them out of greed. Then the novel man is not born. He can abandon them in order to get some advance booking in heaven, paradise. He can abandon his worldly possessions seeing that death will take them away. If that is the case, then the old man remains old, even if he abandons all.

In India it happens many times, more often than not: people abandon their possessions, they renounce, but if you watch them you will see they have not abandoned their greed.

In fact, they have renounced BECAUSE of the greed.

I know one man who renounced almost a million rupees many years ago, but he still goes on talking about it. Thirty years have passed, and whenever I meet him, he will again and again bring the subject up that he has renounced a million rupees. And you can see the light that starts shining in his eyes -- a million rupees!

The last time I saw him I asked him, "If you have really renounced then why talk about it? What is the point? As far as I can see, you have not renounced at all. The novel man is not born. You are as much attached to those one million rupees, or maybe even more than you were before. Now the very idea that you have renounced a million rupees has become your bank balance. Now you are living on it.'' I told him that if he went to God, the first thing he would relate to Him would be his million rupees: "Do you know or not that I have renounced one million rupees?" And he would be expecting something special for himself. This man is the same; the novel man is not born. It has been a miscarriage.

You can renounce, but if you enjoy ego through it, if you feel that you are a great man of renunciation, a MAHATMA, a great soul because you have renounced, you are not an ordinary man, you are not worldly, then your renunciation is not true.

When is the renunciation true? -- when you understand the futility. Not out of greed, not because you have to earn something in the other world, but just seeing the futility of it all, you renounce. This renunciation has no effort in it, just a deep insight. Every morning you clean your house and throw the rubbish on the rubbish heap, but you don't go declaring and advertising to the whole town that again you have renounced much rubbish, again this morning you have done a great deed of renunciation. No, you know that it is rubbish -- finished. What is there to tell about it?

The novel man is born when you have a deep insight that worldly things have no value; they are all counterfeit, unreal diamonds, and unreal real diamonds are also so. Real dollars are also as unreal as unreal dollars. When the whole outside world has no value for you, that is a real renunciation. Then you are not attached at all.

And Bauls say,

My plaited hair

is still intact and dry.

Though I stand in the stream

and splash and swim about the river,

I cannot be touched by the water.

Keep your soles dry

as you coast the sea.

Let attachments share the same home,

but live unattached.

Groping for the river,

Oh my senseless heart!

In vain do you wander from place to place.

The ocean of your heart

bears a priceless gem.

What good is life

if you fail to contact

the spontaneous man

who dwells in your own body?

Your destiny is shamed.

Do not give up gold

for a piece of glass,

nor leave heaven

for a visit to hell.

What good is there

in rushing round the world?

The eternal hero Iives

in your own little room.

Who is there

for you to call your own?

My heart,

for whom do you shed

your futile tears?

Brothers and friends, let them be;

the world is there.

Your own dear life

is hardly your own.

You have come alone,

you will go alone....

The whole idea of renunciation is of a vision, of a great understanding, of looking into things in their reality. You need not escape from the world. You can remain in the world and become absolutely unattached. But if you feel, "Why carry the burden unnecessarily?" you can leave the world also. But remember, the world has no value this way or that. If it has no value, its renunciation also cannot have any value. If it is valuable, only then can its renunciation be valuable. But then there is no point in renouncing it; it is simply valueless. It is like a dream. When you awake, everything disappears.

You have come alone, you will go alone, and between these two exists the dream. To understand the dream, to become alert to it, is the birth of the novel man. "Come if you wish to meet the novel man," says the Baul. He invites the whole world: Come to see me; the novel man is born. "His worldly possessions he has abandoned for the beggar's sack that hangs from his shoulder."

HE SPEAKS OF THE ETERNAL MOTHER

(KALI, THE GODDESS OF TIME)

EVEN AS HE ENTERS THE GANGES.

The novel man lives in eternity, the ordinary man lives in time.

This word 'Kali' has to be understood. Kali is the mother of time. In Sanskrit time is called KALA, and the mother of KALA is Kali, mother of time. But the mother of time is beyond time. Time is born out of it, but the womb out of which time is born is eternity.

Eternity is the mother of time. Time is just a reflection of the eternal. The Bauls worship Kali, the mother of time; they worship eternity. They seek and search eternity -- not that which changes but that which remains always and always, that which is beyond all flux, absolutely permanent, unmoving. They seek that hub of the existence. Symbolically it is called Kali.

This word 'KALA' is very meaningful: one meaning is time, another meaning is death.

The same word means time and death. It is beautiful, because time is death. The moment you enter into time, you are ready to die. With birth, death has entered into you. When the child is born, he has entered into the realm of death. The birthday is also the deathday.

Now only one thing is certain: that he will have to die. Everything else is just uncertain; it may happen, it may not happen. But the moment a child is born, the moment the child has taken his first breath, one thing is absolutely certain -- that he will die.

Entering into life is entering into death; entering into time is entering into death. Time is death, hence the Sanskrit word KALA is very beautiful. It means both time and death.

And Kali means beyond time and beyond death. Eternity is deathlessness. How to find eternity? What is the way? One has to understand the process of time.

The process of time is horizontal: one moment passes, then comes another moment; that passes, then another moment -- a procession of moments, a queue of moments -- one passes, then another comes; another passes, then another comes. It is horizontal.

Eternity is vertical: you go deep into the moment, not moving in a line, but into depth.

You drown yourself in the moment. If you stand on the bank, then the river goes on passing. Ordinarily we are standing on the bank of time. The river goes on moving; one moment, another moment, and another, and the sequence of moments continues. This is how we ordinarily live, this is how we live in time.

Then there is another way -- take a jump into the river, drown in the moment, the herenow. Then suddenly, time stops. Then you are moving in an altogether different dimension; the vertical dimension is eternity. That is the meaning of Jesus' cross.

The cross is a time symbol. It is made of two lines: one vertical, one horizontal. On the horizontal line are the hands of Christ, and on the vertical line is his whole being. Hands are symbolic of action: doing, having. Having is in time; being is in eternity. So whatsoever you DO is in time, whatsoever you ARE is in eternity; whatsoever you achieve is in time, whatsoever is your nature is in eternity. Change from having, doing, towards being. This moment the turning can happen. This very moment, if you forget past and future, then time stops. Then nothing moves, then everything is absolutely silent and you start drowning in the here-now. That 'now' is eternity.

Kali is a symbol of now, of the eternal, of the absolutely real. To live moment to moment and not to bother about past and future is the way towards the novel man.

SIMPLE WORDS CAN OVERCOME

IGNORANCE AND DISBELIEF:

KALI AND KRISHNA ARE ONE.

THE WORDS MAY DIFFER --

THE MEANING IS PRECISELY THE SAME.

HE WHO HAS BROKEN

THE BARRIER OF WORDS

HAS CONQUERED LIMITS:

ALLAH OR JESUS, MOSES OR KALI,

THE RICH OR THE POOR,

SAGE OR FOOL,

ALL ARE ONE AND THE SAME TO HIM.

Very significant sentences: "Simple words can overcome ignorance and disbelief." If you can listen, then very simple words are enough. If you are capable of being receptive, just simple words uttered by one who knows are enough. But if you don't understand, then things become very complex. Your non-understanding or non-receptivity makes things complex. It creates confusion, it puzzles you, it creates a chaos in your being. If you can listen silently without your mind interfering, then simple words can overcome ignorance and disbelief.

The Bauls say,

Even if you forbid, dear friend,

I am helpless.

My songs contain my prayers.

Some flowers pray

through the glamour of colors,

and others, being dark,

with fragrance.

As the VEENA prays

with its vibrating strings,

do I with my songs.

Bauls don't know much philosophy; they are not philosophers. They are simple people of the earth. They are very simple people who can sing and dance. Their words are simple.

If you love, if you trust, their small gestures can reveal much.

And it is always a question of love and trust. It is not a question of great metaphysical skill, because the more metaphysics you know, the more you will be puzzled. And the more you are acquainted with philosophy, the less is the possibility to come to understanding. The more you are full of knowledge, the less will be your understanding.

You will be too clouded, and too many thoughts will not allow you vision, clarity. Your mirror will be full of dust.

SIMPLE WORDS CAN OVERCOME

IGNORANCE AND DISBELIEF;

KALI AND KRISHNA ARE ONE.

Bauls say, "We don't make any distinction between a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Christian...Kali and Krishna are one." They say, "We don't even make any distinction between male and female... Kali and Krishna are one, male and female are one." That is one of their great insights: that if you really dance and sing in deep trust and love, you will come to feel that man and woman are not two things, are not two beings. Inside you, a new alchemy starts, and your inside man melts with the inside woman...and Kali and Krishna become one.

They sing,

As the man and the woman in me

unite in love,

the brilliance of beauty,

balanced on the bi-petalled lotus

blooms in me,

dazzles my eyes.

The rays outshine the moon,

and the jewels

glowing on the hoods of snakes.

My skin and bone are turned to gold

when the inner man and woman meet,

when Krishna and Kali become one.

My skin and bone are tumed to gold,

I am the reservoir of love,

alive as the waves.

A single drop of water

has grown into a sea,

unnavigable....

The whole problem of man is how to meet with the woman, and the whole problem of the woman is how to meet man.

In one ancient myth prevalent in many countries of the Far East, they say God created man and woman together, not as two beings; they were joined in one body. But then it became difficult. There were conflicts and problems. The woman wanted to go to the East and the man was not willing. Or, the man was ready to do something and the woman wanted to rest. But they were together, their bodies were joined. So they complained and God cut their bodies separate. Since then, every man is searching the woman, his woman, and every woman is searching her man. Now it is such a big crowd that it is very difficult to find who is your woman, who is your man. So much misery, and one goes on stumbling and groping in the dark. It is almost impossible to find your woman. How will you find her?

The myth says that if you can find, everything fits; you again become one. But it is very difficult to find.

But there is a way to find your woman, because the woman is not outside. Outside, at the most, are parallel similarities.

When you fall in love with a woman, what really happens? This is what happens: somehow the outside woman fulfills your inner woman's image, fits with that image --

maybe not a hundred percent, but enough to fall in love. When you fall in love with a man, what happens? Something inside you clicks and says, "Yes, this is the man, the right man." It is not a logical conclusion, it is not a syllogism. It is not that you find out all the pros and cons about the man and then you decide, or you compare the man with all the other men in the world, then you decide. No, something happens out of the blue.

Suddenly you see that this is the man for whom you were waiting, for whom you were waiting for lives.

What happens? You carry an image of man, you carry an image of woman inside. You are both, and you go on looking outside. Nobody is going to fit one hundred percent, because the woman that you find outside has her own images about you; you have your own images. It is very difficult to fit with each other. So all marriages are always on the rocks, and people, by and by, learn how to carry on peacefully. They learn not to 'rock the boat'. But nothing more can happen outside.

Bauls say, "Deep inside you both exist -- Krishna and Kali. Let them meet there." That is the whole Tantra method: how to allow your inner man to meet with the inner woman.

And when this becomes a circle, when this meeting, when this inner copulation happens, a great orgasm, a great explosive orgasm begins which knows a beginning but knows no end. Then you live an orgasmic life.

A single drop of water

has grown into a sea,

unnavigable....

Then you are no more finite, you become infinite.

SIMPLE WORDS CAN OVERCOME

IGNORANCE AND DISBELIEF:

KALI AND KRISHNA ARE ONE.

THE WORDS MAY DIFFER --

THE MEANING IS PRECISELY THE SAME.

HE WHO HAS BROKEN

THE BARRIER OF WORDS,

HAS CONQUERED LIMITS...

Break the barrier of words. Now, I am talking to you; I am using words. You can listen to my words -- then you have not listened to me. You can listen in such a way that the words are no more a barrier, but become vehicles. They no more create problems, but you listen exactly between the words, between two words, in the gaps. You listen to my silence; then words and their barriers are broken. Then limits are conquered.

ALLAH OR JESUS, MOSES OR KALI,

THE RICH OR THE POOR,

SAGE OR FOOL,

ALL ARE ONE AND THE SAME TO HIM.

This is the novel man. Now he knows no duality. He does not make any distinction between the sage and the fool. He makes no distinction between the man and the woman.

All dualities have come to be united, all dualities have dissolved. Once you drop the words, dualities drop.

Language creates duality, language exists through duality. It cannot indicate the non-dual.

If I say 'day', immediately I create night. If I say 'life', immediately I create death. If I say

'good', immediately bad is created. If I say 'no', just by the side of the no, yes is existing.

Language can exist only through the opposite. That's why we see life as always divided --

God and devil. Drop language, drop this linguistic pattern. Once language is no more on your mind and you look directly into reality, day IS night. Suddenly you will start laughing at why you missed it so long! Day, every day turns into night; night turns into day every morning again, and you have been missing. Life is always turning into death, death always turns again into life, and you have been missing. They are not two, they are one whole. This is the non-dual, ADWAITA. This is the most essential religion.

LOST IN HIS OWN THOUGHTS,

HE SEEMS INSANE TO OTHERS...

... because his consciousness is no longer divided by language. He is no longer looking at the world through words. He looks insane: he is absorbed in his own being, he is lost in his own vision. And the vision is so vast, as if a thousand and one suns have risen together. It is so dazzling.

LOST IN HIS OWN THOUGHTS,

HE SEEMS INSANE TO OTHERS.

HE OPENS HIS ARMS

TO WELCOME THE WORLD,

CALLING ALL TO THE FERRY BOAT

TIED TO THE COAST OF LIFE.

And he goes on calling, "Come to me, come, if you wish to meet the novel man," and the boat is ready. And his boat is not against life, it is tied to the coast of the life. He is not negative.

And he says, "Come, and I can take you to the other shore. Come, and I can make you new. Come, and I can take you into eternity."

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #6

Chapter title: Direction a non-ending process

26 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606260

ShortTitle:

BELOV106

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

98

mins

The first question:

Question 1

YESTERDAY YOU SAID THAT AN INWARD TRAVELLER HAS ONLY

DIRECTION AND NOT DESTINATION. WILL YOU PLEASE FURTHER CLARIFY

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TWO?

THE DISTINCTIOIN IS VERY SUBTLE, but it is the same distinction as there is between the mind and the heart, as there is between logic and love, or even more appropriate, as there is between prose and and poetry.

A destination is a very clear-cut thing; direction is very intuitive. A destination is something outside you, more like a thing. A direction is an inner feeling; not an object, but your very subjectivity. You can feel direction, you cannot know it. You can know the destination, you cannot feel it. Destination is in the future. Once decided, you start manipulating your life towards it, steering your life towards it.

How can you decide the future? Who are you to decide the unknown? How is it possible to fix the future? Future is that which is not known yet. Future is open possibility. By fixing a destination your future is no more a future, because it is no more open. Now you have chosen one alternative out of many, because when all the alternatives were open it was future. Now all alternatives have been dropped; only one alternative has been chosen. It is no longer future, it is your past.

The past decides when you decide a destination. Your experience of the past, your knowledge of the past decides. You kill future. Then you go on repeating your own past -

- maybe a little modified, a little changed here and there according to your comfort, convenience; repainted, renovated -- but still it comes out of the past. This is the way one loses track of future: by deciding a destination one loses track of future. One becomes dead. One starts functioning like a mechanism.

Direction is something alive, in the moment. It knows nothing of the future, it knows nothing of the past, but it throbs, pulsates here and now. And out of this pulsating moment, the next moment is created. Not by any decision on your part -- but just because you live this moment and you live it so totally, and you love this moment so wholly, out of this wholeness the next moment is born. It is going to have a direction. That direction is not given by you, it is not imposed by you; it is spontaneous. That's what the Bauls call SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man.

The spontaneous man is the way to the real man, to the essential man, to the God within.

You cannot decide direction, you can only live this moment that is available to you. By living it, direction arises. If you dance, the next moment is going to be of a deeper dance.

Not that you decide but you simply dance this moment. You have created a direction: you are not manipulating it. The next moment will be more full of dancing, and still more will be following.

Destination is fixed by the mind; direction is earned by living. Destination is logical: one wants to be a doctor, one wants to be an engineer, one wants to be a scientist or one wants to be a politician, one wants to be a rich man, famous man -- these are destinations.

Direction? -- one simply lives the moment in deep trust that life will decide. One lives this moment so totally that out of this totality a freshness is born. Out of this totality the past dissolves and the future starts taking shape. But this shape is not given by you, this shape is earned by you.

One Zen master, Rinzai, was dying; he was on the death-bed. Somebody asked, "Master, people will ask after you are gone, what was your essential teaching? You have said many things, you have talked about many things -- it will be difficult for us to condense it. Before you leave, please, you yourself condense it into a single sentence, so we will treasure it. And whenever people who have not known you desire, we can give them your essential teaching."

Dying, Rinzai opened his eyes, gave a great Zen shout, a lion's roar! They were all shocked! They couldn't believe that this dying man could have so much energy, and they were not expecting it. The man was unpredictable; he had always been so. But even with this unpredictable man they were not in any way expecting that dying, at the last moment, he would give such a lion's roar. And when they were shocked -- and of course their minds stopped, they were surprised, taken aback -- Rinzai said, "This is it!" closed his eyes, and died.

This is it....

This moment, this silent moment, this moment uncorrupted by thought, this silence that was surrounding, this surprise, this last lion's roar over death; this is it.

Yes, direction comes out of living this moment. It is not something that you manage and plan. It happens, it is very subtle, and you will never be certain about it. You can only feel it. That's why I say it is more like poetry, not like prose; more like love, not like logic; more like art than like science. Wake, and that's its beauty; hesitant, as hesitant as a dewdrop on a grass leaf, slipping, not knowing where, not knowing why; in the morning sun, just slipping on a leaf of grass.

Direction is very subtle, delicate, fragile. That's why everybody has chosen destination.

Society tries to fix a destination for you. Parents, teachers, culture, religion, government: they all try to give you a fixed pattern of life. They don't want you to be free, left alone, moving into the unknown. But that's how they have created boredom. If you know your future beforehand, it is already boring. If you know that you are going to be this, it is already boring.

In the Koran, Mohammed talks about paradise, but he makes it so predictable, so much like a destination that it already looks worthless. The word 'paradise', or the Muslim equivalent of it, FIRDAUS -- they both come from a single root which means a walled garden -- and in that walled garden of God everything is fixed, almost every detail.

Nothing is left to imagination. Streams are there, streams of wine; and people are sitting in the shade. Of course, Mohammed must have suffered too much from the heat and the desert. People are sitting in the shade, enjoying their wives -- not wife, but wives --

because Mohammed had nine wives. What else do they do? There is nothing else to do but drink wine from the springs, sit on couches under the shade of big trees, enjoy their wives.

But then he was disturbed, because when you die your wife will be old. So what to do? --

he made an arrangement for that also: that for good people, those who had lived according to religion, God would make their wives young again. So remember, if you are not good you will have to remain with your old wife. Then you will be stuck with her forever and ever. Be good! Everything...and servants are there to fulfill any desire. But just think of it!

But it is so ready-made, manufactured, predictable: it loses all meaning. Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists, are more subtle. Buddhists are the most subtle. They don't talk about NIRVANA. They say: one has to know it to know it; one has to be in it to know it -- there is no other way. They don't describe. They don't give any description because all descriptions will be dangerous. All words become definitive and the mystery is lost.

Future should be a direction, not a destination. It should be more like NIRVANA. The word Buddha uses means: all that you know will not be there. That's his definition clf nirvana: all that you know will not be there, all that you have experienced will not be there, all that you are will not be there -- SOMETHING TOTALLY NEW, something that you cannot understand because you don't have the language to understand it, you don't have the experience to understand it. Something absolutely new; it cannot be talked about. NIRVANA is a direction. FIRDAUS, paradise, Christian and Mohammedan, are destinations, very clear-cut.

The mediocre mind demands clear-cut goals because he is so insecure -- he cannot trust his own awareness, and he cannot trust life. The mediocre mind is very afraid of discovery, and discovery is the greatest secret in life. To be ready to be surprised, to be always ready to be surprised means that one is innocent, trying to discover. And life is such that you can go on discovering. The more you discover it, the more you come to know that much more is still left. It is a non-ending process. Direction is a non-ending process. Remember, it is a process, movement; destination is a dead thing.

Destination belongs to the ego; direction belongs to life, to being. To move in the world of direction one needs tremendous trust, because one is moving in insecurity, one is moving in darkness. But the darkness has a thrill in it: without any map, without any guide you are moving into the unknown. Each step is a discovery, and it is not only a discovery of the outside world. Simultaneously, something is discovered in you also. A discoverer not only discovers things. As he goes on discovering more and more unknown worlds, he goes on discovering himself also, simultaneously. Each discovery is an inner discovery also. The more you know, the more you know about the knower. The more you love, the more you know about the lover.

I am not going to give you a destination. I can only give you a direction -- awake, throbbing with life; and unknown, always surprising, unpredictable. I'm not going to give you a map. I can give you only a great passion to discover. Yes, a map is not needed; great passion, great desire to discover is needed. Then I leave you alone. Then you go on your own. Move into the vast, into the infinite, and by and by, learn to trust it. Leave yourself in the hands of life, because life is God. When Jesus says, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done," he's saying this...a great trust. Even if God brings death, there is nothing to be afraid of. It is He who is bringing death, so there must be a reason in it, there must be a hidden secret in it, there must be a teaching in it. He's opening a door.

The man who trusts, the man who is religious is thrilled even at the gate of death -- he can give a lion's roar. Even dying -- because he knows nothing dies -- at the very moment of death he can say, "This is it!" Because each moment, this is it. It may be life, it may be death; it may be success, it may be failure; it may be happiness, it may be unhappiness.

Each moment...

... this is it.

This is what I call the real prayer. And then you will have direction. You need not worry about it, you need not fix it; you can move with trust.

The second question:

Question 2

HOW IS IT THAT THE INSCRIPTION ON THE GREEK TEMPLE TO DELPHI SAYS: KNOW THYSELF, AND NOT: LOVE THYSELF?

The Greek mind has an obsession with knowledge. The Greek mind thinks in terms of knowledge, how to know. That's why Greeks produced the greatest tradition of philosophers, great thinkers, logicians, great rational minds. But the passion is to know.

In the world, as I see it, there are only two types of minds: the Greek and the Hindu. The Greek mind has a passion to know, and the Hindu mind has a passion to be. The Hindu passion is not too concerned about knowing, but about being. SAT, being, is the very search -- who am I? -- not to know it in a logical way, but to drown in one's own existence so one can taste it, so one can be it -- because there is no other way to know, really. If you ask Hindus, they will say there is no other way to know than to be. How can you know love? The only way is to become a lover. Be a lover and you will know. And if you are trying to stand outside the experience and just be an observer, then you may know ABOUT love, but you will never know love.

The Greek mind has produced the whole scientific growth. Modern science is a by-product of the Greek mind. Modern science insists on being dispassionate, standing outside, watching, unprejudiced. Be objective, be impersonal. These are the basic requirements if you want to become a scientist: be impersonal, don't allow your emotions to color anything; be dispassionate, almost not interested in any hypothesis in whatsoever way. Just watch the fact. Don't get involved in it, remain outside. Don't be a participant.

This is the Greek passion: a dispassionate search for knowledge.

It has helped, but it has helped only in one direction: that is the direction of matter. That is the way to know matter. You can never come to know mind that way, only matter. You can never come to know consciousness that way. You can know the outside, you can never know the inside -- because in the inside you are already involved. There is no way to stand out of it. You are already there. The inside is you -- how can you get out of it? I can watch a stone, a rock, a river, dispassionately because I am separate. How can I watch myself dispassionately? I am involved in it. I cannot be outside it. I cannot reduce myself to being an object. I will remain the subject, and I will remain the subject.

Whatsoever I do, I am the knower, I'm not the known.

So the Greek mind shifted, by and by, towards matter. The motto, the inscription at Delphi's temple: Know Thyself, became the source of the whole scientific progress. But by and by, the very idea of dispassionate knowledge led the Western mind away from its own being.

