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The Golden Wind

Talks given from 1/7/80 to 31/1/80

Darshan Diary

31 Chapters

Year published:

Unpublished

The Golden Wind

Chapter #1

Chapter title: None

1 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007015

ShortTitle: GWIND01

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

The only way to know god, to feel god, is meditation. Meditation means a state of consciousness when all thoughts have been dropped.

The Zen masters call the state of meditation the season of autumn, when all the leaves fall and the trees are standing bare, naked. When consciousness drops all thoughts it is like a tree without leaves, without foliage, exposed to the wind, to the moon, to the sun, to the rain uncovered, unhidden. In that exposure there is communion with god. That communion is love. In that communion one becomes a beloved of god.

There is a very famous Zen koan. A monk asked a great master, Ummon, "What will happen when the leaves fall and the trees become bare?" Zen people always ask questions indirectly because life is such a mystery, you have to be delicate about it, you cannot ask directly... To be direct appears to be aggressive and violent; hence Zen has created beautiful metaphors. Now this is a metaphor: the monk is asking "What happens when meditation happens?", but not so directly. He is asking in a more poetic way; not so mathematically, but more metaphorically.

He says, "What will happen when the leaves fall and the trees become bare?" Ummon simply said, "The golden wind." This is the whole story, but all has been asked and all has been said; nothing more is needed.

The monk bowed down, touched the feet of the master and thanked him for his great insight and compassion.

In autumn the breeze is very cool, very fresh, very rejuvenating, and when all the leaves have fallen and are fluttering, all those yellow leaves create a golden atmosphere. They make even the wind golden!

Although the wind remains uncolored, you can feel the song of the leaves, the dance of the leaves, the joy of the leaves, and you can see the wind enjoying the whole dance.

Once a Zen master was teaching the art of gardening to the king of Japan. After three years of teaching he said, "Now I will come and see your garden -- that will be the examination of what you have done in these three years." And he told him before that "Whatsoever you are learning go on practising in your palace garden, any day I may come."

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The king had prepared the garden and he was waiting for that great day; he rejoiced that the day had come. For those three years he had used nearly one thousand gardeners to implement everything in the minutest detail. And for that whole day and night -- because tomorrow morning the master would be there --

the garden was cleaned, everything was put exactly right, as it should be, no error, no mistake...

The master came. The king was very happy because whatsoever the master had said had been absolutely fulfilled; it was impossible to find any fault. But the master looked at the garden and became very serious --

which was not natural to the master. He was a man of laughter. He became sad.

As they moved into the garden he became more and more serious and the king started feeling a little trembling inside: Was he going to fail? What had gone wrong? The silence of the master was too heavy.

Finally the king asked, "What is the matter? I have never seen you so serious. I was thinking you would be immensely happy that your disciple had worked hard."

The master said, "Everything is right but where are the golden leaves? I don't see any dead leaves, yellow leaves fluttering in the wind. Without that the garden looks dead; there is no song, no dance. Without that the garden looks very artificial.

The king had removed all the dead leaves, not only from the ground but even from the plants and trees.

He had never thought of it, that death is also part of life, that it is not its opposite but its complementary, that without it there would be no life. And certainly the master was right: Yes, the garden was beautiful, but it looked as if it were a painting, not alive.

The master said, "The golden wind is missing. Where is Ummon's golden wind? Bring the golden wind!" The master took a bucket and went out of the garden, outside the gate to where all the leaves have been thrown. He collected the leaves in the bucket, came back and threw the leaves on the path. Suddenly the wind started blowing them here and there, and there was noise and there was music, and there was dance. The master said, "Now there is life! The wind is golden again."

This is Ummon's golden wind: when all thoughts fall down from your mind and your consciousness stands absolutely bare and naked. Deep down near your roots the wind is blowing and all your thoughts are fluttering far away from you, no more part of you. They still remain there, they don't go anywhere, but they are no more part of you. You have transcended; you are standing above them, a watcher on the hills. That's what meditation is.

Meditation is not against thought; it is for transcendence, it is going beyond thoughts. It is becoming so utterly naked that you can be seen by god as you really are: with no masks, with no garments, just like a small child. And these are the great moments of life, when love starts showering from the beyond and one becomes a beloved of god. But one has to earn it, one has to be worthy of it, one has to deserve it.

That earning comes through meditation. Meditation prepares you to receive love. God is always ready to give it, but we are not ready to receive it, we are not empty enough to receive it. We are so full of rubbish, we are so full of thoughts, desires, memories, dreams, that there is no space within us. That space has to be created. That is the art of meditation: to create inner space. And then you will start dancing in the golden wind.

Love is the ultimate godly experience. Love proves that existence is not without meaning, that life has significance. Except for love there is no proof for life's significance. If one has not experienced love one will feel meaningless, accidental, just driftwood, at the mercy of unknown, unconscious, natural forces.

That's how materialists look at life: just a combination of matter, just a by-product of matter, an epiphenomenon. But then there is no significance, and without significance one can only drag, one cannot dance. Without significance only cowards can live. The courageous one will commit suicide, they will commit hara-kiri.

The existentialistic philosophers must be cowards because they go on saying that life is meaningless, still they go on clinging to life. If life is meaningless then why should one live? For what? If it is all going to end in nothingness, if matter is going to disappear into matter and there is going to be no outcome of it, then why all this anguish, anxiety, despair, struggle? And these are all the themes of existentialists: anguish, anxiety, despair, fear, death. If life is meaningless then why should one be worried about death? One should rejoice! Then to commit suicide should be the only worthwhile act, the first and the last. But they don't commit suicide; they go on talking about the meaninglessness of life. In fact this very talk becomes their purpose.

One great philosopher, Zeno, lived a very long life -- more than ninety years -- and for his whole life he was teaching that life is meaningless. In fact it is said that a few fools committed suicide in following his 1/08/07

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ideas; he was a very convincing man. When he was on his deathbed somebody said, "This is very strange, that you lived ninety years and many of your followers have committed suicide following your ideas. Why did you not commit suicide? He said, "I had to live so that I could teach my philosophy." Now that was his only purpose: to teach philosophy, to teach this philosophy that life is meaningless. It was as if that became his meaning.

No, nobody really agrees -- not even the existentialists who go on saying that life is meaningless really agree with their own philosophy. Deep down they are still doubting: there may be some meaning. Perhaps we have not discovered it yet. Who know? -- maybe tomorrow we will stumble upon it. We may not have come across it up to now but it can happen tomorrow. So let us wait, live and go on searching.

Nobody really becomes convinced that life is meaningless because life is not meaningless; it has intrinsic value, but it has to be discovered. We are unconsciously, intuitively, instinctively aware of it. We have just a hunch that there is -- there is bound to be some meaning -- but we are not clear about it. It has not come to light; we don't have any proofs for it. Love gives us proofs for it.

A lover has no doubts about life's meaningfulness, its significance, its joy. It is only through love that people have slowly slowly discovered the ultimate meaning, god. It is only through love they have discovered the whole science of meditation because in loving moments, mind stops. When you are really in love, in those moments you don't think. The past disappears, the future disappears, the present becomes all and all -- and that's what meditation is. Love gives you a glimpse of meditation, and through meditation a window opens into the existence of god; hence I call love the most godly phenomenon on earth.

My sannyasins have to be meditators and lovers and together, because both are supportive energies for each other. If you love, you will be able to meditate more deeply; if you meditate you will be able to love more totally, and so on, so forth. They go on helping each other; they are very supporting. Slowly slowly a pyramid is created in your consciousness. By the bricks of love and meditation one can reach the highest peak of existence.

The man who knows only meditation is missing something, and the man who knows only love is also missing something. The whole man knows both; he has both aspects of the coin in his hands. He has all that is valuable within him. His life becomes an exquisite phenomenon, a beautiful song, a graceful experience.

He lives on the earth but he is part of the sky. He is a miracle, he is a paradox, but in his paradoxicalness he is whole -- and to be whole is to be holy. That is my definition of a holy man.

Esther has two meanings; one comes from Hebrew and the other from Persian -- both are significant.

The Hebrew meaning is a plant with white flowers; it symbolises love.

White flowers have always symbolised the purest, the most innocent phenomenon. White means innocence and white also means totality. Every other colour is only one aspect of white. When all colours are mixed together white arises. When white is divided into all its components then the seven colours, the whole spectrum of colours becomes available. That's how the rainbow comes into existence.

In the rainy season, when small drops of rain-water are hanging in the air, if the sun rises, the rays pass through those hanging drops of water and those drops, at a particular angle, start functioning like prisms: they start dividing the white ray into seven colours. That's how the rainbow arises.

All colours are parts or white. Black represents no colour; it represents absence, negativity, hence it has become the symbol of death. White represents all colours, positivity, hence it; is the symbol of love.

Love is a rainbow, a multi-splendoured experience, a multi-dimensional phenomenon. That meaning is beautiful. To attain to love is to attain to bliss -- they come together. Without love there is no bliss, without bliss there is no love. They never come alone, they cannot come alone -- they are inseparable. They are two names of the same thing.

And the Persian meaning is a star. That too is beautiful. Love is a star. It is the only star in the darkness of life, in the darkness of the night. If one can go on remembering love one can pass through this whole dark night of the soul.

Become blissful, become more loving, and your inner being will become a source of light, a star. Your inner being will also become a garden full of white flowers. And unless one blooms one never feels fulfilled, one never knows what contentment is. And not to know contentment, fulfilment, is to miss the whole point of life.

Truth is known only through a deep inner harmony. Ordinarily we are a chaos, very discordant. There is not one person in us but many. We are multi-psychic; there are many minds inside, and they are all dragging 1/08/07

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us in different directions -- many voices and you cannot figure out which is yours. One voice says 'Do this,'

another voice says, 'Don't do this.' One is constantly wavering. One is almost broken into thousands of pieces like a mirror thrown on the floor. That's the situation where man finds himself. But all those fragments can be gathered. They can be melted into one whole; they can be integrated, crystallised.

That's what sannyas is all about: it is the science of crystallising your fragments into one organic unity.

The moment that unity arises in you, great music is born, all noises change into an orchestra, and then only can you see, hear, feel the truth of existence. It is always there but our minds are so noisy that we cannot feel it.

The moment this inner chaos is gone we can hear the still, small voice within. And then indubitably, unmistakably one knows, 'This is My voice, this is god speaking in me!' And there is never any doubt. Even if the whole world doubts it, you will not doubt it: it is indubitable. Only on that rock of indubitability, on that rock of certainty, can life become a temple -- otherwise we are simply making sand-castles.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #2

Chapter title: None

2 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007025

ShortTitle: GWIND02

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

In Celtic mythology Birthe is the daughter of the goddess of wisdom and song. This is a very significant symbol: it is very rare to find in any other mythology the combination of wisdom and song.

Ordinarily nobody thinks of them together -- and in reality they are together. Wisdom is a song. It is not seriousness, it is playfulness; it is not sad, it is celebrating. And unless wisdom is a song it is not true. Then it is only knowledge mere knowledge. It is only pretending to be wisdom. But real wisdom that can also become a song, that ultimately becomes a song, is born only out of meditation. Where is no other way.

Meditation simply means the art of inward journeying. We are perfectly aware how to go into the outside world, how to reach others. We have become capable of travelling long distances very easily; we have reached the moon, walked on the moon. But the people who walked on the moon had no idea who they were; they had not even penetrated the first layer of their inner being. They had gone so far away, and they had taken a great risk. It was risky, it was dangerous. It was a miracle that nothing went wrong. There was every possibility that they would not go back on the earth again. Anything could have gone wrong: it was a first attempt to land human beings on the moon. But they had never tried to go in, and they may never try to go in; the idea may not occur to them.

People take themselves for granted -- that is the difficulty, They think they know themselves already.

and the reality of one's being is the most mysterious phenomenon, the most unknown and unknowable.

Meditation is the art of landing you at your very centre. We live on the circumference -- how to jump from the circumference to the centre? It is a whole art. I call it art rather than science because science is more mathematical and art is more artistic, more poetic. In science there are no exceptions, it follows universal laws. In art there are exceptions. In fact every individual reaches his centre in a slightly different 1/08/07

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way anybody else, because each individual has something unique in him. What is the divinity and the great grace of the universe, that it makes unique individuals only.

Meditation is the bridge between the circumference and the centre, between the outer and the inner, between mind and no-mind, between matter and consciousness.

Learn the art of meditation. My whole emphasis is on meditation. I don't want my sannyasins to become addicted to any other details of discipline, of food....

Where are a thousand and one things people become anxious about, worried about -- what to eat, what not to eat, how much to sleep, when to get up, when to go to bed? They are all nonessential things. The only essential thing is to know oneself. And the person who wants to know himself will naturally arrange his life in such a way that it helps. Slowly slowly he will change his food without any effort, without any enforcement. He will start becoming alert about what food helps him to be more silent. Just by watching one knows what is healthy, what is unhealthy, what gives you cramps in the stomach and what gives you heaviness, what makes you sleepy, what makes you alert, aware, light, what makes you sad and what makes you joyous.

Through watching, the meditator slowly becomes aware of what is the right time for him to sleep, and what is the right time for him to get up... And it will be different for everybody. That's why I don't want to prescribe any rules, because there are people who are day people and there are people who are night people.

The day people are more alive in the day, in the night they slow down. The night people are not so alive in the days they start becoming alive as the sun goes down. Evening is their real time, and as the night progresses they become more lively, now the same rule cannot be prescribed for both. Everybody has to find by experimentation, by awareness, what is right and wrong for him; and it is not for anybody else.

But one thing is for everybody, for all sannyasins -- and that is meditation. In fact by watching your habits, your life-style, your food, your sleep, the way you talk, the way you walk, you are learning meditation, because watching is the key. If first you can start watching outer things then you come a little closer: you start watching your thoughts, then a little closer and you start watching your emotions -- you are already moving in, the meditation has started. When only the watcher is left and there is nothing to watch, you have arrived home. That's the centre. Suddenly great light explodes, all darkness disappears, and with it all misery, all death.

Meditation makes you aware of great music -- music without and music within. It is there, but we are not alert, we are not awake, hence we go on missing it, otherwise the whole existence is nothing but music.

That music is called 'god' by the mystics. God is not a person but the ultimate harmony of existence; it is an orchestra. Everything is in tune with everything else. The trees are in tune with the earth, the earth is in tune with the wind, the wind is in tune with the sky, the sky is in tune with the stars, and so on, so forth. There is no hierarchy. Even the smallest blade of erass is as significant as the biggest star. They both contribute to the orchestra of existence. They both enhance it, enrich it.

Everything is going on in such deep accord, but man remains unaware of it. That unawareness becomes his misery and he starts suffering from his own invented nightmares. Otherwise life is a celebration, it is a constant celebration, a continuum, a non-ending festival. We just have to become a little more silent to be able to hear it. And when we are absolutely silent, not only silent but when we are silence -- then we disappear, then we are part of this whole cosmic harmony. That is the meeting of man with god, of the part with the whole. We disappear in one sense, we dissolve in one sense -- as an ego, as a person -- but we become the whole, so in another sense we are for the first time. The dewdrop disappears but becomes the ocean. It is not a loser, it loses nothing. It loses only its small boundaries which were not worth keeping. In fact they were creating this whole trouble: the fear, the trembling, the constant fear that the sun will rise and it will disappear, it will die.

Mahavira has said that man's life lived as an ego is just like a dewdrop hanging on a blade of grass, constantly afraid.

Just a small breeze and that's the end: the dewdrop falls into the earth and disappears. Or soon the morning will be there and the sun will rise and the dewdrop will evaporate. How can one live surrounded by so much death? All our boundaries are in fact drawn by our death; we are defined by our death. The moment we lose our boundaries we lose our death too. When we are eternal, then when we are infinite.

Remember that meditation is succeeding if you become more and more alert of the great music that is always there -- it just needs a sympathetic ear. Meditation creates that ear, that heart.

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Meditation is a very paradoxical experience. In one sense it takes away your personality, and it takes it away in toto; it leaves not even a trace of your personality. And it is our personality that we think makes us unique; it is not our personality that makes us unique. But we are afraid of losing our personality, our identity, because then we will be nobody -- and this is our uniqueness, this is what makes us special, this is our definition.

In the first place personality is not a reality; it is a mask. The very word 'personality' comes from

'persona', persona means a mask. In Greek theatre actors used to wear masks -- those masks were called persona -- and while they wore masks they had a personality.

We are all wearing masks. They are not our reality -- just faces imposed upon the original face.

Meditation will take away all your false faces -- that's the fear, that's why many people want to meditate but never meditate, they only talk about meditation but never take the jump into it, for the simple reason they are scared to lose their persona, their mask. That's all they have. And they have become accustomed to it: they only know themselves through it.

On the other hand, if you are ready to risk the mask, for the first time you discover your real uniqueness, your individuality. Individuality is totally different from personality. The word 'individuality' comes from a root which means indivisible: that which cannot be divided, that which cannot be dismantled, disintegrated.

Meditation takes away your personality and makes you aware of your individuality. That individuality is unique; it belongs only to you and to nobody else. There has never been any individual like you and there will never be again, because god never repeats. He always creates unique individuals.

And this is not only true about human beings, this is so about everything. Go to the sea beach and try to find two pebbles exactly the same and you will not be able to. Or go into the garden and try to find two leaves exactly the same and you will not be able to. It is not only that your thumb impression is unique, in fact, everything in existence is unique. But we go on biding our reality behind many many curtains and we become lost in our own inventions, in our own lies.

Meditation is the discovery of the truth. Of course one has to sacrifice many lies, but you don't lose anything, you gain. With every lie sacrificed a little bit of truth is discovered. And when you have discovered your whole truth you have found god.

There is no other paradise except when you achieve the state of no-mind. Mind is hell and no-mind is heaven. Hell and heaven are not geographical; hell is psychological and heaven is spiritual.

People have been continuously looking for a geographical hell and heaven. They are only metaphors, and one should not stretch metaphors too far, otherwise they lose all meaning. That's what has happened, and it has happened all over the world, in almost all the religions: beautiful metaphors stretched too far have become ugly.

Now there are maps of hell, of heaven, available, and it is really strange that we were not able to make maps of the earth. Those were made just a few centuries ago, but there are five-thousand-year-old maps of heaven and hell. It was easy because it is all imagination; you can make anything out of imagination; hence the Christians' heaven is different and the Hindus' heaven is different and the Mohammedan's heaven is different. They are bound to be different: different peoples'imagination works in a different way.

The Tibetan heaven cannot be cool; they are so tired of the cold -- it is warm. The Indian heaven cannot be warm; they are so tired of the heat -- it is cool. Now how can they agree about that? An Indian heaven is bound to be air-conditioned. The Indian hell is full of fire, naturally -- that's how India is suffering. We know that's how hell should be more fire, fire and fire, all flame, everywhere. From where do they go on getting all this gas and kerosene? -- nobody knows! For eternity they have been burning hell-fire. And it cannot be a small thing: millions of people are thrown into hell. And the whole work consists of one thing: just cooking them' And they are not owed to die either, because if they die they are freed from suffering, and they have to be there for eternity. And the whole work consists of this. That may be the cause of the scarcity of petrol and kerosene. Hell is somewhere deep down, so they have shut off all petrol going towards hell.

And it must be easy there: you just put a pipe down and the petrol starts flowing. To pump it up is difficult!

This is just imagination. There is certainly something like hell, but it exists in you. And you are the creator of it, your mind is the cause of it. If you can go beyond the mind you go beyond hell, you go beyond suffering.

Meditation is the way of transcendence. And life can be sheer joy. There is no reason why one should suffer. If we are suffering we are creating it.

My sannyasins have to accept total responsibility for their suffering, because it is in that acceptance that 1/08/07

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we become masters of our own hell. Then we of course can get out of it; there is nobody who is preventing us. No devil, no satan is the master of it -- we are! Throwing responsibility on somebody else -- on fate, on kismet -- is just a trick of the mind. So you go on creating your own hell but you go on throwing the responsibility on other peoples' shoulders, and the vicious circle continues.

Once we accept that we are the cause of our own misery, half the journey is already complete. Then the other half is not more difficult, it is less difficult; the first half is the most difficult part. The same energy can be used for creating paradise.

Knowledge is learned from others. Wisdom has to be discovered within oneself. Knowledge comes through studying scriptures, accumulating information from all possible sources. But wisdom is not information, wisdom is transformation. It does not come from any scripture or from any source whatsoever; it is already within you -- you just have to dig deeply into your own being. You have to find the rock-bottom beyond which you cannot go.

Once you have touched the rock-bottom, a fountain of wisdom immediately starts flowing in your life.

And then that wisdom has freshness because it is not borrowed; it is young, innocent, uncorrupted. It is not cunning; it is wise but not clever, it is intelligent but not intellectual. And it will change every thing in your life. Knowledge changes nothing, it simply goes on accumulating in you; you remain the same. Knowledge becomes like a burden; you can carry it on your head, you can go on piling it up in suitcases. That's what memory is, just the piling up of knowledge.

The more knowledge you have, the more you will be respected by people, but you will know that you are the same person. You will not respect yourself, you will not have any self-respect. On the contrary you will have a deep self-condemnation. But with wisdom it is possible, people may not respect you, they may even condemn you, because your wisdom will be so fresh and so new that they may not be able to absorb, digest it. They may not even be able to hear it -- it may be so shocking to them. It will be against their traditions and conventions. Wisdom is never conventional, it is always revolutionary.

Knowledge is always conventional. The pundit always follows the past; the scholar goes on digging in the graves and goes on finding skulls and bones -- that's what his whole work is. The more skulls he accumulates, the more bones he accumulates, the greater scholar he is thought to be.

The wise man has no accumulation really, but he has a tremendous freshness, the freshness of the early morning breeze, the freshness of the first ray of the sun, the freshness of the flowers just opening, the freshness of dewdrops. He has a coolness, a calmness, but whatsoever he says brings rebellion into his own life and it brings rebellion into other people's lives.

That rebellious wisdom is possible only through meditation, not through mentation. Mentation will bring you more and more knowledge, and meditation will bring you more and more wisdom. When meditation is absolutely full, complete, entire; when nothing is left, when you have come to a point beyond which there is no further to go, then wisdom is total.

Then suddenly your life becomes integrated; it becomes one, centered, rooted, grounded.

Then you live joyously and you die joyously.

Then whatsoever you do there is dance in it.

And when every breath is a celebration, then only should one think that one has found god, truth, the home.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #3

Chapter title: None

3 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007035

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Query:-

ShortTitle: GWIND03

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

For centuries religions all over the world have been telling people to serve humanity, but it has not produced any effect, it has not served any purpose. On the contrary, it has created hypocrites. People who are not blissful themselves are absolutely unable to help anybody. Those who have not attained cannot share; they don't have it to share. You can give light to others only if you have it in the first place.

Blind people trying to lead other blind people -- that's what has been happening. It is a very dangerous game, because if the blind person knows nobody is leading him, he tries to find his own way, he tries to grope. He remains careful, cautious, very cautious. But the moment he finds that somebody is leading him, guiding him, that he has found a leader he relaxes; he need not be so alert, he need not be on guard so much.

He is completely unaware that the guide is as blind as he himself. Now there is more danger than there was before because he will not live cautiously. He will think 'Now somebody is there to take respon-sibility --

why be worried?'

It is because of this -- these blind people guiding other blind people -- that the whole humanity has almost become a madhouse: everybody has fallen into all kinds of ditches, everybody is suffering. Life has become almost intolerable. And it has all happened through good intentions.

The people who have tried to help have only hindered growth. Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Jainism; all teach service to humanity: service to humanity is the way to god.

So people start serving without knowing whether they are capable of serving or not.

You won't allow anybody to operate on you unless he is a qualified surgeon. Whatsoever his intentions, even if they are very good intentions -- he reads the Bible every day and goes to church and he talks beautifully about god and about prayer and he is a man of prayer -- still we will say 'Don't touch my body --

you are not a surgeon.' And he will say, 'But I want to help you, I want to serve you. Service to humanity is my religion, service above all.' You will say, 'That's very good, but find somebody else!'

About the body you won't allow anybody to help you unless he is qualified, but about the soul all kinds of people are allowed to help you. Only the awakened ones can be helpers. Unless a man is enlightened, it is impossible for him to guide anybody. Of course the desire to guide is there in everybody, it is very ego-fulfilling. That's why everybody is ready to give you advice whether you ask for it or not. Unasked for advice is being given, and good advice, because everybody wants to be, at least in SOMEBODY'S eyes, a wise man. And it is very easy to advise others. They may not have practised the same thing in their own life...

There is a Sufi story. A woman came to a Sufi mystic with her small child who was eating too many sweets, ice cream and all kinds of things, and the mother was worried. The mother believed that sugar was white poison; she believed in naturopathy. But the child was adamant and he wouldn't listen.

She told the mystic 'I have tried every possible way: I have punished him, I have rewarded him --

nothing works! He goes on eating sweets, he simply eats sweets and nothing else. He is ready to be hungry but he won't eat anything else; the whole day he goes on stuffing himself. We are worried -- it is going to be dangerous for his health, for his teeth, and everything will be affected. You have to do something. You have always been of great help to me -- please advise this stupid child. He is very stubborn.'

The mystic looked at the child and said to the woman, 'Come back after three weeks. I cannot advise you right now.' Even the child was curious, because so many people were advising him. He looked at the mystic and said, 'What is the matter? -- because every person that I have come across advises me, and my mother takes me to every place. I have become accustomed to all this nonsense, and I have to listen. You are the first man who has wanted three weeks. Are you going to ponder over it?'

And the old man said, 'No, my child, I am not going to ponder over it. I love sweets myself. I cannot advise you right now. I am not the right person to advise you; my advice will be futile. Three weeks I will practise. If I can manage at this age to drop sweets completely, then I can advise you. If I fail I will confess

"I cannot advise him -- take him to somebody else."'

1/08/07

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Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

After three weeks they came back and the old man said, 'Three weeks more will be needed.' The child said, 'What is the matter?' The old man said, 'You know, I know, but this woman won't understand -- she is mad! I have been trying hard but I love sweets.'

The child said, 'You are right. I have also tried hard. Not that I don't want... I understand all these people are good people and they are all advising me for my good, but I cannot stop.'

The old man said, 'Wait three weeks more.' And after three weeks when they came back the old man said to the child, 'It can be done, my boy. I have done it! And look: I am a very old man, still I have been able to do it. Give it a try.' And the child said, 'Okay, master. I will try!'

The woman was puzzled. She said, 'This is the first time that the child has taken any interest in any adviser. In fact he insists every day, "When are we going to the old man?" He reminds me, "Now three weeks are over and we should go." You are the first man with whom he has agreed willingly.'

The old man said, 'The reason is he can understand that I have tried on my own first, I have practised it.

He can see my sincerity; it is not mere advice. He knows it has cost me much. I love sweets, I have always loved sweets. Sugar may be white poison -- so what? One is going to die sooner or later. And I am an old man; whether I live two years or three years or seven years or ten, what does it matter? -- one day one has to die. For his sake I practised it, and I give my word that I will never eat sweets, I will never again use sugar in my life. If this can help the child, then it is okay, otherwise what else can I do?' This sincerity worked; the child dropped sweets that very day.

Missionaries have been doing much work all over the world -- missionaries of all religions -- trying to help people with things they have not practised themselves...

One can be a helper only if one has first helped himself. It begins from your very innermost core. You have to be the basic experiment of transformation.

This is my approach. So I don't say to my sannyasins: go and help humanity. Enough of that kind of help has been done and enough harm has been done through that kind of help. No more of it! I insist: help yourself. And if you can attain to light, to bliss, to an experience of godliness, then you are bound to help others. There is no need to say anything about it; it will overflow, your joy will start overflowing. And remember: only a blissful person can be helpful; the miserable person can only harm.

So the first thing to remember, the most basic, is to become blissful. Be totally selfish, only then can you be altruistic. This is a strange message, because for centuries man has been told 'Don't be selfish, then you can be altruistic.' I say just the opposite: Be totally selfish because only out of your selfishness does altruism grow; it is not against it.

A man who has loved himself will be able to love others. A man who has felt bliss will be able to spread it. One always gives whatsoever one has, one radiates it. It is not possible to hide it, it starts functioning of its own accord... It is such a miracle, it is such magic.

One cannot praise god unless one's life is a celebration -- obviously: if you are miserable you can only complain, you cannot praise -- praise for what? You cannot feel grateful -- grateful for what? In fact you will have a grudge against god. Deep down you will feel that you have been cheated.

One of the characters in Fyodor Dostoevsky's great novel BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, says 'If I meet god the first thing I am going to ask him is "Who asked you to create me? And is it right to create me without my permission? This is an imposition, this is dictatorial. I never wanted your so-called life, because I only suffered. Who are you to create me without my permission? Do you enjoy people and their miseries?

Are you a sadist of some kind? Are we created just to keep you engaged, and are all kinds of miseries created for us just for your enjoyment and entertainment? What is this existence for, for what purpose?"'

He is angry, and I can see that his anger has a certain meaning. In fact everybody has felt that anger once in a while. Whenever you are in misery, in deep suffering, anguish, you have felt it. It is not just fiction, it is not something out of the imagination of the novelist; it is very true, it is human.

It will be impossible to forgive god if we remain miserable -- what to say of praising? That's why people who pray are bound to remain hypocrites for the simple reason: they have not tasted of bliss -- how can they show their thankfulness? Maybe they are praying out of fear, but how can prayer arise out of fear? Out of fear love never arises; out of fear arises hatred, anger.

Friedrich Nietzsche seems to be far more authentic man than your so-called popes and ayatollahs and imams and pundits and shankaracharyas, because he declared that god is dead! That was just sheer anger, anger at being in such a miserable situation where there seems to be no way to get out. The more you try to get out, the more you become entangled. The more you try to solve the problems of life, the more you come 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

to see that they are insoluble.

Still man has to live because there is a deep desire to live. God has given us a tremendous libido, a lust for life -- and life is full of misery. He has created a dilemma, a double-bind; he won't allow you to die easily and he won't allow you to live easily either.

It is very natural that the twentieth century has revolted against religions. All intelligent people all over the world are against religion for the simple reason that the whole thing seems to be insincere. You cannot pray, you cannot feel thankful because there is nothing to feel thankful for.

My effort here is to create a totally new concept of religion which will be applicable to the modern mind, which will be contemporary. All religions are rotten and old now. They have lost their relevance, their context, they have lost all their meaning. They may have been meaningful once, but now man has come of age.

Five thousand years ago men were like small children. They needed a different kind of religion, a very childish religion: god the father, and angels flying with wings and all kinds of fairy tales. They were good for children to keep them engaged, colourful, but not for people who have become grown-up. And our religions are still hanging around those ancient fairy tales. They still talk a language which is okay as far as children are concerned but which is stupid, silly as far as silly as far as a grown-up person is concerned.

It is good to take small children to Disneyland, but when the Dalai Lama goes and visits it, then it looks silly, just stupid. But I can see the reason: the Dalai Lama also lives in a very childish religious attitude. He was deeply interested, he enjoyed it very much. There seems to be a certain affinity between the childish mind and the old religious mind.

To me religion should start not with a belief in god; a grown-up's religion cannot start by any belief -- it can only start in scientific experimen-tation. One has to become the scientific lab oneself. Of course the experimentation is inner and subjective, but it is as scientific as any objective experiment. In fact one has to be more alert because one will be dealing with more subtle phenomena. And one has to look for god, one has to look for bliss, because bliss is a natural desire; god almost seems to be something imposed upon us.

Religions can be without god; there are religions -- Buddhism, Jainism. They are without god. God doesn't seem to be a necessary hypothesis at all. But without bliss there can be no religion because then there is no need for any religion. Religion means the science of bliss. How to transform our energies from a state of misery into a state of bliss -- that should be the whole of religion.

And this is my experience, that when it happens a great gratitude arises. In that gratitude, for the first time you feel the presence of something divine. You can call it god, you can call it truth, you can call it tao

-- it doesn't matter what you call it -- or you may not call it anything; you may remain completely silent about it because it is something inexpressible. But certainly it happens when you are blissful. Then you start feeling a deep thankfulness towards existence. That is praise of the lord.

Find bliss and you will have found prayer as a consequence of it. But for centuries you have been told: pray and then you will find bliss. I am saying just the opposite: become blissful and prayer will come of its own accord. And then prayer has a beauty of its own: it is without fear, without greed. You are not asking for anything; it is not beggarly. You are simply feeling a thankfulness to the unknown source of all, to the ultimate source of all. And now you have something to feel grateful for -- you cannot complain.

Dostoevsky lived in misery. For his whole life he was a miserable man. He lived in all kinds of nightmares, he was really a tortured soul. He represented the modern consciousness in all its naked anguish, in its ugliest form. He suffered -- it is natural that he was angry. The same was true about Friedrich Nietzsche; he was also suffering very much. They were unable to find any way because Christianity had become almost hocus-pocus. After Jesus died Christianity became a dead phenomenon.

Nietzsche was right when he said that the first and the last Christian died two thousand years ago on the cross -- the first and the last, he said. After Jesus there has only been a long queue of stupid of people, of all kinds of superstitious people. But this has happened to almost every religion more or less; the difference is only of quantity.

I don't want to give any belief, any dogma, any creed. I trust only in experience. So while being here with me and becoming a sannyasin, this has to be your goal: to become more blissful. We create our misery, hence it is not difficult to be blissful. It is just because we don't understand how we go on creating our misery; once we understand the mechanism of how we go on doing it, we can stop doing it. And the same energy starts moving into different directions. It starts becoming a totally new phenomenon: it becomes bliss, and then prayer follows.

That prayer is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. That prayer is simply prayerfulness. That 1/08/07

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Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

prayer is not addressed to any particular god -- Christian, Jewish, Mohammedan -- it is not really addressed to anybody in particular. It is simply a heartfelt joy, a thankfulness for the whole existence: for the trees, for the clouds, for the stars, for all that has been, is, and will be.

-- What is the meaning of your name, Kiffy? -- I don't know. -- And I also don't know, so...! You have such a beautiful name -- there is no need for a meaning. Ma Anand Kiffy -- we will call you blissful Kiffy. Whatsoever Kiffy means, be blissful! That is the real thing; that is the elephant. Kiffy is just the tail-end. If the elephant passes by, the tall will also go! How long will you be here? -- Till December, I think. -- That's good. Both the elephant and the tail will go!

The Golden Wind

Chapter #4

Chapter title: None

4 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007045

ShortTitle: GWIND04

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Marianne is a very beautiful name, of great meaning. It also has a paradox in it. That paradox makes it even more beautiful, more truthful. So it is not only a name but becomes representative of something significant in life. It has two meanings. The first meaning is bitter grace.

The first time that one hears that it means bitter grace it appears a little bit strange, because we have always thought that grace is sweet -- why should grace be bitter? But in fact in the beginning it is bitter, because grace is possible only when one allows one's ego to die. That is its bitterness, its pain. It is very difficult to allow oneself to disappear; to drop the ego is the most difficult thing in life. People go on clinging to it in one way or another, because they think if the ego is totally gone then we are lost, completely lost. But that's an illusion. When the ego is gone you are found for the first time, not lost; hence the beginning is bitter, but the end is tremendously sweet.

And from that end part comes the second meaning... The second meaning of marianne is living fragrance; when one has allowed the ego to die then life becomes a fragrance; then all misery disappears.

Misery stinks, it is dirty; it is a wound full of pus. Once the ego is gone one is healed and whole. Then life opens up like a lotus flower. There is great rejoicing -- one is fulfilled, contented. For the first time one feels one has come home.

The beginning is bitter but the end is very sweet.

Gautam the Buddha used to say again and again that worldly pleasures are sweet in the beginning and bitter in the end. And divine bliss is bitter in the beginning and sweet in the end.

Bliss alone, without peace, is a state of feverishness, excitement, but not of ecstasy. That's the difference between excitement and ecstasy: ecstasy is both blissful and peaceful; excitement is only bliss; hence there is such turmoil. It is a beautiful turmoil, it is a noise, a noise that one would like to have, but sooner or later one is bound to get tired of it. That's what happens to all kinds of pleasures and happiness and joys in life.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

They are all different facades of bliss, but one thing is missing -- peace is missing -- hence they are shallow, and ultimately boring and tiring. They are good for a few moments but how long can one remain excited?

Excitement is exertion, it is not rest; hence bliss alone is not of much value.

Peace alone is also not of much value. It is cold and dead. It is like the silence that prevails in the cemetery; it is the silence of the grave. You will find it around the so-called saints. They are peaceful because they are dead.

The real thing is to have both together, then peace remains the centre and bliss becomes the cyclone.

And when you have both, life is ecstatic, it is tremendous joy. And it is not tiring; on the contrary, it goes on refreshing you. Then it is bliss with a new dimension, the dimension of peacefulness. It is peace with a new dimension, the dimension of blissfulness.

Both together make life whole. Otherwise, it is easy to achieve one, but then one remains lop-sided and one remains half; and to be half is to be miserable. To be whole brings celebration to life.

My sannyasins have to be really whole persons.

A person becomes capable of blessing others only when he is full of blissfulness. In fact then one need not bless, blessings go on pouring. Your bliss starts overflowing; you become like a fountain. And you become connected with the inexhaustible source of life. That source is called god.

God is not a person, remember. God simply means the ultimate source of all. We come from it, the trees grow from it, and the stars and the whole world... God is like the ocean and we are all waves in the ocean.

Not remaining rooted in the whole is the cause of man's misery; being rooted in the whole life immediately becomes blissful.

We are not separate entities, but we go on believing that we are separate entities. That is just an illusion, but it has been perpetuated by the society, by education, by every method and means. There are vested interests behind it: they want you to remain miserable, the state wants you to remain miserable, the church wants you to remain miserable, the priests and the politicians are in conspiracy to keep everybody miserable for the simple reason that only miserable people can be controlled, they can be enslaved. They are so tired and exhausted, they are not in a state to fight or rebel. They are in such misery that they lose all intelligence.

Intelligence needs the soil of blissfulness. It is a rose that grows in the soil of blissfulness. And the politicians and the priests are very much afraid of intelligence because intelligence is rebellious. Intelligence cannot say yes to all kinds of imprisonments. An intelligent person would rather die than sell his soul. He will not allow himself to be reduced to a commodity.... And that's what the priests and the politicians want: everybody should be reduced to a commodity, everybody should be reduced to a thing, to a machine. Of course they want the machines to be efficient; for that purpose schools, colleges, universities exist. They are not to make you intelligent, mind you; they exist to destroy your intelligence, they exist to create mediocrity in you. Their purpose is to make you efficient machines so that you can be used by the powers. The powers may be political, religious, social... whosoever is in power. Educational systems all over the world serve the powerful people and their interests. They are not in the service of people.

The function of a master is to undo whatsoever the society has done. It is to negate all that has been imposed upon you. And once all the thick layers of conditioning are removed, your ego starts disappearing.

It is the ego that keeps you separate from the whole and keeps you miserable.

The moment bliss arises in your heart -- and it always means only one thing, that you are again bridged with the whole -- then immediately your life becomes a light, not only for yourself but for others too. Your life becomes love. Not that you are loving, you become simply love. That's how one becomes a blessing to the whole existence.

Blessed are those who are blissful because they are not only a blessing to themselves but a blessing to all.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #5

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Chapter title: None

5 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007055

ShortTitle: GWIND05

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Man can live either by his own will or as part of god's will. The first is the way of the ignorant person, and because of that the ignorant person suffers. His whole effort is futile because he is trying to do something which is impossible. We are part of the whole, we cannot exist as separate entities, not even for a single moment.

We can believe that we exist as separate entities, but that is only belief, not reality. And whenever belief goes against reality it creates suffering because you live according to something which is not the cass; you start going wrong. When you live according to the real there is no misery -- bliss is the outcome.

The man who understands drops his ego for the simple reason that it is only a false notion. There is no way to materialise it; it will remain false. And to spin and weave your life around something false is a sheer wastage of energy... but that's what millions of people go on doing, hence they suffer. The suffering is caused because without understanding the reality they go on trying to do something against it. They are trying to go against the current. Their whole energy becomes a constant fight -- and they are bound to lose, because how can the part win against the whole? It is like a leaf fighting with the tree itself.

If the leaf has consciousness it may start thinking it is separate, that it has nothing to do with the tree, that it will have its own way. And then immediately there will be trouble, there will be conflict. It will become more and more alienated from its own sources of energy. The tree is its mother, and the tree is not only a tree, it is rooted in the earth; it represents the whole earth. It breathes the air, it represents the whole atmosphere. It is connected with the sun and with the farthest star. To fight with the tree is to fight with the universe. Just a poor, tiny leaf trying to fight with the universe -- the whole idea is stupid. But that's what man goes on doing: he goes on pushing the river.

Sannyas means dropping the fight with the river, going with the river, allowing the river to take you, learning the art of let-go. Those two small, simple words 'let', 'go', define the very spirit of sannyas. Then one can say 'Let thy kingdom come, thy will be done.' Then one withdraws one's will, and the moment you withdraw your will your life becomes immensely rich. Suddenly the whole is with you, and we can be victorious only when the whole is with us.

Yogi means one who is practising the art, the science of becoming one with the universe. Except for the ego there is no other problem in life; all other problems are offshoots. But people go on trying to solve other problems which are offshoots. You can go on pruning the leaves and the branches, but unless you cut the root new leaves will come, new branches will come. In fact the more you prune the leaves and the branches, the thicker will become the foliage of the tree. That's what happens: the more you try to solve your problems, the more you become entangled in them. You solve one problem and your solution brings ten more problems in the wake of it, and life goes on becoming more and more complex.

The child comes into the world without any problems, and every old man, almost every one, except for the few Buddhas, die burdened with problems. And they have carried these mountains of problems all their life for the simple reason that they have been trying to solve the symptoms and not going to the cause of it.

And it is easy to solve one symptom, but then the problem will assert itself from somewhere else.

You cannot get rid of symptoms directly; you will have to go to the root. And the stupidity of man is such that he goes on watering the root and cutting the branches. Both things he goes on doing simultaneously because he cannot see the relationship. There is a certain reason why he cannot see the relationship between the branches, the leaves, the foliage, and the roots: the roots are invisible.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

You need a very penetrating consciousness to reach the roots, because they are underground and everything else is above the ground -- you can see it. So you see anger, you see jealousy, you see possessiveness, you see greed, ambition, and a thousand and one problems -- and naturally because you see them and you see that they all bring misery... Who does not know that anger brings misery? Who has not suffered from answer? Who has not burned his hands in anger? And who has not tried to get rid of it?

The same is the case with other problems... Nobody wants to remain greedy -- it is ugly and nothing ever satisfies it. You can have as much money as you want and you will still want more because greed means the desire for more. It has no limitation, it is unlimited; it does not believe in limits. So when one limit is crossed... that was only temporary. Greed immediately jumps ahead of you, it is always ahead of you, it is always pointing far away, here, to the horizon. It always keeps the goal the same distance from you; whatsoever you have makes no difference. If you have ten rupees it asks for a hundred, if you have a hundred rupees it asks for one thousand, if you have one-thousand it asks for ten thousand. The distance remains the same.

It is exactly like the horizon: between you and the horizon the distance is always the same wherever you are, because the horizon does not really exist, it is an illusion. Greed creates an illusion of a goal, but it doesn't exist, otherwise people would have achieved it, at least a few people would have achieved it. But in the whole of history not a single person has been able to fulfil his greed. Without any exception all have failed. But still we go on trying. So sooner or later everybody comes to feel that it is a stupid effort it is doomed to fail, an exercise in utter futility. And one can see the ugliness of it because the greedy person becomes like an octopus His whole being is just tentacles spreading in all directions, grabbing everything.

The English word 'greed' comes from a Sanskrit root and the Sanskrit word 'vulture' comes from the same root. The greedy person is like a vulture -- murderous, ready to eat even a dead corpse. One feels the ugliness of is and one wants to get rid of it, but you cannot get rid of it because you go on watering the root: the root is ego. It is ego that wants to fulfil impossible goals. In fact the ego is not interested in possible goals at all, they look too ordinary; anybody can do them. The ego always wants to do something extraordinary to prove 'I am not so ordinary person.' That is the deepest desire of the ego: to prove oneself extraordinary. But the desire to be extraordinary is very ordinary, it is in everybody's heart; it is nothing special.

In fact to accept one's ordinariness is really extraordinary because it is very rare. It happens only once in a while that a person accepts his ordinariness with joy -- not out of despair or failure, not to console oneself, but blissfully, through understanding.

The ego wants to prove, and greed comes in, ambition comes in. And whenever your greed, your ambition, is hindered by anything... And it is bound to be hindered because the same type of people are all around. They are all greedy, they all want the same thing, that you want; hence there is going to be conflict, there is going to be cut-throat competition, hence the answer.

And whatsoever you catch hold of, you cling to, afraid that somebody else may snatch it away because there are so many vultures around; the whole world is full of vultures. Clinging arises, attachment arises, possessiveness arises, and the fear, the constant fear, because you have snatched it from somebody else, now many people are after you.

All these problems arise one by one out of a single root: the ego. The man of penetrating awareness cuts the invisible root; that's what sannyas is: surrendering the ego. And the moment you surrender the ego, immediately the meeting happens; immediately you are one with the whole. And to be one with the whole is bliss, is benediction, is ecstasy, is freedom, freedom from all diseases, freedom from all restlessness, freedom from all ugliness.

Love is the very essence of prayer. Those who pray without love, their prayer remains formal. It is an empty gesture with no reality, no significance. They can go on praying for lives together -- no transformation is going to happen through their prayer. They are deceiving themselves and nobody else.

Real prayer arises only out of love. And the irony is that all the so-called religions have been against love and for prayer. They destroy the very possibility of prayer and then they impose a false, a pseudo kind of prayer.

There is a reason why they do it; because if a man really comes to know prayer through love, he will not be Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan -- he will simply be religious. But Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus are not interested in somebody's being religious. Their interest is that the person should belong to their fold, to their flock, to their crowd.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

The only way to prevent people from moving in the right direction is to cut the very source of real prayer -- that is love. So they all condemn love and they all praise prayer. It is like condemning rose bushes and praising roses: the natural outcome will be that people will have to purchase plastic roses. And that's what established religions have been doing: selling plastic roses.

Plastic roses can be Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan; they can be manufactured in different shapes, colours; they can even be perfumed. They are cheap and they are lasting. And the churches are not interested in your transformation, they have their vested interest.

All the churches in the world are interested in keeping their power intact; nobody wants to love power hence whenever there is a person who starts talking about real roses, all the shopkeepers who have been selling false roses, paper roses, plastic roses, are angry. They crucified Jesus for the simple reason that he said 'Love is god.' Immediately the Jewish priesthood became aware: this man is dangerous -- he is talking about real roses. Then what will happen to our shops?

And about real roses one thing has to be understood they have to be grown within one's own self. You don't need anybody else's garden for it. You don't need any church, any temple, you don't need the Bible, the Koran, the Gita. You don't need any priesthood, any mediators between you and god. You have to seek and search for your own innermost core -- and there is the garden, there is paradise.

The English word 'paradise' comes from a Persian word 'firdaus' Firdaus has a beautiful meaning; it means a garden. In English it has lost its original meaning; it simply means a walled garden. Of course in a desert heaven can be conceived, only as a walled garden, as an oasis. And life is almost like a desert, but everybody is carrying the seed, the soil, the climate, the possibility, the potential -- everything that is possibly needed to grow roses within their being. Once all the churches have to stop you from becoming interested in love, only then can their shops go on doing business.

They were bound to crucify Jesus. They crucified Jesus and then they made the CHristian church along the same lines as those against which Jesus was fighting. The Christian church is as against Jesus as was the Jewish priesthood; there is no difference.

Buddhists are as against Buddha as were the Hindus. When a master is dead you can start the business again in his name.

The garden is within you, and the way to find it is to first become very clear that prayer is a by-product of love; hence nobody can learn prayer from the outside. One can forget about prayer; one should simply move naturally into love. Love as many people as possible, in as many ways as possible. Love animals, birds, trees, rocks. Let love be your religion, and slowly slowly you will see new nuances arising in your love, new fragrances, new experiences, new territories opening. New wonders and new mysteries are being revealed to the lover every day.

And the ultimate phenomenon is prayer; one becomes so full of love that each of one's acts becomes an act of love. does one feel the presence of god- in the rocks, in the trees, in the birds, in the people, everywhere.

My sannyas is a religionless religion. It is not Christian, it is not Hindu, it is not Mohammedan. It certainly has something to do with Christ and Buddha and Krishna and Mohammed, but nothing to do with any established church, established religion. And as your love grows you will find that your love becomes so absorbing that it can absorb Krishna and Buddha, Jesus, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu. And your love is so vast, it can contain all these people with no contradiction, with no problem at all.

Jesus says 'The house of my god is huge, it has many rooms.' In his house Krishna can be a guest.

Buddha can be a guest, Lao Tzu can be a guest -- they are welcome. In my house too, all are welcome -- but not the priests, not the popes, not the shankaracharyas, not the immams. These are the most irreligious people on the earth, the enemies of religion. They have poisoned everybody's heart and they have exploited peoples' faith, trust, prayer everything. They have profaned something sacred in the heart of man. They are criminals, they are sinners.

The Golden Wind

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

Query:-

Chapter #6

Chapter title: None

6 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007065

ShortTitle: GWIND06

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Meditation is a process of alchemy. It is a very wrong notion, but very prevalent all over the world, that alchemy was just primitive chemistry. Alchemy had nothing to do with chemistry at all. Chemistry is part of science, alchemy is part of religion. Chemistry belongs to the world of matter, alchemy belongs to the world of consciousness.

But this wrong notion has arisen because of a certain historical necessity. The Christian church was so repressive that all mystic schools in the West had to function under disguise; they had to go underground.

And the only way to go underground was to pretend that they were doing something else. So on the periphery they pretended that they were trying to change baser metals into gold. That was only a deception; it was to befool the church and the state and the crowd. Behind the facade was the real work. The real work was to transform the lower energies, metaphorically called baser metals, into higher energies, metaphorically, gold. It was a process, of tremendous importance, to transform sexual energy into superconsciousness.

In the East it never happened, because in the East religions have never been so repressive. In fact in the East religions have never been so organised. For example, Hinduism has never been a political power the way Christianity has been, or Islam has been. Hinduism has existed as a way of life, as a philosophy, but with no political power, with no organisation at all. It| good in a sense: in the East many things were possible because of this unorganised state of religion.

Rebels could exist. Even a very rebellious school of mystics, the tantrikas, could exist -- which would have been absolutely impossible in the West. And that was the most extreme, rebellious religion ever; it sabotaged the whole idea of the so-called religiousness. But still it existed openly; there was no need to go underground.

It was only recently, when Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism came in contact with Islam and Christianity, that they started becoming organised religions, and rebellious spirits became more and more impossible.

Alchemy is one of the oldest Mystic Schools. Its origins are really hidden far away in prehistoric times.

But the whole process depends on a single method, meditation. Meditation contains the whole science of alchemy. It is the beginning and the end, because first you have to sort out what is matter in you and what is non-matter in you -- that is the beginning. Unless you sort it out you will remain confused.

The whole confusion is that both are intermixed; matter has penetrated into consciousness in many ways and consciousness has penetrated into matter in many ways. They have become so intertwined that it is almost impossible to exactly define what is what.

And matter of course is visible, measurable -- that's why it is called matter. Matter means that which can be measured. It is possible for others to observe it, it is objective. The word 'objective' is beautiful; it means that which hinders, objects. I won't allow you, it will hinder you, it will prove its existence, But consciousness is empty in that way; it does not object. It is like an open door: you can pass through it. It is so invisible that it is not even like a breeze; it won't even touch you. It is intangible.

That's why we become focussed on the body, and slowly slowly a certain identity arises which is bodily: we start thinking of ourselves as the body. We are not the body; we are in the body but are not the body.

The body only houses us, shelters us. It is a beautiful shrine: it has to be loved, taken care of, nourished, not neglected. It has tremendous possibilities, but the basic thing to remember is, it is not your being. The first 1/08/07

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step of meditation is to demark that you are not the body.

So meditation starts in observing the body from inside. From outside you have observed it; everybody has observed it in the mirror because that is the only way to observe your own body from outside. Others you can observe without the mirror because your eyes function as mirrors, but your eyes cannot function as mirrors for your own body; hence you need a mirror. But the mirror can only mirror the material part of you

-- the house, not the resident.

There is a beautiful story about Alexander -- it must be just a parable, but it is very famous in the East --

that when he was leaving India... He has gathered tremendous wealth in India -- the most valuable diamonds and emeralds and rubies... He met a fakir, a naked fakir, and he became tremendously interested in the fakir.

There was something in him, something very magnetic. He invited him to come with him as a royal guest to his country and he said, 'Every care will be taken and every facility will be provided. You will be treated as a king.'

The fakir said, 'But I don't see that you have anything -- you are a beggar, I am a king! Rather than trying to give something to me, it is better that you ask something from me.' And he said it with such authority that for a moment even Alexander was silent. He looked into his eyes: the fakir meant it, he was not joking.

Alexander said, 'But I don't see that you have got anything.' Hanging from his shoulder the fakir had just a small bag in which there was his begging bowl. He took out the begging bowl and inside the begging bowl there was a small mirror. He gave it to Alexander and ho said, 'Keep it with you and you will know what I mean.'

The story is that when Alexander looked into the mirror it did not reflect his body but his soul. Now, this must be a story because no mirror can reflect the soul, but it symbolises that the mystic, the fakir, must have initiated him into meditation. Meditation is that mirror in which you can see your soul, your consciousness, that which you are.

So one has to begin to watch one's own body from the inside. For example, I can move my hand without being conscious of it; a fly comes and you remove it, a mosquito comes and you remove it, and you go on doing your work. Even in sleep, if an ant starts crawling on your feet, the feet throw it off. They call it a conditioned reflex. Even the body has a little brain of its own; every cell has a little brain of its own, automatic and autonomous; it works on its own. Otherwise even sleep would become impossible, everything would be a disturbance. So you continue sleeping, your sleep is not disturbed; the ant is thrown away, the mosquito is blown away. And that's exactly what you go on doing the whole day.