The Hindu mind, the other type of mind in the world, has another direction: the direction is of being. In the Upanishads, the great master Udallack says to his son and his disciple Swetketu, "That art thou" -- TATWAMASI Swetketu. That art thou -- there is no distinction between that and thou. That is your reality; thou is the reality -- there is no distinction. There is no possibility to know it as you know a rock. There is no possibility to know it as you know other things; you can only BE it.

On the temple of Delphi, of course, it was written: Know Thyself. It is expressive of the Greek mind. Because the temple is in Greece the inscription is Greek. If the temple had been in India then the inscription would have been: Be Thyself -- because that art thou.

The Hindu mind moved closer and closer to one's own being -- that's why it became non-scientific. It became religious but non-scientific. It became introvert, but then it lost all moorings in the outside world. The Hindu mind became very rich inside, but the outside became very poor.

A great synthesis is needed, a great synthesis between the Hindu and the Greek mind. It can be the greatest blessing for the earth. Up to now it has not been possible, but now the basic requirements are there and a synthesis is possible. The East and West are meeting in a very subtle way. The Eastern people are going to the West to learn science, to become scientists, and the Western seekers are going, moving towards the East to learn what religion is. A great mingling and merging is happening.

In the future, the East is not going to be East and the West is not going to be West. The earth is going to become a global village -- a small place where all distinctions will disappear. And then for the first time the great synthesis will arise, the greatest ever --

which will not think in extremes, which will not think that if you go outside, if you are a searcher after knowledge then you lose your roots in being; or if you search in your being you lose your roots in the world, in the scientific realm. Both can be together, and whenever this happens a man has both wings and he can fly to the highest sky possible.

Otherwise you have only one wing.

As I see it, Hindus are lopsided as much as the Greek mind is lopsided. Both are half of the reality.

Religion is half; science is half. Something has to happen which can bring religion and science together in a greater whole, where science does not deny religion and where religion does not condemn science.

"How is it that the inscription on the Greek temple to Delphi says: Know Thyself, and not: Love Thyself?"

Love thyself is possible only if you become thyself, if you be thyself. Otherwise it is not possible. Otherwise the only possibility is to go on trying to know who you are, and that too from the outside; watching from the outside who you are, and that too in an objective way, not in an intuitive way.

The Greek mind developed a tremendous logical capacity. Aristotle became the father of all logic and all philosophy. The Eastern mind looks illogical -- it is. The very insistence on meditation is illogical because meditation says: you can know only when the mind is dropped, when thinking is dropped and you merge yourself into your being so totally that not even a single thought is there to distract you. Only then can you know. And the Greek mind says: you can know only when thinking is clear, logical, rational, systematic. The Hindu mind says: when thinking disappears completely, only then is there any possibility to know. They are totally different, moving in diametrically opposite directions; but there is a possibility to synthesize both.

A person can use his mind when working on matter; then logic is a great instrument. And the same person can put aside the mind when he moves into his meditation chamber and moves into the no-mind. Because mind is not you -- it is just an instrument just like my hand, just like my legs. If I want to walk I use my legs, if I don't want to walk I don't use my legs. Exactly in the same way you can use the mind logically if you are trying to know about matter. It is perfectly right, it fits there. And when you are moving inwards, put it aside. Now legs are not needed; thinking is not needed. Now you need a deep silent state of no-thought.

And this can happen in one person. And when I say it, I say it from my own experience. I have been doing both. When it is needed, I can become as logical as any Greek. When it is not needed, I can become as absurd, illogical as any Hindu. So when I say it I mean it, and it is not a hypothesis. I have experienced It that way. The mind can be used and can be put aside. It is an instrument, a very beautiful instrument; no need to be so obsessed with it. No need to be so fixed, fixated with it. Then it becomes a disease. Just think of a man who wants to sit but cannot sit because he says, "I have legs -- how can I sit?" Or, think of a man who wants to keep quiet and silent and cannot keep quiet and silent because he says, "I have a mind." It is the same.

One should become so capable that even the closest instrument of mind can be put aside and can be put off. It can be done, it has been done, but it has not been done on a great scale. But more and more it will be done. This is what I am trying to do here with you.

I talk to you, I discuss problems with you; that's logical, that is using the mind. And then I say to you, "Drop the mind and move into deep meditation. If you dance, dance so totally that there is not a single thought inside, your whole energy becomes dance. Or sing, then just sing. Or sit, then just sit -- be in ZAZEN, don't do anything else. Don't allow a single thought to pass through. Just be quiet, absolutely quiet." These are contradictory things.

Every morning you meditate and every morning you come and listen to me. Every morning you listen to me and then you go and meditate. This is contradictory. If I were just Greek, I would talk to you, I would make a logical communication with you, but then I would not say to meditate. That is foolish. If I were just Hindu, there would be no need to talk to you. I can say, "Just go and meditate, because what is the point of talking? One has to become silent." I am both. And this is my hope: that you will also become both --

because then life is very enriched, tremendously enriched. Then you don't lose anything.

Then everything is absorbed; then you become a great orchestra. Then all polarities meet in you.

For the Greeks, the very idea of 'love thyself' would have been absurd, because they would say, and they would say logically, that love is possible only between two persons.

You can love somebody else, you can even love your enemy, but how can you love yourself? Only you are there, alone. Love can exist between a duality, a polarity; how can you love yourself? For the Greek mind, the very idea of loving oneself is absurd: for love, the other is needed.

For the Hindu mind, in the Upanishads they say: you love your wife not for your wife's sake; you love your wife just for your own sake. You love yourself through her. Because she gives you pleasure, that's why you love her -- but deep down you love your own pleasure. You love your son, you love your friend, not because of them but because of you. Deep down your son makes you happy, your friend gives you solace. That's what you are hankering for. So the Upanishads say: you love yourself really. Even if you say that you love others, that is just a via media to love yourself, a long roundabout way to love yourself.

Hindus say that there is no other possibility: you can love only yourself. And Greeks say there is no possibility to love oneself because at least two are needed.

If you ask me, I'm both Hindu and Greek. If you ask me I will say love is a paradox. It is a very paradoxical phenomenon. Don't try to reduce it to one pole; both polarities are needed. The other is needed, but in deep love the other disappears. If you watch two lovers, they are two and one together. That's the paradox of love, and that's the beauty of it: they are two, yes, they are two; and yet they are not two, they are one. If this oneness has not happened then love is not possible. They may be doing something else in the name of love. If they are still two and not one also, then love has not happened. And if you are just alone and there is nobody else, then too love is not possible. Love is a paradoxical phenomenon. It needs two in the first place, and in the last place it needs two to exist as one. It is the greatest enigma; it is the greatest puzzle.

If you have loved somebody, you will understand what I mean. You know that the other is other, and yet deep down you feel something has been bridged. It is as if travelling in a sea you come across an island. It is separate from-the continent, yes. But deep down, underneath the sea, the land is one. It is joined with the continent; it is not really separate.

It is separate yet not separate; that's what love is.

So if you ask me, I will say it is possible to love yourself, but then you will have to divide yourself in two. Then you will have to become the lover and the beloved both. And it is also possible to love somebody else, but then you will have to become one. Love is something that happens between two persons, but when it happens they are no more two, they become one.

The third question:

Question 3

THE SAME DAWN, THE SAME DUSK, THE SAME CHASING, THE SAME

THOUGHT OF AWARENESS, THE SAME TALK OF AWARENESS, THE SAME

AND THE SAME....

It depends....

In a way it is the same. How can it be otherwise? The same sun, the same sun rising every morning, and the same sunset, yes -- but if you watch closely, have you ever seen two sunrises exactly the same? Have you watched the colors in the sky? Have you seen the cloud formations around the sun?

No two sunrises are the same; no two sunsets are the same. The world is a discontinuous continuity -- discontinuous because every moment something new is happening, and yet continuous because it is not absolutely new. It is connected. So both proverbs are right.

There is a proverb which says: there is nothing new under the sun; and the other proverb which seems contradictory to it which says: there is nothing old under the sun. Both are true.

Nothing is new and nothing is old. Everything goes on changing and yet somehow remains the same, somehow remains the same and yet goes on changing. That's the beauty, the mystery, the secret. You cannot reduce it to any category: you cannot say it is the same, you cannot say it is not the same. You cannot reduce life into your categories; your pigeon-holes are just worthless. When it comes to life, you have to drop all your pigeon-holes, your categories. It is bigger than your categories, transcendental to all categories. It is so vast that you cannot find its beginning or its end.

The questioner says, "The same dawn, the same dusk, the same chasing, the same thought of awareness, the same talk of awareness, the same and the same."

Yes, in a way it is the same; and in another way, nothing is the same. Yesterday also I was here, but I am not the same. How can I be? -- so much water has flowed down the Ganges. I am twenty-four hours older, twenty-four hours of experience are added to me, twenty-four hours of intense awareness. I am richer; I'm not the same -- death has come a little closer. You are also not the same, and yet I look the same and you look the same.

You have to see the point. This is what I mean when I say life is a mystery: you cannot classify it, you cannot say definitely that this is so. The moment you say, immediately you will become aware that life has falsified you.

Are these trees the same as they were yesterday? Many leaves have fallen, many new leaves have come up, many flowers are gone. They have risen higher. How can they be the same? See, today the cuckoo is not singing. It is so silent. Yesterday the cuckoo was singing. It was a different silence: it was full of song. Today's silence is different; it is not full of song. Even the wind is not blowing -- everything has stopped. Yesterday there was great wind. Trees are meditating today; yesterday they were dancing. It cannot be the same, and yet, it is the same.

It depends on you -- how you look at life. If you look as if it is the same, you will be bored. Then don't throw your responsibility on somebody else. It is your outlook. If you say it is the same, then you will be bored. If you see the constant change, flux-like, the great whirlwind-like movement all around you, the dynamism of life, each moment the old disappearing and the new coming in; if you can see the continuous birth, if you can see God's hand continuously creating, then you will be enchanted, thrilled. Your life will not be bored. You will be continuously wondering, "What next?..." You will not be dull.

Your intelligence will remain sharp, alive and young.

Now it depends on what you want. If you want to become like a dead man, stupid, dull, gloomy, sad and bored, then you believe that life is the same. If you want to become very young and alive, fresh, radiant, then believe that life is new each moment.

Says old Heraclitus, "You cannot step twice into the same river.''

You cannot meet the same person twice and you cannot see the same sunrise twice It is up to you. And if you understand me, I will say, don't choose. If you choose the idea that everything is old, you become old. If you choose that everything is young and new, you become young. If you understand me, I say don't choose; see that both are true. Then you transcend all categories. You are neither old nor young. Then you become eternal, then you become God-like, then you become life-like.

I have heard an anecdote:

A Judge Dunne was seated in court in New York, or rather in Brooklyn, while a very, very stupid witness was being interrogated. The attorney said, "Were you at the corner of Fourth and Elm the day of the accident?"

The witness said, "Who? Me?"

"Yes, you," said the attorney. "Did you notice whether or not the ambulance came to care for the wounded woman?"

"Who? Me?"

"Yes, you! Did you notice whether or not the woman was seriously injured?"

"Who? Me?"

By this time, the Prosecuting Attorney was exasperated. He said, "Certainly you! Why do you think you are here?"

The witness said, "I came here to see justice done."

Judge Dunne said, "Who? Me?"

If you believe that everything is the same, then this will be a constant thing -- Who? Me?

-- and you are going to be bored. The repetition will kill you. To be sharp and alive one needs something which is not repetitive. Something new, constantly happening, makes you alive, keeps you alive, keeps you alert.

Have you watched a dog sitting silently? A rock is Iying down just in front of him; he will not be worried. But let the rock start moving. Just have a small thread connected to the rock and pull it, and the dog will jump. He will start barking. Movement makes you sharp; then all dullness is gone. Then he is no longer sleepy. Then he is no longer dreaming about flies and other things. Then he will simply jump out of his slumber.

Something has changed.

Change gives you movement, but constant change also can be very uprooting. As constant no-change can be very deadening, constant change can also be very uprooting.

That is happening in the West; people are changing. The statisticians say that in America the average limit of a person doing a job is three years. People are changing their jobs, changing their towns, changing their spouses, trying to change everything -- changing their car every year, their house -- the whole value has changed. In England they make Rolls Royce. Their idea is so that it lasts forever, life-long at least. In America they make beautiful cars, but stability is not the quality to be bothered about -- because who is going to keep a car for his whole life? If it lasts for one year, enough. When the American goes to purchase a car, he does not bother about stability; he asks about exchangeability. The English still ask about durability, stability, whether the car will be durable because he purchases once, and finished. He's very old-fashioned. He does not know any divorce, even with a car. Once married, married. He's very monogamous even with a car. He's very sincere. The American lives in a world of change -- everything is changing -- but then the American has lost the roots.

In my old village where sometimes I used to go, I was surprised. Everything remains the same. The same coolie would greet me at the station -- because there is only one coolie --

and the same TONGA, and the same road, and I would see the same people moving around. Everything remains almost the same. Rarely somebody dies; rarely somebody is born -- otherwise everything remains almost the same. And even when people die, they are replaced by their sons, and they look almost the same. Nothing has changed. The houses are the same, the gossip is the same. It seems time does not exist.

I was always surprised going back to my town. That was the first thing that I would see: that in this town time does not exist. Everything seems to be eternally the same. But then people have roots. They are dull but they are very rooted. They are very comfortable, happy. They are not alienated. They don't feel strangers. How can they feel strangers? --

everything is so similar. When they were born it was the same; when they die it will be the same. Everything is so stable. How can you feel a stranger? The whole town is like a small family.

In America everything is uprooted. Nobody knows where one belongs. The very sense of belonging is lost. If you ask somebody; "Where do you belong?" he will shrug his shoulders -- because he has been to so many towns, to so many colleges, to so many universities. He cannot even be certain of who he is because the identity is very loose, fluid. In a way it is good because the man remains sharp and alive, but roots are gone.

For me, both things have been tried: stability, rootedness, nothing new under the sun --

we have tried it in the past, for many centuries. It rusted the human mind. People were comfortable but not very alive.

Then in America, something new has happened and it is spreading all over the world, because America is the future of the world. Whatsoever is happening there is going to happen everywhere, sooner or later. America sets the trend. Now people are very alive but unrooted, don't know where they belong. A great desire to belong has arisen. A great desire to be rooted somewhere, to possess someone and to be possessed by someone: something durable, something stable, something like a center -- because people are moving like wheels and there seems to be no rest. And it is great stress: continuously changing, continuously changing. And change is accelerating every day, becoming faster and faster. Now they say that big books cannot be written because by the time you write a big book it is out of date. Knowledge is changing so fast, so only small booklets are possible. So they reach -- before knowledge changes, they reach to people. Otherwise, before they reach the market, already the books will be out of date and useless, rubbish.

Everything is in such a great change and turmoil and chaos, and man feels deeply stressed, great strain and tension. Both have their benefits and both have their curses.

To me, a synthesis has to be made between these two orientations. One should be aware that life is both the old and new together, simultaneously -- old because the whole past is present in the present moment; new because the whole future is potentially present in the present moment. The present moment is a culmination of the whole past and the beginning of the whole future. In this moment, all that has happened is hidden, and all that is going to happen is also hidden. Each moment is past and future both, a convergence of past and future. So something is old and something is new, and if you can become aware of both together, you will have sharpness and roots both together. You will be at ease, without any stress. You will not become dull, and you will be very conscious and alert.

I have heard....

Mistress MacMahon went beserk one afternoon. She broke every dish and cup and reduced her usually spotless kitchen to shambles. The police arrived and took her to the city's mental institution. The head psychiatrist sent for her husband.

"Do you know any reason," asked the shrink, "why your wife should suddenly lose her mind?"

"I'm just as surprised as you are," answered Mr. MacMahon. "I can't imagine what got into her. She has always been such a quiet, hardworking woman. Why, she has not been out of the kitchen in twenty years!"

Now then, one is going to go mad. It is as simple as two plus two make four. If for twenty years one has not been out of the kitchen, it is maddening. But the opposite is always maddening. If you have never been to your home for twenty years, and have just become a vagabond, always arriving and never arriving anywhere, always reaching and never reaching anywhere; if you have become a gypsy and you don't have any home, then too you will start going mad.

Both are dangerous taken separately. Taken together they make life very rich. All polarities make life rich: yin and yang, man and woman, dark and light, life and death, god and devil, saint and sinner. All polarities taken together make life rich. Otherwise life becomes monotonous. Don't choose a monotonous life. Become richer.

The fourth question:

Question 4

AFTER EACH CAMP, I AM LEFT DEEPLY FRUSTRATED AND ANXIOUS, AS IF

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN THAT NEVER

HAPPENS, AND I SAY TO MYSELF: HEERA, YOU ARE BACK IN THE SAME

BOAT AGAIN. PLEASE COMMENT.

Let me first tell you one anecdote.

The newly-arrived convict was complaining to the warden, "I don't like the food here, I don't like the quarters, and I don't like your face."

"Well," said the warden, "is there anything else you don't like?"

"That's all for the time being," said the convict. "I don't want you to think that I am unreasonable."

Heera, you are very unreasonable.

First, for hundreds and hundreds of lives you have never meditated. Not to meditate has gone deep into your bones, into your very heart -- it has become a hard pattern. Now, suddenly you meditate and you start expecting too much. It is unreasonable.

In fact, all expectations are unreasonable, but when one expects something out of meditation it is ABSOLUTELY unreasonable. Because the very base of meditation, the very foundation of meditation is to understand that expectation has to be dropped; otherwise meditation never starts. It is expectation that keeps your mind continuously spinning thoughts. It is expectation that keeps you tense. It is expectation, when not fulfilled, that makes you feel frustrated, miserable. Drop expectation and meditation will flower, but it can flower only when you are not expecting. You can go on expecting for many lives; you will not allow meditation to flower. That is not the way.

I have heard....

Lanahan's hair kept falling and he complained to his barber. "That stuff you gave me," he cried "is terrible. You said two bottles of it would make me hair grow, but nothing has happened."

"I don't understand," said the barber, "that is the best hair restorer made."

"Well," said Lanahan, "I don't mind drinking another bottle, but it better work!"

Now, with expectation, doing meditation is like drinking a bottle of hair restorer. It is not going to work. It can even be destructive, it can be dangerous.

It is better not to meditate than to meditate with expectation, because at least you will not suffer the frustration. Don't meditate. But if you have decided to meditate, then be clear.

Meditation does not guarantee anything to you. Not that nothing happens out of it; it happens, but there is no guarantee. Tremendous possibilities open but you cannot expect them. If you expect, doors remain dosed. It is your expectation that blocks the way.

Two friends met on the street.

"I'm so unhappy I could cry," said the first.

"Why?"

"Two weeks ago, my uncle died and left me one million dollars."

"That's no reason to cry," said the second.

"That would make you happy, that's true," said the first, "but last week another uncle died and left me two million dollars."

"But why are you so unhappy then?"

The man said, "I only had two uncles!"

Expectation is very, very dangerous. With expectation, even if something happens you will not feel fulfilled, because expectation is almost insanity. You go on expecting more and more -- now the man is miserable because he had only two uncles. Whatsoever happens is not going to make you happy if you start with expectations. Drop expectation -

- that is not the right thing to bring into meditation -- and immediately things will start happening.

Next camp, or from tomorrow, just meditate. Enjoy it intrinsically. There is no need to look for any result. Let it happen. Let the future come of its own accord. Don't make a destination out of meditation -- just simple direction will do. Enjoy it. Celebrate it. Be festive about it.

The very act of meditation is a great joy. Just to be able to dance, just to be able to sing, just to be able to sit silently and breathe and be, is more than enough. Don't ask for anything else. Because of your asking you are corrupting your being. You have tried that way, now listen to me and try my way. You simply meditate.

"After each camp, I am left deeply frustrated and anxious..."

The problem does not arise after the camp, it arises before the camp. First you sow the seeds of expectation, then who is going to suffer? You will suffer. You will have to reap the crop.

"... as if I have been waiting for something to happen that never happens..."

That is never going to happen. Whatsoever you are waiting for, you are waiting in vain. It is not going to happen, and what is going to happen has nothing to do with your expectations and your desires. You just let it come in; don't block the way. Remove yourself out of your own way. This time, with no expectations, no desires, no hopes, just meditate.

"... and I say to myself: Heera, you are back in the same boat again."

If you listen to me you will never again be in the same boat. It is the boat of expectation.

Frustration is a by-product. You want to get rid of the frustration but you don't want to get rid of the expectation. Then it is impossible.

Buddha is reported to have said, "If you want to get rid of death, get rid of birth." There is no other way. If you want to get rid of misery, get rid of the lust for happiness. And when there is no misery, there IS happiness. But it is not because you desire it; it is because you don't have any desire. In a deep desireless state, you are full of bliss.

The last question:

It is from Parijat.

Question 5

YOUR CONTRADICTIONS USED TO THROW ME INTO SUCH UNHAPPY

EMOTIONAL STATES. NOW I LISTEN TO YOU BUT WITHOUT THINKING, REMAINING TRANQUIL. HAVE I ESCAPED BEFORE THE POT CAME TO THE

BOIL?

First, one anecdote.

A mother was examining a new mechanical toy at the corner shop and wondered if it were not too complicated for a small boy.

"Oh, no," the salesman beamed, "it is an educational toy. It is especially designed to teach the child something about our current civilization: no matter how he puts it together, he's wrong."

Don't try to put me together, otherwise you will be wrong. It is designed that way. To contradict myself is my way. To never allow you to settle anywhere is my way. To go on goading you on and on, is my way.

But now, Parijat has learned the trick: listen in deep tranquility. Don't be bothered about whether I am contradicting something that I have said before. Listen to me this moment; don't bring the past in. If you don't bring the past in there is no contradiction. If you bring the past in then there is contradiction. Just don't bring the past in: that is what tranquility is. You just listen to me this moment; then where is the contradiction? And that's my whole effort -- to go on contradicting. One day or other you will decide that if you have to listen to this man, you have to forget all about what he has said before. That's a way to make you alert that the past has not to be brought in. If I go on saying very consistent things you will stop listening to me -- because there is no need: "He is saying the same thing." Even if you sleep you will not miss anything. But I will not allow you to sleep because you can miss, you can never rely.

There was one advertisement in a newspaper: a nightguard was needed by a rich man. He had three conditions: one, he should be very tall, strong, violent-looking; second, he should not be addicted to any sort of alcoholic beverages, he should be alert; and third, he should be reliable.

Mulla Nasrudin applied. He was called, but the rich man was surprised because he is a very small man, not tall at all, and not violent-looking, a very meek fellow.

The rich man said,' I am surprised why you troubled yourself to come here, and why you answered my advertisement. Can't you see? These are the three conditions: first, that the man should be tall, at least six feet. You don't seem to be more than five. The man should be violent looking; I have not seen such a simple, almost simpleton, type man. You look so meek. Why have you come? Do you drink or not?"

Nasrudin said, "I drink too much.''

"Then why are you wasting my time? Why have you come?"

Nasrudin said, "I have come only to say that I am not reliable either."

I also am not reliable. I completely go on forgetting what I have said to you yesterday. I am a drunkard. That's why I can contradict so easily, otherwise it would be very difficult.

It never comes to my mind that I am contradictory. Whatsoever I am saying, this is it! I don't bother about what I have said before. I'm not concerned with it. That was the truth of that moment, this is the truth of this moment, and I'm not reliable. I am not saying anything that I am going to say again tomorrow. Who knows? I don't know myself. If you really listen to me, by and by you will listen to the moment. That's the whole effort.

I am not trying to give you a philosophy, a doctrine, a dogma. A dogma has to be consistent, a creed has to be consistent. I am not trying to convert you to a certain belief; a belief has to be consistent. I am trying to give you a vision, not a belief. I am trying to help you to come to my window to see the sky, to see the truth. That truth cannot be described. And that truth cannot be made a dogma, and that truth contains all contradictions -- because it is so vast. So I go on giving you glimpses, aspects of it: one aspect is contradictory to another aspect. But in the whole truth, all aspects meet and mingle and are one.

The right way to listen to me is this: where Paritosh has arrived. Everybody has to arrive if you want to listen to me. If you want to be with me, you have to arrive to that tranquility where you don't pay any attention to the past. You forget what. I have said as deeply as I go on forgetting. You are simply to listen to this moment. Then there is no contradiction because there is no comparison. And then you don't cling to what I say. It becomes just a direction and not a destination. It just helps you to become more alert and aware. It does not give you a philosophy. Rather, it gives you a very subtle milieu, a totally different vision of life. It imparts my eyes to you.

A salesman walked into a busy executive's office and asked, "How about buying some of the latest styles in ties?"

"I don't need any," said the executive. "Scram!"

"They are pure silk," continued the salesman.

"Look, I said beat it, and I mean it." Then, his patience exhausted, the executive picked up the salesman and tossed him out; sample cases were scattered all over the place. The salesman, undaunted, picked up his wares, brushed off his clothes, and walked back into the office.

"Now that you have got that off your chest," he said, "I am ready to take down your order."

The same I say to Parijat: now that you have got that off your chest, those contradictions, and getting troubled by them and emotionally disturbed about them -- because you were seeking a philosophy, you were seeking a mental belief, you were trying to find something to cling to and I will not allow -- now that it is off your chest, I am ready to take down your order.

Now, the really last question:

Question 6

I WANT TO TELL YOU, TO THANK YOU FOR ALL THE MIRACLES AND

BLESSINGS, BUT I CAN'T FIND A WAY BIG ENOUGH. IT IS ALL SO

OVERWHELMING.

A little anecdote....

A hippie-type hobo wandered into a church and on the way out told the vicar, "Man, you were swinging daddy, like way out, man."

"I beg your pardon?" said the vicar.

"I mean, man," said the hippie hobo, "I really dig your jive, man. I read you loud and clear. I put a little cash in your old plate there, daddyo."

"Aha!" beamed the vicar, grasping the down-and-out's hand. "Cool man, cool!"

That's what I say to you -- cool man, cool. There is no need to express your gratitude; it will be difficult. If you can express it, it is not of worth. If it is of worth, you cannot express it. If you are just giving me a formal thank you, then you can express it. But I know, I know the person who has said this. Something is really happening. It is overwhelming, but there is no need to express it. I know it.

In fact, I know it before you come to know it. Whenever it is happening to somebody, I am the first to know here. You will be the second, even if it is happening to you --

because it will take a little time to reach your mind. It has to travel a little longer. It travels to me more fast. I know it is overwhelming, but there is no need; just cool down.

Become more cool. And I will know it, and everybody else will know it, and the whole world -- even the trees and the rocks and the rivers will know it.

When it really happens, there is no need to say it. The whole existence immediately feels it: something has happened. Somebody has opened, some flower flowered, a lotus bloomed.

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #7

Chapter title: Dying with death, You must live to seek 27 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

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mins

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH

WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN

THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS

AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS

FLOODING YOUR EYES.

THE MAN YOU SEEK

IS EARTHED

IN THE EARTH,

DECEASED WHILE BEING.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK....

THE RELIGION OF THE BAULS IS THE RELIGION OF THE EARTH. It's radical, because it pertains to the very roots of being. When I say it is the religion of the earth, I mean many things: it is the religion of the body, it is the religion of nature, it is the religion of reality. The Bauls don't believe in fantasy and they don't believe in some heavenly paradise; they don't believe in far-away goals, they are not utopians. They are very realistic people, down-to-earth. This is something very special in the world of religions, because ordinarily religions are nothing but wish-fulfillments, dreams of a suffering humanity. Because humanity is suffering it substitutes for reality by dreaming.

A poor man can console himself that at least in the kingdom of God he will be the first.

He can console himself with sayings like: Blessed are the meek because they shall inherit the earth; the poor in spirit are the people of God; those who are last will be the first in the kingdom of God. The poor man needs all these consolations.

Man is afraid of death. He needs to be again and again reassured that he is a soul, deathless, immortal; only the body dies, not you. Man is suffering a thousand and one complexities. The whole life is almost an oceanic sadness, suffering, sorrow. It is difficult to bear it. Dreams are needed, hopes of a better future, of a better world, are needed.

Maybe it is beyond death, but just the idea that it is there waiting for you and the suffering is only for today, you pass it somehow; you believe in tomorrow. Sooner or later you will be relieved of it. Ordinary religions are the religions of tomorrow. They simply indicate that because man lives in suffering, man needs dreaming.

The religion of the Bauls is very down-to-earth; it believes in the here-now. It does not say that paradise is somewhere else; it is here, and you cannot postpone it, and all postponement is dangerous, suicidal. If you cannot discover it here-now, you will never discover it anywhere else because you will remain the same. And whenever you will be, life will always come in the form of here-now. So the only door to reality is here, this very moment.

The Bauls say, "This is the reality and there is no that." They don't divide reality into two: they don't say illusory and the real, they don't say MAYA and BRAHMA, they don't say this and that. They say, "This is all." This moment is total, and all division is dangerous because reality is nowhere divided; it is indivisible.

Hence, they don't talk about a God somewhere sitting in the seventh heaven. They talk about a totally different God -- rooted in you, rooted here in the earth, rooted in this body, rooted in these emotions, lust and love, rooted here in tension and stress. The God of the Bauls is a very real God. You can touch Him, you can love Him, you can embrace Him, you live with Him, you can live Him. It is not far away, it is very close; closer than close, because it is you. They don't use the word 'God' at all. Their word for God is ADHAR

MANUSH, the essential man. Man himself is divine. If you enter yourself you will be entering God. If you enter this world you will be entering God.

This does not mean that there is no God. This is a radical standpoint, but not negation. It is a very revolutionary attitude, but not negative. It does not mean that God does not exist. In fact, it means that God exists here, now, and the responsibility is yours to discover Him. And there is no alibi, there is no excuse to postpone.

In Chinese, Taoists have reached to the same viewpoint: they dropped the very word

'God'. They started using the word, 'CHI'LAN'. CHI'LAN means nature; that is God.

CHI'LAN means that which happens of itself, that which is already happening, that which has always been happening and will go on happening. That is the meaning of the word

'Tao' also. In the Vedas, Hindus have a beautiful word: they call it RITAMBH. That is exactly what Tao or CHI'LAN is. RITAMBH means nature, not God -- because whenever you say 'God', somehow it is always somewhere else, not here; at least not in you, not in your neighbor. The earth seems to be not worthy enough for God to be here.

Jainas and Buddhists use the word DHAMMA -- that exactly means nature. The Sanskrit word DHARMA also means nature. It is not equivalent to the English word 'religion'; no, not at all. In fact, both are polar opposites. Religion means that which binds you, gives you a certain organization -- a church -- gives you a certain belonging. DHARMA means that which frees you from all churches, from all organizations. DHARMA is individual, religion is social. Religion belongs to the collective crowd, religion does not belong to the individual. Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, are all religions; they are not DHARMAS. DHARMA has no adjective to it. Everybody has to discover his own DHARMA; everybody has to discover his own nature.

The Bauls' attitude that God is here in you has to be understood as deeply as possible, because there is no other God. In fact, because religions have been talking about a God somewhere else, that's why the world has become more and more godless. Because the God that is not here and cannot be touched and cannot be seen and cannot be lived with, cannot be very appealing. As man grows to be mature, that God will start disappearing, withering away. Whenever man becomes very mature, those gods of the dreams will disappear and man will be left without God. That's what has happened to this age. It is not because of atheists that man has become godless, it is because of a wrong notion of God.

Marx could condemn the God of the Christians, Marx cannot condemn the God of the Bauls. Scientists can deny the God of the so-called religious, but scientists cannot deny the God of the Baul -- because he never proposes anything dreamlike. He is simply realistic.

I have heard a beautiful anecdote.

A commissar in Russia asked a peasant how the new potato-crop-production plan was coming under their glorious leader.

Said the peasant, "Our potato crop has been miraculous. If we were to put all the potatoes in a pile, they would make a mountain reaching to the feet of God."

'But you know there is not any God," said the commissar.

"I know," said the peasant, "but there are not any potatoes either."

A God in the sky is a false God. Not that the sky is without God, no; the sky is as full of God as the earth. But the first understanding of God is going to be rooted in the earth.

The first understanding has to be of the roots, and out of those roots your understanding will grow and spread to the farther corners of existence. But the journey starts at home. It starts deep within you. The first glimpse of God has to be in the innermost shrine of your heart. If you have not seen Him there, you can go on talking about Him, but you will not ever be able to see Him anywhere. The first encounter has to happen within you. Once it happens, you will be surprised that you start seeing God everywhere. Once you have seen Him within your heart, how can you miss Him. -- because everywhere the heart is throbbing with Him. The tree is full of Him and the rock also, and the river and the ocean, and the animals and the birds, everywhere. Once you have felt His pulse, once you have felt Him circulating in your own blood, once you have had an experience in your own marrow, then everywhere, wherever you look you will find Him. But, it cannot happen otherwise. If you are empty of His experience, you can go to the farthest corner of the world; your travelling will be in vain. You will never reach His temple because you missed the very root of it. You missed Him at home. If your own house does not become His temple, then no temple can be His abode. If your own house has become His temple, then all houses are His abode.

When the Bauls say that one has to be very earth oriented, they don't mean that the sky is empty of God. But they say, "If the earth is not full, then the sky is absolutely empty. If even the earth is not full, how can the sky be full of Him? If He is not here, how can He be there? If He is not this, how can He be that? If He is not today, how can He be tomorrow? If He is not in this life, how can He be in the next?" Their logic is simple and irrefutable.

But man has created a God in the skies. Why? This God is not a real God, it is a substitute -- because you are missing Him here, and you are missing Him so tremendously that you have to put Him somewhere or other. Otherwise you will feel very alone. You will feel so lonely that you will miss the meaning of life. And it is good to put Him very far away, because then there is no hurry. The journey is so far that you cannot complete it today. Even this life is not enough, so enough space to postpone, enough space to say, "Yes, one day I will do," enough space to pretend that you are interested in Him and continuing to be of the world, and going on talking at the same time about God.

This is the double-talk, the double-bind of ordinary humanity. People talk about God and live according to the devil. They go to the temple but they never reach. They read the Bible, they read the Koran, but they never listen. These are pretensions, only on the surface. This is how the hypocritical humanity is born -- a false, pseudo-humanity.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin went to his psychiatrist once and said, "Doctor, I wonder if you can split my personality for me?"

"Why? Why would you want to do that?" asked the doctor, surprised.

"Because," said the Mulla, "I am so lonesome."

Man feels very alone without God, and to find the real God is arduous. It is very easy to create a pseudo-God which looks like God, which appears like God. It at least gives consolation that you are not alone. Have you watched your concept of God? Has it arisen out of the experience of your own being, or has it arisen out of your experience of your loneliness? This is the criterion: if you believe in God because you feel lonely, your God is going to be false; if you believe in God because you have experienced Him in your aloneness, if it has come out of your own being, then the God is real. Then let Nietzsche declare that God is dead; your God can never be dead. Your God is alive in you. How can Nietzsche declare that God is dead? But he could declare, and not only declare; his declaration became a prophecy. Within a hundred years, his declaration has become a reality. The God of the churches is dead, the God of the temples is dead, the God of the books is dead. Nobody has ever been so prophetic as Nietzsche has been. God is disappearing; the very word has become ugly.

Just the other day I was reading a Christian priest's book. I was surprised, because I have heard about cases in which, particularly in India, people, if they want to read Playboy, hide it in their Gita or in their Bible and read it. That I have heard. But that Christian says that he was so afraid to read the Bible that he was hiding his Bible behind the cover of a Playboy magazine! It has come to happen in the West. So when he would go every Sunday to his beauty parlor, he would take his Bible. But afraid that others might see that he was reading the Bible, so out of date, he would hide it in a Playboy magazine and would read his Bible there.

One day in the Bible he came across Jesus' saying: If you deny me, remember, at the last day of judgment I will also deny you. So he became afraid because this was a sort of denial -- reading the Bible behind the cover of Playboy. He became so afraid that he started perspiring, because Jesus says, "If you deny me, then before God I will not recognize you." So he threw away the Playboy magazine and he felt so good. He went to his priest and said, "Today I have done a great deed. I gathered courage to let people know that I read the Bible."

God IS dead, MUST be dead. Have you watched yourself? -- if you are carrying a Bible you feel a little awkward. Or, if you are going to the temple you start finding excuses: that you are going because your wife has gone and there is some work to be done, or your father is there, or you are just going for formality's sake; it is just social. Have you watched how things change?

I was reminded when I was reading this of a beautiful story.

One dacoit, a great robber, became interested in the American ways of dacoity.

Everybody has to be interested now, because everybody in his own profession is trying to go to America. Doctors are going, engineers are going, so the dacoit thought, "Why not us? We can also learn the modern techniques." So he went to America, he joined a gang, and he was watching and observing what they were doing, the modern techniques. He was surprised, because first they kidnapped a beautiful woman, and then they wrote. But he said, "This is okay, because we also do the same in India: we kidnap a woman and then we write a letter to the husband that if within three days he doesn't give fifty thousand rupees, then we will kill his wife." So he wondered, "But what is new in it?"

Then he looked at what they were writing in the letter. He was surprised; he said, "What are you doing?" -- because in the letter they were writing, "If within three days you don't send us fifty thousand dollars, we will send your wife back."

The world has tremendously changed. People used to read Playboys hiding them in their Bible covers, but now they are hiding their Bibles in Playboy covers. Nietzsche was right

-- God is dead. But the real God cannot die; that is impossible. To say that God is dead is to say that life is dead. If God means life, then the statement 'God is dead' is simply stupid, meaningless, contradictory -- because life is that which lives, that which goes on living.

The Bauls would laugh. They would say, "Then you have not understood the real God.

Yes, your God is dead because he was false, but the God of the Bauls is not dead, cannot be dead, because we never talked about God -- we talk about life, love. If all the temples were destroyed and all the mosques and GURUDWARAS were burnt, nothing would happen to God. Because the God enshrined there is not the real God. The God enshrined in you is the real God, and that cannot be destroyed. Life cannot be destroyed; life goes on. It is an eternal river."

But man feels lonely. In his loneliness he creates fantasies, dreams. Man has become so lonely that he finds solace in any way, anywhere. It is unfortunate. But this is no way to find the real.

I was reading one anecdote:

Ira quit college, got himself a backpack and began hitchhiking around the United States.

After he had been gone more than a year he telephoned home. "Hello, Ma, how are you?"

"Just fine, son. When are you coming home? I will fix you some chopped liver and chicken soup and a beautiful potroast. "

"I'm still pretty far away."

"Oh, son!" cried the desperate woman.''Just come home, and I will fix your favorite --

oatmeal cookies."

"I don't like oatmeal cookies," said the boy.

"You don't?" asked the woman.

"Say," said Ira, "is this Century 5-7682?"

"No."

"Then I must have the wrong number."

"Does that mean you are not coming home, boy?" asked the woman.

People are really lonely. Even if it is not your son, at least somebody is coming. You can pretend, you can believe, you can console.

The God that exists in the temples is not a real God. That God that exists in the sky is your projection; the real God is within you. That which you are seeking is not somewhere else, it is in your very seeking. It is in the very seeker -- the sought is in the seeker. You are the truth, alive, in flesh. God is reborn in you, God is incarnated in you, God has taken a body in you. Where are you seeking, where are you going? The Bauls say, "Wait, listen, go within."

They sing,

The God is living in man,

wholly intermingled.

Oh, my unseeing heart,

your eyes are unwise!

How then can you locate

the treasured man?

The unseen man

dwelling in the brilliance of light

hides his identity

from those blinded by stupor.

He is stationed in man,

appearing and vanishing

as the eyelids blink.

They go on singing again and again:

All of us in different ways

think of God

beyond senses and feelings.

And yet it is only

in the essence of loving

that God is found.

On the other shore of the ocean

of one's own self

quivers a drop of fluid

as the origin of all.

The root of all is based in you.

Explore the base

to reach the essence,

release the sensation of taste

on your tongue,

open the doors of feeling

for the Beloved.

Nectar, showering on

the lotus of spontaneity,

lust and love are housed

in one single place,

where sorrows and joys do not exist.

They believe in man. They believe in the tremendous potentiality of man. They believe that man is the shrine of God. They believe in the body. No religion except Tantra has ever endeavored to understand this miraculous happening of consciousness located in the body, of consciousness residing in the body. All the other religions have remained anti-body, anti-life, life-negative, body-negative -- as if the more you destroy your body, the more you become divine, or the more you come close to God. Bauls say, "If you destroy the body, you destroy the very base. If you destroy sensation, you destroy sensitivity. If you destroy your senses, then how will you taste Him, how will you hear Him, how will you see Him? If you destroy your love, how will you love Him? If you destroy your passion, then you will be impotent."

They have a really revolutionary religion to preach to the world. They are very illiterate people, but of great insight. Maybe that's why they are so full of insight, because they are illiterate...because they don't know much about scriptures, and they don't know much about philosophy and metaphysics. Because they cannot read the books they read their own bodies; because they cannot understand conceptualizations they try to find out who they are; because they cannot be very learned -- poor beggars moving from one village to another, singing and dancing, enjoying -- they have come very close to reality.

They are very authentic, uncorrupted by nature, society, education. They are very innocent people. And this is their understanding: that body is divine. Body is sacred, because everything is sacred. But this word 'sacred' is not very good. In the Old Testament, the word 'sacred' comes from a root which means the separate. God is called sacred in the Old Testament because He is a separate reality from this reality.

Bauls would laugh. They will say, "You have gone insane! There is no separate reality.

God is THIS reality." Bauls make the whole reality sacred, holy, divine. Their vision is so vast that even matter is no longer thought of as matter. Even matter, in their vision, becomes luminous. Even body is not just body -- it is of the earth, but it carries the divine within it.

I have heard about a Hassid rabbi: Rabbi Bonum was his name. When he was dying he left this last message for his disciples. He said, "Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into one or the other according to his needs. In his right pocket are to be the words: For my sake was the world created; and in his left: I am nothing but earth."

Beautiful it is. He is saying: Man is nothing but earth -- keep this message in one pocket; and in the other: The whole world is created for me. I am the God of the whole world --

keep this message in the other pocket. Both messages are true because one shows the reality, the other shows the potentiality. One shows the fact, the other shows the truth.

The fact is that we are made of earth; the truth is that we are made in His image. We are both -- God enshrined in earth. We are of the earth, and yet, there is a great passion inside us to rise to the highest sky. Look at the trees -- what are they doing? They come from the earth, they belong to the earth, they are rooted in the earth, and they are trying to reach to the sun, trying to reach to the stars. Rooted in the earth, they move towards heaven. That is the Baul symbol: the tree rooted in the earth, reaching towards heaven; rooted in the body, reaching towards the soul.

Then these two are not contraries; they are both of one process, of one dynamic force.

Just before the Zen Master, Baso, was dying at the age of sixty, he sat up in the lotus posture, and to those gathered around him said, "Don't be misled. Look directly. What is this?" He repeated it loudly, and calmly died.

Let me repeat what he said: "Don't be misled. Look directly. What is this?" He repeated it loudly, then calmly died. THIS conveys the whole meaning; the very directness of it.

There is no THAT. THIS is THAT! This is so vast, there is no need for any that to exist.

This implies all that.

"Don't be misled," he said -- because the greatest misguidance comes from people who separate God from reality, who separate truth from fact, who separate spirit from body, who separate lust from love, who separate mud from the lotus. They are the great misguiders of the world.

They are the poisoners, because once they have made it clear to your mind, conditioned your mind that the lotus can never be of the mud, they have destroyed the very possibility of the lotus. Then you can have a plastic lotus; but a real lotus, never -- because the real lotus is always rooted in the mud. It is part of the mud, it is a flowering of the mud. It is earth come to its glory; it is earth's essence. Once you can see lust and love as one, passion and compassion as one, body and soul as one -- maybe two rhythms of the same energy, two formations of the same force, two concretizations of the same stuff, but the stuff is the same -- if you can see the world and God just like mud and lotus, lust and love, you have the vision of the Baul.

If you don't have that vision, there is every possibility that you will be misled. And the misguiders are very cunning; they are great rationalizers. They can convince you, they can argue for their standpoint.

I have heard....

Mistress Goldfarb walked into a kosher butcher shop, asked the owner for a fresh chicken, and immediately began inspecting it. She lifted the wing, stuck her nose underneath and dedared, "Phew! It smells!" Then she pulled up a leg, sniffed and said,

"Phaugh!" After smelling the hind end, Mistress Goldfarb held her nose and exclaimed,

"It stinks! You call this a fresh chicken?"

"Tell me, lady," said the butcher, "you could stand such an inspection?"

These people who go on condemning the world, condemning the body, condemning everything, just ask them, "Will your God be able to stand all this inspection?" Then nothing is left, because all reality is condemned. Then just a concept, an abstraction is left. Yes, abstraction cannot be condemned because then God will not stink. Then He will not perspire because He will have nothing to do with the earth. Then His hands will not be muddy; then He will be just an abstraction.

Have you noticed the fact that all religions have tried to convince the world that their founders were almost unreal? Jainas say Mahavir never perspired, because how can a man of God perspire? Ordinary humanity perspires, not Mahavir. They say that Mahavir was hit, but blood never came out of his body. What came out of his body?. -- milk. How could blood have come out Mahavir's body, this ordinary humanity? Now they are trying to put Mahavir on such a pedestal that he is bound to become unreal. Then if people come and they say, "We don't believe in your Mahavir, he seems just a myth," they are right.

How can he be real? Reality you deny, you condemn.

The same has happened with all the great Masters of the world: followers try to make them unreal. Followers are always afraid because if the hands of their Masters look dirty....'Dirty' is not a dirty word, remember; it comes from 'dirt'. It simply says earthly, earthy. A gardener works in the garden; his hands are dirty -- not dirty, just dirt is there --

but dirt is good. We are made of dirt, we are made of dust. The word 'human' comes from HUMUS; HUMUS means the earth. The word 'Adam' also comes from ADAMUS; ADAMUS means the earth. "We are made of earth"; that's what Bauls say. We are made of earth but not made only of earth. We are made of earth, but deep inside is enshrined the divine.

You must have seen earthen lamps in India. They are made of earth, but the flame is not of the earth. The lamp is of the earth, the lamp belongs to the earth, and the flame is continuously running upwards, upwards, and upwards, towards the divine. Man is an earthen lamp -- made of earth, yet enshrining the divine flame.

The Bauls are very down-to-earth realists. They have a beauty in their great vision. They are not denyers: they don't say no to the world. Remember, if you say no to the world too much, sooner or later your God will be just an abstraction -- because the very no to the world will go on reducing God's reality. Whatsoever you say no to will be a reduction of your God. By and by, when you have said no to the whole world, God is nothing but a concept, a word: empty, impotent, just a container without any content. The reality is earthly.

The world has been denied and God has been put as if He is an opposite force, as if He is against the world. Now look at the absurdity: these same people go on saying, "God created the world." He cannot be against it, otherwise why should He create it? The creator cannot be against His own creation. The very creation is a proof that God loves it

-- the creation is His appreciation, the creation is His play, the creation is His love, His vocation. God creates the world because He loves it.

Gurdjieff used to say that all the religions are against God because they are against His creation. How can you be for the poet if you are against his poetry? How can you be for the man if you are against his character? How can you be for the painter if you are against his painting? Gurdjieff seems to be very logical, absolutely right: religions seem to be against God. They talk about God, but they are against Him because they are against His world. They teach you to deny the world; but you cannot deny it because you are rooted in it. Then what happens? -- you become pseudo, you become false, you become a pretender, you become double faced. You have one face to show to the world, and another face to live with. This is an emergency measure; man could not do anything else.

What to do? You cannot deny the reality, and you cannot allow it, and you cannot accept it -- because your religions teach you to be against it. So, man has found the golden mean: don't deny it in reality, just go on denying it in words. Show that you deny it, that's all. Pay your respects to God and go on living reality.

Religions have not helped man to become sane. They have helped man to become insane, neurotic, split.