But then try to move the same hand with inner consciousness: with closed eyes move the hand very consciously, watching from the inside, and you will be surprised: suddenly there is a grace, you can feel the hand moving, from inside you can see the movement of the hand. And certainly the seer is different from the seen.

Walking, eating, whatsoever one is doing, one should start watching the body. That is the first step of meditation: watching the body from the inside. Slowly slowly a distance arises between the watcher and the watched, and the confusion starts clearing up.

When you are perfectly aware that you are not the body then the second step has to be taken: the watching of mind processes, which are a little more subtle; hence one should take it only as a second step.

Then thoughts, desires, memories, imagination, dreams, fantasies, slowly slowly the whole panorama of the mind has to be watched; then you start getting out of the entanglement with the mind. Just as you got out of the body, you start getting out of the mind; more clarity arises that you are not the mind either.

Then the third step is to watch the feelings, the emotions, which are the subtlest -- the heart. They are subtler than thoughts; they are very vague, very elusive. It is difficult to catch hold of them, but if you have succeeded in the first two steps then the third also becomes possible -- but only after the first two.

The process is the same, watching; just the object changes: the object becomes more and more subtle, more and more inner. And when you have succeeded in seeing that you are not your heart either -- your emotions, your love, your hate, your moods, sadness, joy -- you are not even that, then a tremendous clarity arises in you.

These are the three steps which make you aware of yourself; it is a clear-cut, crystal-clear awareness of the self.

The Jewish story is that Moses asked god 'My people will ask me "Who is god?" How am I to answer them? What will I say? What is your name?' And the answer is tremendously significant; in fact in the whole Judaic religion there is nothing more important than that single statement. That contains the essence 1/08/07

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of meditation. God said 'Just tell those people ?I am that I am."

Now it looks very absurd, it looks like & tautology: I am that I am. But that is the state of meditation --

when you have become aware 'I am not the body, I am not the mind, I am not the heart.' Then what can you say? -- only 'I am that I am.'

Buddha says this is the third step, and many religions have stopped here. I perfectly agree with him. And I can see why many religions have stopped here, because it seems one has arrived. But just one step more is needed, because this 'I am' is also in a very subtle way, a thought, a feeling, an identity.

If this also can be watched then one reaches the ultimate, and that state is called parishuddha: the fourth, the ultimate purity where nothing can be said; one is simply silent, There is no way to say it, no way to express it.

Lao Tzu says 'Truth cannot be said, and the moment you say it, you have already falsified it.'

Man can exist in two ways. Either he can exist in time... That's where we ordinarily exist, but in time there is death. Time is bound to bring death; there is birth and there is death. Man can also exist in eternity, then there is no birth and no death.

The cross of Jesus represents these two dimensions. Christianity has completely missed the significance of it. The cross is far more ancient than Christ. In fact it is part of an ancient eastern symbol, the swastika. It is just part of the swastika, not the whole symbol. By the time it reached the western world it lost a few things, but the essential core has remained.

You must have seen the swastika because Adolf Hitler chose it as his symbol. The swastika or the cross is made by two lines; one is horizontal, the other is vortical.

The horizontal line represents time. Jesus' hands are spread on the horizontal line. Hands represent work, and work is possible only in time. And Jesus' whole body except the hands is hanging on the vertical line. The vertical line represents eternity.

Time moves in a sequence, moment to moment, in a line, it is linear. You go from a to b, from b to c, from c to d -- that's how time moves. If you want to take a jump into eternity you have not to go from a to b; you have to jump out of a -- either into the depths or towards the heights -- you have to move vertically.

Mind moves in time, and hands are part of mind. This has been very recently discovered, that your mind has two hemispheres. One hemisphere is joined to your right hand; the left side of your mind is joined with your right hand. And the right side of your mind is joined to your left hand. Hands are the visible extension of the mind.

Jesus' body, particularly his hands, is spread on the horizontal line -- that represents time. Work is dono by mind; hence schools, colleges, universities, train your mind because society needs workers, all kinds of workers -- skilled, unskilled, but society needs workers.

The vertical line represents meditation. It is jumping out of the mind. It means learning how to remain absolutely inactive, doing nothing for a few moments.

The Zen people say 'sitting silently, doing nothing, spring comes and the grass grows by itself.' You have only to sit silently doing nothing, and everything goes on happening of its own accord. The spring will come and the grass will grow. Just like that, everything is going to happen; you need not do it. Meditation is not something that has to be done, it is something that has only to be understood.

If you understand meditation then that's enough: sitting silently anywhere you can fall into meditativeness. Meditativeness is not action but a state of silence, a state of inaction when everything stops: time stops, all movement disappears, you are in total rest. And those are the moments when you know that you are immortal, that only the body will die; you are not going to die. Then all fear disappears because all fear is rooted in death. And to be fearless is the most fundamental thing for living life joyously.

The fearful person cannot live life joyously. How can he? -- his whole energy remains entangled with fear, he is continuously afraid of everything. He cannot love, he is afraid -- who knows where it will land him? He is always cautious, on guard. He is so cautious that he becomes crippled, paralysed. He is always concerned that he should not commit any mistake, that he should not do anything wrong. His obsession about not committing a mistake, about not doing anything wrong, about not going astray, becomes so heavy that he stops moving. He dies before death. Then he lives only for the name sake; in fact he vegetates, he does not live. Then he is not a man -- maybe a potato or a tomato or a banana -- anything, but not a man at all'

A man has to be adventurous, always on the go into the unknown, always exploring that which is not known, always taking his small boat of life into the uncharted sea, always risking;because he knows there is 1/08/07

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no death, so there is no fear -- he can risk! He can risk everything.

And sannyas is a risk; it is learning the adventure, it is learning the art of living dangerously. But a person can live dangerously only when he knows that there is no death. Then to live dangerously is playful, there is no seriousness about it. It is a joy, it is a dance.

But the whole thing depends on one thing, that one should have some experience of one's immortality, of I was never born and I will never die. This is possible through meditation, and only through meditation.

So learn to sit silently, doing nothing -- just sitting resting in yourself, relaxing in yourself. It takes a little time because we have been brought up to be restless, we have been brought up by people who have been restless themselves. They have poisoned us, they have corrupted us, not knowingly, not intentionally --

they may have been good people, they may have even tried to help you, but they were unconscious, and unconscious people cannot help, they can only harm. Inspite of good intentions they are bound to harm.

They have made everybody restless, fidgety. Everybody is always running, rushing, not knowing where, not knowing why, for what. Speed in itself has become important, as if it has some intrinsic value.

I used to live with a professor when I was a student in the university. He was a very busy man and always rushing from this university to that, from this country to that. He was a visiting professor of many universities all over the world, on many consulting boards... always on the run.

Whenever he was at home he would play chess, playing cards, monopoly -- stupid things. I used to ask him why. And he would say 'To kill time.'

I said 'This is strange: you don't go by train when you have to go to another town, you rush by aeroplane to save time. And when time is saved you play monopoly to kill time' And you think you are a professor of logic and philosophy -- you are a fool! If this is for what time is to be saved, then why save it in the first place? Then go by bullock cart! You will enjoy the scene and the villages and so many things on the way.

Journeying by aeroplane is not really a journey. You enter a capsule in one place, you get out of the capsule in another place to save time -- and then what do you do with the time?

He said 'You always create trouble for me. In fact in talking with you I feel afraid that you will create some trouble. Now I know that I cannot answer you you are right.'

He died in a plane crash finally, I had been telling him again and again 'You will die...' because in India, only a bullock cart is safe!...'you are running unnecessarily.' He had enough money and I would ask him,

'Why do you go on like this?' 'To earn money.' And I said 'You don't have any child.'

He used to give me money and I would waste his money. I told him 'I don't believe in money or anything -- I simply waste it. If you give me money I will waste it. Never ask me "What happened to it?"'

To earn money he was going to New York and to Washington and to London, and ho had no child, his wife was divorced. I was the only person who was living with him so he had to give money to me -- what else could he do with the money?

I said to him 'This is stupid: you have enough money -- you can retire, you can enjoy your life and play cards and chess and whatsoever you want.' But he continued. It was just the old rut, the old habit.

A meditator has to learn to do only the essential and not to waste one's life in the unessential. A meditator has to learn how to relax, how to rest, and enjoy rest. And slowly slowly one settles into one's own centre. And the moment you touch your own centre you have touched eternity, you have touched timelessness, you have tasted nectar for the first time.

The whole of religion exists for this experience. If religion is not going to give you the experience of the immortal, of the eternal, then it is absolutely pointless.

My sannyasins are going to taste it. They are moving slowly deeper and deeper into it, relaxing into it.

That's what sannyas is all about: an exploration of eternity.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #7

Chapter title: None

1/08/07

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7 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007075

ShortTitle: GWIND07

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Sannyas is the beginning of becoming part of existence. Ego keeps one outside of it. Ego keeps one a stranger, an outsider, a foreigner. The moment we drop the ego then nothing is foreign; then we are rooted in existence. There is no separation anywhere. We breathe god in and out every moment. It is god that beats in our hearts, it is god that circulates in our blood -- the same god that flows in the rivers, rises in the sun, shines in the moon. It is all one.

But the contemporary man feels very much of a stranger. Never before has it happened on such a vast scale. People, a few people, have always felt strangers, outsiders, but now it has gone to epidemic proportions; almost everybody who is intelligent feels alienated, uprooted, feels that he is just an accident.

And if one feels 'I am just an accident,' life cannot be a joy, life cannot become a contentment, a fulfilment.

Life is fulfilled only when we start feeling at home with existence. That's what sannyas is all about: helping you to feel at home with existence, with the trees, with the earth, with the sky, with people, with animals. It is our universe and we are not foreigners to it.

Only this experience makes one religious.

It is only through meditation that one starts feeling exalted, crowned; one becomes an emperor. A man who has not known the taste of meditation remains a beggar, because desires are nothing but a continuous begging, asking for more. Even the so-called kings and emperors are beggars -- maybe bigger beggars than the small ones whom you meet begging on the streets but their minds function in the same way; there is the same desire for more. There is no qualitative difference between a beggar and a king.

But meditation brings a revolution. As you go deeper into silence, desires disappear. They exist only on the circumference, like waves existing on the surface; if you dive deep into the ocean there are no waves. So desires are just on the circumference of consciousness. If you dive deep... the deeper you go, the farther away are the desires. At the very centre of your being you completely forget that desires ever existed; they look like dreams, fantasies.

That moment is the most exalted moment, the entry into oneself. Then you can come back to the surface but you cannot lose contact with the centre. Then you remain centred even though you are on the circumference. Then all those waves are just games. One can act and play, and beautifully and gracefully, but without any disturbance, without any tension, without any strain. One can remain in the marketplace and yet in tremendous silence. One can be in the crowd and yet be absolutely alone.

That's the most fundamental thing in sannyas: to be in the world and yet to not be of it; to be in the world but not to allow the world to be in you. Then the whole world becomes just a big stage, and all relationships are just a great drama. Act as beautifully as you can, but remember it is all acting. Neither anything is gained nor anything is lost, hence one remains undisturbed, unperturbed.

A sannyasin becomes the centre of the cyclone.

There are two kinds of fame in the world. One comes through outer riches. The people who have political power are famous, the wealthy, the rich, like Alexander the Great... But there is another kind of fame also which is real fame. That happens to people who attain to inner richness: Jesus Christ, Gautam Buddha, Tao Tzu. These people are famous for a totally different reason. They are not emperors, conquerors, but in a sense they are: they have conquered themselves, they have attained to the inner kingdom. of god.

The first kind of fame is ugly, it is violent: Alexander the Great has to kill thousands of people; Joseph Stalin kills millions of people; Adolf Hitler is one of the greatest murderers history has ever known. These 1/08/07

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people are mad! They become famous but they are unhealthy, pathological; they bring misery into the world. They themselves are miserable and they create great misery in others. If they had not been, the world would have been far better -- they are calamities.

But Buddha, Christ, Tao Tzu -- these people arc blessings to the world. Without them humanity would not have progressed at all; they are the salt of the earth. Life has some meaning because of them, some poetry, some music because of them. They made themselves blissful and they spread the secrets of being blissful into the world.

So choose the right kind of fame. Don't choose the wrong kind of fame. Become blissful, peaceful, serene, because you can give to others only that which you have got already in the first place. Become a source of bliss and blessing to others.

Religion is the science of bliss. True religion is not based on beliefs; it is only the untrue religion that is based on beliefs. True religion is rooted in experience; hence I don't want my sannyasins to believe in anything, not even in the existence of god, because all kinds of belief are barriers in experiencing the truth.

If you already believe you stop enquiring. Once the belief is there you start thinking that you already know. Belief simply means you have repressed all your doubts -- and enquiry can begin only if your doubts are alive, fresh, young.

Doubts are not to be repressed. They have to be used as stepping stones. They are not bad, nothing is wrong in them, but one should not live in doubts forever. One should use the doubts to find out the truth.

There are two kinds of believers in the world: the believers in beliefs and the believers in doubt. Both are believers, The believers in belief are called theists. There are different kind of theists, they come in all sizes and shapes: Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans. And there are believers in doubt, they are called atheists. They also have different shapes, different colours: there are anarchists and there are communists and there are fascists. But they both agree on one point -- that there is no need to enquire.

One believes in god, one believes god is not, but both have come to a conclusion. And how have they come to a conclusion? They have not explored, they have not gone within themselves, they have not searched far. They have not even remained open to truth, they have become closed. Every conclusion without your Own experience closes you.

My sannyasins have to learn to remain open. I don't teach you belief or disbelief; I teach you enquiry, and enquiry is always scientific. And I trust in enquiry because I know: if you really enquire you will find god; there is no need to believe.

When I know that the sky is full of stars, why should I tell you to believe? I invite you to come out of your room and see for yourself -- I trust my experience, hence I can trust your enquiry.

It is the priests who have not known god, who have not known the starry night outside, who have never gone outside their minds, who are afraid of enquiry. They are afraid because they themselves are suspicious, they themselves are suspicious, they themselves have doubts -- repressed but lurking somewhere. They're repressed, but in moments of weakness they start surfacing. Hence they want everybody else to believe.

They are afraid of questioning, they are afraid of asking anything.

Asking seems to them to be disobedience, questions seem to them to be irreligious: you should simply believe whatsoever they say... because they themselves have not experienced.

God is, truth is, tao is -- there is no need to believe at all. Just open the doors and the windows and let the wind and the rain and the sun come in, and they will give you a glimpse of the outside world, of the tremendously beautiful existence. They will become invitations from the ultimate. Then go and explore with joy, with thrill.

My sannyasins have to be adventurers, explorers. One day they are bound to find. And when you yourself find, it has a totally different significance, it has a totally different quality to it. It is not impotent belief, it is living truth, it is your truth -- you can risk your life for it.

Jesus could die so easily for the simple reason that the knew. If he had been just a believer he would have wavered, he would have escaped. There was every possibility to escape. He need not have gone to the capital city. Rumours were coming that he would be caught; he knew everything. It was almost certain that he was going to be caught -- he could have escaped...

Socrates would not have died so willingly. The court even offered him the opportunity to escape: 'If you leave Athens we won't punish you, but then you cannot come back to Athens. Simply leave the town.' If he had been just a believer hc would have escaped from the town; life is far more important. He could have lived somewhere else. Athens was not the whole world, just a city -- the whole world was there. But he said 1/08/07

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'I know whatsoever I am saying is true and I am ready to risk all for it.' The court could feel the sincerity of the man; he was ready to sacrifice his life -- they gave him another opportunity.

They said, 'Then do one thing: live in Athens if you insist, but stop talking about your philosophy.' He said, 'That I cannot do. That is my business. That I cannot stop. For that you will have to kill me. While I am alive I am going to spread the truth because that is the whole purpose of my being alive. Otherwise what is the point of being alive? -- then death is far better.'

He refused both opportunities. This would not have been possible if he had been only a man of belief.

He trusted his enquiry, he trusted his own experience.

One's own experience is so valuable, one can sacrifice everything for it.

Bliss is the greatest blessing in life. Without knowing bliss one lives in vain; in fact one does not live but only vegetates, one only dies. What we ordinarily call life is nothing but a gradual process of death.

From the moment of birth we start dying. Every day, one day less; time goes on slipping out of one's fingers like water. This is not life because it ends only in the graveyard.

You may go in any direction, you may do any kind of work, but every road leads to the grave. The proverb is that every road leads to Rome -- I don't know why, unless Rome is another name for the graveyard! Every road leads to the graveyard... and in fact, Rome is a graveyard, particularly the Vatican City. It is where Christ has really been crucified, it is where he is buried.

Our life is not worth calling life. Life starts only when you start moving in the dimension beyond death.

That's what meditation is for: a strategy, a device, a ladder, to go beyond death. And just a glimpse of the beyond is enough. Then you know only the body is going to die, not you, and only the body is born, not you. You were here before your birth and you will be here after your death. You are part of eternity.

When one experiences this, life becomes blissful, and in that blissfulness one feels that god has blessed one. Then naturally, spontaneously, gratitude arises. I call that gratitude prayer. All other prayers are pseudo. The real prayer arises only when you have experienced bliss and the blessing of it. Then naturally you have to be thankful, you have to bow down to existence. You feel what a gift has been given to you --

and you had not asked for it, you don't even deserve it. Nobody deserves it, nobody is worthy of it, but god gives out of his abundance.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #8

Chapter title: None

8 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007085

ShortTitle: GWIND08

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

The most significant thing about bliss is the it is intrinsically a paradox and because of its paradoxical nature it has almost always been misunderstood. The paradox is: man needs to make much effort, and yet it does not happen because of the effort it always happens as a gift of god. But without effort man never becomes capable of receiving the gift. Even though the gift is always available, man remains closed.

1/08/07

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Query:-

So the whole human endeavour is not really the cause of attaining bliss, it cannot cause bliss; it can only remove the barriers. It is a negative process. It is as if you are living in a closed room, all the windows, all the doors closed: the sun has risen but you are in darkness. The sun cannot rise because of your efforts.

Whatsoever you do you cannot make the sun rise, but you can open your doors or keep them closed -- that much depends on your effort. If you open the doors the sun becomes available to you, otherwise it waits just on your doorsteps, without even knocking. You can live in darkness for eternity -- can and all that was needed was to remove the barrier between you and the sun.

Exactly the same is the case with bliss. God is always showering bliss, it is his nature. Bliss is intrinsic to existence. It is not something that happens once in a while, it is not seasonal; it is its intrinsic nature, its very innermost core. So it is always there, but it is not available to us because we are not available to it.

Because of this paradoxical nature there have been two kinds of misunderstanding. There have been people who have said that because bliss always happens through the gift of god as a gift, as a grace, then there is no need to make any effort, so whenever it happens it happens; we cannot do anything about it.

These are the fatalists, this is the fatalists' fallacy. They think that whenever god decides, it will happen; before that no effort on our part is going to help, so why make unnecessary effort? These people will remain always in misery -- bliss will never happen.

The other extreme is the people who think that some effort is absolutely necessary, without effort it cannot happen. So they go on making efforts, with the fallacious notion that it is by their efforts only that they will be able to achieve it. They remain obsessed with their effort. This is the fallacy of yoga. Great endeavour -- body postures, psychological techniques, fasting, austerities... People go on doing all kinds of things, and they completely forget that whatsoever they are doing is unnecessary, it is not needed.

Exactly between these two extremes is the right path: a little bit of effort is needed and a little bit of trust is needed; a little bit of effort to remove the barriers, and a little bit of trust, patience, awaiting, 'God is gracious, so whenever my barrier is removed and I am ready, it is bound to happen, it is inevitable.'

This is my approach, the golden mean: to walk exactly in the middle between the polar opposites. Mind always chooses the extreme. The mind is an extremist; from one extreme it goes to the other. First it will make all kinds of efforts, then it will fail -- it is bound to fail -- then it will move to the other extreme, it will drop all effort. That too will not succeed; then sooner or later it will move again to the first extreme. In this way, like a pendulum, the mind goes on moving from right to left, from left to right; sometimes it is leftist, sometimes it is rightist, but it is never in the middle.

If the pendulum stops in the middle, the clock stops. If your mind stops in the middle, your inner clock also stops, time disappears, mind itself disappears. Suddenly you are showered with infinite bliss. From all directions? from all sources, from all planes bliss starts rushing towards you in millions of streams.

Love in fact is always great. If it exists, it is great; if it is small, it exists not. There is nothing like small love -- that is a contradiction in terms. It is just as you cannot say 'the small sky'; if it is small it is not the sky, if it is sky it is not small. Sky means the vast, the unbounded, the infinite. So is the case with love: greatness is part of it, vastness is its very flavour.

That's why our so-called love is not really love. It is too small, it is too confined, too conditional, too demanding. It gets suffocated; in fact it commits suicide.

I see almost everybody's committing suicide. And then life becomes a desert; then one feels that there is no meaning, no poetry, no music, that all is futile. But in fact we are responsible for that desertlike, juiceless existence.

Love is the very juice. Without love we are dry. With love we are green; with love there is foliage, flowers, fruits, with love there is growth. But love can only be great. And the problem is that we want to maintain something impossible: we want love and we also want to protect our ego.

Now, ego is intrinsically small, just as love is intrinsically great. They cannot be partners, they cannot co-exist. And this is what everybody is trying to do: asking for the impossible which has never happened and which is never going to happen because it is against the tao, against the law of nature, against dhamma.

Either you have to choose the ego or you have to choose love -- you cannot have both. And in this conflict between the ego and love, ninety-nine point nine per cent of people choose the ego, for the simple reason that it is small, manageable, controllable, within your grasp. You feel safer, secure. It feels like a small, cosy hut. Of course the vast sky of love is beautiful, full of stars, but one feels afraid, sacred, to go into such a vast unknown territory which goes on and on, which will possess you; you cannot possess it.

1/08/07

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Ego can be possessed, love cannot be possessed. With love you have to understand one thing: You will have to be possessed by love -- love is vaster than you -- so love will take whole possession of you. Unless one is ready to surrender totally, one cannot know what love is. And without knowing love one never comes to know what life is either. Then all talk of god is mere talk. You don't know lire, you don't know love --

how can you know god? God is the ultimate crescendo of life and love. It is the highest peak of life and love.

Sannyas means becoming ready to go into the unknown, to go into the great, into the vast, to go into the uncharted, going into the ocean with a small boat. The other shore is not known; in fact there is no other shore -- it is just ocean and ocean and ocean. But the very adventure creates the soul.

Gurdjieff used to say that people are not born with a soul; the soul has to be earned, deserved. It belongs to only those few rare people who risk, who are gamblers.

The businesslike person has no soul at all. He lives a soulless existence. Because of his calculations he always remains within the boundaries.

Sannyas means always being ready to go beyond the boundaries, always leaving the known behind, searching for the unknown. The very search gives integrity, the very search creates a centre in you; otherwise people remain without a centre, just a circumference.

Learn the art of great love -- that is the very foundation of true religion. Those who have known love have known all, those who have missed love have missed all.

Meditation is not serious, as it is ordinarily thought to be; it is a song, it is a dance, it is a celebration.

The serious person can never go beyond the mind. It is the mind that is serious. Mind does not know how to take things playfully; even while playing, mind becomes serious. You can watch chess players: they become utterly serious, far more serious than you will find anybody else in the world. Many chess players go mad because of seriousness.

There is an ancient Sufi story of an Egyptian king who was a great player of chess. He went mad. All kinds of treatments were tried -- nothing worked. His condition was deteriorating every day. Finally a mystic, whom the king used to visit, came to know about the problem. He said, 'This is very simple. Find some great chess player and pay him whatsoever he asks for -- because he will ask a fabulous price, otherwise who would be ready to play chess with a madman? Give him whatsoever he wants but let him play chess with the king. And come back after one year...'

They found the champion of chess players. He really asked an almost impossible sum of money -- they agreed. Out of greed he started playing chess with the madman. After one year they went to see the mystic; he asked, 'How are things?' They said, 'Things are perfectly good. The king has regained his sanity, but that chess player has gone mad!'

The mind is basically serious. Playing cards, people become so serious -- start cheating, deceiving, they become dishonest. If they lose a game they are ready to fight. Sometimes people have killed just because of chess or playing cards; some stupid game and they have shot each other!

Mind cannot take anything playfully: even in ordinary games it becomes serious.

Meditation is not anything of the mind, it is something beyond the mind. And the first step is to be playful about it. If you are playful about it mind cannot destroy your meditation. Otherwise it will turn it into another ego trip; it will make you very serious. You will start thinking, 'I am a great meditator. I am holier than other people, and the whole world is just worldly -- I am religious, I am virtuous.' That's what has happened to thousands of so-called saints, moralists, puritans: they are just playing ego games, subtle ego games.

Hence I want to cut the very root of it from the very beginning. Be playful about it. It is a song to be sung, a dance to be danced. Take it as fun and you will be surprised: if you can be playful about meditation, meditation will grow in leaps and bounds.

But you are not hankering for any goal; you are just enjoying sitting silently, just enjoying the very act of sitting silently -- not that you are longing for some yogic powers, siddhis, miracles. All that is nonsense, the same old nonsense, the same old game, played with new words, on a new plane.

His may be the only commune in the whole world where meditation is taught as fun, as joy, playfulness, where we are not taking it seriously at all. We are taking everything with great laughter. Life as such has to be taken as a cosmic joke -- and then suddenly you relax because there is nothing to be tense about. And in that very relaxation something starts changing in you -- a radical change, a transformation -- and the small things of life start having new meaning, new significance. Then nothing is small, everything starts taking on 1/08/07

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a new flavour, a new aura; one starts feeling a kind of godliness everywhere. One does not become a Christian here, does not become a Hindu, does not become a Mohammedan; one simply becomes a lover of life. One learns only one thing here, how to rejoice in life.

But rejoicing in life is the way towards god. Dance your way to god, laugh your way to god, sing your way to god! And god must be tired of your serious saints by now or centuries those stupid guys... Either he must have committed suicide, seeing all those saints -- I cannot even keep their pictures in my room -- or he must have gone mad, or he must have escaped.

It is impossible to conceive god living with all those Christian, Hindu, Jaina saints -- impossible to conceive. If you look at life, if this life is a creation of god, if this life is the expression of god, then god is a dancing god, full of flowers and fragrance, full of songs -- very creative, very sensitive -- full of music... If this life is any proof -- and except for this life there is no other proof -- then god cannot be a serious person.

I always love to relate a story about a Hassid fakir's last moments. Zusya was dying -- and for his whole life he laughed and joked and danced... I love that kind of person; to have such a man as company is a blessing. But the elders of the society were worried about him.

When he was dying somebody asked him, 'Zusya, have you made your peace with god? Or have you wasted your life dancing, singing, joking, fooling around?' Zusya opened his eyes and hc said 'But I have never quarrelled with him, so why should I make peace with him? I have never quarrel ed with him; we have been always on good terms. Sometimes I tell jokes -- he laughs; sometimes he tells jokes -- I laugh.

Things have been going very well.

And I have saved a few jokes which I have never told anybody; they are especially for him, because I know when I arrive there he will ask "Zusya, what have you brought?" I have saved a few jokes especially for him! What else? I am a poor man,' Zusya said, 'what else I can keep, to take with me as an offering?