It happened in a church:

A man was confessing. "And how much of that stack of hay did you steal, Kavanagh?"

the priest asked at confession.

"I might just as well confess to the whole stack, your Reverence," said Kavanagh. "I am going after the rest of it tonight."

He's confessing, and yet he's planning to do the same thing again this night. Then why confess? No, he is putting himself at ease because people say 'this is bad' and 'this is sin', and people have made a virtue of confession -- as if confession in itself is a virtue. Unless it is authentic, it is meaningless.

It happened on a road:

A Protestant minister was given a brand new car by his congregation, and he was driving it through downtown Dublin. Suddenly the car in front of him came to a screeching stop, and the minister crashed into it. The furious clergyman climbed out and stormed up to the car in front of him with murder in his eyes. Then he noticed that the driver of the other vehicle was a Catholic priest.

"Your Reverence,'' said the minister through clenched teeth, "were it not for the fact that I am a man of the cloth, I would be tempted to thrash you within an inch of your life."

"Your Reverence," said the priest, sticking his head out the window, "were it not that I too am a man of the cloth, and that it happens to be a Friday, I would be tempted to bite your balls."

This is how the whole effort of all religion has made man just pretentious, hypocritical.

Their reality is something different; their masks are absolutely different. Bauls are against it. They say, "Love the world and find your God through that love, so that there is no division created in you. "

Man had to become a hypocrite; it became just a safety measure. Religions have not left any possibility, any way for him to be real. Now look at the absurdity: they go on teaching 'be true', and their whole teaching creates untruth. On the one hand they teach you to be true, to be authentic, and on the other hand their whole teaching creates such a situation that if you want to be true you will have to commit suicide; you cannot live.

Either commit suicide if you want to be true but then what is the point of being true if you commit suicide? You will not be here to be true. If you want to live, you will have to be untrue. But the fault is not with you; the fault is in the whole program that has been fed into your brain. The whole program is faulty.

Man has to be real, real to reality. Whatsoever the reality, man has to accept it and live it in deep gratitude, and live it with such reverence, respect -- because it is God's reality. It is His temple.

When Moses reached on the mount where he encountered God, he saw a fire burning under a bush. And the bush was not burnt; the bush was as green as ever and flames were coming out of it. He could not believe his eyes. He started moving towards the bush; he was almost magnetized by what he saw. Then suddenly God shouted, "Moses! Take your shoes off! You are walking on holy ground."

I have always loved that parable. But I say to you, not only on Mount Sinai, but wherever you are walking, you are walking on holy ground -- because all is His ground, because all is He.

The Beloved is present in so many forms. Lust is also His, love is also His. Bauls say,

"Don't deny anything because denial is an irreverence. It is a rejection of God."

One day I saw that Mulla Nasrudin was teaching his son to be able to defend himself, so he taught him the finer points of boxing.

I asked him, "But suppose, Mulla, he comes up against a bigger kid who also knows how to box? Then what?"

"I have already thought of that," said Nasrudin, "so I am teaching him how to run too."

On one hand we go on teaching people to be true, and on the other hand, in a subtle way, we go on teaching them not to be true. Each child is made neurotic by the parents, by the society; and we know that we are doing it, and we know that others have done the same to us. Stop doing it to yourself and stop doing it to others. Become alert. Just be real. I emphasize reality more than truth. Because truth has been used by the anti-life people so much, it has wrong associations. Be real. If you are real, one thing will start disappearing from your heart, and that is guilt.

One psychoanalyst and therapist, Shepard, has coined a word:'unguilting'. I like the word.

Real religion is always a process of unguilting; false religions are always a process of guilting. They try to make you more and more guilty: anger is there, lust is there, sex is there, greed is there, attachment is there, hate is there, love is there -- and everything is condemned. You become guilty, you start feeling wrong; you are wrong, you start feeling condemned, you start hating yourself. If you start hating yourself you will never be able to find God, because He is hiding in you.

Unguilt; drop all guilt! Whatsoever you are, whosoever you are, wheresoever you are, God has accepted you. When God has accepted you, why be worried?. -- accept yourself.

Start living your life not through concepts; start living your life through your feelings, emotions, your body. Start living life as if you were never corrupted by any society, as if you have just come new into the world directly from God's hands and nobody has taught you anything. Start living: that life is the real life. Then you listen to your own heart, you listen to your body. You don't repress, you try to understand; and through understanding is transformation.

The Bauls sing the song for today:

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH

WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN

THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

Commit yourself to the earth -- don't be committed to some heaven somewhere else, be committed to the here and now, to the reality that is your surround. Be committed to your humanity, to the earth that is just below you: commit yourself to the earth while on the earth.

Bauls say, "We will think -- when we have moved to heaven and gone to the other world, then we will see. Once you have learned how to be committed to the here and now, there also you will be committed." Because whenever future comes, it always comes as the present. Even the other world will come as this world. Have you seen that you move from one shore of a river to the other, and when you reach closer to the other shore, the other shore becomes this shore, and the first shore that used to be this shore becomes that shore? So wherever you are, you are surrounded by this-ness.

I have heard....

Once Mulla Nasrudin drank too much, and was walking on a road, zig-zagging from this side to that. He was asking people, "Where is the other side of the road?"

Somebody said, "The other side is there."

He went there and he asked people, "Where is the other side of the road?" And they said,

"The other side is there."

He said, "These people seem to be very foolish. When I go to that side, people say the other side is there. When I come here, people say the other side is there. Are they mad?"

The other side is always there. And wherever you are, you are always here; this-ness surrounds you.

Just the other day I quoted one very great saying of Udallak to his son, Swetketu -- ''That art thou"; TATWAMASI SWETKETU. The Bauls would like to make a little change in it. They would say, "THIS art thou" -- not that, because THAT gives a far away idea of God. THIS is more earthly.

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH

WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN

THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

That unattainable man, the ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man; if you want to attain it, then be committed to the here and now. Be committed to the present, be committed to the reality that is available to you in this moment. There is no other commitment.

PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS

AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS

FLOODING YOUR EYES.

They are very real people. They say 'the flowers of feelings'. Ordinary flowers won't do.

You can pick flowers from the trees and go to the God of your temple and put those flowers there, but the God is abstract, the flowers borrowed. In fact, they were more in tune with God on the trees. They were more in tune with God on the trees -- at least they were alive. You have not made them closer to God, you have killed them.

When I used to live in Jabalpur I had a very beautiful garden, and I was a victim, a continuous victim of religious people. Because there used to be two temples just close by, so any worshippers would come, and without asking they would start picking flowers. In that part of the country it is thought that if somebody is picking flowers for his God, it is not good to prevent it. So I had to put up a notice, because if I prevented them they would say, "These are for religious purposes." I had to put up a notice: You can pick for any other purpose, but not for religious purposes -- because, as I see it, the flowers are more surrendered to God on the plants, alive. You will kill them. Your God is bogus and you will kill the flowers. This whole worship is pseudo.

The Bauls say 'your flowers of feelings place at his feet': your love, your compassion, your understanding, your lived experiences, your visions, your taste, your richness.

"Place at his feet your flowers of feelings and the prayers of tears'-' -- because words won't do. How can words become prayers? Words are dead things: they don't mean much. Yes, there is much noise in them, but they don't mean much. Silent tears would be better. So you can find Bauls standing by the side of the road crying, and if you ask,

"What are you doing?" they will say, "Praying." And you don't see any shrine, no temple, not even a tree-god. They are just standing on the road, crying. You will ask, "Where is your God?" and they will say, "Everything! Everywhere He is. Whenever the right moment is available to pray, whenever I feel in a receptive moment, that is the right moment to pray. I'm praying." With tears they pray, with dance they pray, with singing they pray, but their prayer is very alive.

The Bauls say,

With a beggar's humility

I have come to your doors.

No one is ever turned away

from your home of unending stores.

You have all the riches,

and so much have you given

without my demand.

No more do I need any wealth,

O my Master,

give me your feet!

"No more do I need any wealth, O my Master, give me your feet" -- just your feet are enough, so I can cry, so my tears can wash your feet.

PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS

AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS

FLOODING YOUR EYES.

THE MAN YOU SEEK

IS EARTHED IN THE EARTH,

DECEASED WHILE BEING.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK...

The man you seek is earthed, is incarnated in the body. The body is your earth. And the man you seek is here, enshrined in the earth, enshrined in death: the flame of life enshrined in death...so don't be afraid of the earth, and don't be afraid of death; they make it possible for you to live. Life is possible only because of death, soul is possible only because of the body. The tree is possible only because of the roots, so don't be afraid of the roots, and don't be afraid of death. Don't be afraid of the body. Accept this reality.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK...

Live when life is there. Be committed to the earth while on the earth; die when death comes. Move with life and move with death. Dying, don't cling to life. Dying, don't resist death; dying, die. Living, live; dying, die. Let the moment be total. Float with it, be committed to it. When death comes, then don't be sad. Then accept death. Then accept it with such totality that even death cannot kill you.

A total person cannot be killed, and a divided person never lives. A total person is already beyond death. Totality is beyond death. Divided, separated, falling into parts, not together, you just look alive but you are not alive. Dying, die; surrender to death. Now it is God who has come as death.

For the Baul everything is divine -- life, death. Nothing is undivine. The devil does not exist.

You must have heard the parable in Jesus' life that when Mary Magdalene came to see him, she was possessed by seven demons. He touched her and all the seven demons rushed, ran towards the sea and drowned themselves there. Now this parable is very significant. The word 'demon' comes from a root which means division. If you transiate this parable into psychological terms, it simply means Mary Magdalene was divided into seven parts. Jesus touched her, she became total, unpossessed; the demons disappeared.

Demons mean divisions.

The Baul lives an undivided life; he never divides. He is not against anything, he is not for anything; he simply lives. Whatsoever comes in the moment, he lives it. He is surrendered to reality; that is his prayer. Death comes, he yields beautifully, gracefully.

He dies. He cooperates with death. There is not a little bit of resistance, not even a little bit. He is not fighting; he embraces death.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK....

And then he goes on and on. His search is unending. God can never be totally known because He is infinite. We can go on knowing Him more and more and more. We go on coming closer and closer and closer, but God is not a goal. Nobody can say, "I have arrived." If somebody says it, then something is wrong. The Upanishads say the one who says "I have known God", has not known -- because how can you know the eternal? Yes, you can live Him, you can love Him, you can be in Him, but you cannot know Him --

because knowledge will become a definition, knowledge will make Him finite. That which is known totally becomes finite, but God remains unknowable. The more you know, the more doors open, the more mysteries open. Then each death is a closing of the past and a new vision of the future.

DYING WITH DEATH, YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK.... and one goes on seeking. The pilgrimage is eternal.

The Bauls sing,

SHUT THE DOORS ON THE FACE OF LUST,

ATTAIN THE GREATEST, THE UNATTAINABLE MAN,

AND ACT AS THE LOVERS ACT:

MEET THE DEATH BEFORE YOU DIE.

To die with death is possible only if you have met death before you die. Otherwise it will be difficult. You need some acquaintance. If death comes and you are not acquainted with it, it will be difficult for you to surrender. That is what meditation is all about: meeting death before you die; making a few acquaintances, a few encounters with death, so you start loving the beauty of it, so you start falling in love with it, so you can see the divine face even in death. Only a meditator can die without fighting, otherwise fight is unconscious. It is not that you will fight; you will find yourself fighting, and it will be almost impossible for you not to fight. Resistance is unconscious, it is built in.

Meditate or love, because these are the two ways to be acquainted with death. If you love, it is a small death. If you love very deeply, it is a great death. If you are really in love, you are no more the same as you were before. Something has disappeared; you are reborn. Love is a rebirth. So, many times in life, through meditation and love, you should become acquainted with death so that when death really comes you know the guest so well that you are not afraid. You can welcome the guest, you can receive the guest with great love, with great rejoicing, celebration.

The Bauls say about the ADHAR MANUSH, the essential man: Poison and ambrosia

are one and the same to him.

He is dead while wholly living.

If you become acquainted with death through love and meditation, by and by you will see that life and death are two aspects of the same coin; poison and ambrosia are two aspects of the same coin; matter and mind -- two aspects of the same coin; good and bad, all dualities -- two aspects of the same coin. Then you are not worried. Then you don't choose. Then you live a life of choiceless awareness. Then all is the same. If you choose life you have chosen death. If you avoid death you will avoid life -- so there is no point in choosing, and there is no point in avoiding. One simply waits and accepts whatsoever gift comes from God's grace.

This is what Bauls call: He is dead while wholly living. He is absolutely alive and yet, in a sense, dead, because all dualities have come into him and become a synthesis. He is wholly dead and wholly alive. You are neither alive nor dead; you are in a limbo.

The perfect man is both together. In him, all dualities are transcended. He is tremendously enriched because life goes on pouring into him, death also goes on pouring into him. Whatsoever life can give, he accepts; whatsoever death can give, he accepts.

Whatsoever happiness gives he accepts, and whatsoever unhappiness gives he accepts.

And remember, there are treasures hidden in unhappiness also, as there are treasures hidden in happiness. If you have known only treasures of happiness, then you have not known much. If you have known only treasures of joy you have not known much; there are treasures of sadness also. There are a few treasures which only sadness can give to you. There are treasures of laughter and treasures of tears.

The Bauls say that one should be so capable that one allows all dualities to merge and come into oneself. Then only is the essential man revealed. And the essential man is the God of the Bauls.

COMMIT YOURSELF TO THE EARTH

WHILE ON THE EARTH,

MY HEART,

IF YOU WISH TO ATTAIN

THE UNATTAINABLE MAN.

PLACE AT HIS FEET

YOUR FLOWERS OF FEELINGS

AND THE PRAYERS OF TEARS

FLOODING YOUR EYES.

THE MAN YOU SEEK

IS EARTHED

IN THE EARTH,

DECEASED WHILE BEING.

DYING WITH DEATH,

YOU MUST LIVE TO SEEK....

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #8

Chapter title: The body is an abode

28 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606280

ShortTitle:

BELOV108

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

93

mins

The first question:

Question 1

THE BAULS CELEBRATE THEIR LIVES IN THEIR BODIES. COULD YOU SAY

MORE ABOUT THIS? AMERICANS CHERISH THEIR BODIES WITH HEALTH

FOOD, ROLFING, MASSAGE, ETC. BUT I DON'T THINK THIS IS THE SAME AS

THE BAULS. COULD YOU PLEASE COMMENT?

THERE IS A LOT OF DIFFERENCE, and the difference is not only quantitative, it is qualitative. The modern world, the modern mind, knows only the empty temple. It has completely forgotten about the one who is enshrined in the temple. So we go on worshipping the temple, but the God is forgotten. Not knowing anything about the center of life, we go on moving and indulging on the periphery. The American cherishes his body as the body, Baul worships his body as the shrine of God. Body in itself is nothing.

It is luminous because of something that is beyond the body. The glory of the body is not in the body itself -- it is a host -- the glory is because of the guest. If you forget the guest, then it is sheer indulgence. If you remember the guest, then loving the body, celebrating the body is part of worship.

The Baul has a great vision. In that vision body is the lowest part, the most visible part, the most tangible. But it is not the all, it is just the beginning. You have to enter through the body; it is just a gate. It leads to deeper mysteries. The Baul cherishes the body because the body is a vehicle, and through the body one can know that which is embodied, that which is not body itself. The body is the earthen lamp and God is the flame. The lamp is worshipped because of the flame. Once the flame is gone, who worships the body, who celebrates the body? Then it is nothing; then dust unto dust, it returns back to the earth.

The body is throbbing with God, pulsating with God. If you can see that pulsation, then even dust becomes divine. If you cannot see that pulsation, then it is simply dust. Then there is no meaning in it.

The American worship of the body is meaningless. Hence, people go after health food, massage, Rolfing, and in a thousand and one ways they somehow try to create meaning in their lives. But look into their eyes; a great emptiness exists. You can see they have missed. The fragrance is not there, the flower has not flowered. Deep inside, they are just desert-like, lost, not knowing what to do. They go on doing many things for the body, but it is missing the target.

I have heard an anecdote:

Rosenfeld walked into the house with a grin on his face. "You will never guess what a bargain I just got," he told his wife. "I bought four polyester, steel-belted, radial wide-tread, white-walled, heavy-duty tires, on sale yet!"

"Are you nuts?" said Mistress Rosenfeld. "What did you buy tires for? You don't even have a car."

"So," said Rosenfeld, "you buy brassieres, don't you?"

If the center is missing, then you can go on decorating the periphery. It may deceive others, but it cannot fulfill you. It may even deceive you sometimes, because even one's own lie repeated too many times starts appearing like a truth. But it cannot fulfill you, it cannot give contentment. The American is trying hard to enjoy life, but there seems to be no rejoicing. The Baul is not trying at all to enjoy life. There is no effort in it; he simply is enjoying it. And he has nothing to enjoy; he is just a beggar on the road, but he has something of the inner, some glow of the unknown surrounds him. His songs are not only songs; something from the beyond descends in them. When he dances, it is not only that his body is moving; something deeper has moved. He's not trying to enjoy.

Remember it: whenever you are trying to enjoy you will miss. When you are trying to achieve happiness you will miss. The very effort to achieve happiness is absurd --

because happiness is here: you cannot achieve it. Nothing has to be done about it, you have simply to allow it. It is happening, it is all around you; within, without, only happiness is. Nothing else is real. Watch, look deep into the world, into trees, birds, rocks, rivers, into the stars, moon and sun, into people, animals -- look deep: existence is made out of the stuff of happiness, joy, SATCHITANANDA. It is made of bliss. There is nothing to be done about it. Your very doing may be the barrier. Relax and it fulfills you; relax and it rushes into you; relax, it overflows you.

The Baul is relaxed; the American is tense. Tension arises when you are chasing something, relaxation arises when you are allowing something. That's why I say there is a great difference, and the difference is qualitative. It is not a question of quantity -- that Bauls have more than Americans, or Americans have less than the Bauls. No, the Americans have nothing of happiness that the Bauls have; and what the Americans have -

- the misery, the tension, the anguish, the neurosis -- the Bauls don't have. They exist in a totally different dimension.

The dimension of the Baul is here-now; the dimension of the American is somewhere else -- then-there, but never here-now. The American is chasing, chasing hard, trying to get something out of life, trying to squeeze life. Nothing comes out of it because that is not the way. You cannot squeeze life; you have to surrender to it. You cannot conquer life. You have to be so courageous to be defeated by life. Defeat is victory there, and the effort to be victorious is going to prove to be nothing but your final, UTTER failure.

Life cannot be conquered because the part cannot conquer the whole. It is as if a small drop of water is trying to conquer the ocean. Yes, the small drop can fall into the ocean and become the ocean, but it cannot conquer the ocean. In fact, dropping into the ocean, slipping into the ocean is the way to conquer.

Dissolve yourself.

The Baul is one who is dissolved in life. He has said an absolute yes to life. He's not trying to squeeze anything. He simply waits -- passive, alert, available. When God knocks on his door the doors are always open, that's all.

He is not chasing God. How can he chase? Where, in what ways, on what paths can we find Him? Either He is everywhere or He is nowhere. You cannot address your life towards God; you cannot make a target out of Him. He is the total; the total cannot be made a target. Wherever you look, He is. Whatsoever you do, you do in Him. Even when you are miserable, you are miserable in Him. Even in your misery you don't lose Him. He cannot be lost. That which can be lost is not God.

That's why Bauls call God ADHAR MANUSH -- the essential man, the essential consciousness. It is so essential you cannot lose it. It is your very ground, it is your being.

He celebrates his body because he knows that someone who is of the beyond, the stranger, is residing in the body. The body is an abode. It is a temple, but not empty. It is full of light, it is full of life -- God is there. Realizing this, he dances; realizing this, he sings; realizing this, he smiles and cries and weeps, and tears roll down his face. Seeing the miracle: "I have not earned Him, and He is here; I have not even sought Him, and He is here; I have not even begged, and He is here," a great, tremendous gratitude arises. The Baul dances because of it.

Now let me say this: the American is trying to find happiness, hence his overconcern with the body. It is almost an obsession. It has gone beyond the limits of concern, it has become obsessive: continuously thinking about the body, doing this and that, and all sorts of things. He is making an effort to have some contact with happiness through the body.

That is not possible.

The Baul has ATTAINED it. He has already seen it inside himself. He has looked deep into his body, not through massage, not through Rolfing, not through sauna bath. He has looked into it through love and meditation and he has found that it is there, the treasure is there. Hence he worships his body; hence he is careful about his body because the body is carrying the divine.

Have you watched how a woman walks when she is pregnant so careful, because a new life is enshrined in her. Have you seen the transfiguration that comes to the, face of a woman when she becomes pregnant? Her face is luminous, hopeful, throbbing with new life, new possibility. Look at Prafulla; she is pregnant now. Look at her face -- how transfigured, how happy she looks. She is carrying a treasure, a great treasure. A new life is going to be created through her. She walks carefully, moves carefully. A grace has arisen in her because she is pregnant. She is no more alone: her body has become a temple. This is just to make you understand.

What to say about a Baul? God is there. He is pregnant with the divine. He glows, he is luminous, he dances and sings. Possessing nothing, he possesses all; having nothing, he is the richest man in the world. In one way he is just a beggar on the road, and in another way, the emperor. Because of this that has happened inside -- that he has become aware --

he is happy with his body, he takes care of his body, he loves his body. This love is totally different.

And secondly: the American mind is competitive. It is not necessary that you may be really in love with your body; you may be just competing with others. Because others are doing things, you have to do them. The American mind is the most shallow, ambitious mind that has ever existed in the world. It is the very basic worldly mind. That's why the businessman has become the top-most reality in America. Everything else has faded into the background; the businessman, the man who controls money is the top-most reality. In India, BRAHMINS were the top-most reality -- the seekers of God. In Europe the aristocrats were the top-most reality -- well-cultured, educated, alert, in tune with subtle nuances of life: music, art, poetry, sculpture, architecture, classical dances, languages, Greek and Latin. The aristocrat, who had been conditioned for the higher values of life for centuries, was the top-most reality in Europe. In Soviet Russia the proletariat, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the laborer is the top-most reality. In America it is the businessman; VAISHYA, one who controls money.

Money is the most competitive realm. You need not have culture, you need only have money. You need not know anything about music, anything about poetry. You need not know anything about ancient literature, history, religion, philosophy -- no, you need not know. If you have a big bank balance, you are important. That's why I say this is the most shallow mind that has ever existed. And this mind has turned everything into commerce.

This mind is continuously in competition. Even if you purchase a Van Gogh or a Picasso, you don't purchase it for Picasso. You purchase because the neighbors have purchased.

They have a Picasso painting in their drawing room, so how can you afford not to have it? You HAVE to have it. You may not know anything -- you may not know even how to hang it, which side is which. Because it is difficult to know, as far as a Picasso is concerned, whether the picture is hanging upside-down or right-side up. You may not know at all whether it is authentically a Picasso or not. You may not look at it at all, but because others have it and they are talking about Picasso, you have to show your culture.

You simply show your money. So whatsoever is costly becomes significant; whatsoever is costly is thought to be significant.

Money and the neighbors seem to be the only criterion to decide everything: their cars, their houses, their paintings, their decorations. People are having sauna baths in their bathrooms not because they love their bodies, not necessarily, but because it is the 'in'

thing -- everybody has it. If you don't have it you look poor. If everybody has a house in the hills, you have to have it. You may not know how to enjoy the hills; you may be simply bored there. Or you may take your t.v. and your radio there and just listen to the same radio you were listening to at home, and watch the same t.v. program as you were watching at home. What difference does it make where you are sitting, the hills or in your own room? But others have it. A four-car garage is needed; others have it. You may not need four cars.

The American mind is continuously competing with others. The Baul is a non-competitor. He is a drop-out. He says, "I am no more concerned with what others are doing, I am only concerned with what I am. I am not concerned with what others have, I am only concerned with what I have." Once you see the fact, that life can be tremendously blissful without having many things, then who bothers? That's one of the basic differences between other renunciates in India and the Bauls. Bauls are beggars, Jain monks are also beggars, but there is a great difference: Jain monks have the American mind. They have left the world with great effort, they have renounced the world with great effort -- because they think this is the only way to achieve the other world, to earn virtue. But they remain businessmen. The Jains are the top-most businessmen in India. That's why I say they have the American mind. Their sannyasins remain the same.

The Baul's renunciation is totally different. He has not renounced for any other world. He has renounced seeing the foolishness of possessions, seeing the unnecessary burdening.

He has renounced seeing the fact that you can be so happy without many things. Then why carry them? Carrying them creates anxiety, burdens you and destroys your blissfulness. The Jain monk is thinking of another world: his MOKSHA, his heaven. The Baul is not worried about any other world. He says, "This is the only world." But he has come to see the fact, a simple truth: that the more you have, the less you enjoy. Can't you see it? It is a simple arithmetic of life -- the more you have, the less you enjoy, because you don't have any time to enjoy. The whole time is occupied by having. If you have too many things, you are occupied by those many things; your inner space is occupied. To enjoy, you need a little space; to enjoy, you need a little unburdening; to enjoy, you need to forget your possessions and just be.

The Baul loves life, hence he renounces. The Jain monk hates life, hence he renounces.

So sometimes the gesture may appear the same, but it need not be the same. The inner significance may be totally different.

I have heard....

Old Luke and his wife were known as the stingiest couple in the valley. Luke died and a few months later his wife lay dying. She called in a neighbor and said weakly, "Ruthie, bury me in my black silk dress, but before you do, cut the back out and make a new dress out of it. It is good material and I hate to waste it."

"Could not do that," said Ruthie. "When you and Luke walk up them golden stairs, what would them angels say if your dress ain't got a back in it?"

"They won't be looking at me," she said. "I buried Luke without his pants."

The concern is always the other -- Luke will be without pants so everybody will be looking at him. The American concern is with the other. The Baul's concern is simply with himself. The Baul is very selfish; he is not worried about you, and he is not worried about anything that you have or anything that you have done. He is not concerned at all with your biography. He lives on this earth as if he were alone. Of course, he has a tremendous space all around him -- because he lives on this earth as if he were alone. He moves on this earth without being concerned with others' opinions. He lives his life, he is doing his thing, and he is doing his being. Of course, he is happy like a child. His happiness is very simple, innocent. It is not manipulated, it is not manufactured. It is very simple, essential, basic, like a child's.

Have you watched a child just running, shouting, dancing for nothing at all -- because he has nothing? If you ask him, "Why are you so happy?" he will not be able to answer you.

He will really think that you are mad. Is there any need for any cause to be happy? He will simply be shocked that the 'why' can be raised. He will shrug his shoulders and will go on his way and start singing and dancing again. The child has nothing. He is not a prime minister yet, he is not a president of the United States, he is not a Rockefeller. He owns nothing -- maybe a few shells or a few stones that he has collected on the seashore, that's all.

That's all that Bauls own: a few seashells, a few stones -- they will make a MALA of those stones, they will wear the MALA; a little instrument to sing, bells to ring for their innermost God, a small AEKTARA, a one-stringed instrument -- that too one-stringed, because that is enough; a small DUGGI, a small drum -- that's all. A Baul sleeps unconcerned with the world. He lives, moves unconcerned with the world. And his God is always within him so wherever he is is his shrine. He never goes to the temple -- not that he is against it; he never goes to the mosque -- not that he is against it. He has come to the real temple, and now there is no need to go anywhere. He worships, he prays, he loves, but his love, his prayer, his worship, is of the essential reality that he is.

The Baul's life does not end when life ends; the American's life ends when life ends.

When the body ends, the American ends. Hence, the American is very afraid of death.

Because of the fear of death, the American goes on trying any way to prolong his life, sometimes to absurd lengths. Now there are many Americans who are just vegetating in hospitals, in mental asylums. They are not living; they are long since dead. They are just managed by the physicians, medicines, modern equipment. Somehow they go on hanging on.

The fear of death is so tremendous: once gone you are gone forever and nothing will survive -- because the American knows only the body and nothing else. If you know only the body you are going to be very poor. First, you will always be afraid of death, and one who is afraid to die will be afraid to live -- because life and death are so together that if you are afraid to die you will become afraid to live. It is life that brings death, so if you are afraid of death, how can you really love life? The fear will be there. It is life that brings death; you cannot live it totally. If death ends everything, if that is your idea and understanding, then your life will be a life of rushing and chasing. Because death is coming, you cannot be patient. Hence the American mania for speed: everything has to be done fast because death is approaching, so try to manage as many more things as possible before you die. Try to stuff your being with as many experiences as possible before you die, because once you are dead, you are dead.

This creates a great meaninglessness and, of course, anguish, anxiety. If there is nothing which is going to survive the body, then whatsoever you do cannot be very deep. Then whatsoever you do cannot satisfy you. If death is the end and nothing survives, then life cannot have any meaning and significance. Then it is a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.

The Baul knows that he is IN the body, but he is not the body. He loves the body; it is his abode, his house, his home. He is not against the body because it is foolish to be against your own home, but he is not a materialist. He is earthly but not a materialist. He is very realistic, but not a materialist. He knows that dying, nothing dies. Death comes but life continues.

I have heard: The funeral service was over and Desmond, the undertaker, found himself standing beside an elderly gent.

"One of the relatives?" asked the mortician.

"Yes, I am," answered the senior citizen.

"How old are you?"

"Ninety-four."

"Hmm," said Desmond, "hardly pays you to make the trip home."

The whole idea is of bodily life: if you are ninety-four,; finished. Then it hardly pays to go back home; then better to die. What is the point of going back? -- you will have to come again. It hardly pays...if death is the only reality, then whether you are ninety-four or twenty-four, how much difference does it make? Then the difference is of only a few years. Then the very young start feeling old, and the child starts feeling already dead.

Once you understand that this body is the only life, then what is the point of it all? Then why carry it on?

Camus has written that the only basic metaphysical problem for man is suicide. I agree with him. If body is the only reality and there is nothing within you that is beyond body, then of course that is the most important thing to consider, brood, and meditate on. Why not commit suicide? Why wait until ninety-four? And why suffer all sorts of problems and miseries on the way? If one is going to die, then why not die today? Why get up again tomorrow morning? It seems futile.

So on the one hand the American is constantly running from one place to another to somehow grab the experience, somehow not to miss the experience. He is running all around the world, from one town to another, from one country to another, from one hotel to another. He is running from one guru to another, from one church to another, in search, because death is coming. On the one hand a constant, mad chasing, and on the other hand a deep-down apprehension that everything is useless -- because death will end all. So whether you lived a rich life or you lived a poor life, whether you were intelligent or unintelligent, whether you were a great lover or missed, what difference does it make?

Finally death comes, and it equalizes everybody: the wise and the foolish, the sages and the sinners, the enlightened people and the stupid people, all go down into the earth and disappear. So what is the point of it all? Whether it be a Buddha or a Jesus or a Judas; what difference does it make? Jesus dies on the cross, Judas commits suicide the next day

-- both disappear into the earth.

On the other hand there is a fear that you may miss and others may attain, and on the other hand a deep apprehension that even if you get, nothing is got. Even if you arrive, you arrive nowhere because death comes and destroys everything.

The Baul lives in the body, loves his body, celebrates it, but he is not the body. He knows the essential man, the ADHAR MANUSH. He knows that there is something in him which will survive all deaths. He knows that there is something in him which is eternal and time cannot destroy it. This he has come to feel through meditation, love, prayer.

This he has come to feel inside his own being. He is unafraid. He is unafraid of death because he knows what life is. And he is not chasing happiness, because he knows God is sending him millions of opportunities; he has just to allow.

Can't you see the trees are rooted in the ground? They cannot go anywhere, and still they are happy. They cannot chase happiness, certainly; they cannot go and seek happiness.

They are rooted in the ground, they cannot move, but can't you see the happiness? Can't you see their joy when it is raining, their great contentment when winds are running hither and thither? Can't you feel their dance?

Now researchers say that when the gardener comes and the gardener loves the tree, the tree feels happy and rejoices. If you love the tree and you come close to it, it rejoices, as if a great friend is coming close. Now there are scientific instruments to check whether the tree is happy or not. It vibrates in a different rhythm. When the enemy comes -- the woodcutter, the carpenter -- the tree is simply in a turmoil, anxious, afraid. And when you cut one tree, now the scientists say the other trees all cry and weep. It is not only that when you cut one tree that tree weeps and cries; other trees, all the surrounding trees, cry and weep. And not only with trees, but if you kill a bird, all the trees start weeping --

subtle tears, great anguish, agony spreads. But they are rooted; they go nowhere. Still, life comes to them.

This is the understanding of the Baul: that there is no need to go anywhere. Even if you go on sitting under a tree as it happened to Buddha; God himself came to him. He was not going anywhere -- just sitting under his tree.

All comes -- you just create the capacity; all comes -- you just allow it. Life is ready to happen to you. You are creating so many barriers, and the greatest barrier that you can create is chasing. Because of your chasing and running, whenever life comes and knocks at your door she never finds you there. You are always somewhere else. When life reaches there you have moved. You were in Katmandu; when life reaches Katmandu you are in Goa. When you are in Goa and life somehow reaches Goa, you are in Poona. And by the time life reaches Poona, you will be in Philadelphia. So, you go on chasing life and life goes on chasing you, and the meeting never happens.

Be...just be, and wait, and be patient.

The second question:

Question 2

BEFORE COMING TO YOU I USED TO DO A BUDDHIST MEDITATION CALLED

MAITRI BHAVANA. IT STARTS BY SAYING TO ONESELF: MAY I BE WELL, MAY I BE HAPPY, MAY I BE FREE FROM ENMITY, MAY I BE FREE FROM ILL-WILL AGAINST MYSELF. AFTER BEING PENETRATED BY THE FEELING

THESE THOUGHTS GENERATE, THE NEXT PHASE OF THE MEDITATION

CONSISTS IN EXTENDING IT TO OTHERS: TO START WITH, VISUALIZING

PEOPLE YOU LOVE AND GIVING OUT THIS GOOD FEELING TO THEM; THEN

DOING THE SAME WITH PEOPLE YOU LOVE LESS, UNTIL YOU MIGHT EVEN

FEEL COMPASSION FOR PEOPLE YOU HATE.

I USED TO FEEL THIS MEDITATION WAS PRETTY GOOD. IT SOMEHOW

OPENED ME TO OTHERS. AND I STILL FEEL THERE IS SOMETHING REALLY

DEEP AND BASIC TO IT. BUT I DROPPED IT WHEN I CAME TO YOU BECAUSE

I SAW IN IT THE DANGER OF IT BEING SOME KIND OF SELF-HYPNOSIS. I STILL FEEL FOR THIS MEDITATION BUT I AM CONFUSED AS TO WHETHER I SHOULD TAKE IT UP AGAIN, MAYBE WITH A DIFFERENT ATTITUDE, OR

JUST DROP IT. CAN YOU PLEASE SPEAK ABOUT THIS MEDITATION? I WOULD BE GRATEFUL.

MAITRI BHAVANA is one of the most penetrating meditations. You need not be afraid of getting into some sort of self-hypnosis; it is not. In fact, it is a sort of de-hypnosis. It looks like hypnosis because it is the reverse process: you have come to me from your home, you walked the way; now going back you will walk the same way. The only difference will be that now your back will be towards me. The way will be the same, you will be the same, but your face was towards me while you were coming towards me; now your back will be towards me.

Man is already hypnotized. It is not a question now of being hypnotized or not hypnotized. You are already hypnotized. The whole process of society is a sort of hypnosis. Somebody is told that he is a Christian, and it is so continuously repeated that his mind is conditioned and he thinks himself a Christian. Somebody is Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan -- these are all hypnoses. You are already hypnotized. If you think you are miserable, this is a hypnosis. If you think you have too many problems, this is a hypnosis. Whatsoever you are is a sort of hypnosis. The society has given you those ideas, and now you are too full of those ideas and conditionings.

MAITRI BHAVANA is a de-hypnosis: it is an effort to bring back your natural mind; it is an effort to give you back your original face; it is an effort to bring you to the point where you were when you were born and the society had not yet corrupted you. When a child is born he is in MAITRI BHAVANA. MAITRI BHAVANA means a great feeling of friendship, love, compassion. When a child is born, he knows no hatred, he knows only love. Love is intrinsic; hatred he will learn later on. Love is intrinsic; anger he will learn later on. Jealousy, possessiveness, envy, he will learn later on. These will be the things the society will teach: how to be jealous, how to be full of hatred, how to be full of anger or violence. These things will be taught by the society.

When the child is born he is simple love. He has to be so because he has not known anything else. In the mother's womb he has not come across any enemy. He has lived in deep love for nine months, surrounded by love, nourished by love. He knows nobody who is inimical to him. He knows only the mother, he knows the mother's love. When he is born his whole experience is of love, so how can you expect him to know anything about hatred? This love he brings with himself; this is the original face. Then there will be trouble, then there will be many other experiences. He will start distrusting people. A newborn child is simply born with trust.

I have heard....

A man and a little boy entered a barber shop together. After the man received the full treatment -- shave, shampoo, manicure, haircut, etcetera, he placed the boy in the chair.

"I'm going to buy a green tie to wear for the parade. I will be back in a few minutes."

When the boy's haircut was completed and the man still had not returned, the barber said,

"Looks like your daddy has forgotten all about you."

"That was not my daddy," said the boy. "He just walked up, took me by the hand and said, 'Come on, son, we are gonna get a free haircut!' "

Children are trusting, but by and by there will be experiences in which they will be deceived, in which they will get into trouble, in which they will be opposed, in which they will become afraid. By and by they will learn all the tricks of the world. That's what has happened to everybody, more or less.

Now, MAITRI BHAVANA is again creating the same situation: it is a de-hypnosis. It is an effort to drop hatred, anger, jealousy, envy, and come back to the world as you had come in the first place. If you go on doing this meditation, first you start loving yourself -

- because you are closest to you than anybody else. Then you spread your love: your friendship, your compassion, your feeling, your well-wishing, your benediction, your blessings, you spread these to people you love -- friends, lovers. Then, by and by, you spread these to more people that you don't love so much, then people to whom you are indifferent -- you neither love nor hate -- then by and by to people you hate. Slowly you are de-hypnotizing yourself. Slowly you are again creating a womb of love around yourself.

When a Buddha sits, he sits in existence as if the whole existence has again become his mother's womb. There is no enmity. He has attained to his original nature, SWABHAWA. He has come to know the essential man. Now you can even kill him but you cannot destroy his compassion. Even dying, he will remain full of compassion towards you. You can kill him but you cannot destroy his trust. Now he knows that trust is something so basic that once you lose trust you lose all. And if you don't lose trust and everything is lost, nothing is lost. You can take everything from him but you cannot take his trust.

MAITRI BHAVANA is beautiful; you can do it. There is no need to drop it. It will be tremendously helpful. It is a de-structuring.

The ego is made with hate, enmity, struggle. If you want to drop the ego, you will have to create more love feelings. When you love, ego disappears. If you love tremendously and you love unconditionally and you love all, then the ego cannot exist. The ego is the most stupid thing that can happen to a man or to a woman. Once it has happened it is very difficult even to see it because it clouds your eyes.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin and his two friends were talking about their resemblances.

The first friend said, "My face resembles that of Winston Churchill. I have often been mistaken for him."

The second said, "In my case, people think I am President Nixon and ask me for my autograph."

Mulla said, "That's nothing. Well, in my case, I have been mistaken for God Himself."

The first and second asked together, "How?"

Mulla Nasrudin said, "Well, when I was convicted and sent to jail for the fourth time, on seeing me the jailer exclaimed, 'Oh God, you have come again!' "

Once the ego has happened it goes on collecting from everywhere -sense, nonsense -- but it goes on feeling itself important. In love you say, "You are also important, not only I."

When you love somebody, what are you saying? You may be speaking or not, but what is really deep in your heart? You are saying, whether in words or in silence, "You are also important, as much as I am." If love grows deeper, you will say, "You are even more important than me. If there arises a situation where only one can survive, I would like to die for you, and I would like you to survive." The other has become more important. That is the meaning of 'beloved': you are even ready to sacrifice yourself for the one you love.

And if this goes on spreading, as it goes on spreading in MAITRI BHAVANA, then by and by you start disappearing. Many moments will come when you will not be there --

absolutely silent, not any ego at all, no center, just pure space. Buddha says, "When this is attained permanently, and you have become integrated to this pure space, then you are enlightened."

When the ego is lost completely you are enlightened; when you have become so egoless that you cannot even say 'I am', you cannot even say that 'I am a self'. The word Buddha uses for that state is ANATTA: no-being, non-being, no-self. You cannot even utter the word 'I'; the very word becomes profane. In deep love 'I' disappears. You are destructured.

When the child is born he comes without any 'I'; he simply is -- a blank sheet, nothing is written on him. Now the society will start writing, and the society will start narrowing down his consciousness. The society will, by and by, fix a role for him: "This is your role; this is you"; and he will stick to that role. That role will never allow him to be happy because happiness is possible only when you are infinite. When you are narrow, you cannot be happy. Happiness is not a function of narrowness; happiness is a function of infinite space. When you are so spacious that the whole can enter into you, then only can you be happy.

MAITRI BHAVANA can be a tremendous help.

The third question:

Question 3

THE OTHER DAY YOU SAID THAT BELIEF WAS LIKE A LANTERN IN THE

HANDS OF THE BLIND. MAY I KNOW WHAT FAITH IS?

Faith is like eyes: you see yourself. Belief is like a lantern in a blind man's hand: he cannot see, he cannot even use the lighted lantern. Even that lighted lantern will be just a burden to him, to be carried. And if the light goes off he will never become aware of it.

Belief is just believing what others say. It is not faith; faith is knowing. Faith is existential, belief is intellectual.

Buddha says something, or I say something; you listen to me, it appeals to your intellect.

It seems to be convincing to your reason and you start believing in it. Then it will be a lantern in a blind man's hand. But if you listen to me, something appeals to you and you don't stay with the intellectual understanding but you try to make that your own experience..

If I talk about love and Iistening to me you don't cling to my words but you move into love, you take the risk of love, you move into the danger of love, then you will come to an understanding which will be like eyes. If you just listen to me, it is very cheap. Just listening to me you can collect information and you can say, "Yes, I know much about love." Your knowing will be a deception.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin and his wife went to Israel for their holidays and visited a nightclub in Tel Aviv. A comedian was on the bill who did his whole act in Hebrew. Nasrudin's wife sat through the comic's act in silence, but Nasrudin roared with laughter at the end of each joke.

"I did not know you understood Hebrew," she said to the Mulla when the comedian had concluded his act.

"I don't," replied Nasrudin.

"Well, how come you laughed so much at his jokes?"

"Oh," said Nasrudin, "I trusted him."

You can laugh at a joke without understanding it, but what sort of laughter will that be? It will not arise in you; it will be just a painted laughter. It will be just like an exercise of tne lips and the face. It will not have any center in your being. It will not be coming from anywhere -- because you can't understand the joke, you can't understand the language --

how can you laugh? But Mulla says, "I just trusted him. He MUST be saying something beautiful; others are laughing."

Buddha must be saying something beautiful -- so many people believe in him, so you believe. But you have not understood the joke; the laughter is not yours. It will tire you, it will not refresh you. When laughter happens to you it spreads from your very being, from your innermost core of being to the surface. Your whole body ripples with it, pulsates, throbs. It gives you a sort of bath; you are new after it. But if you simply trust, believe, that is not going to help. Many people have just been deceived by their beliefs about many beautiful things. You think you believe in God, you think you believe in soul, you think you believe in this and that, and you have not known anything by your own experience. Then it is better not to believe -- because if you don't believe, if you know that you don't know, there is a possibility that you may seek and search. Your belief will not allow you even to seek and search because you already think you know.

Belief is dangerous. Even to be a sceptic, to be an agnostic, is better. To be true when you don't know is better because this honesty of accepting that you don't know will help. This honesty will grow. One day or other you will start seeking, because nobody can remain in deep ignorance for long. Everybody wants to KNOW. To know is such an intrinsic desire in man that you cannot avoid it if you are true.

Please drop your beliefs so your mind is not clouded with rotten furniture, and you can see what you know and what you don't know.

To know exactly what one knows and what one does not know is the basic step towards knowledge. To be absolutely clear-cut that this is all that you know and this is all that you don't know. You cannot remain in this state. You will start moving towards the unknown, because it is human to seek to know. Every child is born with infinite curiosity; that's why children bore you to death with their questions. They go on asking and asking. They don't bother whether you are interested in answering them or not; they go on asking. You want to keep them quiet but they go on bubbling again and again with new questions.

What is happening? From where do so many questions come? a deep desire to know. But this desire is crippled by your beliefs.

Beliefs give you an appearance as if you know. That 'as if' is very costly.

I have heard....

The nervous passenger was standing with the pilot of the river steamboat as he twisted and turned the wheel.

"Don't you worry none," said the pilot. "I have been running boats on this river so long, I know where every snag and sandbar is."

Just then the boat struck a submerged snag with such force that the whole boat shivered from stem to stern. "There," said the pilot triumphantly, "that is one of them now."

What type of knowledge is this? How is it going to help? Your whole so-called knowledge is only like this; it does not help. It simply gives you a certain egoistic idea that you know, but it doesn't help in life, it does not help you on the path, it does not help you to avoid ditches and pitfalls, it does not help you to move towards the right direction, it does not help you in any way to avoid calamities. Still you go on thinking that you know. Drop this so-called knowledge. This burden is useless; don't carry it on your head anymore. Once you drop it you will feel clean, fresh.

I have heard....

Aldous Huxley had a very great library, his whole life's efforts. He had collected many rare books. And one day it caught fire. The whole library burnt; his many valuable manuscripts were burnt, many valuable art pieces, statues, paintings. He had really been a great seeker of beautiful things; they were all burnt down to zero. He was standing in front of the fire, and nothing could be done. And somebody asked him, "You must be feeling very very sad."

He said, "I am surprised at what I am feeling. I myself am surprised. I am simply feeling very clean, as if the whole burden is gone. I have never felt so clean and unburdened. I am surprised myself, because I was thinking I would feel sorry, I would feel tremendously miserable, for years I would not be able to forget my library and all these things I have collected, but suddenly, seeing everything going into flames, I am feeling very unburdened, weightless, clean."

When you throw your beliefs to the fire, you will feel very clean. It is just a burden. It is not yours; it cannot help.

We know what is right but we do what is wrong. We know anger is bad and we go on being angry again and again. We know what should be done, but we never do it; we do just the opposite. What type of knowledge is this? We know where the door is and we always go on trying to get out through the wall. We stumble and we are knocked down, and we hurt our own being, but again and again we try to get out through the wall. We say we know the door; is it possible that you know the door and still you try to get out through the wall, and you get hurt and hit in the head? It is not possible. You have simply heard about the door. That door exists only in your fantasy, not in reality.

Whatsoever YOU know, you always behave accordingly. That's why Socrates' famous dictum: Knowledge is Virtue -- but it is not your knowledge. He says, "Once one knows something is right, one does it. There is no other way." When you know two plus two is four, you cannot make it five, can you? Try one day -- just sit, write two plus two, and then try to write five. It will be impossible. Even if you write it you will laugh; you are joking, befooling. Once you know two plus two is four, there is no way to forget it. The basic thing is to have known it, and the knowledge should be your experience. Otherwise, you can always find rationalizations.

I have heard a small anecdote.

A small town chorine had theatrical ambitions. Her parents finally agreed to allow her to try New York City, but on two conditions: first, no men were allowed in her apartment, and second, she had to call home at least once a week. "Remember," said her mother, "I will worry about you, so please don't forget to call."

Armed with a letter of introduction, she went to see an agent. He agreed to help her and started squiring her about town. At the end of the week she called home. It was late and mama was perturbed.

"Honey," she said, "you know the bargain we made about no men allowed in your apartment, and I hear a man's voice in the background."