Prayer he has heard enough of, serious people he must have seen enough of.'

Nobody knows how Zusya was received, but I can say with absolute authority that nobody has been received with such joy as Zusya!

This is the way of a truly religious man.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #9

Chapter title: None

9 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007095

ShortTitle: GWIND09

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

For man there are only two possibilities of existing in the world: one is through the mind and the other is through meditation. Through the mind there is misery, anxiety, anguish, death; through meditation there is bliss, benediction, immortality, godliness. And the choice is always yours.

Man always stands on the crossroad. Each moment is a crossroad. You can turn towards the mind or you can turn towards meditation. And means living in the past. Mind is an accumulation of ail the experiences, memories, which have passed. They are no more in existence; only traces are left on your memory film.

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Memory is exactly a recording mechanism. It is very talented and has infinite capacity, almost infinite.

One simple memory system can record all the information contained in all the libraries of the world. But memory means that which is no more.

Because we live in the past we project a future. The future is a by-product of the past. The future also does not exist; it is another non-existential thing just like the past. At least the past has been -- the future has yet to be. And whatsoever you can conceive of the future is just a reflection of your past, a modified past.

You would like all the pleasures that you lived through in the past, magnified, on a bigger scale, and you would like to drop all the miseries that you had to go through in the past. Your future is a selected past: that which you like you project and that which you don't like you reject. But the problem is that in life everything is intertwined with everything else. You cannot choose the nice part and reject the bitter part --

that is impossible. They are one parcel, they come together.

If you choose anything from the past thinking that it was beautiful, you have also chosen the ugly.

Whether you like it or not is not the question; it will come inevitably -- just as days are with nights. You cannot choose the day and drop the night; the night and day are two aspects of the same phenomenon. You cannot choose one aspect of the coin. You can hide the other, but it is there, and sooner or later you will have to give it its due. And if you want your pleasures to be on a bigger scale, your misery will grow in the same proportion. That is the dilemma man goes on living, suffering, hoping that some miracle will happen and he will be able to choose only the roses without the thorns. But they come together!

But there is a totally different way of life, a different style -- and that is to live in the present. That's what I call meditation. Meditation is an opening into the present, dropping the whole past without any choice. If you can drop the whole past, future disappears. Then there is no future, future evaporates, and all that is left is the existential moment. This moment is all there is: now, here. And then life starts moving in a different dimension, altogether different; then you are on an adventure, because you have never know the present. It is the most unknown phenomenon in life.

It seems strange that the only thing that is existential is the most unknown. And the non-existential is very much known; you go on brooding about the past and the future. Mind is a brooding about the non-existential; meditation is living the existential. And the moment your whole being is herenow, god is.

God is existence, another name for existence, and the present is a door into his temple the only door. There are no other doors.

To be a sannyasin means to live your life moment-to-moment, without any expectation because all expectations come from the past. And when there are no expectations, there are no frustrations either.

Living moment-to-moment means living a life always fresh, young, alive. The past makes you old, dull, dead, the more it gathers on you -- and it is gathering every moment. It is like dust gathering on a mirror: soon you cannot see anything in the mirror.

That's how we are live -- like blind persons because we cannot see a anything, we cannot feel anything, we cannot experience anything. All beautiful things have become mere words; love, god, bliss are just words. People use them but they know that they don't mean anything. Meaning can come only through experience, and the only experience possible is of the present.

But always remember: once you have lived the moment it is past. Then drop it; howsoever beautiful it was, don't cling to it. When it is no more, it is no more. That's what Jesus means when he says 'Let the dead bury their dead.'

The past is dead. Go on dying to the past -- and every moment die to the past so that every moment you are born anew. That's the way of sannyas. Then you know what a gift life, what a splendour, what a joy to be... Just to be is enough, more than enough! It is such a benediction that we cannot repay existence in any way; we can only feel grateful.

Sannyas is a pilgrimage from bliss to bliss, from perfection to perfection, from life to more abundant life.

The ancient seers of the Upanishads have a beautiful prayer. It is one of the most beautiful prayers ever uttered. The prayer is tamsoma jyotirgamaya -- Oh my lord, lead me from darkness to light; astoma sadgamaya -- Oh my lord, lead me from untruth into truth; mrityorma amritam gamaya -- Oh my lord, lead me from death to deathlessness.

This is a beautiful prayer, the most beautiful prayer. But five thousand years have passed. I feel that now it needs a little improvement.

I would not say 'Lead me from darkness to light,' because darkness does not exist. I would say 'Lead me 1/08/07

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from light to more light.' I would not say, 'Lead me from untruth to truth, because untruth does not exist; I would say 'Lead me from truth to more truth.' I would not say 'Lead me from death to deathlessness,'

because death does not exist: I would say 'Lead me from deathlessness to more deathlessness, from life to more abundant life, from perfection to more perfection' ... if that is possible, because ordinarily we think perfection means the end, but I don't think it is so. Perfection can become more perfect; perfection goes on becoming more and more perfect. At each stage it is perfect, but still that perfection is not a closedness, it is open. It can always become richer, it can always become more colourful, with new songs, with a new dance, with new celebrations. There is no end to evolution.

That is the meaning of your name: a pilgrim of bliss. And don't let it remain just a name, let it become a reality. It can become a reality. All that is needed is just a little conscious effort.

We go on living mechanically, repeating the same stupidity again and again. Man seems to be the only animal who does not learn from experience at all. This is my observation. Even donkeys learn.

In Arabic they have a proverb that even a donkey will not fall in the same ditch again... but man can do that miracle! He can fall in the same ditch thousands of times what to say of twice or thrice? As many times as he passes by the side of the ditch he will fall in' He will say to himself, 'Let us try once more -- maybe things have changed, maybe it is not the same ditch, and certainly I am no more the same person. So much has changed, and that time it was evening and this time it is morning. And what is wrong in it? -- one more try...'

In one of the ancient scriptures of India, MAHABHARATA, there is a story. The story is centred around the fight between Pandavas and Kauravas -- they were cousin-brothers -- and the fight was for the kingdom.

The Pandavas were the rightful, legal rulers -- the kingdom should have gone to them, but the Kauravas were very deceptive and cunning people. They arranged a gambling game and provoked the Pandavas to put everything at stake -- even the kingdom. The game was preplanned, it was a fraud. Everything was settled beforehand: the Pandavas were going to lose. The play was not fair, and they lost. The condition was that for twelve years they would have to go into the forest, so that they wouldn't create any trouble for the Kauravas. So the Pandavas moved to the forest. They lost everything, they became almost beggars -- they moved to the forest.

One day roaming in the forest they lost their way. They were thirsty; there were five brothers so the youngest went to search for water. He found a beautiful lake, but as he was going to fill his pot a voice from a tree -- just a voice, nobody was there -- shouted 'Stop! Before you take the water of the lake -- I am the owner, I am a ghost -- before you take the water you have to answer those five questions, if I am satisfied, you will be allowed to take the water.

(one line missing) you will have to go without water. And if you try to fill your pot without my permission you will fall dead here, now.'

He tried to answer but he could not. The first question was: 'What is the most strange thing about man?

Because he could not answer to the ghost's satisfaction and still he tried to fill the pot, he fell dead then and there. By and by the other three brothers came. Finally Yudishthira, the oldest brother, came, and he saw his four brothers lying dead. The first question, the same question, was repeated: What is the most strange thing about man?

Yudishthira said, 'The most strange thing about man is that he never learns from his experience.' The ghost said, 'There is no need to ask the other four questions -- I am satisfied. You are a REAL man of observation. You will be able to answer my other questions too. You can fill your pot... And I am so pleased, because for millions of years I have been here, waiting, for a man who can satisfy my question, because this is the curse upon me: If I can be satisfied, I will be released from my bondage. I am released from my bondage today. And I am so happy with you that I will make all your four brothers alive again.'

This is certainly the most important observation about man, that he never learns from his experience. He goes on in a vicious circle; he functions like a machine.

To be on the path of bliss all that is needed is to learn from your experience. Don't repeat the same stupid things -- the same anger, the greed, the jealousy, the possessiveness. Don't repeat them. You have repeated them enough and you have burned your hands enough. It is time to be aware, to be watchful, to be alert, and not to fall into the old traps again and again.

As you become capable of watchfulness, you become more and more capable of being free of all those old traps. A moment comes when one is absolutely free from all traps and imprisonments -- that is the moment of bliss. Bliss starts showering like flowers from the sky, and it goes on showering. One's life 1/08/07

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becomes a blessing to oneself and a blessing to others too.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #10

Chapter title: None

10 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007105

ShortTitle: GWIND10

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Man can come to truth only through meditation. Truth is not something that mind can know. Mind can theorise about it, but 'about' means around -- and mind goes about and about, around and around. It moves in a circle, it never reaches the centre. Its very nature is not to reach to the centre, it exists for the circumference.

Mind is needed only to relate with others. It is a method of communication. Truth is your very being. It is not a question of relating to it. It happens only when you fall into deep silence, when you forget the whole world, when the other is completely forgotten as if the other does not exist at all. In those moments of solitude and aloneness truth is revealed. It is not a conclusion of the mind but a revelation of no-mind.

Meditation simply means turning in. Mind is always turning out, mind is basically extroversion. It has its utility -- I am not against utilising it, but I am certainly against being utilised by it. Use it as a servant, use it as a beautiful mechanism, but don't let it become your master. It is a good slave, take every care of it, but don't allow it to enslave you.

Remember that the real master is not on the circumference, the real master is at the centre. And at the centre there is only consciousness: no thoughts, no desires, no imagination. All the faculties of the mind stop functioning. You are simply alert, aware, watchful, you simply are. In that state you are truth. That is the meaning of Verity -- it is one of the most beautiful names: the state of being true.

And once it is experienced it starts changing your whole life style. If you know your truth you cannot be untrue in any way. It becomes impossible. Even to be untrue to others becomes impossible.

The joy of being truthful is such that who would like to fall into the darkness of being untrue? The simplicity of being truthful is such that who would like to create unnecessary complexities, complications, by being untruthful?

One lie brings in its wake a thousand and one other lies, because you have to defend it, you have to support it -- and it cannot be defended by truth, it can only be defended by other lies. And every other lie will need in its own turn more lies. A single lie, and your whole life starts becoming untruthful, inauthentic.

Truth needs no defence. It is very simple, it is simply so. And the man who lives in truth need not bother what he has said, what he has done. We need not go on remembering all that he has said and all that he has done. The lying person has to be continuously calculating, watching. he may say something; which goes against something else which he said before, he may do something, that may undo something else. His life becomes more and more complicated, more and more entangled. It becomes a riddle, it becomes a problem; he becomes a problem to himself and to others. And a problematic life cannot know what bliss is.

Bliss is known only by the simple, the innocent. But the way to find it is to put the mind aside and to go in a state of no-mind. Slowly slowly a few glimpses will arise, and then those gaps start becoming bigger, 1/08/07

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then those beautiful intervals become vaster. And then sooner or later such a state arises that even if you are in the marketplace doing the ordinary things of life which are needed, your silence continues like an undercurrent; it goes on flowing. You can hear its melody, you can feel its beauty, you can taste its sweetness.

Truth brings many gifts, but one has to open the door of meditation. Nobody can give you the truth; truth is already given to you from god himself. It is not something that has to be found anywhere else; it is already the case, it is your suchness, verity! You just have to take a few steps inwards...

Sannyas simply means this: a decision to find one's truth, a commitment that 'From this moment my life will be devoted to finding mY truth.'

And remember: the truth of Buddha, the truth of Jesus or the truth of Zarathustra cannot be your truth. If you repeat Jesus or Buddha you will be living in the mind. And when you put the mind aside, naturally you put your Christianity, your Hinduism, your Mohammedanism aside because they are all part of the mind.

The moment you put the mind aside you have put the whole of history aside, the whole world aside. Then you are moving into your own being with no history, no past, with no society, as if you are alone on the earth, as if you are the first being on the earth, in existence.

Once this decision becomes a commitment... That's why I insist on sannyas, otherwise people can simply listen to me and they can meditate and they can go on living ordinarily -- there is no need to become sannyasins. And many people think 'What is the need of becoming a sannyasin? We can meditate, we can listen, we can try to understand what is happening, we can go through therapy groups...'

But there is a very fundamental reason; the reason is: it is a deliberate commitment, a conscious decision, so from this moment it becomes your focus of life. You have to put all that is unessential aside, and you have to put more and more energy into the inward journey.

The truth is not very far. It needs only one step, hence it is better not to call it a step: it is a quantum leap, a jump from mind to no-mind.

Meditation brings many fruits. It brings truth, it brings freedom too; it brings bliss, it brings awareness, it brings immortality too. In fact it simply opens the doors of all the mysteries of life. It is the golden key, the master key: with a single key you can unlock everything.

Without meditation nobody can live in freedom. One can be politically free, but that is not true freedom.

If there are many desires inside you, then those desires function like chains -- invisible chains of course, but because they are invisible they are more dangerous. Iron chains are not so dangerous because you can see them, and because you can see them they can be broken. The chains created by desires are invisible, and because you cannot see them you go on thinking you are free. But a man living in desires is not a free man, he is living in constant bondage. He is always desiring more. His greed is his imprisonment: he will live like a prisoner and die like a prisoner.

And desires bring other problems too: jealousy will be there, possessiveness will be there, clinging will be there, fear will be there, competition, comparison, and between all these boundaries you cannot be free.

Unless you are free of all these you are not free.

The moment desires disappear one knows freedom for the first time. Then one is untethered, then one lives moment to moment, not asking for more; on the contrary, enjoying that which is available.

There are only two kinds of people in the world. There are the people who are always asking for more and never enjoying that which is available. When that which they are asking for becomes available they will still be asking for more; they are not going to enjoy it either. They will be postponing their enjoyment for their whole life. Their life is nothing but a long, long postponement; it is always tomorrow. Today they have to work, today they have to earn, tomorrow they will relax and enjoy. But the tomorrow never comes, it is always today. Hence they live without knowing what life is.

The second category of people is of those who enjoy that which they have, not bothering about more.

And the miracle is that every day they have more and more to enjoy, for two reasons. Their capacity to enjoy increases. They are constantly practising it, each moment they are enjoying. They become more skilful, they become connoisseurs of joy, they become very very sensitive about small nuances of pleasure.

All their senses become very alive, they become tremendously intelligent, and out of this intelligence, awareness, sensitivity, the next moment will be born. Of course they will be able to enjoy the next moment more than they have enjoyed this moment. Their life will be a constant process of deepening; they will be moving into depth.

The first category of people live horizontally. They don't know anything about depth; they have never 1/08/07

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known anything of intensity, of passion, of totality. They are always running and rushing. They are in such a hurry, it is impossible for them to enjoy anything. They are always running and rushing. They go on missing that which is surrounding them.

The person who lives in the moment lives a vertical life. It is a totally different dimension; he grows in depth. And the deeper you go, the higher you rise. It is just like a tree: the roots go deep in the ground and the tree goes high in the sky; the deeper the roots, the higher the tree. It is always proportionate: with small roots a tree cannot rise high in the sky -- it will fall. If the tree wants to touch the stars then it will have to reach the very hell by its roots.

Hence a real man lives in such totality that he reaches the very depths, the rockbottom of his being. And he starts touching the very stars, the ultimate heights and peaks of bliss.

This is freedom -- freedom to be, and freedom to be total and whole. Sannyasins have to belong to the second category.

Meditation brings all that is valuable in life: truth, freedom, celebration. It gives your heart a dance, it makes your being full of songs; one loses all seriousness.

Seriousness is pathological. It is an ill state of affairs, it is not healthy. The meditator takes life playfully. For him the whole existence is just a beautiful dream and life is acting: do it with totality, but without any seriousness. And if you are not serious then there is never any frustration. If you succeed, good; if you fail, good. Neither failure brings misery nor success brings euphoria; one takes both things with deep equanimity. One remains undisturbed by success or failure; one remains absolutely unmoved, centered, grounded.

Meditation makes you the center of the cyclone. Life comes and goes -- the meditator remains unaffected, even death is just a drama. Just as he enjoys life, he enjoys death; he can laugh in life, he can laugh in death.

Meditation is the greatest miracle there is. It is the greatest gift that has been given by the awakened ones to humanity. Science has given many things, but nothing compared to meditation; and one cannot conceive that science will ever be able to give anything comparable to meditation. Up to now meditation has been the greatest gift to humanity, and it is going to remain the greatest gift forever. That can be safely predicted for the simple reason that science goes on studying the objective world; meditation gives you mastery of your subjective existence, your inner world -- and the inner is always higher than the outer.

Science cannot be greater than the scientist, obviously: the object cannot be higher, more valuable than the observer.

Albert Einstein has given many great things, but nothing is more valuable than Albert Einstein himself

-- and he remained unaware of himself. He became aware of this fact, but very late. Just before he dies he confesses to a friend "Next time, if I come back to life, I would rather be a plumber than a physicist. I would like to live a simple life." But he did not know that plumbers are not living simple lives either! Life without meditation -- whether you are a plumber or a physicist makes no difference. But one thing is certain, that he became aware of the fact that he had missed something.

This is the right time for you, this is the age that one should start getting involved in the inner. Then there is time and there is space and there is energy to do something. So feel blessed that at the right time you are becoming a sannyasin. You need not to die feeling that you have missed.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #11

Chapter title: None

11 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007115

1/08/07

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Query:-

ShortTitle: GWIND11

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

There is a great difference between a student and a disciple. The student communicates with the teacher through the mind. His relationship is that of communication, head to head, intellect to intellect. He knows nothing of the master, he can know only about the teacher. The teacher is one who teaches something; the master is one who transmits something, he doesn't teach. He has no doctrine to teach but a life to give, a bliss to share, a truth to transpire. It is a totally different kind of relationship: it is from heart to heart, it is a love relationship.

The disciple discovers the master because the disciple approaches through the heart. The whole gestalt is different. To approach through the head is very superficial. One can learn many things through the head too, one can become very knowledgeable but one cannot know oneself. One can know everything else except oneself -- and that is the very foundation of true knowledge. And if the foundation is missing you are making a house in the sand, is is going to collapse. Not only is it going to collapse, it will crush you too, because you will start living in it.

The scholar lives in the house of knowledge which can crumble any moment -- it has no foundation. The disciple is not a scholar. The student, when successful, becomes a scholar. The disciple, when successful, becomes a devotee. His love changes its quality, it becomes more prayerlike, it becomes more unearthly, it becomes absolutely pure and innocent. It asks nothing.

Love is the door from where the disciple enters and discovers the master. To discover the master is one of the greatest blessings in life, because without discovering the master it is next to impossible to attain to truth. You will need somebody who has already attained to trigger the process in you, to function as a catalytic agent. But it needs great courage to be a disciple.

It needs no courage to be a student. All that it needs is greeds greed for knowledge, information. It is very ego-fulfilling: the more knowledge you accumulate, the more your ego feels decorated, crowned;it has many degrees and gold medals and certificates.

The disciple has to risk his ego. The very thing that is enhanced by knowledge has to be dropped and surrendered. It is almost like committing hara-kiri, committing suicide. In a sense it is suicide. In a sense it is the beginning of the real life. The unreal life disappears and the real life begins. The unreal life is lived around the centre of the ego; and the real life needs no ego, being is enough.

To be a disciple means to surrender your ego. Sannyas is surrender, sannyas is love. Sannyas is a device to attain to disciplehood, and ultimately to the purest form of love, devotion, prayer. It is only through this that one becomes aware that existence is full of godliness.

The student can learn much about god but he knows nothing. Words, cliches, theories ... many he accumulates, but all is sheer junk, an unnecessary burden. He is like a donkey carrying Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

The disciple is absolutely unburdened. He grows wings. He loses the grip of greed, the clinging to any kind of accumulation -- whether it is of money or knowledge. He simply loses all grip on anything whatsoever. He lives in an unclinging way, unattached. But in that state of unattachment, unclinging, tremendous mysteries open their doors, great flowers bloom. The imprisoned splendour is released.

Daniel is the name of an ancient Old Testament prophet who was thrown into a den of lions because he refused to drop his commitment towards his faith.

The story is beautiful -- whether it happened or not is not the point: he came out unharmed, the lions did not harm him at all. The story is beautiful because it says two things.

One is that whenever there is a man who devotes his life to a certain attitude, approach, who endeavours to discover truth, society immediately becomes inimical towards him. It starts taking revenge. It cannot forgive him because society lives on lies -- and the man committed to truth becomes a danger to all the 1/08/07

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vested interests he has to be killed.

Man has been doing that all along. He has not changed a little bit, even today he is the same. Much progress has happened in other fields -- technologically, scientifically man is far advanced today, but psychologically he is as primitive as ever. He still behaves with Daniel in the same old way.

The second point in the story is that even wild lions are far more intelligent than man, far more compassionate and loving than man, far more human than so-called human beings. They could not harm Daniel; they could see that this man was worth saving.

Such stories have existed in all mythologies. A mad elephant was set loose to kill Buddha. He had killed many people. He was so mad that he had to be kept in chains continuously, but his chains were removed and he was left loose. When he came to Buddha he looked at Buddha, bowed down and touched his feet! Sat there for half an hour! The people who left him were puzzled -- what had happened? What had gone wrong?

The story is the same: even a mad elephant is not as mad as the so-called sane human beings. These may not be historical facts. I don't insist on their being historical. They are far more valuable than historical facts, they are eternal truths. They contain something immensely significant. They are not just facts but truths.

Facts are momentary, facts are events in time. Truths are not events in time, they have something eternal about them. So these are symbolic stories.

This is going to happen to my disciples too -- it has already started happening. They will be tortured in every possible way, they will be harrassed in every possible way. But one thing is beautiful about this whole thing, that the more you are harassed for truth, the deeper becomes your love for it. You start becoming more crystallised, you start becoming a soul, you start having a centre. The more you are tortured, harassed, the more you become committed to your truth, the more you become rooted in it, the more certain you become of its validity, because if it were not true then people would not bother about you at all. If so many people are worried and are unable to tolerate you it simply shows that you have stumbled upon something significant.

People are only afraid of truth and of nothing else.

The last words of Gautam the Buddha to his disciples were 'Be a lamp unto yourself.' This is the most pregnant message ever. The whole philosophy of meditation is contained in it.

Meditation means that no outer light is going to help, no outer treasure is going to make you rich, no outer conquest is going to make you a real conqueror. The real treasure is within you and the real conquest has to be made there. It is such a ridiculous thing that we go on searching for something which we have already got, but we never look within. We look everywhere else we can go to the very corners of the earth or even to the moon in search of some illusory pleasure -- just one territory we never enter, and that is our own being.

Meditation is a simple technique of entering it. Meditation means awareness, alertness, watchfulness, witnessing. Witness your actions, witness your thoughts witness your feelings so that slowly slow you can see you are neither the body nor the mind nor heart -- that you are the witness of it all.

The moment you know that you are only a witness, a pure mirror reflecting everything, and you are not identified with any reflection, suddenly you discover your inner light. It is already there, but we have to shift our consciousness. A one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn is needed, and it happens only by witnessing, there is no other method. When you are witnessing, anything one thing becomes clear, that you are not the thing that you are witnessing, obviously; you are the witness of it.

Go on, deeper and deeper. When nothing is left to witness, you have witnessed all objects that you can witness and you have rejected them knowing 'I am not that,' when everything is eliminated, only you are left

-- just the mirror and nothing else; suddenly the shift: consciousness turns upon itself.

That moment of turning in is the greatest moment in life. In that very moment you know who you are and you know what god is, and you know what bliss is, you know what truth is, freedom is, what eternity is.

All that is worth knowing is known -- immediately, instantly. And then you can go on living in the world but you will be living with a totally different centre, with a totally different perspective: you will be in the world but absolutely out of it.

That's the way of sannyas: to be in the world and absolutely out of it.

Every sannyasin has to become a song of meditation. I insist on the fact that you have to become a song, a celebration, because for centuries meditation has become associated with seriousness. That has proved a calamity, the greatest disaster; it has colored the whole world of meditation in a wrong way. And because of 1/08/07

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this wrong association only sad and pathological people become interested in meditation.

People think that religion is for those who are already dead or almost dead. It is for old people, people who are in despair, people who have failed in life and need some kind of consolation, people who could not make it. Karl Marx says, religion is the opium of the people. It is for failures who need some kind of drug to keep them away from their failures and the pain of their failures so that they can forget their miseries.

Karl Marx is certainly right about this wrong kind of religion, but he is not right about the religion I am talking about.

My religion has a totally different flavor. It has the flavor of joy, of dance, of song, of celebration. It has the color of spring. In the East orange symbolizes spring. In spring, when all the flowers bloom, the whole forest becomes orange. They all become sannyasins. They become afire with color.

It is not for dead people, it is for the most fresh young people. It is for those who are totally alive and want to be more alive.

My sannyasins have to change the very definition of religion in the world. It is a great task, a great challenge, but now the time has come for it to be done, otherwise religion will die. That sad and serious kind of religion has no more future.

Now we need a laughing religion, a dancing religion, a religion which loves life, which loves love; a religion which rejoices in small things. A religion which is not against life but totally for it.

Meditation is the ultimate magic. It changes dust into gold; it transforms the lowest forms of energies into the highest form of energies. It is an alchemical process of transformation.

Man comes with all the potential of being a god and remains only an animal for the simple reason that he remains confined to raw energies. He never tries to change those raw energies into some refined form.

They can be changed: anger can become compassion -- it just has to pass through meditation; sex can become samadhi -- it just has to pass through meditation, greed can become sharing, lust can become love, love can become prayer. And we live at the lowest rung of the ladder, we live where we are born. We never think of ourselves as potential beings, we take life for granted, as if we are already born entire, complete, perfect. That's not so. We are born with the capacity to be perfect, we are born with all the potential to reach to the highest peak. But it is only a potential -- it has to be made actual. And to make it actual you will need a certain methodology.

It is just as gold is found in the mines and then it goes through many processes of refinement. It is just as diamonds are to be found in the mines, but then they are just stones. Only jewellers can recognise them ordinary people will not be able to recognise that they are diamonds.

I know one jeweller, one of my friends. He has his house full of so many diamonds that he cannot count them, he has to weigh them. He keeps them in heaps. When he took me to show his collection I only saw ordinary stones. I said 'What are you talking about? You were saying that you have thousands of diamonds

-- are these diamonds?' He said 'These are diamonds, but they will need much processing; then only will you be able to see what they are. Right now, they are just ordinary stones, and I purchased them for nothing because the people who brought them to me thought they were just coloured stones.'

Man also is a rare diamond, but ordinarily you will find in him anger, greed, hatred, lust -- all kinds of poisons -- and you will not be able to see any Buddha, any Christ at all. You will not be able to see Krishna anywhere, you will not hear the flute of Krishna inside him, and you will not see the purity and the innocence of Buddha. But he contains the purity of Buddha, the innocence of Mahavira, the rebellion of Jesus, the song and the dance of Krishna, and the infinite wisdom of Lao Tzu. He contains everything that has ever happened to any human being in the world.

But a certain science is needed, and that's the science of meditation. It is not a complicated science at all, very simple, but sometimes it happens that we go on missing the simplest thing in life. We miss the obvious because we are always looking far away. We are always attracted by the distant, by the far away, and the closest always remains available. But because it is always available, who cares about it?

I was reading that once a survey was made in London of how many people had not visited the Tower of London. It was a surprise, a great surprise for the surveyors, that there were thousands of people who had not visited the tower. They had been passing by the side of the tower for their whole life, but they were thinking 'Any day, any time, we can go and see it.' And there are people who come from the farthest corner of the world to see the Tower of London!

In Agra there are thousands of people who have not visited the Taj Mahal -- and they may die without visiting it, unless somebody declares that 'Tomorrow an atom bomb is going to be dropped on Agra.' Then 1/08/07

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they will rush to see the Taj Mahal because that would be the last day. Otherwise they will go on living, postponing: it is so obvious, it is so close by, they can visit it any time.

Our own being is even closer, and the method of meditation is so simple -- that's why millions of people miss it.

Once you start going in you will be surprised that it is such a simple phenomenon but it has tremendous beauty, the greatest joy possible, the greatest flowering possible. How had you missed it for so long? You will not be able to explain to yourself why and how you waited so long. And it can transform your whole being into gold.

So being a sannyasin make it a point... I don't ask for any other formalities, the whole emphasis is on meditation. Make it a point that from this moment meditation has to be your focus, your whole life, everything else is secondary. Sacrifice everything for meditation and you will never repent.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #12

Chapter title: None

12 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007125

ShortTitle: GWIND12

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Man has lost grace, animals still have it -- wild animals, more so. In a zoo they start losing grace and beauty, they start becoming perverted. The association with man is poisonous.

This is something very significant to understand, that man has no being like other animals. The dog has a certain being, the wolf has a certain being; a settled centre is there. The dog is born as a dog and will die as a dog. He will neither fall below it nor will he rise above it. His life is a certainty.

Man has no certain being, he has only a potential; hence both alternatives are open: he can fall below the animals, he can rise above the gods. He can become an Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Tamerlaine; he can become a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Lao Tzu.

Man is a ladder -- there are many possibilities in him; hence it is both a danger and a dignity, a glory and an agony. It is easier to fall; falling is always easier, no effort is needed for it. To rise needs effort. The higher you want to rise, the more effort is needed. If you want to reach the peaks of consciousness you will have to risk all.

One should not take one's being for granted because man has no being at all -- just a spectrum of possibilities, the whole spectrum. That is the beauty of man, and his misery too. He is the only anxious animal in existence, the only animal who feels anguish. This is the root cause of his anguish: he is always at a crossroads; he has to choose every moment to be or not to be, to be this or to be that. He is torn apart.

Sannyas is a decision, a commitment towards rising to the ultimate peaks.

The most divine duality in man arises through meditation. Meditation is the door to the divine. Nothing is more godly than meditation, because in meditation you slip out of the mind; you disappear from the outside, you exist only at your innermost core. And your innermost core is rooted in god.

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Just as every tree is rooted in the earth, every consciousness is rooted in god; god means the ultimate consciousness. And meditation is the bridge that takes you to the very source of your being. Once you have tasted the joy of being at the source, then everything else in life becomes meaningless. Then you can go on living the ordinary life but it is all acting, it is a beautiful drama. Play it as well as you can, but you know now that you are not part of it. It's just a role, it is not your existence. You can have all kinds of relationships in the world yet you know the beauty of your being alone, you know the bliss of being, of being at the centre in solitude.

Once that window opens your life is transformed. And that's the whole purpose of sannyas: to open that window so that you can really know you are godly.

Misery needs no intelligence, no courage, no rebellion; you simply have to adjust yourself to society and you will be miserable, because the whole society is miserable. If you want to be blissful you have to rebel against many things which create misery: you have to be on guard not to fall a victim of all kinds of superstitions that surround everybody. They are ancient, very ancient, and we have accepted them almost as if they are truths. They are not. They are the cause of our misery.

But society wants you to be miserable. This has to be very clearly understood, that the society is interested in your being miserable. There are reasons why the society is interested in your being miserable: a miserable person is manageable; a miserable person is always in such a low state of energy that he can be enslaved. Misery functions almost like a spiritual castration.

Bulls cannot be harnessed to bullock carts; first they have to be castrated. And have you seen the difference between a bull and an ox? There is a tremendous difference. the bull has grace, beauty, power, strength, and the ox is just poor. He was also born to be a bull but he has been cut from his very roots, his energy has been destroyed. Now it is possible to harness him to a cart.

If you harness a bull to a cart you will be in danger; he will take you anywhere. You will not be bale to manage him; it will be impossible to keep him on the road. And if he meets a beautiful cow on the road he will forget all about you and the cart! He is alive -- the ox is dead.

And the same has been done to man. It is a very subtle strategy: from the very beginning the child is slowly, spiritually castrated, is made spiritually impotent. He is forced to be obedient to all kinds of stupidities. Things are imposed on him and he is helpless; he depends on the parents. He knows that he cannot exist without their support so he has to compromise. And slowly slowly he completely forgets that he has compromised too much. By the time he is able to stand on his own feet he has completely forgotten what freedom is, what rebellion is, what the beauty of being intelligent is -- he has become a slave.

Hitherto this society -- and when I say 'this society' I mean all the societies of the world. I make no distinctions -- Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, they are all alike. Different brands of castration of course, but the base is the same: they have all done one thing, they have destroyed the spirit of man.

My effort here is to make you alive once more, to call you forth from the grave. My sannyasins have to be rebellious, intelligent, only then can they be blissful. Risk everything to be blissful, because nothing is more precious than bliss. Let that be the only goal in life; everything else is secondary, insignificant.

The two qualities of being courageous and being blissful prepare the ground for god to descend in you.

You have to be courageous because god is unknown. And whatsoever you have heard about god, when you really come to know god you will be surprised: all that you heard about him was sheer nonsense, bullshit!

There is no way to describe the experience. God remains indefinable, inexpressible. It is so unknown, even those who have experienced him cannot relate their experience to anybody else; one simply becomes dumb.

The English word 'mystic' is very beautiful. Its original meaning is: one who has become dumb through experiencing, one who has come across such a truth that he can only say it is mysterious, that it is a mystery

-- which is saying nothing.

One needs to be courageous enough to enter into the unknown. Cowards live in the known, courageous people explore unknown. And one needs to be blissful for god to enter into your being, because unless you are dancing and singing and celebrating you are not ready for god. God is celebration, god is a dance, god is a song. God cannot happen to people who are sad and serious, god cannot happen to miserable people.

Misery makes people shrink, bliss makes them expand, bliss makes them spacious -- and god needs all the space, only then can that ultimate sky enter you. You have to become almost as vast as the sky -- and this is possible only in absolute blissfulness.

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Prepare these two qualities and god is yours. This is the price one has to pay for god-realisation.

Meditation is not a seasonal flower. It is like a cedar of Lebanon -- a big, vast tree -- because it is the most ambitious project. It is an effort to touch the stars! It needs time, devotion, patience, and an infinite capacity to wait, because one can never be certain when it is going to happen. It can happen this moment, it may happen after years. It is unpredictable.

Only one thing can be said: the more patient you are, the quicker it happens. If your patience is absolute then it can happen even this moment, but if your patience is not enough, then it will take a longer time.

Many people start meditations but they will do them for a few days and then they will drop the whole idea saying 'Nothing is happening -- why bother?'

Do meditation without thinking of any result, enjoy meditating as an end in itself. and then some day the light explodes, the ego disappears. And with the ego death disappears. And with the ego death disappears and you enter into eternity.

Jesus calls that eternity 'the kingdom of god.'

Cowards, weaklings cannot be religious, although temples and churches and mosques are full of those people -- so much so that they have contaminated the whole of religion with fear. In almost all the languages of the world there are words like 'god-fearing' for the religious person. Now, the religious person is absolutely fearless; he is not god-fearing, he is god-loving. His religion is out of love, not out of fear.

How can you pray out of fear? How can you love out of fear? You can hate out of fear.

This whole accumulated hatred finally exploded in Friedrich Nietzsche when he said 'God is dead and man is free.' That statement is symbolic, very symbolic. It represents our century, it represents modern man more than anything else. For thousands of years man has been told to be afraid of god, man has been crippled, paralysed with fear; and man has been told to be greedy. Fear and greed go together, they are two aspects of the same coin. Fear has created hell and greed has created heaven; they are projections of fear and greed.

The religious person has nothing to do with greed and fear. The religious person lives in love and bliss.

He is strong enough not to be afraid of anything. He is not afraid of death. Why should one be afraid of anything? One day you are not. Just think of a few years ago: you were not -- were you missing anything?

So even after death you won't be missing anything. It is such a simple thing. Just a few years ago you were not in the world and you were not missing anything; I think you were perfectly happy! You were not even aware of happiness, so how could you miss anything? At the most, whatsoever is going to happen in death you will be the same: you will move back to the same original state that was before birth, so why fear? For what? What has life given to you that death can take away? Nothing has been given, nothing can be taken away.

The religious man lives joyously: there is nothing to be afraid of. And out of that fearless ness a rocklike spirit arises, and on that rocklike spirit one can make a temple for god -- that's the only possibility.

These two things, love and meditation, have always been separated by the so-called religious -- not only separated and divided, but almost made as if to be opposite to each other. For centuries religions have been teaching people: if you love you will miss meditation, so drop out of all love relationships, move into a monastery, remain bachelors, become a monk. The word 'monk' means living alone; the word 'monk' itself means one who lives alone, unrelated to anybody.

From the same root from which comes 'monk' come words like 'monopoly', 'monotony', 'monogamy'.

'Become a monk or become a nun. Avoid love, escape from love, only then can you attain to meditation' --

this has been the teaching for centuries. Or if you want to move into the dimension of love then forget all about meditation.

So the world has been divided by religious people; they have created a kind of schizophrenia. And the problem is that man needs both and he cannot be contented with one; it is impossible to be contented with one. There is a certain need for love and there is a certain need for meditation too.

Meditation fulfils something, love fulfils something else. It is like telling a person 'Either you can eat or you can drink. If you eat, then you cannot be allowed to drink anything; if you want to drink anything then you cannot eat. Choose one -- whatsoever you want.' Now, you will drive that man crazy! He needs both.

You tell somebody 'Either you can remain awake or you can go to sleep -- choose.' These are opposite activities, and you cannot choose opposite things because that will create troubles for you, so either be 1/08/07

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awake or be asleep.' Now, nobody can choose one. You will need a certain rhythm between waking and sleeping; you will have to move from one to the other. Waking you will create the necessity for sleep, sleep will create the necessity for waking.

The same is true about love and meditation: if you love it creates the need for meditation. People don't understand it, because they have been told just stupid things. Whenever you love somebody sooner or later you will feel a deep need to be alone, to have your own space, and because you don't understand the inner psychology, the inner rhythm, you start thinking, 'What has happened? Has my love died? Am I betraying my love? What is happening to my love affair?' And the person you love also starts thinking 'You want to be alone? You want your own space? That means you don't love me anymore?' Both are absolutely unconscious of the inner mechanism.

And when you are alone soon you will see that you need somebody to share your joy, to be with, and then you feel guilty again, as if you are betraying your meditation. This whole nonsense has been created by the priests.

My effort here is to drop this whole schizophrenic culture and make you capable of both together: be a lover and a meditator. And remember the rhythm, that both are enrichening forces; they support each other, they are not contradictory, they are complementaries.

This is something new; it is being tried for the first time in the world of religion. My sannyasins are a totally new phenomenon in the history of man; they are trying to bridge something that has been broken for centuries. But once you understand the inner mechanism, the inner rhythm... It is like breathing: the breath goes out, then it comes in. If somebody says 'Why don't you choose? -- either throw the breath out and stop, or take it in and stop. What is the point of continuously breathing in and out? -- it is unnecessary trouble.

Either keep it in or keep it out -- make it simple.' His advice may look logical, but he will kill you.

The same has happened with love and meditation. Love is like exhalation: your energies go out to meet the other person. Meditation is like inhalation your energies go in to the deepest core of your being. The most alive man is one who is capable of both without any contradiction. If we can make man aware of this, out of one hundred mind-problems, almost ninety-nine per cent will disappear automatically.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #13

Chapter title: None

13 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007135

ShortTitle: GWIND13

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Man builds his life on the sands of dreams. That's why whatsoever one tries to do, everything fails, all houses collapse. They don't have their foundation in something eternal, they are founded on the momentary.

And when one house of sand falls we start making another house -- of the same material, with the same material. We never seem to learn any lesson: if one dream fails we start dreaming, another dream; if one desire is frustrated we immediately jump into another desire, another project -- but we never see that desire as such is bound to fail.

To desire means to go against the whole. It is an impossible task, it cannot be done. Not to desire means 1/08/07

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to relax with the whole, to go with the whole, to have no desire of one's own, it means 'Whatsoever the whole wills is my will. I am not trying to achieve any individual goal.'

The moment you start trying to achieve an individual goal you are bound for trouble, because we are not separate from the whole, hence we can't have separate goals. The English word, idiot, is very significant in this context. Its root meaning is one who is trying to achieve something individual. He is an idiot because his failure is absolutely certain. Nobody has ever succeeded in achieving any individual goal.

We have to learn to be part of life, existence. We are waves in the ocean: we cannot have individual goals. And there is no need to at all. And because of the individual goals, every day there is frustration, every day there is misery.

Sannyas means seeing, the whole absurdity of our dreams and desires then trying to find a rocklike phenomenon on which a house can be built. and that rock is found only in meditation because meditation moans a state of no-thought, no desire, no dream. Suddenly you are on solid ground. Now each moment is going to be a blissful experience and each moment is going to be a victory -- not yours of course, because you are no more.

We are victorious when we are not, and when we are, we are failures. Meditation means coming to know that we don't exist as separate entities, that we are not islands; we are part of the infinite continent --

call it god, call it truth, the ultimate, the absolute or whatsoever name you choose.

Lao Tzu says 'It has no name, hence I will call it tao.' It has no name, so you can choose your own, or you can choose some name used by Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Krishna... but the basic secret of being victorious is disappearing totally as an individual. And the moment there are no desires, no dreams, no thoughts, how can you be? Who are you except a bundle of desires, thoughts and dreams?

To be a beloved disciple is the greatest gift of god. There cannot be anything greater than that. The

'word 'disciple' comes from the same root as discipline; it means the capacity to learn, the openness to learn, the availability to learn. Very few people are capable of learning. Their knowledge hinders; they already know too much. They have already arrived at some conclusions, hence they are always listening through their conclusions. They are closed.

Coming to a conclusion means that your mind is closed; on a certain subject you have decided that this is the end, there is no more to it. That means conclusion. A real disciple, a learner, never concludes. He remains always open, he never comes to a full stop. He knows nothing of the full stop, nothing like a full stop exists in his consciousness. His consciousness is always an ongoing phenomenon. He is always learning. There is so much to learn that only stupid people can conclude.

The wiser a person becomes, the more aware he becomes of how little he knows; the more stupid a person is, the more certain he is about his knowledge. You can judge the stupidity by the certainty. The stupids are very fanatical people because they have arrived at ultimate conclusions. And not only have they arrived for themselves, they have arrived for everybody. They want to impose their conclusions on everybody, on the whole world. They think they are being very compassionate to people.

You must have come across Jehovah witnesses or Hari Krishna people. These are the representatives of the most stupid fanatical types. They have arrived at every conclusion, they know everything; there is nothing more for them to know. Now their whole work is to force their knowledge on others, whether you are willing to accept it or not.

Socrates in his last days said 'I know only one thing, that I know nothing. And that was the day he became the greatest wise man the West has yet known. That day he became part of the great company of the Buddhas. That day he was no more a philosopher, that day he became awakened, enlightened.

A disciple is one who functions through a state of not-knowing. Whatsoever he knows is only hypothetical and he is always ready to change it -- he is not a fanatic. He loves truth so much that he cannot decide anything about truth in a hasty way. His love is so great, he is not in a hurry. He knows truth is vast

-- how can I be decisive about it? At the most I can say that this much I feel -- maybe, perhaps -- is right.'

One of the greatest men the East has produced was Mahavira. He used to start every sentence with a

'perhaps '. It was becoming almost annoying to his disciples, irritating. He would always start every statement with a 'perhaps'. But I can see his point. This is the non -- fanatical person. If you ask him 'Is there a god?' he will not say yes or no ; he will say 'Perhaps -- perhaps yes, perhaps no.' He will not give you a conclusion. He will help you to enquire, he will push you into the enquiry.

That's the function of the master: to push you into the enquiry. He does not give you ready-made conclusions. He simply makes you aware of the tremendous questions of life, of the tremendous mysteries 1/08/07

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of existence. The function of the master is to make you aware of the mysteries which are almost unknowable. And the function of the disciple is to be able to go along with the master, totally, fully -- and he can go totally and fully only if he is not carrying any conclusions already. If he is a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan he cannot be a disciple.

Disciplehood does not happen through the head, it happens through the heart. The head is full of conclusions, the heart is always innocent and always ready to know. The heart is always a child and the head is always an old man. The head is never young, remember, and the heart is never old.

To be a beloved disciple means to live in the heart, to live through the heart, to remain fresh, young, open, available, to be capable of dropping all conclusions and knowledge and scriptures. The disciple has to be courageous enough to burn all the scriptures -- I mean symbolically, not literally -- and just to live out of love, not out of logic.. Then life becomes an infinite wonder, then each moment brings new surprises, then one is always in a state of awe.

And to remain in that state continuously is ecstasy, is bliss, is benediction.

Man cannot get out of misery unless he realises something in him which is deathless. Death is the root cause of all our fears -- and we are surrounded by death. Whenever you see somebody dying you are reminded of your death. Never ask for whom the bell tolls -- it always tolls for you.

People don't like to talk about death. It is not thought to be polite, mannerly, cultured, to talk about death, because it reminds everybody of his own death which is always there, hanging like a naked sword from a very thin thread: it can fall any moment! Just a little breeze is enough and it can fall on you. How can you enjoy life? How can you live totally when death is always following you like a shadow? It contaminates all your joys.

It is a well-known fact, observed almost all over the world by all the researchers, that people are afraid of love for the simple reason that when they move into love-making a moment of deep orgasmic joy comes when they suddenly experience themselves as being close to death, melting, disappearing, and they become frightened, they become frozen.

It is one of the causes why millions of women never achieve orgasm; they hold back, they remain cold.

Of course they have rationalised it in many ways -- that that is good, ladylike. And millions of men suffer from premature ejaculation for the simple reason; the same reason they are so afraid, and out of fear they cannot attain to a mature ejaculation. Before the orgasm happens their energy is released. It is a way of avoiding the orgasm, it is a very subtle strategy. Women become frigid, men either start having immature ejaculations or at a later stage of life they become impotent. And now this is a perfectly well-known fact that very rarely does a man become impotent, very rarely -- one man in a thousand, maybe -- but millions suffer from the idea of impotency. The idea is their own, imposed on themselves. And the reason is very deep, it is beyond psychology to help.

Only meditation can help, because only meditation can make you aware that you are deathless. In fact, even if you want to die you cannot, there is no way to die. You were never born and you will never die. You were before birth and you will remain after death. Birth is only entering into a certain body and death is leaving that certain body -- but you are eternal.

To experience this eternity, this deathlessness, becomes the foundation of a totally new life, a new life-style: fearless, without misery, without anxiety, a life which is orgasmic -- not only in the sexual sense...

because that is only one of the dimensions of orgasm. There are many dimensions of being orgasmic.

A really orgasmic person knows many dimensions of orgasm. Looking at a beautiful sunset he is in an orgasm -- an absolutely non-sexual orgasm. Watching the sky full of stars he goes into an orgasm; that orgasm has nothing to do with sex. Listening to music or dancing or just sitting silently doing nothing, resting in oneself, there is great joy; all the cells of the body are dancing, rejoicing.

A person starts living bliss each moment if only one experience becomes possible: that of deathlessness.

Hence the East has never bothered much about psychology, for the simple reason that the eastern understanding has been this, that ninety-nine point nine per cent of psychological problems are not basically psychological, they are rooted in spiritual ignorance. Once that ignorance disappears, those problems disappear. Western psychology goes on analysing. That analysis is simply absurd, it goes on and on. No psychoanalysis is ever complete -- cannot be -- it is moving in a vicious circle. You analyse one thing, there is still another thing; you analyse that and then a third thing bubbles up, because the centre of the problem is never touched, the root is never cut. You go on pruning the leaves and new leaves go on coming. The foliage in fact becomes far thicker than it was before.

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Psychologists suffer more from psychological problems than anybody else for the simple reason that they know how to prune the leaves and how to cut the branches, so their problems become more and more thick and bigger and stronger, and the roots are intact, the roots are underground, hidden...

Ordinarily psychologists don't think that meditation can do anything because they are not aware of the roots -- and meditation's whole function is to cut the roots. Once the roots are cut the tree withers away by itself.

Love makes man an ocean, an infinity. It gives a kind of unboundedness. It helps you to know that you are not defined by any limits, that you are not confined by the body or the mind, that you are not confined at all, that you are as vast as the sky; in fact, even the sky is not the limit. There is no limit to you.

This is the beauty of love, it makes you aware of vastness. That is the first experience of godliness. And if the first experience happens, then other things follow in their own time. The first experience triggers a process. Then everything follows, then you have not to do anything else. Just one thing you have to do, that is to start with love.

Love as much as you can, as many people as possible -- not only people, but animals, birds, trees, stars, rocks. When I say love, I mean become loving. Be love, so whatsoever you do, it should have the flavor of love, whatsoever you touch you should touch with love, whatsoever you say you should say it with love. In the beginning it is hard because we are so unconscious.

A man came to meet a great Zen master, Lin Chi. He pushed open the door, threw off his shoes and went in. The master was watching and a few disciples were sitting with him. The man touched the master's feet, the master said, "Don't touch my feet, because I will have to take a bath!" The man said, "What are you saying? Why should you have to take a bath? I am not impure or dirty or anything." The master said, "You are! In the way you opened the door there was anger, in the way you threw your shoes there was anger. You misbehaved with the shoes, you misbehaved with the door -- which have not done anything wrong to you.

So your bowing down to me is just formality, deep down you are full of anger. Close your eyes and see!"

The man had to close his eyes and he could see it was so.

The master said, "If you see that what I am saying is right, then go and first bow down to your shoes, ask forgiveness." The man said, "What are you saying? Are you mad or something? -- bowing down to the shoes, my own shoes and asking their forgiveness? They are dead things!"

The master said, "If you could be angry with them and you never thought that you were being angry with dead things, why can you not ask their forgiveness? Unless you ask forgiveness from the shoes and the doors I am not going to even talk to you. Simply get out, be lost!"

The man could see the point. He went and bowed down to the shoes, to the door. And later on he came back with tears in his eyes and he said to the master, "Never in my life have I felt so happy. At first bowing down to my shoes I felt very embarrassed. But when I really bowed down, I was immensely happy.

Something inside me, the whole climate, immediately changed, as if suddenly spring had come and flowers had bloomed."

Watch your life. Don't be in any way rude to anything, not even dead things, because in fact nothing is dead. If god permeates everything then nothing is dead. A rock is only a soul very fast asleep, so fast asleep that it is not even breathing, in a coma. But it is as alive as anybody else.

Be love... and you will know what sannyas is. Sannyas is an experience of love, and love brings you to the oceanic, to the unbounded, to the vast. The door of the temple opens, and without your knowing suddenly you enter the shrine.

No churches, temples and mosques can help you. Only this door I am talking is the real door to the real temple where you will find the real god.

Love simply moans surrendering the ego. Don't live any more as an ego, Drop the idea that you are separate, forget completely that you are a different entity. We are rooted in existence, we are one with it, part of it ; we live through it, it lives through us. We are intertwined, we are interdependent. You cannot exist without the whole, and the whole also cannot exist without you. If it could exist without you it would have existed without you. Just that you are is proof enough that existence needs you in some way, you are fulfilling a certain need.

Even the smallest blade of grass is as needed as the greatest star. There is no hierarchy in existence.

Nobody is higher and nobody is lower, and nobody is more needed and nobody is less needed. All is needed because existence means the togetherness of all. We all contribute something to existence, and existence 1/08/07

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goes on giving to us everything that we need.

Once this interdependence is understood life starts having a new kind of beauty and grace. Then there are no problems. Problems are created by the ego; because the ego is a false entity it creates problems. It lives in anxiety, fear, always afraid, always cautious: something may go wrong...

The moment the ego is dropped nothing can go wrong. Nothing ever goes wrong: all is perfectly right as it is. That's exactly the meaning of god -- that all is good as it is.

Samarpan (her name) defines sannyas. Samarpan means surrender, let-go. Those two words 'let', 'go', are my whole message.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #14

Chapter title: None

14 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007145

ShortTitle: GWIND14

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Man lives in misery because of cowardliness. There is no other cause for it. It is fear of the unknown that keeps man clinging to his misery, because misery is known, well-known. We are born in it, we are brought up in it, we see it all around -- everybody is miserable, the whole crowd is miserable. It is the climate, the atmosphere. To be blissful means to transcend this climate, this atmosphere, to go beyond the limits of the crowd, to move into the unknown and the unacquainted and the uncharted.

It is the fear of the unknown that keeps us clinging to all kinds of suffering. The suffering is not clinging to you, you cling to it. People prefer suffering more than nothing.

Sannyas begins with changing your preference. Nothing is not only better that suffering, it is better than everything, it is better than the whole. To be nothing, to be a nobody, to be an utter non entity certainly needs guts. It is moving to the farthest shore without knowing whether it exists or not. It is losing this shore, which has become very well-known, and taking a quantum leap towards something which may be, may not be -- there is no guarantee.

That's why a master is needed. A master is not a guarantee of the unknown, for the unknown, but a witness. He cannot guarantee truth for you. We can only share: 'It is -- I have known it, I am a witness to it.'

And if, looking into his eyes, you can feel the trust, if you can feel his love and your love for him, then something starts transpiring, then something mysterious starts happening. That mysterious relationship is disciplehood, that is sannyas. It is the most mysterious experience of life. Even the experience of love is nothing compared to it.

Man lives in bondage because man lives in the mind. Mind is a bondage. Mind is not yours, remember.

Mind is implanted in you by the society; hence there are as many minds as there are societies, cultures, religions.

A Christian mind is different from a Jewish mind, a Hindu mind is different from a Mohammedan mind, an atheist mind is certainly different from a theist mind. And these minds are cultivated by others; they are impositions by others on you. But the imposition is so subtle that you are not even aware of it, that you are 1/08/07

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being forced by your parents and the society to be a Christian or a Hindu or a Communist, that this is not your own choice, that you have not chosen it out of freedom. So freedom was never given to you; you were not even asked, your permission has not even been taken. But for years it has been forced, repeatedly, so it becomes a deep conditioning in you.

Meditation means dropping the identity with the mind, knowing that 'I am not the mind that I have always supposed myself to be, that I am separate from my mind, that I am just a witness, a consciousness, that I am neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian, that I don't belong to any country, to any church, to any ideology.' The moment this becomes your experience you start living in freedom.

Meditation brings freedom. It releases you from the subtlest kind of bondage. A meditator is simply religious. He does not believe in any dogma. He knows by his experience that the world does not end in matter, that there are higher realms than matter, that the whole existence is immersed in godliness.