"Oh," said the future actress, "that's my boyfriend. But don't worry," she hastened to assure her mother, "we are in his apartment. Let HIS mother worry.''

We can always find ways, rationalizations to avoid that which we want to avoid, and to do that which we want to do. And if your knowledge is just intellectual, just verbal, then it is not going to help in actual life. Actual life needs actual knowledge. If you want to write a book, it will be okay. If you want to give a lecture, it will be okay. If you want to discuss with your friends, it will be okay -- because a verbal knowledge is enough for writing a book, for giving a lecture, for discussing with your friends. But if you want to translate it into your life, it will be impossible. Life does not believe in that which you have accumulated very cheaply. Life believes only in that which has been earned the hard way.

I have heard about a Sufi mystic, Bayazid. He meditated for years, and it is said God was very, very compassionate towards him. He had made such great effort; arduous was his search, intense was his prayer. So God sent an angel, and the angel came and said to Bayazid, "God is happy, and whatsoever you want He is ready to give to you. You just ask. Your days of seeking and inquiry are finished."

But Bayazid said, "But no, that is not the way. I don't want to get so cheaply because I know well...in life also I was deceived because of this cheap possibility. Now you cannot deceive me. Tell God that I will earn the hard way."

But the angel said, "You are foolish! He is ready to burn the innermost light of your being. Just ask!"

But Bayazid said, "Thank you, and give Him also my thanks, but I am not going to do that because it will be borrowed; even if borrowed from God, it will be borrowed. Let me seek and search."

The angel said, "God will feel offended. It has never happened; His offer has to be accepted."

Then Bayazid looked around -- he had a small lamp and the oil was almost finished. He said, "If He really wants to light something, tell Him to light my lamp because the oil is almost finished and the night is dark, and I have still to meditate. Just this will do. You just tell Him to give me one blessing: that my oil should never finish so I can meditate the whole night."

That's all he asked for, and it is said that God was very happy and He said, "This is the right way." If he had asked he would have missed; if he had accepted he would have missed -- because whatsoever comes to you without your earning it is never yours. You possess only that which you have lived. You possess only that which YOU have known.

You possess only that which you have earned.

A young boy had been taking swimming lessons. He rushed home one afternoon and breathlessly announced that he had gone off the diving board by himself.

"That's fine, Johnny," said his father. "But I thought you told me you went off the board last week."

"I know," said the boy, "but last week somebody shoved."

Going by yourself is really totally different. When somebody shoves you, it is qualitatively different. When I give something to you, it is not the same as when you earn it. Remember it: many will be the temptations on the way. When things are available very cheaply, avoid them. Always remember that one has to go the hard way, because that is the only way. All shortcuts are false, and belief is a shortcut. Faith is a hard way.

The last question:

Question 4

MOST BELOVED OSHO, THIS MORNING I SIT BEFORE YOU FLOODED WITH

ORGASM, LIGHT AND FEATHERY, DEEP AND OVERWHELMING. I HARDLY

NOTICE YOU. THE INNER IS MORE, BECAUSE OF YOU. PARAS.

Good, tremendously good. That's how it should be. A Baul is born in Paras, and I hope that a Baul will be born in each of you. Each moment God is available. Just allow Him, don't prevent Him, don't bar the way. Just get out of your own way, and this will start happening to each and everybody.

"This morning I sit before you flooded with orgasm, light and feathery, deep and overwhelming. I hardly notice you. The inner is more, because of you."

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #9

Chapter title: It is always god who loves

29 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606290

ShortTitle:

BELOV109

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

94

mins

WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE

OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

THE OWL STARES AT THE SKY,

SITTING BLIND

TO THE RAYS OF THE SUN.

MAN IS A QUEST, AN ETERNAL INQUIRY, A PERENNIAL QUESTION. The quest is for the energy that holds existence together -- call it God, call it truth, or whatsoever you like to call it. Who holds this infinite existence together? What is the center of it all, the core of it all?

Science, philosophy, religion, all ask the same question. Their answers may differ but their question is the same. Religions call it God. Scientists will not agree with the word

'God'; it looks too personal. It looks too anthropomorphic, man-oriented. They call it electricity, magnetism. energy fields; but only the name is different. God is an energy field.

Philosophers go on giving different names to it: the ultimate stratum, the absolute, the BRAHMA. From Thales to Bertrand Russell, they have supplied many answers.

Sometimes some philosopher says it is water, liquidity; sometimes somebody else says it is fire -- but the quest has been eternal. What holds this infinite universe together?

Bauls call it love, and to me, their answer seems to be most pertinent. It is neither personal nor impersonal. It has something of God in it, and something of magnetism in it also; something of the divine, and something of the earth.

Love has two faces. It is Janus-like: one face looks towards the earth, the other face looks towards the sky. It is the greatest synthesis conceivable: it comes out of lust and moves towards prayer; it comes out of mud and becomes a lotus facing the sun.

This word 'love' has to be understood. What do we mean by the word 'love'? One thing we certainly all mean is that it has a pull in it, great energy. When you fall in love, it is not that you do something -- you are pulled in. It has a magnetic force. You gravitate towards the object of your love, you gravitate almost helplessly, you gravitate even against your will. It has a pull, a magnetic field -- that's why we call it 'falling in love'.

Who wants to fall? -- but who can avoid it? When the energy calls you, suddenly you are no more your old self. Something bigger than you is pulling you, something greater than you is invoking you. The challenge is such that one simply runs into it headlong.

So the first thing to understand is: love is a great energy pull. The second thing: whenever you fall in love, suddenly you are no longer ordinary; something miraculously changes in your consciousness. Love transforms you. Falling in love, a violent man becomes kind and tender. A murderer can become so compassionate, it is almost impossible to believe.

Love is miraculous -- it transforms the baser metal into gold. Have you watched people's faces and eyes when they fall in love? -- you cannot believe that they are the same persons. When love takes possession of their souls they are transfigured, transported into another dimension; and suddenly...and with no effort of their own, as if they are caught in the net of God. Love transforms the base into the higher, transforms earth into sky, transforms the human into the divine.

These two things: first, love is an energy field -- scientists will agree -- second, love is a transforming force; it helps you to become weightless, puts you on your wings. You can move towards the beyond. Religious thinkers will agree that love is both God and electricity; love is divine energy. Bauls have chosen love because this is the most significant experience in man's life. Whether you are religious or not makes no difference; love remains the central experience of human life. It is the most common and the most uncommon. It happens to everybody, more or less, and whenever it happens it transmutes you. It is common and uncommon. It is the bridge between you and the ultimate.

Remember the three L's: life, love, light.

Life is given to you; you are alive. Light is present, but you have to make a bridge between life and light. That bridge is love. With these three L's you can make a total way of life, a way of being, a new way of being.

Bauls are not philosophers. They are more like poets -- they sing, they dance, they don't philosophize. In fact, they are almost anti-philosophical, because they have come to see that whenever a man becomes too head-oriented he becomes incapable of love -- and love is going to be the bridge. A man who becomes too head-oriented goes farther away from the heart, and the heart is the center which responds to the call of love.

A head-oriented man is cut off from the universe. He lives in the universe, but lives as if in a deep stupor. He lives in the universe, but lives as a tree that has lost its roots. He lives only for name's sake: the sap of life is no more flowing. He has lost contact; he's unconnected. That's what alienation is.

The modern man feels too alienated, feels too much an outsider, does not feel at home, at ease with life, existence, the world. He feels almost as if he has been thrown into it, and it is a curse rather than a blessing.

Why has this happened? -- too much head orientation, too much training of the head has cut all the roots from the heart. There are many people -- I have observed thousands of people -- who don't know what the heart is; they bypass. The heart is throbbing but the energy no longer moves via it. They bypass it; they go directly to the head. Even when they love, they THINK that they love. Even when they feel, they THINK that they feel.

Even feeling is via thinking. Of course, it has to be false.

Thinking is the great falsifier, because thinking is man's effort to understand the universe, and love is God's effort to understand man. Let me repeat it: when you try to understand God, or existence, or truth, it is your effort -- a part, a very tiny part trying to grasp the whole, the infinite whole. The effort is bound to be doomed. It's impossible. It cannot happen in the nature of things. Love is when God has found you. Love is when God's hand is searching for you, groping for you. Love is when you are allowing God to find you. Hence, you cannot manage love. You can manage logic; you can be very very efficient as far as logic is concerned. The moment love arises, you become absolutely inefficient. Then you don't know where you are, then you don't know what you are doing, then you don't know where you are moving, then you don't know any control. Logic is controlled; love is uncontrolled. Logic is manipulated; love is a happening. Logic gives you a feeling that you are somebody; love gives you a feeling that you are nobody.

Love arises in you when you allow God to enter you. When you are trying on your own, then the whole effort is absurd.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin sidled up to a guest at one of his daughter's social evenings. He had heard him addressed as doctor, and now he said, diffidently, "Doctor, may I ask a question?"

"Certainly," he said.

"Lately," said Mulla Nasrudin, "I have been having a funny pain right here under the heart..."

The guest interrupted uncomfortably and said, "I am terribly sorry, Mulla, but the truth is I am a Doctor of Philosophy."

"Oh," said Nasrudin, "I'm sorry." He turned away, but then, overcome with curiosity, he turned back. "Just one more question, doctor. Tell me, what kind of disease is philosophy?"

Yes, philosophy is a kind of disease -- and not just an ordinary kind of disease; it is more cancerous than cancer, more dangerous than all the diseases put together. A disease can cut only one root. Even all the diseases put together cannot cut you completely from existence. Philosophy cuts you, uproots you utterly.

What is disease? When one connection is loose with existence, you feel ill. When the head is unconnected, then there is headache. When the stomach is unconnected, then there is stomachache. Somewhere, you have become autonomous; you are no more in the ocean of the interdependence of existence. There exists disease. Disease has a certain autonomy, independence. When you have a cancerous growth inside you, that growth becomes a universe unto itself. It is unconnected with existence.

An ill person is one who is unconnected in many ways. When a certain disease becomes chronic, it simply means that that root is completely destroyed; even the possibility to replant it in the earth no longer exists. You will have to remain alive only partially; a part of you will remain dead. Somebody is paralyzed -- what does it mean? The body has lost contact with the universal energy. Now it is almost a dead thing -- hanging, unconnected.

The sap of life no longer flows in it.

If this is what disease is, then philosophy IS really the greatest disease there can be --

because it disconnects you utterly; and not only that, it disconnects you with such logic that you never become aware that you are ill. It disconnects you with such justifications and rationalizations that you never become aware that you are missing. It is a very self-justificatory illness; it goes on supporting itself. Philosophy means that a man has become completely head-oriented. He looks towards existence through the eyes of logic and not through the eyes of love.

When you look through the eyes of logic, you will know a few things, but those few things will not give you the vision of reality. They will be only abstractions.

When you look through love, then you know the reality as it is. Love is falling with the universe, together; falling in a togetherness. It is orgasmic: you are streaming, and the existence has always been streaming, and both streamings meet and mingle and are infused in each other. A higher synthesis arises: the part is meeting in the whole and the whole is meeting in the part. Then something arises which is more than the part and the whole together -- that's what love is. 'Love' is one of the most significant words in human languages, because love is existential language.

But somehow, from the very childhood, we are being crippled. Our roots with the heart are cut. We are forced towards the head and we are not allowed to move towards the heart. It is something humanity has suffered for long, a calamity -- that man has not yet become capable of living with love.

There are reasons.

Love is risky. To love is to move into danger -- because you cannot control it, it is not safe. It is not within your hands. It is unpredictable: where it will lead nobody knows.

Whether it will lead anywhere, that too nobody knows. One is moving into utter darkness but roots grow only in darkness. If the roots of a tree become afraid of darkness and don't move underground, the tree will die. They have to move into darkness. They have to find their way towards the deepest layers of the earth where they can find sources of water, nourishment.

The heart is the darkest part of your being. It is like a dark night. It is your very womb, it is your earth. So people are afraid to move into darkness; they would like to remain in light. At least you can see where you are and what is going to happen. You are safe, secure. When you move in love, you cannot calculate the possibilities, you cannot calculate the results. You cannot be result-oriented. For love, future does not exist, only the present exists. You can be in this moment but you cannot think anything about the next moment. No planning is possible in love.

The society, civilization, culture, church, all force a small child to be more logical. They try to focus his energies in the head. Once the energies are focused in the head, it becomes very difficult to fall towards the heart. In fact, every child is born with great love energy. The child is born out of love energy. The child is full of love, trust. Have you looked into the eyes of a small child? -- how trusting. The child can trust anything: the child can play with a snake, the child can go with anybody. The child can move so close to a fire that it can become dangerous -- because the child has not yet learned how to doubt. So we teach doubt, we teach scepticism, we teach logic. These seem to be measures for survival. We teach fear, we teach caution, we teach prudence, and all these together kill the possibility of love.

I have heard....

Doctor Abrams was called to Mulla Nasrudin's shop where the Mulla was Iying unconscious. Doctor Abrams worked on him for a long time and finally revived him.

"How did you happen to drink that stuff, Nasrudin?" he asked the Mulla. "Didn't you see the label on the bottle? It said 'poison'."

Nasrudin said, "Yes Doctor, but I didn't believe it."

Doctor Abrams asked, "Why not?"

Nasrudin said, "Because whenever I believe someone, I am deceived."

By and by people learn how not to believe, how not to trust, how to become chronic doubters. And this happens so slowly, in such small doses that you are never alert to what is happening to you. By the time it has happened, it is too late. This is what people call experience. They call a person experienced if he has lost his contact with his heart: they say that he is a very experienced man, very clever, very cunning; nobody can deceive him.

Maybe nobody can deceive him, but he has deceived himself. He has lost all that was worthy; he has lost all. And what is he saying?

Then a very peculiar phenomenon happens: people cannot love persons because persons can be deceptive; they start loving things. Because there is a great need to love, they go on finding substitutes: somebody loves his house, somebody loves his car, somebody loves his clothes, somebody loves money. Of course, the house cannot deceive you, the love is not risky. You can love the car -- a car is more reliable than a real person. You can love money -- money is dead; it is always under your control. Why do so many people love things rather than persons?. -- and even if they sometimes love a person, they try to reduce the person to being a thing.

If you love a woman, you are immediately ready to reduce her to being your wife, that is, you are ready to reduce her to a certain role: the role of a wife -- which is more predictable than the reality of a beloved. If you love a man you are ready to possess him like a thing. You would like him to be your husband, because a lover is more liquid; one never knows.... A husband seems to be more solid. At least the law is there, the court is there, the police is there, the state government is there to give a certain solidity to the husband. A lover seems to be like a dream: not so substantial. Immediately people fall in love, they are ready to get married -- such fear of love! And whomsoever we love, we start trying to control. That's the conflict that goes on between wives and husbands, mothers and sons, brothers and sisters, friends -- who is going to possess whom? That means: who is going to define whom, who is going to reduce-whom to a thing? Who will be the master and who will be the slave?

Mulla Nasrudin sat moodily over his drink and his friend said, "You look pretty down in the mouth, Mulla. What is the matter?"

Nasrudin said, "My psychiatrist says I am in love with my umbrella, and that is the source of my troubles."

"In love with your umbrella?"

"Yes, is not that ridiculous? Ah, I like and respect my umbrella, and enjoy its company, but love?"

But what else is love? If you enjoy the company of your umbrella, and if you respect and like your umbrella, what else is love? Love is respect, tremendous respect; love is a deep liking; and love is sheer joy in the presence of the one you love. What else is love? But people love things -- a deep need is somehow fulfilled by substitutes.

Remember, the first calamity is that one becomes head-oriented. The second calamity is that one starts substituting love needs with things. Then you are lost, lost in the desert land. Then you will never reach to the ocean. Then you will simply dissipate and evaporate. Then your whole life will be a sheer wastage.

The moment you become aware that this is what is happening, turn the tide: make all efforts to again contact the heart. That's what Bauls call love -- to make contact with the heart again to undo that which has been done to you by the society. Undoing that which has been done by the society is true religion, undoing all nonsense that has been done by your well-wishers. They may be thinking that they are helping you, and they may not be knowingly destroying you; they may themselves be victims of their parents and their society. I'm not saying anything against them. Great compassion is needed for them.

Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples that a man only becomes religious when he is able to forgive his parents.

Forgive? Yes, that's how it is. It is very difficult. The moment you become aware, it is very difficult, almost impossible to forgive your parents because they have done so many things to you -- unknowingly of course, behaving unconsciously of course, but still they have done. They have destroyed your love and they have handed you dead logic. They have destroyed your intelligence and they have given you, as a substitute, intellect. They have destroyed your life and aliveness, and they have given you a fixed pattern to live, a plan to live by. They have destroyed your direction and have given you a destination.

They have destroyed your celebration and they have made you commodities in the marketplace. It is very difficult to forgive them, hence all the old traditions say: respect your parents.

It is difficult to forgive them; it is very very difficult to respect them. But if you understand, you will forgive them. You will say the same as Jesus said on the cross:

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Yes, exactly those are the words.

And everybody is on the cross -- and the cross is not prepared by your enemies, but by your parents, by your society...and everybody is crucified.

The head has become so dominant that it does not allow any spontaneity. It has become dictatorial. It does not allow the heart even to utter a single word; it has forced the heart to be completely quiet. You will have to listen again to the heart. You will have to start dropping logic a little. You will have to take a few risks. You will have to live dangerously. You will have to move towards the unknown, and you will have to love persons and not things. You will have to be ready not to possess anybody, because the moment you possess the person is not there. Only a thing can be possessed.

Try to understand it as deeply as possible: the moment you fall in love with somebody, immediately your whole conditioning starts trying to possess him. Resist that temptation; the devil is tempting you -- the devil of the society, the devil of civilization and the church. The devil stands in a very religious garb, and the devil goes on quoting scriptures.

Beware!

Whenever you start possessing you are killing love. So either you can possess the person or you can love the person; both together are not possible. So this is the alternative: a man who wants to become a Baul, a lover, has to drop all possessiveness. Resist all temptation to being possessive because that temptation comes from the ego.

Once Mulla Nasrudin said to me, "It is remarkable,,sir, how congenial we are. After all, we have practically nothing in common."

"Oh yes we have." I replied, "We have one very important thing in common: I think you are wonderful and you agree with me."

The ego goes on agreeing for wrong things, because the ego can exist only with the wrong. It feeds on the wrong. So whenever you feel that your ego is fulfilled, beware! --

you have eaten something wrong, you have swallowed something wrong. Whenever you feel egoless, relax -- now you have eaten the right, something which is in tune with your nature.

Ego arises out of disturbance, but ego has its own logic. It goes on saying that you are important, that you are the most important man in the world, and you have to prove it.

And we are all trying to do this one way or the other -- somebody by possessing more money, somebody by possessing a beautiful woman, somebody by possessing prestige, power, somebody by becoming a president or a premier, somebody by becoming an artist, a poet, somebody by becoming a MAHATMA -- but we are all trying in some way or other to prove our innermost fantasy, that we are the most important person in the world.

Then you cannot be a lover.

Ambition is poison for love. A lover is not in any need to prove. In fact, he knows that he is loved, and that's enough.

Try to diagnose it very carefully. When you are not loved -- and how can you be loved if you don't love? -- when you are not loved and you don't love, suddenly a great need arises to perform, to do something, to show the world that you are important, that you are needed. There is a great need to be needed. You feel futile, impotent, useless, if you are not needed. The need in itself is not wrong; it is a love need to be needed. If a woman loves you, you are fulfilled -- somebody needs you, you are significant. Then you don't bother about the crowd. You don't go into the marketplace and shout, "I am important!"

Then you are not ambitious; you don't collect money like an obsession. If somebody loves you, in that love you are dignified, in that love you become a sovereign. Love makes you an emperor, a sovereign. Love fulfills you so deeply and so greatly; then there is no need to perform or do anything. Ego simply does not exist with love. But if that need is unfulfilled, then you will try to fulfill it somehow: you would like to become a very famous man so many people need you.

But remember, to be loved by one and to be needed by millions is not the same. Even a single person's love, even a single glance of love is enough; and you can collect millions of people and they can all look towards you, but that will not be satisfying. That's what politics is, and what the politician is trying to do.

I have never come across a politician whose heart is functioning. The heart is totally dead

-- but the need is there to be loved, to be needed, somebody to look to. Where to fulfill it?

-- he gathers crowds. Through the crowds he tries somehow to fulfill the love need. But that crowd does not love him, that crowd is not bothered by him; that crowd is after its own needs. Because he's in power he seems to be important. They pay their respects to the chair, and the chairman is deceived. Once the chairman is not in the chair, they don't bother about him.

Have you ever observed that once a politician is out of power he is simply forgotten?

Nobody remembers him. He may live for thirty or forty years; nobody will know about him. By and by, he will recede into darkness. Only once, when he dies, will there be a small notice in the newspapers -- that the ex-president or ex-premier is dead.

The man who ruled over Russia before Lenin, Kerensky, lived for fifty years after it like a small New York grocer, and nobody knew about him. He was the Prime Minister of Russia, the most important man -- the revolution happened and he was thrown out of power. He escaped. For fifty years he lived. Only when he died did people become aware that Kerensky had been alive for all those fifty years.

Power cannot fulfill a love need. You can possess great kingdoms -- that will not fulfill your love need. But if you possess one heart which throbs in tune with you, then you are fulfilled.

The Bauls sing,

O my heart,

let us go then on a promenade

to the grove of Krishna's love.

The breeze of joy

will calm your life.

In that woodland eternally bloom

five scented flowers --

their fragrance will enchant

your life and soul,

giving them sovereign dignity.

Enter the temple of love, and you always enter it as a sovereign. Enter into the world, the world of things, and you always enter as a beggar. The world reduces everybody to a beggar; love raises everybody to an emperor. Love is an alchemical phenomenon. Even if one heart has flowed towards you, God has reached through that heart. Somebody looked towards you with love; in that moment God looked at you. Watch the eye full of love, the hand full of love, and you will find God throbbing there -- because it is always God who loves. To love is to become God, to allow-love to happen is to become God.

Whenever you fall from the peak of love, then it is something else: you become possessive; you become a husband and a wife. Then you are no more in the grip of God.

But whenever you reach to the peak -- maybe for a single moment sometimes it happens: when two persons are in absolute harmony, no barrier, no fence even exists between them; they are not throbbing as two centers, they become one center -- in that moment, God happens. When love happens, God happens. When God descends on earth, His name is love.

Each fruit is open to two frontiers

and born on a pair of trees.

Listen carefully...

Each fruit is open to two frontiers

and born on a pair of trees.

Have you ever seen one fruit born on a pair of trees? One fruit is born on one tree; two trees are not needed for one fruit. Love is that fruit which is born on two trees, never on one tree.

Each fruit is open to two frontiers

and born on a pair of trees.

Deep meditation reveals the knowledge

beyond any doubt.

When you love somebody and somebody loves you, then there comes a moment when these two trees are not two trees; then it becomes one tree. That tree is the tree of love, and on that tree of love is fulfillment, is fruition, is flowering.

The two who are wholly present

can bring forth a fruit

to offer the Master;

they are conscious and fruitful.

Let me repeat:

The two who are wholly present...

In love, two persons are simply present to each other, doing nothing. Love knows nothing of doing. When two persons are deep in love, they are simply present to each other. They face each other, just present, as if two lamps are burning, illuminating each other, or two mirrors are facing each other, reflecting each other in millionfold ways. Two lovers are just in each other's presence, saturated by the other, penetrated by the other. In that state a moment arises -- the climax, the peak moment -- when the fruit is born: when they are no more two, when all distinction is lost, when the egos don't exist, when they have become pure presences. Then, the fruit is born.

The two who are wholly present

can bring forth a fruit

to offer the Master;

... and that is the fruit to be offered to the Master, to God.

... they are conscious and fruitful.