When this is your experience it is a totally different thing: it is not a belief, it is knowing, it is wisdom, it is a light within your being. It makes you totally free from the past, from all kinds of societies and cultures.

For the first time you know who you are; you become an independent soul. That is real birth, a resurrection.

That's the whole purpose of sannyas -- it is a process of being reborn.

Love is the greatest rebellion known to man, because it is rebellion against the ego. It's way very few people love. Very few people ever gather enough courage to move into the world of love for the simple reason that they cannot drop their ego -- and it is a prerequisite. Love happens only when you can merge your ego, when you can put it aside, when you can say 'I am not -- you are.' This is the beginning of love when one says 'I am not- you are.' And when the 'you' also disappears that is the end of love, that is the climax of love, the highest peak, where I and thou both disappear. And there is an organic unity where duality disappears.

It can happen between two individuals. That is just like learning swimming in shallow water. Naturally when one learns, one learns in shallow water, in a swimming pool. You don't start learning in the ocean, you don't start going into the deep waters. But once you know how to swim then you can go. It doesn't matter whether the water is one mile deep or five miles deep; it can be infinitely deep -- it makes no difference.

Love between two persons is only a lesson for the ultimate love: love between you and the whole existence.

But those people who have never even loved individuals cannot hope to love god: god means the whole.

And there are stupid people all over the world who think they love god, although they don't love their wives, they don't love their husbands, they don't love their children. In fact their whole idea is that if you want to love god, you have to drop loving everybody else; you have to renounce all love relationships, then you can love god. Their god is a very jealous god, like a jealous wife or like a jealous husband. Their god is as stupid as they are. It is bound to be because your god is always your projection; it is as stupid or as intelligent as you are. In fact god is always a mirror: it only reflects your face. If you have a monkey face it cannot reflect any angel in it.

So monkeys have monkey-gods -- Hanuman. And in India you will find many Hanuman. Those are monkey gods. That simply shows one thing, that there are many monkeys in India, otherwise how is a man going to worship a monkey? Something monkeyish must be there.

Darwin never came to know about it, otherwise he would have incorporated it in his theory of the evolution of humanity. Hanuman could have become a part in proving his theory. That Hanuman seems to be an ancestral god; people still remember something of the past -- he is a very ancient god. The very idea of god is always a reflection of your mind.

The people who think against love, who renounce love, cannot love god either. Their god is only a strategy to avoid love. And god is so abstract that you can pretend you love god without any trouble, without any problem; there is no risk in it. To love a woman or a man is risky: it creates trouble, it brings a thousand and one agonies. Of course it also brings ecstasies, but they are always balanced: the deeper the ecstasies, the deeper will be the agonies. If you want to avoid the ecstasies then you can avoid the agonies too. Then you can have a smooth wife-husband relationship -- the normal, the traditional, the orthodox, the polite British type. Then there is no problem. But if you want a real love relationship in which there is some possibility of ecstasy then there is always a similar possibility of agony. If you reach peaks then you will have to have valleys too; the higher the peaks, the deeper will be the valleys. It will be in the same proportion, exactly balancing.

But with the love of god you don't have anything -- it is just an abstract idea.

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My idea of love is not abstract, it is very pragmatic, realistic. I am not an idealist at all, I am very down-to-earth. Start loving people make it your foundation, and then slowly move towards higher realities.

If you can love human beings, if you can love animals, if you can love trees and rocks, then only are you capable of loving god. And then your god will not be an abstraction, then your god will be simply the totality of existence. Then it will be the whole universe -- the stars and the moon and the sun. Then it will be simply the total of all. And that love needs only one thing: slowly slowly you have to die as an ego. And the more you die as an ego, the more you are born as a soul.

This I call a rebellion. All other rebellions are not rebellions; they are just small things -- political revolutions, reforms but not rebellions.

The only revolution worth calling rebellion is when you are capable of discarding the whole idea of the ego and you are ready to disappear into love just like a dewdrop disappears into the ocean and becomes the ocean.

Every man is born with a divine treasure within him. And in fact we are searching for it for our whole life, but we go on searching in wrong directions. We go on searching for it outside, and it is not there so it cannot be found.

It is within you, it is your very nature, so unless one explores withinwards one never finds it.

The people who have searched for it on the outside have never found it. There is not a single exception; without any exception they have all failed. Still, man is so stupid, he goes on doing the same thing again and again.

And the people who have explored within have always found it -- that too, without exception. A Jesus, a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu -- anybody who has ever gone in has always found it. Nobody has ever failed there. But such is the stupidity of man that he never listens to these people.

It is good that you are here and you are ready to move into sannyas. It can become a tremendously significant decision in your life. If you really make it a commitment, if you really get involved in this pilgrimage you will be tremendously enriched, you will be able to find the kingdom of god. And that is the only thing worth finding -- everything else is futile.

It is contentment that brings bliss. We live in discontentment, we axe never contented with anything.

The mind always goes on asking for more that is the nature of the mind -- and those who follow mind will remain in misery. They can even become great emperors -- they will be beggars. Even Alexander the Great lived like a beggar and died like a beggar.

By beggar I mean a person who is always begging for more. By emperor I mean a person who is immensely contented with whatsoever he has got. It is a change of gestalt, a shift of our total consciousness.

Just look at all that god has already given to you... and it is inestimable, it is so much that nobody is worthy of it. We have not earned it, we don't deserve it -- god gives out of his abundance but we never feel grateful.

In this ungratefulness misery lives and becomes stronger every day. Discontentment is food for misery, and contentment is nourishment for bliss.

Change your energy from discontentment to contentment and you will be surprised by the transformation: immediately there is gratitude, thankfulness. And whatsoever one has got one feels so happy with it that small thing of life start bringing tremendous joy. Just a cup of tea can be as bliss-giving as the whole of paradise; a cup of tea can contain the whole of paradise. It all depends on you, on how you look at it. Otherwise the whole of paradise will not be capable of satisfying you; you will start finding faults there.

The way of sannyas is the way of contentment.

Meditation opens your inner consciousness like the sun opens the flowers. The sun does not make any effort; it does not force the petals of the flowers to open up -- just the presence is enough, the warmth is enough. The presence of the sun functions like a catalytic agent. Something inside the flower immediately starts opening up, as if the flower suddenly feels a deep trust, there is no need to hides it can open up, it can open all the doors and all the windows.

The same, exactly the same happens in meditation. Meditation simply creates an inner warmth. The non-meditative person is ice-cold inside. He has no heart, he is just mind, and mind is ice-cold. The meditative person's energy starts moving from the head to the heart; the heart starts becoming warmer. You actually start feeling the warmth inside, and in that warmth your being opens up like a flower. And that opening is the fulfilment. In that opening one feels one has come home. In that opening one knows how 1/08/07

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nothing is missing -- this is it!

A man without love is like a plastic flower, a paper flower with no perfume. He looks like a flower, he looks like a man, but he is not really a man. A man becomes a man only when his heart starts throbbing with love. With love man is no more an ordinary animal, he starts becoming extraordinary; he starts moving upwards. Otherwise he is just like other animals. He has a bigger mind, more efficient -- that's the only difference. The difference is quantitative, and a quantitative difference is not a difference at all.

The real difference is only when there is a difference of quality. And love is the only thing that brings a new quality to you, otherwise everything else is available to animals also.

Sex is available to them, but no love. They also have a certain kind of intelligence. For example, some animals have a very good memory. There are some species of snakes which have such a memory that for years they will remember to take revenge; they will not forget. Elephants have a very good memory. For years they will remember; even after a ten, twelve-year gap, they will be able to recognise the friend and the enemy, immediately.

Once I went to visit a fort of a maharaja -- he himself had not gone to the fort for eight years. Just to show me he went with me, and at least a dozen peacocks came and started dancing. I asked him 'What is the matter?" And he said 'They recognise us. Whenever anybody of my family comes they will receive us with dance. After eight years I have come but they have not forgotten.'

Just to experiment, the next year when I went there I took his wife with me, and the same thing happened. I enquired of the servant, they said 'They won't dance with anybody else -- only the royal family.

They recognise who the royal persons are. For only a few people... if the maharaja, his wife, his son, if these three persons come they will dance, otherwise they won't dance. No effort can persuade them to dance. And they have been here for many centuries: their parents were dancing, the parents of their parents were dancing. It is as if they have inherited the memory and they continue the tradition.'

Now the maharaja is no more a maharaja, because maharajas and their states have disappeared. Nobody recognises him any more, but those peacocks do.

Animals have their own memory system, they have a certain intelligence of their own. Only one thing is missing: they don't know what love is, they can't know. Even out of one hundred men, ninety-nine never know what love is. The rare individual comes to know love.

My vision of a real man requires two things: love and meditation. But love is needed far more essentially, because if man can love he is bound to find, sooner or later, the way to meditation, because love itself gives you certain glimpses of meditation. It makes you silent. Then two lovers meet, if they are really in love, they have nothing to say to each other. They may hold hands and they will sit silently. The silence is too significant to disturb by anything else.

Love gives a few glimpses of meditation, naturally. Love is a natural kind of meditation, and because it is a natural kind it can become a good jumping board for meditation.

So begin with love. Love as deeply as possible, as widely as possible, because the wider the love, the more rich your inner being becomes. Love as many people as possible, because each person is unique and each experience unique. And love not only man, love animals, because they have a different plane of existence. Your love of them will make you aware of their plane of existence. Love trees too, birds too, then you become multi-dimensional and your life becomes more and more enriched.

That enrichment is what religions have called the birth of the soul. I call it the perfume of love. And then one day out of that perfume you will start moving into meditation naturally.

Meditation is a transcendence, a transcendence of all identities. We are identified with the body. The first step of meditation destroys that identity; we become aware that we are not the body. Then we become aware that we are identified with the mind, with the thought process. That is the second step of meditation: it destroys that identity and makes us aware that we are not minds either. And the third and the most important and the deepest step is that we are identified with the heart, with our feelings, emotions.

Meditation destroys that too.

These are the three steps, the three great negations, and out of these three negations comes the most positive phenomenon in existence: suddenly you become aware of who you are. But you become perfectly aware of who you are not.

To know the false as false is the beginning of knowing the true as true. So real religion starts in negation and ends in absolute affirmation. It starts with no, three no ss no to the body, no to the mind, no to the heart.

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And then a miracle happens: out of these three no's you suddenly attain to the biggest yes that you have ever seen in your life, ever experienced in your life -- a total yes, an absolute yes. That yes is the transcendence of all misery, all bondage, all ignorance, all darkness, all death. You become part of eternity, you become part of god. You become god himself! That is the ultimate goal of sannyas. How long will you be here?

-- Probably for four weeks.

Good. Four weeks are enough: three for three no's. The next time come for four months and then for four years and then for forever!

The Golden Wind

Chapter #15

Chapter title: None

15 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007155

ShortTitle: GWIND15

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Man remains a beggar unless he knows what the truth is. And the truth is only one. It is neither mine nor yours; it does not belong to anybody, to any religion, to any ideology, to any church, to any country, to any time. It is eternal, it is the very centre of the whole existence. It is also our centre, everyone's centre. They are different on the circumference, we are all joined at the centre. As we start moving towards the centre we start moving towards oneness of being.

First the personality is lost. The personality is a very circumferential thing, a peripheral thing, cultivated, conditioned, taught; it is something imposed from the outside. And when personality disappears, individuality appears. Individuality remains for the whole journey between the circumference and the centre. Then you enter the centre even individuality disappears; you become universal.

To reach that centre is to be crowned, is to become an emperor. That's what Jesus was talking about when he said 'I am a king' and 'Blessed are the meek' for theirs is the kingdom of god.' But he was totally misunderstood. The woman emperors thought that he was trying to take power from their hands, that he was trying to make a political rebellion and hiding his political philosophy behind religious words. That's why they conspired with the rabbis, with the Jews, otherwise they were not at all interested in whether he was the messiah or not. The rabbis were angry because he was saying 'I am the messiah. I have come to deliver people from their misery.'

And he was right: every man who has attained to truth is a messiah, and the man who has attained to truth lives only to liberate people. His whole life is nothing but a sharing of his joy, he has nothing else to live for. All his desires have disappeared; he has no motivation of his own. As long as he lives and breathes he breathes for all, he lives for all.

He was saying absolutely the right thing. But the rabbis were angry because he was trying to possess their religion, he was trying to convert Jews into his followers. And the Romans were afraid because he was talking about a kingdom and a crowning and saying that the people who listened to him and followed him would inherit the earth. They thought he was a political person camouflaging his political philosophy with a 1/08/07

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religious ideology. Hence the Roman emperor and the rabbis conspired together to crucify Jesus.

But he was simply stating a fact: every man of truth is an emperor. He is certainly crowned, because he reaches the ultimate height of glory, splendour, freedom, blissfulness. That is the goal of sannyas too: to help you to become emperors, to help you to attain the kingdom of god, to help you to inherit the whole existence.

My sannyas is not for beggars, my sannyas is for emperors, those who really want to be crowned, those who really want to know the ultimate peak of bliss and benediction. It is possible, and it is possible for everyone, whosoever is ready to go on the inner pilgrimage, whosoever is ready first to risk his personality to attain individuality and then to risk even individuality to attain universality. He deserves to be crowned!

Meditation is rest, absolute rest, a full stop to all activity -- physical, mental, emotional. When you are in such a deep rest that nothing stirs in you, when all action as such ceases, as if you are fast asleep yet awake, you come to know who you are. Suddenly the window opens. It cannot be opened by effort, because effort creates tension and tension is the cause of our whole misery. Hence this is something very fundamental to be understood,,that meditation is not effort.

One has to be very playful about meditation, one has to learn to enjoy it as fun. One has not to be serious about it -- be serious and you miss. One has to go into it very joyously. And one has to keep aware that it is falling into deeper and deeper rest. It is not concentration, just the contrary, it is relaxation, When you are utterly relaxed, for the first time you start feeling,,your reality, you come face to face with your being. When you are engaged in activity you are so occupied that you cannot see yourself. Activity creates much smoke round you, it raises much dust around you; hence all activity has to be dropped, at least for a few hours every day.

That is only so in the beginning. When you have learned the art of being at rest then you can be both active and restful together, because then you know that rest is something so inner that it cannot be disturbed by anything outer, the activity goes on on the circumference and at the centre you remain restful. So it is only for beginning that activity has to be dropped for a few hours. Then one has learned the art then there is no question: for twenty-four hours a day one can be meditative and one can continue all the activities of ordinary life.

But remember, the key word is rest, relaxation. Never go against rest and relaxation. Arrange your life in such a way, drop all futile activity, because ninety per cent is futile; it is just for killing time and remaining occupied. Do only the essential and devote your energies more and more to the inner journey.

Then that miracle happens when you can remain at rest and in action together, simultaneously. That is the meeting of the sacred and the mundane, the meeting of this world and that, the meeting of materialism and spiritualism.

It is only in this way that the East and the West can meet and become one. It has not been possible up to now for the simple reason that the East has tried to remain at rest; hence it has fallen into a kind of inactivity. And the West has tried to remain active. The West has completely forgotten how to be at rest; it has become very feverishly active. Both have gone wrong: the East has become lazy and lousy and the West has become insane. And activity out of insanity is dangerous; the West is driving the whole world towards that danger, the third world war. And inactivity, lousiness, lethargy, laziness, is also dangerous -- it is suicidal, it is a slow kind of death. So the East is starving and dying, withering away.

The meeting of the East and the West is one of the most essential things if humanity is to be saved. And my sannyasins have to become this meeting of action and rest; then they can herald the new man on earth.

A man who has not tasted of bliss is a man living in dark night. He has not known the morning yet, the day has not happened. He may have dreamt about the sun, he may have heard about the sun in his dreams, he may have seen paintings of the sun, but he has not yet experienced any sunrise in himself.

Sannyas is an endeavor to bring you out of your dark night of the soul. Hence the colour of sannyas is the colour of the rising sun, when the sky starts becoming orange, goes red, all the colours of red and suddenly the sun starts coming on the horizon. The same, exactly the same happens inside, you just have to prepare the way for it. The only blockage, the only hindrance is the ego. The whole art of sannyas consists of a simple thing how to drop the ego. And it is not difficult really because it is a false thing you have simply to understand that it doesn't exist at all.

To see that it doesn't exist is what I mean by dropping it. You cannot really drop it because it is not there at all even to be dropped; it is just a false notion, just an idea in the head, just hot air and nothing else. A 1/08/07

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little prick is needed, that will do; the balloon bursts and the hot air is released.

And that's my whole function here: to burst peoples' balloons. And they really bring big balloons...

Light is possible, but only through love. Without love only darkness is possible. In the inner world love and light are synonymous; they don't mean different things. Hence one who wants to be full of light, one who wants to be enlightened, has to be unconditionally loving.

Love without any demands. Demands make it ugly, demands destroy it. If you have some condition attached to your love, it remains no more love, it becomes lust. And it becomes a political game, a power trip.

Let your love remain pure and let your love remain unconfined; don't make any boundaries to it. Let it remain unaddressed, so slowly slowly it is not a question of whom to love, what to love; the only question is how to be loving. The object of love is irrelevant.

Love people, love animals, love the trees, love the stars, love yourself. Unless you love each and everything, it cannot become your very breath. And just as the body needs breath -- it is its life -- the soul needs love -- it is the nourishment for your soul. The more you love, the more soul you have. When your love is infinite your soul also has infinity. When your love knows no bounds, your being also knows no bounds. That's what is really meant by god-realization; it is love-realization and nothing else.

Jesus is right when he says "God is love." He would have been even more right if he had said "Love is god."

That's my whole effort; to put love first, even before god. Why say, "God is love"? -- love becomes secondary. I say, "Love is god." Love is primary -- god is another name for it.

Man has tremendous glory hidden in him. Man is a splendor, but an imprisoned splendor. That splendor has to be released. It is just as a seed keeps thousands of flowers hidden in it; they are imprisoned in it. A gardener is needed to help the seed; soil is needed. And the seed also needs a little courage to drop its defence, the hard shell that surrounds it and protects it. Then immediately life starts growing out of it, millions of leaves will come and millions of flowers and millions of seeds too! In fact a single seed has so much splendor hidden in it, it can make the whole earth green.

And so is the case with a man: man is a seed with thousands of flowers waiting. Meditation is the method to release them. And the art is the same as that of the gardeners. You are the seed and you have to be the gardener too; you are the seed, you are the gardener, you have to be the soil too. And you have to drop that hard crust around you, the ego -- and immediately miracles become possible. One cannot believe it unless one comes to know what is hidden inside.

Jesus is right when he says, "The kingdom of god is within you." People can't believe it because they don't know anything inside them. It is only through meditation that they will be able to experience it.

By becoming a sannyasin you are taking a jump -- a jump into meditation. Put in all your energies, focus your whole being in meditation, and through meditation all is possible: even the impossible is possible.

From the outside man appears to be a very small dewdrop. But that is only an appearance -- don't be deceived by the appearance. And it is from the outside that he appears like a dewdrop; if you look from within your being, from the inside, the whole vision changes. The moment you stand at your very inner centre and see yourself from there, you are in for a treat surprise: you appear to be oceanic, as vast as you can imagine. In fact, vaster than the whole space outside, bigger than the sky.

But because we know ourselves only from the outside we go on believing in our smallness. And because of this feeling of smallness an inferiority complex arises, and that creates millions of troubles -- not one or two, but millions.

Everybody, almost everybody, suffers from an inferiority complex. And if you stop suffering from an inferiority complex, then you start suffering from a superiority complex -- which is the same! All that you are doing is standing on your head. It is the same problem in reverse order.

First you were starting, from ABC, now you are starting from Z and going backwards. It is the same thing whether you start from A or from Z; it is the same line, the same logic. If you fail in your life you suffer from inferiority. If you succeed you become a president or a prime minister, you start suffering from a superiority complex. But the problem is the same. Why does it arise at all? It arises because we don't know who we are.

We are oceanic: neither small nor big, just infinite with no beginning, no end. That is our godliness.

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When we say, 'Man is a god', that's precisely what is meant -- that man is neither small nor big; man is infinite. You cannot conceive anything about him through these words 'small' and 'big'. You can conceive only if you drop all these words totally. But that is possible only through meditation, because you don't know how to stand at your centre, how to be the centre of the cyclone.

Meditation is the secret, the only secret, and the greatest secret that man has discovered up to now. The theory of atomic energy is not the greatest secret, neither the theory of gravitation, nor the theory of Einsteinian relativity. These are nothing compared to the insight that man has discovered through meditation.

Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu -- all these people have come to know only one thing: a simple art of going to your very centre and seeing the world from there... Because the perspective is totally different.

Your whole world becomes different, it is no more the same world. In one sense everything remains the same and in another sense nothing is the same. It becomes such a beautiful experience, such an ecstasy that words are not adequate to express it, even poetry falls short, even music falls short, even dancing cannot become a real indication of it. There is no way to make a gesture about it.

Each one has to know it. The only way to know it is to know it.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #16

Chapter title: None

16 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007165

ShortTitle: GWIND16

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

The revolution begins with bliss. One cannot grow in sadness, in misery; one can grow only in blissfulness, because when one is miserable the being shrinks, it closes. That's a natural phenomenon, and everybody knows about it because everybody has felt it. It is factual, it is not a theory: whenever you are sad you become closed -- all windows, all doors are closed. You want to be cut off from everything and everybody. Growth becomes impossible because growth needs opening.

In bliss one opens up. All the doors and all the windows are thrown open. You are available to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, to existence. In that meeting with existence growth happens. Hence blissfulness has to be the first step, only then is there a possibility of prayer.

People pray out of their misery. They pray because they are miserable, and they think through prayer they will be able to get out of misery. At the most that kind of prayer can help to console them, but it cannot help them to get out of misery. They will become settled and adjusted to their misery -- that is really dangerous. The so-called religion works in that way: it helps you to become adjusted to all kinds of misery.

That's why in the East you will see people living in all kinds of miseries without any rebellion, without any effort to improve their life. It is because of their so-called religiousness; they have become adjusted to everything, they have forgotten completely that life can be different. They have accepted life as it is.

This is not a good situation: it stops evolution. Hence I never suggest prayer when one is in misery.

Prayer should be only when you are cheerful, blissful when you can dance and sing, when you can rejoice.

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Then prayer is a tremendous leap into the unknown because it helps you to trust existence. Prayer is trust. It is a love affair with the whole, a love affair with the trees and the stars and the mountains and all that is.

Prayer means you are feeling so thankful to everything that is that you are ready to bless it because you feel the blessing of it all showering on you. Then prayer is gratitude, gratefulness, thankfulness, a heartfelt thank you to the whole, unaddressed to anybody, not even to god in particular. A real prayer is always unaddressed. It is a sheer utterance of joy, a shout of joy; it need not be addressed.

Whenever a prayer is addressed, it is not real prayer: it is Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, but it is not prayer. It is prescribed by the state, by the church, by the people who have a vested interest and who want you to adjust according to them. It is an imposition from those who are powerful -- the politicians and the priests. It is a conspiracy against every individual and his freedom.

Real prayer has no adjective to it; it cannot be Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. It is simply a thankfulness. It need not even be said. It is a deep feeling; your very being is full of it, overflowing with it.

That overflowing thankfulness becomes your fragrance.

Prayer is like a flower. Bliss is like the spring when the flowers open up. And when the flowers open there is fragrance; the imprisoned fragrance is released. When prayer starts overflowing with no effort, naturally, spontaneously, when you are just thankful -- for no particular reason at all, just to be is enough, just to exist for a single moment is enough...

To attain to that fragrance is to come to the peak of your life, to the crescendo. There is fulfillment and tremendous contentment. One has arrived home.

All glory is of god. If our life is missing it, it is because of our ego. Ego is something ugly, it is a monster. It is like an octopus that surrounds you from all sides; it is a parasite. It goes on and on exploiting all possibilities of being glorious, all possibilities of attaining dignity and grace, and it goes on creating all kinds of ugly attitudes, motives. Greed comes out of it, anger comes out of it, hatred comes out of it, violence comes out of it, jealousy comes out of it -- all kinds of power trips trying to dominate people.

The whole politics of life arise out of this single source. It poisons your life, it poisons other people's life... but we go on carrying it. And then we are puzzled again and again: why is our life missing the splendour Jesus talks about, Buddha talks about, Zarathustra talks about? Where is the kingdom of god? All that we see is evil, within and without; we don't see anything which can really be called divine. Everything seems to be devilish.

The whole of life is crippled and paralysed by a single poison, the ego. It is very destructive, it destroys others, and it is self-destructive too, because you cannot destroy others unless you destroy yourself. It is impossible to be murderous if you are not suicidal -- those things go together. Only a suicidal person is murderous. In fact he is trying to murder just to avoid suicide. If he cannot murder he will commit suicide.

Adolf Hitler tried to commit suicide many times when he was young. Small things ... and he would think of suicide. He could not get into art school and he thought to commit suicide, then what is the meaning of life? Then he wanted to become an architect and he could not -- again, the idea of suicide.

To avoid it he entered the army, he became murderous, and then he succeeded in being the greatest murderer in the whole of human history. And ultimately he committed suicide. When he could not murder any more, when he saw that everything that he had made was crumbling down, that now there was no more possibility of his being victorious and a world-conqueror, that he had lost the war, when he saw the enemy forces entering Berlin the only thing that came to his mind was suicide, he committed suicide.

Many psychologists have been puzzled by it because their idea is that a suicidal person and a murderous person are opposites -- that's not true. They appear opposites but they are not opposites. It is the same mind which moves like a pendulum between two polar opposites. But it is the same mind which goes from the left to the right, from the right to the left. It moves between two extremes.

This fundamental thing is still missing in modern psychology. They still think in terms of opposites.

They have not been able to see that opposites meet somewhere and are joined together and are not real opposites, only apparent opposites -- basically complementary, not contradictory.

Any moment the suicidal person can become murderous, and any moment suicidal; but it is the same ego, the same pendulum that moves. It never stops in the middle because to stop in the middle means death of the ego. Hence all the great masters of the world have talked about the golden means stop in the middle.

Buddha has called his path the middle way, majjhim nikaya. He says if you can avoid the extremes then there is nothing else to be done, just avoid the extremes absolutely and remain in the exact middle and you will be able to transcend all problems of life. Don't be murderous, don't be suicidal, neither be this nor be 1/08/07

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that; just begin in the middle, and in the middle the ego dies. The ego lives through extremes.

So there are worldly people -- that is one extreme; then there are other-worldly people -- that is another extreme. There are people who are after money and there are people who have renounced money. These are extremes, the ways of the ego. A few people live in the market, their whole life is devoted to the marketplace, and a few escape to the monasteries. They are the same people, apparently looking very opposite but they are not opposite people. They belong to the same spectrum, the same mind; the same ego moving from one extreme to the other.

My sannyas means being exactly in the middle. And that is the whole art of attaining to divine glory, because in the middle is transcendence from all problems. Just as if when you stop the pendulum in the middle the clock stops, stop the ego in the middle and the whole mechanism of the ego -- -the mind -- stops, the whole clock stops. Suddenly you transcend time, mind, you enter into eternity. And there is the glory and the splendour.