In that peak of love, they are totally conscious and fruitful. Remember, love is not something like unconsciousness. Ordinarily, when you are in love, you become more unconscious. Then it is lust. Then it is the very lowest denominator. Then it is the lowest rung of the ladder. Of course it belongs to the ladder, but it is the lowest rung. At the highest rung there is tremendous consciousness -- and if you cannot be conscious in the presence of your lover, where else are you going to be conscious? If the presence of your lover is not worth being conscious, then where else will you find the treasure to be conscious? If you love the person, if you really love, a peak of consciousness arises. You would just like to observe, to see your beloved or your lover; you would like to be with a pure presence. And they help each other to be more and more conscious -- because when the one becomes more conscious, it is immediately reflected in the other. The other becomes more conscious, and it works like a chain reaction. Higher and higher they go, and then there comes a moment when the fruit is born; that fruit is called love. That love you can offer to the Master of the world. No other fruit will do.

They are conscious and fruitful....

And in that peak of consciousness they are fruitful. Otherwise, people live a fruitless life.

People live an unfruitful life, people live without fruition. Nothing is born out of them; they simply live and die. There is no meaning and no significance in their lives. The significance arises only when two trees have become one tree, and when on that one tree the fruit of love is born.

....conscious and fruitful.

The well never sinks

into the water.

The Bauls say, "You see? Go and see a well full of water -- but it never sinks into the water.'' This is very mysterious. When you are absolutely drowned in oneness, for the first time you are. You never sink into it. You are merged, all boundaries lost, but then happens a paradox: the paradox of being lost completely and yet being, for the first time, yourself. When you are lost completely, you are, for the first time, your reality. You are full, surrounded by tremendous force, but you are not sunk in it. You are one with it, but for the first time your flame burns. Without any ego, your being is revealed.

Bauls sing,

Let ripeness appear in its own time

for the full flavor of the fruit.

A green jackfruit

can be softened by blows

but not made sweet.

And they say, this love you cannot force. There is no way to manipulate it. There is nothing that you can do about it. All that you can do is to allow.

Let ripeness appear in its own time...

It will come in its own time. What do you do when you watch a tree, an apple tree? What do you do? You don't pull the fruits, you don't force, you just watch. You take care, every care that is needed -- you protect the tree, you water the tree, you provide fertilizers and manure. Everything that you can do, you do; but what can you do to force? That is just helping the tree to ripen in its own time. Then the fruit comes; then you watch. One day it is ripe, sweet.

Let ripeness appear in its own time..

... so Bauls are not for any sort of Yoga. They are against Yoga. That's why I told you in the beginning that they belong to the tradition of Tantra, not to the tradition of Veda, Yoga -- no. In fact, the Bauls' tradition is more ancient than the tradition of Veda and Yoga.

Historians say that Tantra is pre-Aryan. When the Aryans came to India, Tantra was in existence here, and Shiva was their God. When the Aryans came to India they overran India, they defeated the people who were living here. Their religion was crushed, their scriptures destroyed, and by and by even their Gods were absorbed into the pantheon of the Aryans. Shiva was their God. It took very long for him to be absorbed. He was alien, but he had to be absorbed because he was very influential. And when all his followers were absorbed into the world of the Aryans, they brought their Gods also.

Tantra belongs to Shiva, and the Baul is an offshoot of the same tree. Tantra says,

"Everything happens in its own right time, you need not force it. Your force will not help.

It will be a disturbance. It may destroy, but it can never be creative. One has to be very effortless, spontaneous. One has to be in a let-go."

Let ripeness appear

in its own time

for the full flavor of the fruit.

A green jackfruit

can be softened by blows

but not made sweet.

The Bauls say, "We are not searching for liberation." A lover, a seeker of love, never talks in terms of liberation. He says, "It is tremendously beautiful. All that is, is already beautiful. There is no need to be liberated from it. All that is needed is how to be in it, totally absorbed." The world is not a bondage for the Baul, and there is no need to struggle against it. In fact, the Baul says, "We love the bondage of the world because these fetters are also created by you, my Lord.

The heart, a lotus,

continue flowering;

age after age, you are bound to it

and so am I...

The Baul says to his God,

You are bound to it

and so am I --

and with no escape.

The lotus blossoms,

blossoms,

blossoms;

there is no end to it,

but all these lotuses

have one type of honey

with one particular taste.

The bee is avid and unable to leave,

so you are bound and I am bound.

Where is freedom then?

It is a great play of hide and seek between the energy that God is and the energy that you are. It is the same energy in a great hide and seek. It is a great play. There is no need to end it. Let lotuses flower and blossom forever and ever. The world is beautiful: that is the basic Tantra attitude. Yoga says: one needs to be liberated. Tantra says: for what, from whom? The bondage is beautiful because it is God's. Yoga will say: drop, by and by, all your attachments; and finally, one has to go beyond love. The Bauls say: all attachments are beautiful. Go deeper into them so you don't remain with the periphery but you reach to the center. On the periphery is attachment, at the center is love.

The bee is avid and unable to leave,

so you are bound and I am bound.

Where is freedom then?

For the Baul, life is not a serious thing. It is fun, it is laughter, it is joy. So you cannot find anything like the seriousness of a church-goer, or the long faces of so-called religious people in the world of the Bauls. They love laughter, they love fun. They enjoy small things with tremendous respect. Ordinarily, religions are very long-faced, very sombre, serious, because they have to be -- they are against life.

I have heard....

One friend of Mulla Nasrudin was amazed to see that the Mulla had hitched his prize-winning possession, his prize-winning bull, to the plough, and was guiding it across his fields.

He said, "Mulla, have you gone crazy? That bull is worth twenty-five thousand rupees!

Why are you letting him pull a plough?"

"That bull," said the Mulla grimly,' has got to learn that life is not all play."

There are people who become disturbed the moment you laugh; they would like to teach you that life is not all play. These people are themselves ill. They have missed life and they would not like anybody else to enjoy it. The priests are ill people; they would not like you to enjoy. They have missed; they are jealous of you. And they have staked too much: their egos are fulfilled only because they have been against life. They have chosen ego against life. If you choose life they will be against you. They will go on curbing you, they will go on condemning you, they will go on creating guilt in you. No greater calamity, not a bigger calamity can happen to humanity as has happened through religions. The calamity is that they have created a guilty conscience. So whenever you are enjoying, deep down somewhere you start feeling guilty, as if you are doing something wrong. Whenever you are healthy, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you are dancing, you start feeling something is wrong. Whenever you laugh, you can never laugh totally because deep down something goes on pulling you back: "What are you doing?" From the very childhood, whenever you were happy there was somebody to teach you that life is not all play: "Stop laughing! Be serious! When will you be mature?

Be grown up! Enough is enough! Drop all this nonsense of childhood." Somebody was always round the corner to teach you.

They have lost: they could not enjoy so they cannot allow others to enjoy. This is how, from generation to generation, diseases are being transferred.

Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to the existence and become part of it. Then you become a Baul, then you become a lover --

because love can exist only with a deep respect for fun, with a deep respect for delight.

Love cannot exist with a serious mind. With a serious mind, logic is in tune. be non-serious. I'm not saying not to be sincere. Be sincere, but be non-serious. Sincerity is something else; seriousness is totally different. Be sincere with existence, then you will be true; you will become part of this cosmic LEELA, this cosmic play.

The Bauls sing,

How can you walk

the ways of love

carrying stolen loot with impunity?

In the forest of Brinda

loving is worshipping.

The forest of Brinda, where Krishna played with his lovers, friends, girlfriends; where he danced, where the RAAS happened....

This word RAAS is very beautiful: it means the divine celebration, the divine dance.

How can you walk

the ways of love

carrying stolen loot with impunity?

In the forest of Brinda,

loving is worshipping.

As the essence of purity

in the brilliance of the sky

love transcends lust

evolving ecstasy.

The bellows breathe

into the fire of life

and stabilize mercury.

Beautiful; the saying is very beautiful.

The bellows breathe

into the fire of life

and stabilize mercury.

Even mercury becomes stabilized. So what about lust? Don't be worried. Let there be a goal to your love, a center to your love, a target for your arrow, and love transcends lust.

Yoga will say: transcend lust, fight with lust. It is a negative approach. The Bauls say: love, and love transcends lust. It is a positive approach.

Tell me, my silent Master,

O my Lord,

what worship may open me

to my beloved's lotus bloom?

The stars and the moon

eternally move

with no sound at all.

Each cycle of the universe

in silence prays,

welling up with the essence of love.

It is what physicists call electricity, gravitation, energy field. What religious people call God, Bauls call love.

Each cycle of the universe

in silence prays,

welling up with the essence of love.

Trees are in love with the earth; the earth is in love with the trees. The birds are in love with the trees; the trees are in love with the birds. The earth is in love with the sky; the sky is in love with the earth. The whole existence exists in a great ocean of love. Let love be your worship, let love be your prayer.

The song for today is very small, but a diamond -- very precious. And Bauls know how to be precise. Just the other night I was reading Digale's life, and he had a motto on his table. I loved it; Bauls would also appreciate it. The motto is: Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.

WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE

OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

THE OWL STARES AT THE SKY,

SITTING BLIND

TO THE RAYS OF THE SUN.

The Bauls say it is impossible to communicate....

WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE

OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

It is impossible to commune with someone who has not known love. How can we talk about God? How can we talk meaningfully about prayer? How can we say anything about the truth? -- because he's completely unaware of his own heart. He does not know the language; he has lived in the head. He's like the owl: stares at the sky, sitting blind to the rays of the sun.

In Indian mythology the owl is a symbol of knowledge, learning, learnedness. People who are too learned, too much in their heads, accumulating information and data, are like owls. They cannot see that the sun has risen. They can go on looking and staring at the sun, and still they remain oblivious to the rays of the light.

The Bauls say: a man who lives in the head -- a PUNDIT, a scholar -- a man who thinks only in terms of concepts, abstract theories, doctrines, dogmas, who has memorized the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible, will not be able to understand anything about love. Even if you say, he will immediately misunderstand. If you talk about love he will make a theory out of it, and love cannot be managed in a theory. If you say something about prayer he will try to make that prayer look like a hypothesis, and prayer is not a hypothesis. A man of logic always reduces everything to his logic.

I have heard....

A devout clergyman making a tour of the Holy Land arrived at the Sea of Galilee. His heart thrilled: "Perhaps one of these very wavelets had touched the feet of the Master Himself..." A boatman approached. The clergyman addressed him in choicest Arabic, a pocket dictionary of Arabic terms in his hand.

"What is the matter?" complained the ferryman. "Can't you talk United States?" He was an American making his living boating tourists.

"So," exclaimed the clergyman, "this is the Sea of Galilee where our Savior walked upon the waters."

"It is."

"How much will you charge me to take me to the exact spot?"

"Well, seeing as you look like a clergyman, I won't charge you anything."

After reaching the place, the clergyman glanced around with great satisfaction, consulted his texts and commentaries, and at last signalled that he was ready to return to shore.

"Cost you twenty dollars to take you back."

"But you said you would charge nothing!"

"That was to bring you here."

"And you charge everybody twenty dollars to take them back?"

"That, or more."

"Well then," said the devout one, reaching for his pocketbook, " no wonder our Savior got out and walked."

Everybody goes on interpreting everything according to his own way. Our interpretations are our interpretations.

It happened one day: Mulla Nasrudin hailed a taxi just outside the Ashram. "Take me to the Ashram, driver," he demanded, hopping into the cab.

The disgusted hackie got out, opened the door and snapped, "You are in front of the Ashram, fellow!"

"Okay," grumbled the Mulla as he got out, "but next time, don't drive so fast."

If you are drunk, then you are going to interpret everything through your drunkenness. If you are drunk with logic, love cannot penetrate your skull. Then you have a very thick head, dense -- it is impossible for love to penetrate. Then you are like the owl.

The Bauls say communication is possible only when there exists a common language. So if you want to understand the Bauls, you will have to love -- because there is no other way to understand love than to love. If you want to understand the man of prayer, pray.

Move into prayer, have a taste of it. Put aside all your logic. Don't try first to be logically convinced, then you will pray; then nobody has ever prayed -- because the first thing is that it is impossible, it cannot be done. Nobody can logically convince you that prayer is meaningful. The very logical framework of your mind prohibits it. So you are asking the impossible. If you say, "First it has to be proved that love is God, then I will love," then you will have to wait, and you will have to wait for eternity -- it is not going to happen.

The day it happens, it will happen in the only way it can happen, and the way for it to happen is to put aside your logic. Logic is irrelevant. You just love; have a taste of it.

Move into the world of the lover. Let his singing surround you. Have a feel, and that will become the proof, and that will become the conviction. Then you can bring your logic in and your logic will start proving it, but not before. First, the taste, the experience; then the logic. Logic is a good servant but a bad master.

WHAT DEALINGS

CAN YOU EVER CONCLUDE

WITH SOMEONE WHO IS UNAWARE

OF THE FEELINGS IN LOVING?

THE OWL STARES AT THE SKY,

SITTING BLIND

TO THE RAYS OF THE SUN

Love is a radical change in your innermost core of being. The head is just on the periphery. The head is just like waves on the ocean; love is like the depth. In the depth there are no waves, and in the waves there is no depth. Thoughts are like waves just on the surface. There is no way for a wave to know the depth while remaining the wave. The wave can know the depth, but then it has to disappear in the depth. It will no more be a wave, but then it can come back to the surface. But then that wave will itself become a Baul; no other wave will listen to it. Other waves will call that wave mad because she will talk about depths, and waves only know shallowness, they don't know depths.

Love is an experience -- existential, like taste. If you have not tasted salt, there is no way to explain it to you. If you have tasted it, there is no way to forget it. If you have tasted it, then too there is no way to explain it to somebody else who has not tasted it. How to explain to somebody else who has never known anything salty? What to say? It is not that you don't know; you know, it is just on the tip of your tongue. You know what saltiness is, but how to say it to somebody else? The only thing is to offer him a little salt. But if he says, "First let me be convinced that there exists something like salt, then only will I take"; if he is that cautious it is impossible. Then he will have to remain without any experience of salt.

And to remain without experiencing love is to remain dead -- because only a lover goes on dropping his dead selves, because only a lover moves, because only a lover is dynamic. Logic is dead; love is alive.

I am reminded of a saying of Browning. He used to say, "The life process is to rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things."

... the life process is to rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things....

Logic belongs to the past; love belongs to the future. Logic is just moving in the old circle again and again and again. Love moves into new territory. Being yourself is never static, being in love is also never static. It is always ecstatic -- not static but ecstatic: out of stasis, out of standing still.

Be moving. One never arrives, though one is always arriving.

The Beloved, Vol 1

Chapter #10

Chapter title: Truth is neither I nor you

30 June 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Archive

code:

7606300

ShortTitle:

BELOV110

Audio:

Yes

Video: No

Length:

87

mins

The first question:

Question 1

WHO HAS ORIGINATED BAULS? PLEASE EXPLAIN.

PEOPLE LIKE BAULS ARE NEVER ORIGINATED. Religions like the Baul religion are more like happenings. Who originated the roses? Who originated the songs that the birds go on singing every morning? No, we never ask that question. It has always been there.

Philosophies are originated; you can find the originator. 'Isms', dogmas, creeds are originated. The Baul is not a creed, it is a spontaneous way of life. People have always lived that way. People who have ever lived have always lived that way. People who have ever been alive have been alive in no other way. Whether they were known as Bauls or not is immaterial. The name may have some origin somewhere; I'm not concerned with it.

The word simply means 'the madman': madly in love with existence, madly in love with life -- but this madness has always been there. And it is good that a few people have always been so mad that we have not lost contact with the roots of existence. It is because of them that we haven't. They could sing and dance and live and love -- real people, authentic to the very core.

So, I don't know when they started. They must have started from the very beginning, if there was any beginning. They must have started with the first man, because their whole teaching is about the essential man. In fact, by and by, they have disappeared. They must have been more in the beginning. By and by they have lessened; their numbers have become less and less and less every day. Because the world has become too worldly, and the world has become too cunning and clever, it does not allow the simplicity of the heart to exist. The world has become too competitive and too ambitious. It has forgotten all that is beautiful, it has forgotten all that cannot be manufactured, it has forgotten how to surrender, to allow the eternal to happen in time. It has forgotten the language of ecstasy.

The more we move back, the more and more Bauls you will find. In the beginning the whole humanity must have been like the Bauls. Even now you can watch it: every child is born a Baul, then later on he is corrupted. Every child is again born as madly in love with life, but we cultivate him, we prune him, we don't allow him spontaneity of being. We condition him, we give him a certain character.

The Bauls have no character. They are men of consciousness, but not of character. In fact, a man of consciousness never has a character. Character is a fixity, character is an obsession, character is an armor. You have to do only that which your character allows.

Character can never be spontaneous. Character is always imposed by the past on the present. You are not free to be, you are not free to respond; you can only react.

The Baul believes in the SAHAJA MANUSH, the spontaneous man. The Baul says the spontaneous man is the way to the essential man. To be spontaneous is to be on the way towards being essential. Every child is a Baul.

So as I see it, in the beginning -- if there was, any beginning -- the whole humanity must have been like Bauls: true, authentic, sincere, mad, deep in love, rejoicing -- rejoicing the opportunity that God has given, rejoicing the gift.

We don't have any claim on life. Have you ever noticed it, that we don't have any claim?

If we had not been, there would be no way to be and there would be no way to appeal it.

There would be no way to complain against it. If you are not, you are not. The next moment you can disappear. Life is fragile, and without any claim. We have not earned it!

That is the meaning when we say it is a gift. A gift is something that you have not earned; you don't have any claim over it. You cannot say that you have some right to get it. A gift is something that is given to you.

Life is a gift. It has been given to you for no reason at all. You cannot have earned it, because how can you earn it if you were not? Life is a gift, but we go on forgetting it, we are not even thankful. We don't have any gratitude. We certainly complain for a thousand and one things which we may think we are missing in life, but we never feel grateful for life itself.

You may complain that your house is not good: the rains have come and it is leaking.

You may complain that your salary is not enough; you may complain that you don't have a beautiful body. You may complain that this is not happening and that is not happening -

- a thousand and one complaints -- but have you ever seen that the whole life, the very possibility that you can be, breathe, look, see, hear, touch, love and be loved, is a gift? It has been given to you because God has so much to give, not because you have earned it.

The Baul lives in tremendous gratitude. He sings and dances -- that is his prayer. He cries. He simply wonders why, for what has life been given to him, for what has he been allowed to see the rainbows in the sky, for what has he been allowed to see flowers, butterflies, people, rivers and rocks? For what? Because life is so obvious you tend to forget the tremendous gift hidden in it.

In the beginning, everybody must have been a Baul, because civilization was not there to corrupt, society was not there to destroy. Priests and churches were not there to give you a character, to give you a narrow passage. In the beginning, life must have been overflowing. Everybody must have lived out of their own beings -- not because of any commandments, not because of scripture. There was no scripture and there was no commandment. Moses had not appeared yet. Everybody must have been a Baul in the beginning; and every child, when he is born, is a Baul. Watch a child to understand what this phenomenon of being a Baul is. See children delighting for nothing -- just shouting out of joy, just running here and there out of overflowing energy. When you become a Baul you again become a child.

To become a Baul is to become a primitive. To become a Baul is to reclaim one's primitiveness, one's primalness. One is reborn; it is a rebirth -- the child happens again.

Your body may be old, your mind may be old, but your consciousness is released from the bondage of the body and the mind. You have a past, you have many experiences, but they no longer burden you. You put them aside. You use them when needed; otherwise, you don't carry them continuously on your head for twenty-four hours. This is what liberation is: it does not liberate you from existence or from life or from flowers and love, it simply liberates you from your past. In fact, the more you are liberated, the more you fall in love with God. The more you are liberated, the more you become capable of rejoicing and loving.

So don't ask me who originated Bauls. Nobody has ever originated things like that. The whole emphasis is on spontaneity. Of course, to have a theory like Einstein's Theory of Relativity, an Einstein is needed. Without him it cannot be originated; without him it would not be in existence. A very complicated mind is needed to discover the complicated Theory of Relativity.

Bauls don't give any theories. They simply say, "All that you need be, you are already." It is not a question of being very clever, it is a question of just being simple. No talent is needed to become a Baul. That's the beauty of it: no genius is needed. What genius is needed to be a child? Every child is born as a child. The sages and the fools -- all are born as children. No talent is needed. Childhood is simply everybody's nature.

To be a Baul nothing is needed. In fact, the moment you need nothing, you become a Baul. The moment you are unburdened and you don't possess anything, any past, you are a Baul.

No, things like that are never originated. Nobody creates them; they happen. They are part of nature.

The second question:

Question 2

SO MANY TIMES I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOUR WORDS BECAUSE THE

SOUND OF YOUR WORDS SHOWERS ON ME, YOUR SOUND STRIKES ME

WITH ENERGY, FILLING ME, AND AS A SHOCK, I FEEL IN MY SPINAL CORD

THRILLS, WAVES AND VIBRATIONS. SHOULD I BE CAREFULLY AWARE FOR

THE MEANING OF YOUR WORDS?

Then there is no need to be careful about the meaning of the words; that will be a disturbance. If you feel in tune with my sound, THERE is the meaning. If you feel you are being showered with a new energy, if you feel thrilled, pulsating in a new way you never knew before, if you feel a sort of new dimension arising in your being because of the sound of my words, then forget all about me. Then there is no need; you have got the meaning already. That showering is the meaning, that thrill in the spine is the meaning, that vibration that cleanses you is the meaning. Then there is no need to worry about the ordinary meaning of the words. Then you are getting a higher meaning, then you are reaching a higher altitude of meaning. Then you are really getting the content and not the container. The meaning of my words is just the container.

If this is happening to you, then my words are no longer words to you; they have become existential. Then they are alive, then they have become a transfer. Then something is transpiring between my energy and your energy. Then there is happening something like what Bauls call love.

Allow it. Forget all about the words and their meaning. Leave it for foolish people who only collect words and are never in contact with the content. The words are just like shells: hidden behind them, I am sending you great messages. Those messages cannot be understood by the intellect, those messages have to be decoded by your total being. That is what is happening -- the vibration, the pulsation, the thrill, the showering of a new energy -- your total being is decoding. This is real listening. This is really to be in contact with me, to be in my presence.

Once I stayed with a friend. He had a big cage in his garden and he had one eagle in that cage. He took me to the cage and he said, "See, what a beautiful eagle." The eagle was beautiful, but I felt sorry for her.

I told the friend that this was not an eagle.

He said, "What do you mean? This is an eagle. Don't you know eagles?"

I said, "I know them, but I have known them only against the wind in the sky, in the high heavens, free, almost not of this world and not in this world, weighing themselves floating on the winds, in deep love with the free sky. I have known them as freedom. This eagle is no eagle. Because an eagle in a cage without the openness, the wideness of sky, without those high heavens, without weighing herself in freedom on the winds, is no eagle. Where is the background? -- because this is only the figure. In a cage, the real eagle has disappeared. You cannot find a real eagle in a cage because a real eagle is tremendous freedom. Where is the freedom? The soul has disappeared. The essential has disappeared; only the non-essential is here. This is just a dead eagle, more dead than any dead eagle. Release it from the cage; let it become real."

When I talk to you my words are like caged eagles; my words are in a prison. If you really listen to me, you will drop the cage and you will release the eagle. That is what is happening...the thrill. Then the freedom is released; then you become the eagle -- and higher and higher you rise. The earth is left very far behind. You can forget all about it.

The ordinary is left very far behind. The shell is left, the container is left, and you have the whole sky open to you; you, your wings, and the sky, and there is no end to it. The eternal pilgrimage has started.

Forget all about words and their meanings, otherwise you will be more concerned with the cage and you will not be able to release the eagle within you.

The third question:

Question 3

EVERY TIME I HAVE LOVED SOMEONE AND AFTERWARDS DUG INTO IT, I HAVE FOUND THAT IT WAS NO LOVE AT ALL. IT WAS SOMETHING ELSE IN

THE NAME OF LOVE. THUS I NOW HAVE NO FAITH IN LOVE. I JUST CANNOT

BELIEVE THAT WE CAN LOVE AS WE ARE.

The questioner says, and rightly so, that whenever he has been in love he has found something else masquerading as love, so he has lost faith in love.