All that is needed is a tremendous awareness of extremes and the attraction between the extremes. And avoiding that attraction is the only path.

Meditation is not something added to you, it is just the explosion of your self-nature. It is already there in the seed form, so it is not an achievement. You already have it -- all that is needed is a little exploration:

'Where is it?' But we have never explored our inner beings.

Man is a strange animal, he explores everything -- he will go to Everest, he will go to the North Pole and the South Pole and he will go to the moon -- but he will never think of going within himself. That is the greatest disease man suffers from.

The only space that he leaves unexplored is his own inner world -- and the real treasure is there. And unless one enters into the shrine of one's own being one's life is just a wastage, a wastage which is inestimable. We are losing such a golden opportunity but we are not even aware that we are losing the golden opportunity. We are so unconscious that we go on throwing away all that is precious and we go on collecting junk.

People collect every kind of junk. Even when they become old they are so childish, collecting old postal stamps ... or collecting just any kind of ancient junk, anything that experts say is antique. And the things that are known as antique in the world, ninety-nine por cent of them are not antique at all; they are manufactured, they are very modern.

One of my friends runs a factory in Nepal which manufactures antiques -- ancient Buddhas, fifteen hundred years old, seventeen hundred years old... I asked him 'How do you create them?' He showed me his factory. First the statue has to be created then an inscription is made in the language of those days. Then the inscription has to be rubbed off so a few words are missing, and then acid has to be poured onto the statue.

Then the statue has to be put deep into the earth for at least six to nine months. A few of its limbs have to be broken -- the nose may be missing, an eye may be missing -- and then a simply ordinary statue becomes antique, and suddenly it becomes very precious!

If it were modern it would have been just three hundred, four hundred rupees at the most. But when it becomes antique after six months of all kinds of treatment, then it collects thousands of dollars.

People are just mad! And this is something that gives an indication of their mind. There are people who will go on collecting old scriptures; the older they are, the better they are thought to be. Here are money-collectors, and all kinds of stupidities go on. Man has infinite greed and nothing satisfies him. It cannot satisfy him because the real search which can satisfy never begins.

He is really searching for his own ancientmost treasure, but searching in a wrong direction. Going to Everest he is really trying to find the highest peak of consciousness, but his whole effort is misplaced.

Going to the moon is really symbolic: he wants to explore his own moon energy, his own silent energy; the moon represents silence, peace, the feminine inside. But rather than going there he will go to the moon, All these efforts are doomed to fail. But before one effort fails, we have already planned another, and in this way we go on moving from one failure to another failure. Death simply closes a long series of failures.

Even those people who we think are successful people are not really successful people. Even Alexander the Great or Napoleon or Ivan the Terrible, all these people who have made great conquests, deep down are very miserable because they know perfectly well that death is approaching and all that they have gathered is bound to be taken away, so what is the point of it all? It is simply pointless.

The only treasure worth searching for is your own nature. The real adventure is to go within yourself.

And that's what sannyas is all about. Once it becomes your commitment -- a deliberate, conscious 1/08/07

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commitment, a decision that whatsoever happens I have to find myself, my nature, my being, 'that I am not going to miss this opportunity of life'... once this decision is clearly there and your energies start pouring into it, there is no reason why one should fail. Nobody has ever failed. Whosoever has put his energies into the inner search has always found himself.

So let your initiation into sannyas be a great decision, the greatest of your life. From this moment onwards withdraw your energies from all that is non-essential. Yes, the essential has to be done and fulfilled, but that is not much. It is the non-essential that destroys life. Withdraw your energies from the non-essential and put that energy into the inner search. And it is a promise that once you go totally into it there is no reason why one should fail; nobody has ever failed. Without any exception, those who have entered inwards with intensity, with passion, have always reached to their innermost core. And there, light explodes. One suddenly comes to know that this is what life is for, this is the meaning of life.

Meditation is the only possibility of knowing that you are deathless. The body dies but not you, the body is born but not you. You have been before birth and you will be there after death. Hence life is not just an episode between birth and death, on the contrary, there are many births and many deaths in a long, long eternity of life. Birth and death are just small events, just like bubbles in the river, waves which come and go, but the river remains ... and the river goes on and on.

Unless this becomes your experience one cannot live life joyously because the fear of death contaminated everything. We may not be conscious of it but it is always there like a shadow following us.

We may not think about it at all, in fact we don't want to think about it -- people avoid the subject of death as much as they can. Even if it comes up in certain situations, they change the subject as quickly as possible; nobody wants to discuss it,

There have been only two taboos in the world, sex and death. Don't talk about sex because sex is bound to bring up the question of death sooner or later. And the second taboo is death. Don't talk about it, because people start becoming afraid, they know that it concerns them and they escaping it in many ways. Even the word 'death' is not used. When somebody dies we have beautiful words to describe it: 'He has become a beloved of god.' We will not say that 'He has died' but 'He has become a beloved of god', 'He has gone to the other shore.'

We have expressions in every language to avoid the word 'death', but whatsoever we do, it is there. And everybody knows that it is there. From the very moment a child is born death follows him. Every day it is with you, and one has to encounter it, and one has to see it face to face and one has to come to terms with it.

The only way is meditation. Meditation means becoming aware of 'Who am I? Am I the body or the mind or am I something more, something different?'

Meditation moans becoming aware inside your being, becoming alert, watchful, witnessing. And then those things are very simple: you can see that you are not the body, because one day the body was a small child, then it became a young person, then it became old -- and you are the same. The body has been going through a thousand and one changes and you are exactly the same, nothing has happened to you. That's why if you close your eyes you cannot exactly say how old you are. It is in looking in the mirror that you become aware that you are becoming old,' otherwise with closed eyes you cannot feel any age. Nobody can feel it, nobody can see any change inside; consciousness remains unchanging. 'Hence the changing is not me and cannot be me.'

And the mind is even more changing than the body. Even the body stays the same for a few days, a few months, even a few years, but the mind is very momentary. One moment there is anger, another moment there is no anger, one moment there is sadness, another moment there is joy -- it is continuously changing.

You are a witness of it all, and the watcher cannot be the watched. You are the subject and all these things are the objects.

As this becomes your deep experience a realisation, a great freedom arises in you. The body is there and it has to be used; it is a beautiful house to live in. The mind is there and it has to be used; it is one of the most beautiful mechanisms given by nature to you -- use it to its fullest capacity. But remember, don't get identified with any, neither the body nor the mind. Remaining unidentified one becomes aware of eternity, of deathlessness. That is amrit, that is nectar. To taste it, even just a drop of it, is enough and your whole life takes on a totally different perspective, a different vision. Suddenly you are transported. men you live in the same world yet you are no more the same.

That's what sannyas is: being in the world yet being in such a totally different way. Being in the world as a witness -- that defines sannyas precisely. In your remaining unidentified with everything that goes on, 1/08/07

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remaining centred in your consciousness, unwaveringly centred, slowly slowly it becomes a crystallised phenomenon. Then even when death really happens you will be able to see it happening. You will be able to see that the body is dropping; just like a dead leaf dropping from the tree, the body is dropping from you.

The greatest experience of life is to see death clearly, alert, aware. It is the greatest experience, because one who can see it happening is never born in the body again. Then he becomes part of the eternal flow of consciousness, of the universal consciousness, then he becomes part of god.

Unless this experience happens you will have to come back again and again into the body. The body is just like a school: if you fail you have to go back; if you pass then there is no need to go back.

My observation is that everyone can pass in this experience, everyone has the potential, we just never try to actualise it. Now this has to be your goal.

A man who has never known meditation goes on thinking about himself as a very small phenomenon.

From the outside man looks very small -- the body is a small thing, compared to the earth it is so small. The earth itself compared to the sun is very small. The sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, so compared to the sun we are just like such small dust particles, almost invisible. But the sun is not very big really. There are stars with which in comparison this sun is just a dust particle.

So what are we as far as the body is concerned? -- so small that it is impossible even to conceive that things can be smaller than we are. We are almost like electrons: invisible, just hypothetical, nobody has seen them.

There is a beautiful story written by Bertrand Russell -- he has written a few stories, and when a man like Bertrand Russell writes a story it is not an ordinary story.

A great theologian dies, and of course in his heart he thinks that he will be welcomed by god. He reaches the doors of heaven but he is very shocked: the door is so big, he cannot completely see where it ends. He goes on knocking and knocking and he feels, 'On such a vast door -- I cannot see where it starts or where it ends -- my knocks are like a small ant knocking on the church door.'

Millions of years pass, then a janitor opens a window in the door and looks down. He searches very carefully to see who is knocking at the door and then he finds this tiny theologian. The theologian thinks he is god, and he says, 'My father, have you recognised me or not?' But he is very afraid whether or not his voice can be heard by this man -- he is so far away. He shouts as loudly as he can.

The janitor says, 'Excuse me -- I am not god the father, I am just the janitor. As far as god the father is concerned, I have not seen him. He is so big and I am so tiny in comparison to him, I have not seen him yet.

I have not even seen anybody who has seen him, because the people who have seen him are very big. They have millions of eyes.'

'I ask admission' said the theologian, because I am a good man and devoted my life to the glory of god.'

'Man?' said the janitor. 'What is that? And how could such a funny creature as you do anything to promote the glory of god?'

The theologian is astonished. 'You can't be ignorant of man. You must be aware that man is the supreme work of the creator.'

'I am sorry to hurt your feelings,' said the janitor, 'but what you're saying is news to me. However, since you seem distressed you shall have a chance of consulting our librarian.'

The librarian is huge, like a mountain, and has ten thousand eyes. 'This,' says the janitor, 'says that it is a member of a species called man which lives in a place called earth. It has some odd notion that the creator takes special interest in this place and this species.'

'Perhaps you can tell me where this place is that you call earth,' says the librarian.

'It is part of the solar system' says the theologian. 'And what is the solar system?' asks the librarian. 'The solar system is part of the Milky Way' says the theologian. 'And what is the Milky Way?' asks the librarian.

'The Milky Way is one of the galaxies' replies the theologian.

The theologian was losing all hope. He thought he would be welcomed and god himself would be waiting at the door. More inquiries are made and a clerk concerned with the galaxies is called in. Several years later he returns with more information about this particular galaxy. At this point it is all such a shock to the theologian that he wakes up. He had not really died, he was dreaming. He wakes up, he is completely perspiring, and from that day he forgets all about his religion. That dream shattered all his religion, his spirituality. Now he knows, 'All that is nonsense, my own creation, my own imagination.' It is a beautiful story....

Man is very small, but only from the oustide. If you look at man from the inside, he is as vast as the 1/08/07

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whole existence itself. But we have never looked from the inside, that's why everybody suffers from some kind of inferiority complex.

Meditation frees you from an inferiority complex. And except for meditation, nothing can make you free from an inferiority complex, no psychological analysis can help. At the most psychologists can help you to create another fiction -- that is the superiority complex. But it is as stupid as the first one, in fact more stupid than the first one. The first one has some reality about it; the superiority complex is simply fiction, pure fiction.

A meditator neither feels inferior nor superior, he simply feels he is no more, only the vast existence is, the whole space is. He becomes part of it, he is immersed in it, he becomes oceanic. And to feel that vastness is the greatest bliss in life. It is also freedom from fear, it is also the ultimate truth.

So put all your energies into meditation, into awareness, so that you are able to look at yourself from the inside. Meditation is the mirror,,the real mirror which will give you your original face.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #17

Chapter title: None

17 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007175

ShortTitle: GWIND17

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Mind lives in doubt. Doubt is the climate which is absolutely necessary for the mind to exist. In the same way trust is the climate in which the heart grows; they are polar opposites. If one wants to live in the mind then one has to go on increasing one's doubt. Then the whole effort should be how to sharpen doubt, how to make it absolute so that there is no way to come to any conclusion.

Science depends on doubt because science is a project of the mind; hence science never comes to any conclusions. At the most it comes to hypothetical conclusions. And whenever a conclusion is hypothetical it is not conclusive. It simply means for the time being we will sharpen our doubt more and then we will have to change it. So science is always approximately true, never exactly true. It cannot claim truth -- that is not its territory.

Religion is just the opposite of it: it functions through trust, faith. It is a totally different approach towards life. It is an approach through love. That's why religion comes to conclusions and it helps a person to become centred, to relax, to rest. With a hypothesis you can never rest, you can never be at ease. You know that it is only a hypothesis, tomorrow it is going to be changed -- how can you make your home on such shifting sands?

Science can never be a shelter for man. It can give you more comfort, convenience, a better standard of living, but it cannot give you a better quality of life -- that is impossible. That can happen only through religion, because it helps you to feel at home, it gives you something certain to live for. It gives you a rock to build your temple upon -- and that rock is trust.

As your trust grows, your bliss grows; as your doubt grows, your tension grows, misery grows. Doubt ultimately ends in anguish and anxiety. That's why the scientific approach is bound to drive people crazy; it 1/08/07

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is driving the whole world crazy. And remember: I am not against science at all, but I would like man first to be centred in the heart and then to use science as a means. It can never be the goal, it can never be the end. It can only be a good servant, never the master.

Love has to be the master, doubt has to be its servant, then everything is in its right place. Otherwise doubt becomes the master and it starts encroaching upon the territory of love and trust and it goes on destroying everything. It is like cancer if it becomes a master. It has to be put in its place.

I am not against it, it has to be used. Science has to be used for human comforts, convenience. It can give many benefits to humanity. But it never be enshrined as a god. That is not its business but that's what science has been pretending to do. That's why the whole of humanity feels is a desertlike situation where all meaning has been lost, he has become insignificant, worthless. At the most you can drag, but you cannot dance.

Through trust comes dance, celebration, bliss, benediction.

Sannyas means a change, a radical change from the heard to the heart, a jump from logic to love.

Just as the farmer has to work with the seeds and the soil and the water and the sun, a sannyasin also has to work in the same way in the inner world. His interiority, his subjectivity, is his field, his farm. He has to sow seeds of meditation, of awareness, of consciousness. And he has to work hard. He has to work hard, only then one day can those seeds start growing and one see the inner world flowering and becoming fruitful.

Ordinarily man's inner world remains a desert. It can become a beautiful garden. All that is needed to make it a garden is provided at your birth; all that is necessary is given to you. It if you keep the seeds locked in a treasure box they don't become flowers. If you never take any care of the inner, if you never look at the inner, nothing is going to happen there. Attention is needed.

It has been found recently that attention is one of the most important ingredients for any kind of growth, outer or inner. A child needs the mother's milk, but even more than that he needs the mother's attention. If the mother only gives him nourishment for the body and takes no other care, if the child feels neglected, ignored, his growth is stopped. He loses trust in himself, he loses confidence, he loses the very purpose of life. He starts feeling he is useless, he is not needed. To be needed is the greatest need. Without it, without its cosy atmosphere nothing can grow.

They have found that even with plants... you can put two plants of the same size int he same soil you can give them the same nourishment -- manure, chemicals, everything -- with no difference except one: with one plant be loving and very caring, and with the other just be a nurse.

With one be a mother, with the other just be a nurse: give all that is needed but no attention, no caressing, never a 'hello'. And with the other plant chitchat a little, hug it a little, kiss it. And you will be surprised that the plant that has been given attention grows faster. In fact within weeks it will be double the size of the neglected one, it will bring bigger flowers and bigger fruits.

Although it cannot speak, it cannot say to you thankyou, this is its way of thanking you. Those bigger flowers and bigger fruits are enough proof that the communication has happened, that the plant has felt deep down that there is somebody who cares.

The same happens in the inner world: if we remain deserts we are at fault. We have not taken any care of it, we have never even bothered about it.

Sannyas means the beginning of a new care in your life, becoming attentive to your inner needs. And the most important thing is attention: pay more attention to your own centre. Whenever you have time close your eyes to the whole world and forget all about it. Shower your centre with all your attention, care, love, and soon you will see flowers coming up. It is a kind of gardening, a kind of farming, and it brings tremendous joy because when you come to see the flowers of consciousness you know that life has not been a wastage, that you have not missed the opportunity, that you have used it.

Man ordinarily lives in a state of unconsciousness, he lives almost in a kind of sleep. Only in a very minimal way is he aware, and even that not the whole time; only in emergency situations. If somebody suddenly comes with a knife to kill you, then for a moment you are alert. Then you will see what I mean when I say man lives in sleep. Suddenly you will see a change: you are no longer as sleepy as you were just a moment before, a great alertness has come. You are shocked. All your thinking disappears, all your dreaming disappears, the fantasies that continuously go on and on stop. For a moment the whole mind stops, there is a blank, an interval. In that interval you are alert.

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George Gurdjieff used to say, and he seems to be very close to the truth, "I have observed hundreds of people and my feeling is that if a person can attain a few seconds of awareness in his whole life, that seems to be more than enough." A few seconds -- even those few seconds are not available.

We live like robots, machines. We go on doing things, and efficiently too, but that does not prove that we are conscious. In fact all machines are efficient and robots can do almost every kind of thing that you are doing; computers can do things better, more efficiently and more quickly.

Now they say that in the next century there is going to be trouble because there will be many robots.

They may be already around, but you don't recognise them. They will look just like you. They will talk like you and they will be very efficient and very healthy, they will not fall ill.

Machines are machines -- they will remain young longer, they will be more powerful. Only once in a while when something mechanical goes wrong will you recognise that it is a machine, not a real man. For example, the battery runs down... The robot was making love and suddenly he says 'Grrrgrrrrgrrr'. The woman will become afraid -- what is happening? He cannot speak; you may have to look into his pockets and find out what number robot he is, what computer has to be enquired about for him, and what has to be done and what workshop he has to be taken to. They will carry small identity cards and numbers for emergency situations. Or you will have to plug him into the electricity so that he comes back to normal.

Otherwise it will be difficult to make any distinction. They may already be around -- they may be sitting here! If somebody goes 'Grrgrrr'... Be watchful!

Man, as he has existed for centuries -- the common man, the ordinary man, the mob, the crowd -- is mechanical. It is only through consciousness that you can go beyond this mechanicalness. And that is the real birth, then you become twice born. Through your parents you are only given a biological birth, not a spiritual birth.

The spiritual birth is possible only through the master. Hence in the East we have ancient scriptures which say that it is easy to pay all your debts to your parents, but it is impossible to pay the debt to your master. And it is true because the parents have given to you only a biological birth, and in fact they have not given you anything consciously. They were not even thinking about you. You are just an accident to them, they were not waiting for you. They knew nothing about you -- how could they have waited for you? They might have been just attracted to each other by a biological pull, by something like gravitation, and out of that pull you were born. In fact you are just accidental in that way.

But with a master a totally different journey begins. You are given a birth, a new birth, a new dimension: the spiritual dimension. And it is given very consciously, very deliberately.

The whole work of the master upon the disciple is to bring him so some consciousness of his self, of his being. That's what sannyas is all about: an effort to make you conscious, to help you to rise above your biology.

People live as biological units and die as biological units. Very few people have attained to their spiritual selves, and those that do are the only real men. Everybody has the potential but people never work on it, so it remains just a potential and it is lost.

It can become actual. So make it a point that from now onwards your whole life will become a concentrated effort to become more and more conscious. And as glimpses of consciousness start arising in you, you will be surprised: bliss follows each moment of consciousness. As consciousness deepens, bliss deepens. Bliss is the consequence, the by-product, of being conscious.

Pleasure is animal -- and many people live at that level. They look like human beings but because pleasure remains their only goal... It may be through sex, it may be through food; those two are the most basic sources of their pleasure, and they are interchangeable too: if they repress their sexuality, they start eating more; if they become too involved in sexuality their fatness disappears, they eat less.

Ninety-nine per cent of people live at that level, which is not better than any other animal. And animals can be forgiven, but not man, because animals can't do anything about it and man can do something about it.

He has the capacity to rise above it.

Human beings don't even become human, what to say about divine? Happiness is human. Very few people know the distinction between pleasure and happiness. They go on thinking that pleasure is happiness

-- it is not. Happiness is something far superior, far more refined.

Sex is animal, but then it is pure lust, a gratification of a bodily need. It is physiological, biological, nothing more than that. Love is human. Love is far higher than sex. Sex may be one part of it, and that too, not necessarily. You can have a non-sexual relationship and a very joyous relationship -- you can have a 1/08/07

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friendship which may be even more satisfying than any sexual relationship, far more deep-going, far more ecstatic; and sex can be a part of it, but only a part. There is much more in love than sex. And whether it is a part or not, the moment your being becomes love-full, it transforms the very nature of sexuality too. Then it is not biological, then it is more of the nature of play. It has nothing to do with reproduction, it is just enjoying the company of the other. One of the dimensions can be sex, and that too, not necessarily.

And then in happiness there are many more things which animals are absolutely incapable of enjoying: poetry, painting, music, sculpture. A thousand and one things are there -- the whole world of art and aesthetics. And you can see in music also, music that really belongs to the animal part of you. Particularly the modern music, jazz and pop music, belongs to the animal part of you. Classical music has a totally different dimension. Beethoven or Mozart or Wagner -- they take you into a totally different world.

And eastern classical music takes you even higher because it is part of meditativeness. It almost touches the divine. It was born in the temples, it was born in the monasteries. It was born through sannyasins, not through ordinary people but through people who were tremendously meditative. It came out of their meditation. They had heard something fo the celestial music and they wanted to bring something to humanity. Their music represents something celestial -- something of it, a reflection. It is a far-away echo, but still; a reflection of the moon is a reflection of the moon: it is a reflection but somehow it represents the moon, gives you a glimpse of the moon.

Bliss is the highest dimension of joy. the first is pleasure -- that is animal, the second is happiness -- that is human, and bliss is divine.

Sex is animal, love is human, prayer is divine. In love there may be sex, there may not be. In prayer there is no possibility of sex, is simply disappears. Hence tantra cannot be understood by ordinary people; they are bound to misunderstand it. It is prayer. It has nothing to do with sex. Even making love has nothing to do with sex. When it becomes a meditation, a prayer -- just the melting and meeting and merging of energies in a prayerful mood. It is not even fun or play, it is devotion.

Bliss is the goal because only in blissfulness do you touch the highest peak of your being, you come to your total realisation. Man is a three-storeyed building. The ground floor is animal. And it is good, nothing is wrong in it; I am not against it, but I would like everybody to know something of the higher. Let the lower be the base, but don't remain confined to it. The second floor is human and the third floor is divine.

In knowing bliss one comes to know one's godliness, one is a god. And unless this is realised, remember: life remains unfulfilled, it remains a deep frustration, a discontentment. When you have reached your ultimate peak, only then is there contentment, peace, silence, a deep satisfaction that one has arrived.

Gold has always been symbolic, both in the East and in the West. For centuries alchemists have talked about it, and they have been very much misunderstood because people thought that they were talking about real god. They were talking about gold only as a metaphor.

Man can become gold, he has all the chemicals needed for that transmutation, but those chemicals have to be mixed in the right proportion, heated in the right way to the right degree. Only in a mystery school is that possible. It is the world of inner chemistry. And the moment everything inside you is put in the right place a great harmony arises.

Ordinarily a man is like an orchestra in which there is no leader, no guide and everybody is playing solo.

Although it is an orchestra everybody is playing solo according to his own ideas, not bothering about others, what they are doing, not making any effort to bring a harmony; hence the noise, hence the craziness inside, the insanity. Almost the whole of humanity is insane. Of course people differ in degrees: a few people are more insane and a few are less, but a difference of degree is not much of a difference.

Only very few people -- once in a while a Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Basho, a Jesus -- only very few people have been able to become guides of all their elementary forces and have been able to play, not solo, but to become part in an orchestra. These few people who have been able to bring some accord into their beings have known the ultimate truth.

That's what is meant by gold. It is the most precious metal, hence it became symbolic.

The man who knows what to do with all his elementary forces becomes gold; his life becomes really precious. Each moment is so inestimably valuable, each moment is such a gift that one cannot be thankful enough for it. There is no way to show our gratitude to god. His gift is of such immense proportions that we don't really deserve it. He has given it out of his abundance.

Knowing this accord, feeling this accord one becomes blissful. And out of that bliss arises a thankfulness towards existence. That thankfulness is prayer.

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The Golden Wind

Chapter #18

Chapter title: None

18 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007185

ShortTitle: GWIND18

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Misery is a by-product of being unconscious, unaware and in the same way bliss is also a by-product, a by-product of being conscious, alert, watchful, vigilant. These two alternatives are available to man: either he can live in an unconscious mechanical way or he can live with a deep awareness of each moment, each act, each thought, each feeling.

As you start becoming aware bliss follows of its own accord. Everybody wants to attain to bliss but nobody tries to be aware. That's why people desire bliss and still remain miserable. It is not possible to achieve bliss directly.

You can achieve vigilance -- that is possible. That's the whole art of meditation, the whole secret of religion. And then bliss follows. Jesus has a tremendously beautiful saying. He says 'Seek ye first the kingdom of god then all else shall be added unto you.' Don't be bothered about anything else. People are worried about everything else except the kingdom of god -- and that's why they remain failures. They are interested in attaining the fragrance but they are not interested in growing the rose bush, in growing flowers.

How can they achieve fragrance? It is impossible.

Grow the flowers, plant the seeds for flowers then one day, fragrance comes. It is a natural phenomenon, it is inevitable; you need not worry about it.

Be watchful, and you will be surprised: in the same proportion bliss is going to happen, and without any other effort on your part. Go on making efforts in the direction of being aware.

Man cannot be virtuous unless he is blissful. In the past religions have been teaching just the opposite; hence the failure of the old religions. All religions have failed. Humanity has not become religious at all.

After thousands of years of teaching, nothing much has happened. Only very few people have been really religious -- a Jesus, a Buddha, a Krishna -- just people who can be counted on fingers. They can be thought as exceptional. They just prove the rule: that millions of people have remained absolutely irreligious.

Something has gone wrong basically; religions have been teaching something fundamentally wrong.

They have been telling people: be good, first be virtuous be moral and then you will be rewarded with bliss. That is not so, that is just the opposite of the truth. Be blissful and you will be good. A person who is blissful cannot be bad to anybody, he cannot do wrong -- it is impossible. When you are blissful you share your bliss with people. And that's what good is, virtue is: sharing your bliss. When you are blissful you become a blessing to others; when you are miserable, how can you be a blessing to others? Even if you intend to be a blessing you are not going to be a blessing, you will be a curse.

And that's what one can watch and see. I am not talking about any theoretical phenomenon: everybody wants to help but everybody harms. Parents want to help children; their intentions are good but the outcome 1/08/07

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is not good. The teachers want to help the students; the universities are there to create better citizens but nothing happens. The churches, the priests, the temples everywhere are trying to make life more beautiful --

it goes on becoming more and more ugly. And I am not doubting their intentions, I am not saying that their intentions are wrong; their intentions are very good but very unscientific. They want you to live long and they go on giving you poison.

Their desire is good but what they do is not good, it cannot be good. They are miserable, so anything that they do brings misery to others. We can only give to others what not we have already got; vice versa is not possible. You cannot give bliss if you are miserable, and you cannot be helpful if you yourself are living in a dark valley, in darkness. When you are full of light, when your whole being is full of blissfulness, naturally, whatsoever you do brings joy to others.