The first part is absolutely. right: if you observe deeply, you will find something else always hiding behind love, something counterfeit. But the counterfeit can exist only because real coins exist. If there were no real coin, how could a counterfeit exist?

Sometimes it is possessiveness which hides itself behind love, sometimes it is lust, sometimes something else, jealousy.

But why do they hide behind love? -- because they feel love is a real coin, and you can pretend and hide behind it. You can be safe behind love. Whenever you hide yourself somewhere, it simply shows that somewhere that place is protective; it can become an armor around you. Why does everything seek to hide behind love? -- because love is the greatest protection in the world, the greatest reality in the world, the only energy.

Everything else is false; love is true. All that is not love is false, and whatsoever you are doing which is not love is a sheer wastage. All that is love is true, and whatsoever you do on the path of love increases your being, gives you more truth, makes you more true.

Knowing this, everything hides behind love because love can give protection. Love is so beautiful that even ugly things can hide behind it and pretend to be beautiful.

I was reading Shepard's book, BEYOND SEX THERAPY. He relates one incident.

He was in love with a woman, a young woman. A few friends had come to see him, but the whole time he remained with the woman, talking to her, as if he was not interested in the friends. They felt a little offended, and they told the woman, "We know Shepard better than you. He has been in love with many women, and this comes and goes. So remember it: sooner or later he will get interested in some other woman. What are you going to do then?"

The woman said, "I will feel jealous, but that is my problem. But I would like my man to know every sort of love, to know all that is possible before he dies. I will feel jealous, but that is my problem. That I have to tackle, and I have to get over it. That has nothing to do with him. As far as he's concerned, this is my desire: that he should know all that he wants to know before he dies, because once gone, one is gone forever. I would like him to live as richly as possible. If problems arise, like jealousy, then they are my problems."

This is what love is. It knows the distinction between jealousy and love. It is not confused about it. The jealousy cannot hide behind it; it cannot pretend to be love.

So the first thing is right, the questioner is absolutely right: "Every time I have loved someone and afterwards dug into it, I have found that it was no love at all. It was something else..." perfectly true "... in the name of love. Thus I now have no faith..." That is wrong -- because you have not known love yet. How can you lose faith in love, which you have not known yet? You can lose faith in jealousy, you can lose faith in possessiveness, you can lose faith in anger, you can lose faith in lust, but you have not come across love at all so how can you lose faith in it? To lose faith or to have faith, at least some experience of love is essential -- and you have not come across it.

Dig a little more and you will be able to sort it out now. What is jealousy? -- you know; what is possessiveness? -- you know. This is good; you are evolving. This is how everybody has to evolve. In the beginning, everything is mixed -- as if mud is mixed in gold. Then one has to put the gold into fire: all that is not gold is burned, drops out of it.

Only pure gold comes out of the fire. Awareness is the fire; love is the gold; jealousy, possessiveness, hatred, anger, lust, are the impurities. You are becoming more aware.

Now you see what jealousy is, and you can see it is not love. Half the battle is won; fifty percent of the battle is over -- you can recognize jealousy. But you have not yet known what love is. You are on the right track. But don't become hopeless, don't lose courage, don't lose faith, because sooner or later you will be able to know what love is. You are coming closer to home.

Don't be in such a hurry. Truth tends to reveal itself. Truth is revelatory, truth is revelation. You just go on seeking, searching, finding. There may be many errors, but there is no other way to grow. Trial and error is the only way. By and by, you go on eliminating the errors. Less and less errors happen, and more and more purity becomes available. Don't stop in the middle.

I have heard....

Mulla Nasrudin got a job in a bank. The cashier tossed him a packet of one-rupee notes and said, "Check them to make sure there are one hundred."

The Mulla started counting. Finally he got up to fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight, then he threw the packet in the drawer.

"If it is right this far," remarked Nasrudin to the man next to him, "it is probably right all the way."

Don't be in such a hurry. If it has been wrong so far, don't think it will be wrong all the way. At a hundred degrees, suddenly it turns right. One has to penetrate all the impurities.

But you are on the right track, so be happy.

And it is because of a deep desire for love that you have been able to recognize what is not love. Otherwise, how would you recognize? You can recognize that this is not gold because gold exists. Otherwise, what is the criterion to know that this is not love? You have some tacit understanding; it is not conscious yet, it is tacit, deep down. That is the meaning of understanding, understood. You have a tacit understanding, some deep undercurrent which knows what love is. That's why you can find 'this is not love', 'that is not love'. Good, you are on the right track. Go on to the very end, all the way.

It is because of the possibility of love that you have become aware of jealousy, of possessiveness, of anger, of lust, of greed, of indulgence, of gratification, and a thousand and one things. But the central core is dependent on a tacit understanding of love.

Truth tends to reveal itself.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

The funeral cortege was being set up for the wife of Mulla Nasrudin. He was dressed sombrely in the appropriate black. The funeral director said to the Mulla in a respectful whisper, "And you will be sitting in the head car with your mother-in-law."

Nasrudin frowned, "With my mother-in-law?"

"Yes, of course."

"Is it necessary?"

"It is essential -- the bereaved husband and the bereaved mother, the two closest survivors, together."

Mulla Nasrudin turned to look at the large and sobbing figure of his mother-in-law and said, "Well, all right then. But I tell you right now that it is going to spoil the pleasure of the occasion."

Your black dress cannot hide the truth, your tears cannot hide the truth. Deep down he was feeling happy that now he was free, now he was no more in bondage with this woman. Just on the surface he was showing his bereavement.

Truth has a tendency to reveal itself. If you just become a little alert, you will always know what is true. Truth need not be learnt; one needs just to be a little alert, and then the truth reveals itself. Revelation is intrinsic to truth. And when truth is revealed, a thousand and one lies are also revealed simultaneously, all the lies that were pretending to be truth when the truth was not known.

It happened: Abdul Rehman was very sick, a friend of Mulla Nasrudin. Everybody was worried about the sick man. He was very sick indeed, and his friends took turns visiting him to keep up his spirits.

The night Mulla Nasrudin went he was warned in advance that Abdul Rehman was very low and he must be extremely careful to say nothing discouraging. Nasrudin was doing beautifully, and actually had Rehman chuckling over a number of funny stories. But suddenly however, the Mulla stopped and began to shake his head.

"What is that? What is the matter, Mulla?" said Rehman anxiously.

"I was just thinking," said Nasrudin, "how in the name of the Holy Prophet are they going to get a coffin down the crooked stairs in this house?"

Now on the surface he was trying to encourage the man, but deep down he knew that he was going to die, and deep down an undercurrent: how are they going to get the coffin down? -- the staircase is so crooked.

Truth has a tendency to reveal itself. Just be a little alert and your heart will show you the path. And then nothing will be able to hide behind love. Things can hide behind love because you are unconscious. It is not a fault of love, it is your unconsciousness. So don't distrust love, distrust unconsciousness. Don't lose faith in love -- love has not done anything to you. Nothing wrong has love done to you. In fact, in spite of you, it is love that is keeping you alive. I repeat: in spite of you it is love that is keeping you alive. Lose faith in unconsciousness. If you are conscious, then nothing can hide behind love. Then no counterfeit can deceive you.

"It was something else, always in the name of love. Thus I now have no faith in love."

That is absurd. The logic is incorrect. You have not come across love; how can you lose faith in love? Dig a little more, go to the very end of it: you will always find purer gold, the deeper you go into yourself.

It is just like digging a well: first you dig a well -- you just get stones, rocks, rubbish; after that layer, more pure soil; after that layer, wet soil; after that, muddy water; after that, purer water. The deeper you go, purer springs become available. And this is so inside your heart also. On the surface there is just dirt, dust, rocks, then dry earth, then wet earth, then muddy water. But don't lose faith; you are coming closer to home -- then, pure water.

"I just cannot believe that we can love as we are." That's true -- you cannot love the way you are. But there is no need to choose to remain the way you are. You can change. There is no need to cling to your structure. You can destructure it.

That's what I'm doing here; that's all that we are trying to do together: to destructure you so that you can be realigned, so that you can be rearranged, so that the old disappears and the new is born.

This is true -- that the way you are you cannot love. But there is no reason to lose faith in love. Lose faith in yourself, lose faith in your ego. If it is you who is preventing you from loving, then drop this you -- because love is worth it. Millions of you's are not as valuable as a single moment of love. Drop this structure. Choose the sky, don't choose the cage.

The you you are feeling you are is nothing but the cage given by the society. Choose the sky drop the cage.

The fourth question:

Question 4

TWO MORNINGS AGO I SLEPT THROUGH THE LECTURE AND WOKE UP AT

THE END WITH THE WORD 'SINGLE-MINDEDNESS' ON MY MIND. SO WHAT

TO DO?

Be single-minded. The message is so clear; what is there to ask? Your being has given you a great message.

Sometimes it happens after deep sleep that you have messages from your deepest core of being. Start listening to your first thoughts in the morning; out of sleep you are very close to your being. There is more possibility, within two or three seconds of waking, to have some glimpses of your deepest being, some messages. After two, three seconds, the contact will be lost. You will again be in the world, thrown into the world. But sometimes it happens, as it happens to a few people: listening to me they fall asleep. There are different types of people.

For example, just now Sheela is fast asleep, but her sleep is really beautiful: it is a sort of trance, not sleep. She is not just asleep; her sleep is luminous. She has simply relaxed.

Listening to me deeply, she could not remain tense. All tension is gone, so she simply relaxed, relaxed into a deeper layer of her own being. To all people from the outside she will look fast asleep. When she is back, even she may not be able to understand what has happened because to her also it may look like sleep. It is not sleep; it is a certain stage: in yoga we call it TANDRA. It is a midway point between waking and sleep, and without dreams.

So there are two midway stages between deep sleep and waking. The ordinary stage is dreaming: if you are just in between, then you dream. Either you are awake, or you are fast asleep, or you are dreaming. And dreaming is just in the middle of waking and sleeping; it is the middle passage. This is ordinarily so.

But if your meditation goes deeper, or, if your love goes deeper, the first change that happens in consciousness is a change in the middle stage -- dreaming stops. Now it is very difficult to say what it is. You can think about it as sleep, or you can think about it as waking; it is both together -- just a balance between the two, a very balanced stage.

TANDRA is the first glimpse, the beginning of SATORI. Dreams disappear first. Then in the next step, sleep disappears; and in the third step, what you call waking, that disappears. And when all three have disappeared, then arises what we call REAL waking.

Then one becomes enlightened. TANDRA is the first step; dreams are disappearing.

So sometimes it happens that people fall asleep here -- they are in a state of trance.

TANDRA can be translated as trance. For all practical purposes, they are asleep. They will not be able to remember my words, but after they are back they will remember that something very deep and silent has happened. Something in their energy has changed.

It is a deep relaxation. In this relaxation if some message arises, listen to it very carefully.

"Two mornings ago I slept through the lecture and woke up at the end with the word

'single-mindedness' on my mind." That morning I had been talking about singlemindedness.

The question is old. The question is concerned with the series of Zen stories.

I was talking that morning about single-mindedness. You may not have heard; you were in TANDRA, in trance to what I was saying. But what I wanted to deliver to you has been delivered. Your being listened, your body listened, your totality drank out of me, absorbed what I was saying, what I was being here. And when you came back, as a condensed message, a gift from your deepest core to your periphery, from your center to your circumference, the word 'single-mindedness' arose in your consciousness. Now you ask what to do?. -- be single-minded!

And what do I mean when I say 'be single-minded'? In fact, to say 'be single-minded' is almost to say 'be without mind' -- because the mind exists only in conflict. Mind exists only as many. When the manyness has disappeared and the crowd is no more there, we call it single-minded -- or you can call it no-mind because the mind has disappeared.

Mind is many; single mind is no-mind. When you are one, together -- no conflict inside, no division, all demons gone, you have become indivisible,,everything joined together in a deep coherence and harmony, a single orchestra -- then there is no-mind.

Single-mindedness is a term from Yoga tradition. No-mind means the same, but the term belongs to another tradition, Zen. But they both mean the same: don't be a crowd, don't be poly-psychic. Become uni-psychic, become one.

The fifth question:

Question 5

HOW CAN I DISTINGUISH BETWEEN ENLIGHTENED SELF-LOVE AND

EGOMANIA?

The distinction is subtle but very clear, not difficult; subtle, but not difficult. If you have egomania, it will create more and more misery for you. Misery will indicate that you are ill. Egomania is a disease, a cancer of the soul. Egomania will make you more and more tense, will make you more and more up-tight, will not allow you to relax at all. It will drive you towards insanity.

Self-love is just the opposite of egomania. In self-love there is no self, only love. In egomania there is no love, only self. In self-love you will start becoming more and more relaxed. A person who loves himself is totally relaxed. To love somebody else may create a little tension, because the other need not be always in tune with you. The other may have his or her own ideas. The other is a different world; there is every possibility of collision, clash. There is every possibility of storm and thunder because the other is a different world. There is always a subtle struggle going on. But when you love yourself, there is nobody else. There is no conflict -- it is pure silence, it is tremendous delight.

You are alone; nobody disturbs you. The other is not needed at all. And to me, a person who has become capable of such deep love towards himself becomes capable of loving others. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love others? It must first happen at close quarters, it must first happen within you, to spread towards others.

People try to love others, not being at all aware that they have not even loved themselves.

How can you love others? That which you don't have you cannot share. You can give to others only that which you have already with you.

So the first and the most basic step towards love is love of oneself; but it has no self in it.

Let me explain it to you.

The 'I' arises only as a contrast to the 'thou'. 'I' and 'thou' exist together. The 'I' can exist in two dimensions. One dimension is 'I-it': you -- your house, you -- your car, you -- your money; 'I-it'. When there is this 'I', this 'I' of 'I-it', your 'I' is almost like a thing. It is not consciousness; it is fast asleep, snoring. Your consciousness is not there. You are just like things, a thing amidst things: part of your house, part of your furniture, part of your money.

Have you watched it? A man who is too greedy about money, by and by starts having the qualities of money. He becomes just money. He loses spirituality, he is no more a spirit.

He is reduced to a thing. If you love money, you will become like money. If you love your house, by and by you will become material. Whatsoever you love, you become.

Love is alchemical. Never love the wrong thing, because it will transform you. Nothing is so transforming as love. Love something which can raise you higher, to higher altitudes.

Love something beyond you.

That is the whole effect of religion: to give you a love-object like God so that there is no way to fall down. One has to rise.

One sort of 'I' exists as 'I-it'; another sort of 'I' exists as 'I-thou'. When you love a person, another type of 'I' arises in you: 'I thou'. You love a person, you become a person.

But what about self-love?. -- there is no 'it' and there is no 'thou'. 'I' disappears because 'I'

can exist only in two contexts: 'it' and 'thou'. 'I' is the figure, 'it' and 'thou' function as the field. When the field disappears the 'I' disappears. When you are left alone, you are, but you don't have an 'I', you don't feel any 'I'. You are simply a deep AMNESS. Ordinarily we say 'I am'. In that state, when you are deep in love with yourself, 'I' disappears. Only amness, pure existence, pure being remains. It will fill you with tremendous bliss. It will make you a celebration, a rejoicing. There will be no problem in distinguishing between them.

If you are getting more and more miserable, then you are on the trip of being an egomaniac. If you are becoming more and more tranquil, silent, happy, together, then you are on another trip -- the trip of self-love. If you are on the trip of ego you will become destructive to others -- because the ego tries to destroy the 'thou'. If you are moving towards self-love, the ego will disappear. And when the ego disappears, you allow the other to be himself or herself; you give total freedom. If you don't have any ego you cannot create an imprisonment for the other you love; you cannot create a cage. You allow the other to be an eagle in the high heavens. You allow the other to be himself or herself; you give total freedom. Love gives total freedom. Love IS freedom -- freedom for you and freedom for the object of your love. Ego is bondage -- bondage for you and bondage for your victim.

But ego can play very deep tricks with you. It is very cunning, and subtle are its ways: it can pretend to be self-love.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

Mulla Nasrudin's face lit up as he recognized the man who was walking ahead of him down the subway stairs. He slapped the man so heartily on the back that the man nearly collapsed, and cried, "Goldberg, I hardly recognized you! Why, you have gained thirty pounds since I saw you last. And you have had your nose fixed, and I swear you are about two feet taller."

The man looked at him angrily. "I beg your pardon," he said in icy tones, "but I do not happen to be Goldberg."

"Aha!" said Mulla Nasrudin, "so you have even changed your name?"

The ego is very cunning and very self-justifying, very self-rationalizing. If you are not very alert it can start hiding itself behind self-love. The very word 'self' will become a protection for it. It can say, "I am your self." It can change its weight, it can change its height, it can change its name. And because it is just an idea, there is no problem about it: it can become small, it can become big. It is just your fantasy.

Be very careful. If you really want to grow in love, much carefulness will be needed.

Each step has to be taken in deep alertness so ego cannot find any loophole to hide behind.

Your real self is neither I nor thou; it is neither you nor the other. Your real self is altogether transcendental. What you call 'I' is not your real self. 'I' is imposed on reality.

When you call somebody 'you', you are not addressing the real self of the other. Again you have imposed a label on it. When all the labels are taken away, the real self remains -

- and the real self is as much yours as it is others. The real self is one.

That's why we go on saying that we participate in each other's beings, we are members of each other. Our real reality is God. We may be like icebergs floating in the ocean -- they appear to be separate -- but once we melt, nothing will be left. Definition will disappear, limitation will disappear, and the iceberg will not be there. It will become part of the ocean.

The ego is an iceberg. Melt it. Melt it in deep love, so it disappears and you become part of the ocean.

I have heard....

The Judge looked very severe. "Mulla," he said, "your wife says you hit her over the head with a baseball bat and threw her down a flight of stairs. What have you got to say for yourself?"

Mulla Nasrudin rubbed the side of his nose with his hand, and meditated. Finally he said,

"Your Honor, I guess there are three sides to this case: my wife's story, my story, and the truth."

Yes, he is perfectly right.

"You have heard about two sides of a truth," he said, "but there are three sides" -- and he is exactly right. There is your story, my story, and the truth; I and you and the truth.

The truth is neither I nor you. I and you is an imposition on the vastness of the truth. 'I' is false, 'you' is false; utilitarian, useful in the world. It will be difficult to manage the world without 'I' and 'you'. Good -- use them, but they are just devices of the world. In reality, there is neither 'you' nor 'I'. Something, someone, some energy exists with no limitations, with no boundaries. Out of it we come, and into it we disappear again.

The sixth question:

Question 6

EVEN IF SOMETIMES LOVE-LIKE FEELINGS ARISE IN MY HEART, IMMEDIATELY THE NEXT MOMENT I START FEELING 'THIS IS NOT LOVE, THIS IS NOT LOVE AT ALL: IT IS ALL MY HIDDEN CRAVINGS FOR SEX AND

ALL THAT'.

So what is wrong in it? Love has to arise out of lust. If you avoid lust, you will be avoiding the whole possibility of love itself. Love is not lust, true; but love is not without lust -- that too is true. Love is higher than lust, yes, but if you destroy lust completely, you destroy the very possibility of the flower arising out of the mud. Love is the lotus, lust is the mud the lotus arises out of. Remember it; otherwise you will never attain to love. At the most, you can pretend that you have transcended lust. Because without love, nobody can transcend lust; you can repress it. Repressed, it becomes more poisonous. It spreads into your whole system, it becomes toxic, it destroys you. Lust transformed into love gives you a glow, a radiance. You start feeling light, as if you can fly. You start gaining wings. With lust repressed you become heavy, as if you are carrying a weight, as if a big rock is hanging around your neck. With lust repressed, you lose all opportunities to fly in the sky. With lust transformed into love, you have passed the test of existence.

You have been given a raw material to work, to be creative. Lust is raw material.

I have heard....

Berkowitz and Michaelson, who were not only business partners but life-long friends, made a pact: that whichever one died first would come back and tell the other what it was like in heaven.

Six months later, Berkowitz died. He was a very moral man, almost saint-like, a puritan who had never done anything wrong, who had always remained afraid of lust and sex.

And Michaelson waited for his dear departed holy friend to show some sign that he had returned to earth. Michaelson passed the time impatiently hoping for and eagerly awaiting a message from Berkowitz.

Then one year after the day of his death, Berkowitz spoke to Michaelson. It was late at night; Michaelson was in bed.

"Michaelson, Michaelson," echoed the voice.

"Is that you, Berkowitz?"

"Yes."

"What is it like where you are?"

"We have breakfast and then we make love, then we eat lunch and we make love, we have dinner and then we make love."

"Is that what heaven is like?" asked Michaelson.

"Who said anything about heaven?" said Berkowitz. "I am in Wisconsin, and I am a bull."

Remember, this happens to people who repress sex. Nothing else can happen because that whole energy repressed becomes a load and pulls you down. You move towards lower stages of being. If love arises out of lust, you start rising towards higher being.

So remember, what you want to become -- a Buddha or a bull -- depends on you. If you want to become a Buddha, then don't be afraid of sex. Move into it, know it well, become more and more alert about it. Be careful; it is tremendously valuable energy. Make it a meditation and transform it, by and by, into love. It is raw material, like a raw diamond: you have to cut it, polish it; then it becomes of tremendous value. If somebody gives you an unpolished, raw, uncut diamond, you may not even recognize that it is a diamond.

Even the Kohinoor in its raw state is worthless.

Lust is a Kohinoor: it has to be polished, it has to be understood.

The questioner seems to be afraid and antagonistic: "It is all my hidden cravings for sex and all that." There is a condemnation in it. Nothing is wrong; man is a sexual animal.

That's how we are. That's the way life means us to be. That's how we have found ourselves here. Go into it. Without going, you will never be able to transform it. I'm not speaking for mere indulgence. I'm saying move into it with deep meditative energy to understand what it is. It must be something tremendously valuable because you have come out of it, because the whole existence enjoys it, because the whole existence is sexual. Sex is the way God has chosen to be in the world, notwithstanding what Christians go on saying -- that Jesus was born out of a virgin woman -- all foolishness.

They pretend that sex was not involved in Jesus' birth. They are so afraid of sex that they create foolish stories like this: that Jesus is born out of a virgin Mary. Mary must have been very pure, that's true; she must have been spiritually virgin, that is true -- but there is no way to enter into life without passing through the energy that sex is. The body knows no other law. And nature is all-inclusive: it believes in no exceptions, it allows no exceptions. You are born out of sex, you are full of sex energy. But this is not the end; this may be the beginning. Sex is the beginning but not the end.

There are three types of people. One thinks that sex is the end also. They are the people who live a life of indulgence. They miss, because sex is the beginning but not the end.

Then there are people who are against indulgence. They take the other, the opposite extreme: they don't want sex even to be the beginning, so they start cutting it. Cutting it, they cut themselves. Destroying it, they destroy themselves, they wither away. Both are foolish attitudes.

There is the third possibility: the possibility of the wise man who looks at life, who has no theories to enforce on life, who just tries to understand. He comes to see that sex is the beginning but not the end. Sex is just an opportunity to grow beyond it, but one has to pass through it.

The last question:

Question 7

OSHO, I USED TO THINK I KNEW WHAT SUBMISSION WAS. NOW I SEE IT --

IT WAS A POLITICAL MIND-TRIP TO BUY RELATIONS. NOW THAT THERE IS

NO PLACE TO STAND BUT WHERE I AM, BLISS HAS ENTERED. THANK YOU

FOR TURNING ME ON MYSELF.

It is from Anup.

It is significant to have come to an understanding of what surrender or submission is. It is one of the keys, but people are very afraid to use it -- because if you surrender, submit, you are lost. It is death-like. It is as if one is committing suicide. So people go on doing other things and they call it submission, surrender.

To have this understanding, this glimpse that all that you have up to now been thinking of as surrender, as submission is not the real thing, is a great step towards transformation.

Once you understand the false as the false, you are becoming capable of knowing the real as the real. To understand the false as the false is the beginning of understanding the real as the real. The lies have to be exposed. Once lies are exposed, truth stands nude, naked, revealed.

Table of Contents

Chapter title: Direction a non-ending process