And blissfulness comes through meditation, not by being virtuous. Meditation brings bliss, bliss brings virtue: this is the fundamental law.

Nothing else makes a man victorious except when he becomes blissful. Money, power, prestige, fame --

nothing helps to be victorious. The real victory consists of being blissful.

Alexander the Great is not the really victorious person; Jesus Christ is, although Jesus dies on the cross and Alexander dies as the most powerful person in the whole history of man, the greatest conqueror, the man who ruled the whole of the earth as it was known at that moment. But still he is not victorious. Deep down he also knew it.

On his deathbed he wept and he said to his friends, his generals, 'When you take my coffin to the grave, let my hands hang outside the coffin.' They were puzzled. They said 'That is never done. Why are you asking such an absurd thing?' He said 'I want to let it be known to everybody that I am going empty-handed.

Let people see my hands. I am dying as a beggar. My whole life has been a wastage. I remained concerned with unnecessary, non-essential things. I have not done anything really worthwhile. I am dying ignorant of myself...' although one of his teachers was Plato, the direct disciple of Socrates, and the teaching of Socrates was carried down by Plato to Alexander and the whole teaching was based on a single fundamental and that was: Know thyself. He wept because he did not know who he was. That is the only victory, to know oneself, and in knowing oneself bliss arises.

In that very knowing you are showered with bliss.

Aurora means the dawn, the early morning when the sun is just about to rise, when the east has become red and the birds have started singing and the flowers are opening and the whole earth is getting ready to receive the sun. Exactly the same happens in the inner world with meditation.

The colour of sannyas is the colour of the dawn, the early morning sun. It represents the inner dawn. A man who has not known meditation lives in a dark night of the soul. He has not seen inner light. And if you are full of darkness inside your life is bound to remain miserable because all your actions will come out of your darkness; they are bound to be wrong. You are bound to fall here and there. Your whole life will be that of stumbling from one error to another error. That's what people are doing: moving from one mistake to another mistake.

As they grow old, their misery becomes bigger and bigger. They carry mountains of misery for the simple reason that they have not tried to bring any light into their inner source. And it is very simple to do it, people have just never been told to go in.

The vested interests are against it; they don't want people who are full of inner light. The people who are powerful -- the politicians, the rich, the priests -- are all against it, because a man who has his own inner light cannot be enslaved. You can kill him but you cannot enslave him. Basically he remains rebellious, because he cannot do anything wrong. Whatsoever the cost he will always do the right thing. He can risk his life but he cannot risk his light.

The powerful people became aware of that fact long ago; hence all their efforts are to prevent every child from entering into his interiority. The schools, the college, the universities, the churches -- they all exist to make people extroverts. That is a subtle strategy, a spiritual exploitation and oppression.

My effort here is to create rebellious souls, people who have their own intelligence and who are ready to live according to their own inner light, even though they have to sacrifice their whole life for it. Even a single moment of absolute freedom is more valuable than a long life of slavery, because in that single moment of intensity you come to know god.

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Man without meditation is homeless, he has no refuge. He is just like driftwood, accidental -- goes on living from one event to another event, not knowing why, not knowing from where he comes, where he is destined to go, why he exists, how to exist so that you can know the truth of your being and the mystery of life. Without meditation everything remains closed. Meditation is the key. And just as a simple key can open a complex lock.... Mind is like a complex lock and meditation is a very simple key but it can open the complex lock -- and behind the mind is the real treasure.

Once you can enter and by-pass the barrier of the mind, you are in for a great surprise; you are carrying the very kingdom of God within you. And to know it is to know one's real home. To know it is to become part of the mystery of existence. To know it is to know deathlessness, eternity. Once it is known, then your ordinary life is no more ordinary; it becomes full of grace, beauty, music, celebration.

By becoming a sannyasin you are taking a vow to enter into the world of meditation. Now all your efforts should be concentratedly centered on a single point: how to be more meditative, more aware, more conscious. And once you pour all your energies into one direction it starts happening. All that is needed is intensity and passion.

Sannyas has to be a love affair so that you can put your total energy into it. Then things start happening on their own.

Heather is a wild shrub, with thousands of flowers, very long-lasting.

So is meditation, with only one difference: it is also evergreen, it is also wild, but its flowers are not only long-lasting, they are everlasting. Once attained they are yours forever, for eternity, because meditation means transcending mind.

Time is part of mind. The moment you transcend mind, you transcend time too; they disappear simultaneously. And when time disappears you know eternity. Eternity is always now, it is always present; it never becomes past, it is never future. There is no past, no future, there is only the present.

Present in fact is not part of time. Time is past and future. Present is eternity, just touching the periphery of time. That's why you cannot hold the present moment, you cannot pinpoint it. The moment you say 'It is,'

it is no more; it only touches it. The moment you become aware of the present it is already past. Either it is in the future -- then you have to wait for it: it is coming, coming, coming -- either it is coming or it is gone.

But you cannot catch hold of it while it is there -- it is just a touch.

We live in the past and the future if we live in mind, and both are non-existential. Past is no more, future is not yet. That's why our life remains almost non-substantial, the same as dreams, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. The reality consists only of the present. When you move beyond the mind you start living in the present.

And the beauty of being in the present is immense, inestimable, inexpressible, indefinable. Words like

'truth', 'god', 'nirvana', 'enlightenment', are just ways of expressing the inexpressible. But in fact it remains unexpressed. These words are just like fingers pointing to the moon. Don't become too interested in the fingers. Look at the moon and forget the fingers.

Being here with me your whole effort has to be that of meditation. And meditation means a jump from the mind into the no-mind, from thought into no-thought, from noise into silence, from constant movement in the mind to a deep stillness of the heart. And suddenly, you enter into the evergreen world, with millions of flowers -- flowers of eternity.

That's exactly the meaning of the word 'paradise'. The word 'paradise' comes from the Persian, 'firdaus'.

Firdaus means a garden full of evergreen trees, full of ever-blossoming flowers. It has lost its meaning in English but it is rooted in the word 'firdaus': a walled garden.

There are a few animals in the world -- the bear is one of them -- which know the art of going into hibernation. Frogs know it: after the rains they simply disappear, they move into the earth and lie down there almost dead. They don't breathe, they don't eat. They go into a kind of suspended life; for eight months they will remain in that same suspended coma, dead and yet not dead. Dead in one sense, because they are no more breathing, all functioning has stopped, but they are not dead in another sense! because as the rains come again, they will be revived.

In Yoga there are a few exercises which can make a man perform such things also. There have been yogis who practise such things. In fact, they have nothing to do with religion, of no intrinsic value, but people are very much surprised, because if a yogi goes into the earth for six months or nine months, lies down there and then comes back alive again it seems like a miracle.

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Once it happened in Egypt, in 1880, a man performed such a miraculous feat. He went for twenty years; it was the longest record. But people forgot to take him out after twenty years. Twenty years is a long time; the people who had put him into the earth had died. He remained buried under the earth for forty years.

Looking into some old records a librarian came to know about this fact, that a man was lying buried in a certain place. People had forgotten about him and he must be dead by now because it was 1920. He was to be dug out in 1900 -- twenty more years had passed...

The place was searched and the man was found. When he was brought out he was almost dead. But he was massaged according to the instructions he had given forty years ago. It was on record what you had to do: you had to massage and give him a bath. All the things were done and he lived for three more years!

That is the longest record, forty years, of remaining in suspended life, neither dead nor alive.

The bear is also capable of doing it, particularly the bears that exist in Siberia, because when it is so cold that they cannot move they go under the ice and they lie down there, frozen, for nine months. Only for three months is it worth living, otherwise it is impossible to live. Hence the bear has become the symbol of resurrection.

Man can be reborn through meditation, he can have a new life. The ordinary life is not much; it is just so-so, lukewarm -- somehow we are alive. It is a suspended kind of life. A Buddha lives because he lives with such totality, such intensity, with such awareness. Ordinarily people simply go on making empty movements, empty gestures. They appear to be living but they are not really, not authentically. Not knowing at all what they are doing, they go on doing things, almost under a kind of natural hypnosis. Whatsoever their instincts tell them they go on doing. They will reproduce children just as their parents reproduced them, not knowing exactly what they are doing and whether they should do it or not... Some biological urge forcing them. They will reproduce children and they will die. And their children will go on doing the same thing for centuries to come.

Each generation repeats the same mechanical pattern. It is through meditation that one can escape from this prison of biology, from this prison of mechanical, repetitive life and can be really reborn.

Mind is always old. Even a one-day-old child has a one-day-old mind, because mind means the past. It accumulates the past; it is accumulative it goes on accumulating experiences and everything that happens. It is always old and it goes on becoming older and older. But the heart is always young; it never accumulates, it is non-accumulative. It lives in the moment. That's why the mind and the heart are never in agreement, they cannot be in agreement, because the mind talks about the past and the heart wants to live spontaneously, right now.

The mind always gives advice, tries to be very wise, calls the heart a fool, mad, and all kinds of names, but the heart never becomes wise in that sense; it remains a fool. And it is good that it remains a fool, it is good that it never becomes old, because that is the only hope for man. That is the only door to know reality, because reality is in the present.

Mind can never know anything about reality. It can have no encounter with reality. The past is always standing in between like a wall, and the wall goes on becoming bigger and bigger every day. That's why children are more alive, more spontaneous, more beautiful, more joyous than old people. Old people become too experienced and everything that is spontaneous is not possible for an old man. He has a condemnation for it; he has a thousand and one opinions about it.

The mind calls love mad. Out of its experience, observation, knowledge, it creates a false kind of love it calls marriage. Marriage is an invention the mind. It is a very poor substitute. It is an institution. It is more utilitarian, certainly; it has more economic value, it is more marketable, it is more worldly. Love looks mad, but it is love that gives you feel of being alive, not marriage.

And it is the same about anything else. Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism -- these are mind things. To be with Jesus is a heart thing, but that is possible only when the master is alive. To be with the pope is a mind thing. He has two thousand years of heritage. Jesus was a madman; no rabbi followed him, no knowledgeable professor followed him, but simple people: carpenters, fishermen, prostitutes, gamblers, drunkards -- these type of people who are really simple and in a way more spontaneous. A prostitute is a far more alive being than a rabbi. I respect a prostitute more than a rabbi, because a rabbi is absolutely dead.

Mary Magdalene was far more alive -- she could see the beauty of Jesus. But the head-priest of the great temple of Jerusalem could not see: he thought 'This man is simply dangerous, a madman collecting other mad young people and trying to destroy the whole social structure.'

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be so. Only the heart can move into meditation, only the heart is the hope. There is only one hope for man: if he moves from the head to the heart, starts listening to the heart and follows the heart. It is risky: everybody will condemn you, everybody will think that something has gone wrong, that you have gone cuckoo. But that has always been so: the people who had been with Buddha were thought to be cuckoos and the people who are with me are bound to be thought to be cuckoos. But to be a cuckoo with a Buddha is a blessing!

So feel blessed!

Bliss is poetry. It is not science, it is not logic, it is not mind, it is not prose. It is art, it is dance, it is music, it is love: it is poetry. And one has to learn the ways of being poetic; they are totally different. In the world mathematics is needed, not music; logic is needed, not love. So the world teaches you to be logical, but logic destroys your love, which is far more valuable because it is through love that you will know god. It is through being poetic that there is a possibility of knowing the beauty of existence. It is tremendously beautiful, but we need a different perspective to see the beauty, a different vision, a different approach, a different context altogether.

Ordinarily, what we have been taught is not poetry. We have been brought up in a very calculative way.

We are being made to be cunning and clever because that is what succeeds in life, that's what helps you to achieve ambitions. You are brought up in such a way that you can go on power trips -- and reality is not a power trip, it is not an ego trip.

One has to put aside the ego and all the calculating and cunning ways. One has to learn something of the aesthetic sense; one has to be more sensitive, more in tune with existence. That's what I call poetry.

I don't mean that you have to read Shakespeare and Milton and Shelley and Byron. When I say poetry, I mean that you have to be in a love affair with life; it should not be calculative. You should be more open to the wind, to the sun, to the rain. You should be more full of wonder than of knowledge; you should live in awe.

Each moment should be a moment of awe, of wonder. Looking at life with the eyes of a child, the whole world becomes god-full. If your heart is full of wonder, then the world is full of god; if your heart is calculative and cunning, god disappears from the world, god dies. Then you live in a godless world, and living in a godless world is not worth living at all. Life loses all significance altogether. It becomes absolutely mundane, a commodity -- and that is the ugliest thing that can happen to a man.

My sannyasins have to live a beautiful life; a life of grace, of poetry, of music and celebration. Dance, because it is through the dance... sing, because it is through singing... that you will become vulnerable to god, open to god. It is not a question of argument, it is not a question of proofs, of philosophy or theology.

The word 'love' defines sannyas precisely. And a heart full of love is naturally full of poetry. To live life in poetry is to be a sannyasin.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #19

Chapter title: None

19 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007195

ShortTitle: GWIND19

Audio:

No

Video:

No

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Query:-

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Misery is something like going downhill: it is so easy, no intelligence is needed, no work upon yourself is needed. You can simply go on rolling down, under the influence of the magnetic field of the earth, by gravitation. But if you want to go uphill then intelligence will be needed, work upon yourself will be needed

-- and not a hectic kind of work but something constant. One never knows at what point the breakthrough happens; one has just to go on hammering.

Sometimes it happens that you stop just before it was going to happen; just one more step and the goal would have been achieved. So one has to go on -- it is unpredictable. Because it happens differently to each person, there is no way to predict it. A few people need a little effort, a few people a little less; it depends on many past lives. If you have worked upon your inner being in your past lives, that work is never lost, it remains with you. Whenever you start working again for your spiritual growth, it becomes a stepping stone.

But there are people who have not worked at all. They may be just beginning in this life, this time. A few may have worked hard enough and just a little crust is left to be broken; and a few may be carrying big hard walls of ego -- they will need constant hammering. But one thing is certain and predictable, that if one goes on working it happens, it is bound to happen, it is inevitable. One has to be patient and industrious, only then can one rise above misery.

Millions of people are miserable it needs no effort, and very few have attained to bliss because very few have put their energies together and worked hard, patiently, without bothering about the result, without hankering at all for the result to be quick.

Bliss is not like a seasonal flower; it can't be quick in that way. It is a big huge thing; it takes its time; its course.

The miserable person is miserable because he has not sharpened his intelligence. He allows dust to gather upon his intelligence, and intelligence is like a mirror, if you allow dust to gather upon it, it loses its essential quality of being reflective. It functions like a mirror no more. And when dust is too thick you completely lose track of the mirror, you even forget all about it. And that's how people have been livings they allow the dust to gather. That's what we call past, memories. And when I say memories I mean psychological memories, not factual memories. Factual memories are perfectly good; they are simple information accumulated by the brain.

Psychological memories... Somebody insulted you twenty years ago and it is still there, it still hurts. It still affects you. If you see that person you can't see him as he is; that hurt stands between you and him. It affects your visions you look through that feeling. It may have become absolutely unconscious. You may say 'Hello' to him and 'How are you?' and you will even smile. but if you watch and observe your smile you will see there is some feeling which is holding your smile back, which is poisoning it. You say 'Hello', but reluctantly it is simply formal, it has no heart in it. You enquire how he is because it is part of etiquette, mannerism, but you don't mean it, you are not interested at all. In fact, deep down you are still wanting to take revenge. And if some opportunity arises you will take revenges you have not forgotten, you have not forgiven.

These psychological memories accumulate on the intelligence like dust and they don't allow you to see reality as it is Otherwise it is blissful, tremendously blissful. Each moment can be an ecstasy. you just need a bright mirror to reflect it in its totality, in its intensity. Then each moment brings so much grace of god, it is immeasurable; we cannot be thankful enough for it. But very few people become aware of the beauty of existence, of the beauty of people, of the grace of the animals, of the green and the gold of the trees, of the redness and liveliness of the flowers. Very few people are aware of the music of the rain falling on the roof, the song, the dance of it...

And because they are not aware of it all they remain imprisoned in the very small dark hole of their psychological memories, which is just like a tunnel, very dark, and it accumulates all kinds of negativities.

A person may have done a thousand and one good things for you and you will not remember, but if he hurts you once that you will remember. He may have been a friend for years, may have done many things for you -- they will all be effaced, erased completely by a single thing that you think is wrong. It may not be 1/08/07

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wrong at all. He may not have done it knowingly, he may not have wanted to do any harm to you. It may have happened by chance, or it may be just a wrong interpretation on your part. But just a single wound is enough to destroy all that the person has done... as if we are hankering to collect all that is negative, dark, ugly.

We don't collect flowers, we collect thorns -- this is the stupidity of human beings and hence the hell.

Hell is not somewhere else; we create it. And heaven also is not somewhere else; we can create. We have as much capacity to create heaven around our being as we can create hell. It is the same energy which accumulates flowers, which accumulates thorns. It is the same being; just a little different perspective, just a little change of understanding, of looking at things, and the whole world changes.

Sannyas is nothing but that little change. It is a very small thing but it makes a lot of difference. It transforms the whole vision. It creates a totally new existence for you and then life is a joy.

A sannyasin has to live life joyously. He has to transform small things into great rejoicings. He has to transform the mundane into the sacred.

I am not against the mundane. I am all for transforming it because it contains the sacred. The old religions were creating a division between the mundane and the sacred. I don't create any division. The change is not needed on the outside; you are not to leave the marketplace and go to a monastery. The change is needed in your way of seeing. Then the mundane becomes sacred, the marketplace becomes more beautiful that any monastery can be. And that is real work.

I am not an escapist and I am against all religious attitudes which are escapist. I believe in life and I believe in living life totally, but it can be lived in such a beautiful way that slowly slowly matter disappears and there is only godliness surrounding you. And that is truth, that's how it is.

Meditation is the only experience that gives you solid proof of god's existence. Logic is of no help.

Philosophy cannot produce a single proof although for centuries philosophers have tried -- but all in vain.

They have made very articulate, complicated theories, theologies, philosophies, trying to prove god -- but they have all failed. All their proofs are, without any exception, childish and rooted in some flaw, in some fallacy. They can befool only people who want to be befooled, otherwise anybody of ordinary intelligence can see that all their arguments are fallacious.

For example, all the philosophers of the world have tried to prove that god is a must because existence needs a creator. Now this is good if you are talking to small children, otherwise it is stupid. If creation needs a creator, then the creator itself will need a creator in its own turn. And then you fall into an infinite regress: A creates B. B creates C, C creates D -- where is it going to end?

Hence a man like Gautam Buddha simply said 'Forget all about this nonsense. The whole metaphysics is nonsense,' he said. And he has a great insight about that thing; he says 'Don't argue about god, don't ask about god, because there is no way to prove or disprove.' He simply puts aside all arguments, for and against. He says 'Rather put your energies into meditation and then see whatsoever is. There is no need to believe -- when we can experience, why believe?'

And that's precisely my approach too I don't want you to believe in god, I want you to know that which is -- and that is godly.

You may not come to know god as a person because there is nobody as a person, but in meditation you will certainly come to know existence as divine, as godly. The quality will be felt; you will see the whole existence radiant with godliness. In that radiance you are included. It is not that only others radiate god, you also radiate gods everything becomes part of a divine organic unity. But it is not to be believed in.

One need not be a theist or an atheists both are foolish. A really religious person is neither. He is an enquirer, he says 'I don't know but I am ready to enquire.' And the only way to enquire is meditation, because meditation takes you beyond thoughts. If you remain in thoughts you remain within the boundary of philosophy; when you move beyond thoughts, you go beyond philosophy -- and that's where religion begins. Where philosophy ends, religion begins; where mind ends meditation begins. And meditation is the only religious phenomenon. Remember it: the only, hence it is the only door towards godliness, the only bridge.

It is only through meditation that you become a servant of god. The moment you know the godliness of existence you naturally become a servant. It is not something imposed upon you by somebody else, it is out of your love for existence.

Meditation is golden. Gold represents the highest peak of consciousness in man; it is an alchemical 1/08/07

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symbol. Alchemists were known all over the world as people who were interested in changing the baser metals into gold. Really they were interested in changing the baser energies of man into golden energies.

Man comes with many energies but in a raw form; like diamonds just taken out of the mine. Only a jeweller can recognize them; to others they will look like ordinary stones. But once they have been purified, cut, once the unnecessary parts have been dropped and their hidden glory becomes expressed, then you know that it was not an ordinary stone; it was carrying a hidden treasure within it.

So is the case with every human being. Becoming a sannyasin means entering into an alchemical school.

The whole effort here is to make gold out of you. We are born with it -- just a little cleansing is needed and it starts shining forth. And when one realizes one's glory then gratitude arises, and gratitude is prayer.

Meditation transforms you, and the ultimate result is gratitude, prayer. That is the fragrance of the flower of meditation.

How long will you be here?

I don't know.

Be here. There is no need to know -- be here. Real Italians never go back!

Love is the surest way to real victory but it is a very strange way, very paradoxical, because love begins in surrender and ends in victory. That's its paradox: love does not want to be victorious but it becomes victorious. Love wants to surrender, but surrender brings victory.

And the people who try to be victorious remain failures. They may become victorious in the eyes of the world but that is not true victory because death will take it away. True victory is that which even death cannot destroy.

Think of yourself as victorious only when you have gained something of immortality. Love gives you the first glimpse of immortality, love opens the first window beyond death. One who knows love is bound to know god sooner or later, one just has to go on deepening one's love.

Be in love with love itself, then victory is going to be yours!

Sannyas is a dance of bliss. It is not renunciation, it is rejoicing. It is not life-negative, it is a tremendous love affair with life itself. It is not the old idea of sannyas, monkhood. I am totally against the old idea. It has poisoned the whole humanity, it has made people's lives more miserable.

Rather than helping people to be blissful, it has been a curse rather than a blessing, for the simple reason that it created negativity in peoples' minds: life is wrong -- if you want to achieve god you have to renounce it; joys of life are not good, they are temptations from the devil -- you have to escape from all temptations of life. You have to go on shrinking, shrinking, you have to move away from all relationships, you have to live in a cave in the mountains or in a monastery.

It created so much fear in people that people became pathological. Those who escape, lived in utter misery. Their only solace was that people thought that they were saints and people respected them and honoured them. That was very ego-fulfilling, that was their only solace, otherwise there was nothing in it.

Their life was like a desert, with no greenery, with no oasis at all. But it was a tremendously powerful ego trip. And people can do anything for the fulfilment of the ego; any absurd thing, any stupid thing, if it is ego-fulfilling they are ready to do it.

And if you look into the history of monks and nuns you will be surprised: in the name of religion they have been doing such stupid things all over the world, in the world, that coming generations are simply going to laugh at the whole idea of religion. It was so unintelligent, so stupid and mediocre, in fact insane.

And the people who did not go that far also suffered because they could not enjoy life with totality. They could not escape -- they were not that extreme either -- but they could not live life with totality, with joy; their joy was poisoned. They lived in the world feeling guilty.

The people who escaped suffered because they became uprooted. They starved, they were undernourished because life is a nourishment, relationship is a nourishment. To be with people and to be in many loving relationships, friendships, is an absolute necessity to make your life rich. They became beggars, and the people who lived in life became very guilty; they started thinking they are sinners. The saints were those who had escaped. so of course, logically, the people who were not capable enough.

courageous enough. thought 'We are not brave enough. We are guilty people, sinners, and we are going to suffer in hell.'

This is how the whole world has been dominated by the wrong kind of religion. It is good that the modern is getting freer every day of all that rubbish. But sometimes it happens that when you throw the 1/08/07

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Query:-

rubbish you can also throw the diamonds. You can throw out the baby with the bathwater -- that is the danger.

The old fools were doing one thing -- they were throwing out the baby and saving the bathwater. Now the new fools can do this -- they can throw both, but both ways the baby is gone.

My effort here is to save the baby and throw the bathwater. And if the bathwater can also be used somewhere in the garden, it should be used. There is no need to throw is it should be put to some use.

Life is not to be renounced but experienced, lived, loved, because it is only at the innermost core of life that you will feel the presence of god. Hence my sannyasins have to be lovers of life, and they have to be dancers, singers, musicians, poets, creators, because the fundamental of my religion is, if you want to come closer to the creative energy of existence you have to be creators yourself. That's the only way to come close to the creative energy, or call it the creator.

By your becoming creative, you start participating in god's creation.

Celebrate -- don't miss a single opportunity to celebrate. Go on searching for opportunities to celebrate.

If you cannot find them, invent them, because the whole point is celebration, not whether there is a real opportunity or a fictitious opportunity -- that doesn't matter. What matters is celebration because it is through celebration that you will flower, that you will come to your higher peaks of consciousness, sensitivity, creativity.

It is the celebrating person who really lives others only die a slow kind of death. It takes seventy years for a few people to die, for a few it takes even longer, eighty, ninety -- they are slow diers. They don't know how to finish a job quickly; they go on and on, they go on dragging. There are many people who go on dragging posthumously; they should have died decades ago but somehow they manage. There are ghosts' --

there are the people who are ghosts, who live a posthumous kind of existence.

In fact it is near-about the age of four that people die -- then it is all posthumous existence, then they simply go on dragging. Just look at a child of three and you will see what liveliness should be, how joyous he is and how sensitive to everything that goes on happening around him, how alert, watchful; nothing misses his eye. And how intense in everything: if he is angry, he is just anger, pure anger. It is beautiful to see a child in anger, because old people are always half-hearted, even if they are angry they are not totally in it, they are holding back. They don't love totally, they are not angry totally, they don't do anything in totality, they are always calculating. Their life has become lukewarm. It never comes to that intensity of one hundred degrees where things evaporate, where something happens, where revolution becomes possible.

But a child always lives at one hundred degrees -- whatsoever he does. If he hates you he hates you totally, and he loves you he loves you totally; and in a single moment he can change. He is so quick, he does not take time, he does not brood over it. Just one moment before, he was sitting in your lap and telling you how much he loves you. And then something happens -- you say something and something goes wrong between you and him -- and he jumps out of your lap and says 'I never want to see you again.' And see in his eyes the totality of it'

And because it is total it does not leave a trace behind. That's the beauty of totality: it does not accumulate psychological memory. Psychological memory is created only by partial living. Then everything that you have lived only in part hangs around you, the hang-over continues for your whole life. And thousands of things are there, hanging unfinished.

That's the whole theory of karma, unfinished jobs, unfinished actions go on waiting to be finished, to be completed, and they go on goading you 'Complete me' because every action wants to be fulfilled.

But if you live totally, intensely, then you are free of it, you have lived the moment and it is finished.

You don't look back and you don't look ahead. you simply remain herenow, there is no past. no future.

That's what I mean by celebration. In a real moment of celebration only the present exists. And to be in the present is to be a sannyasin. and to be in the present is to be blissful.

The Golden Wind

1/08/07

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Query:-

Chapter #20

Chapter title: None

20 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007205

ShortTitle: GWIND20

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Truth is achieved not by thinking, truth is achieved by a state of no-thought, because only when you are in a state of no-thought is there clarity. Thoughts are like clouds around you: they make your consciousness dim, unclear. When all thoughts are put aside, your eyes are clean. Then there is nothing to distort your vision, then you can see that which is -- and that is truth.

Truth is not a conclusion of mind but an experience of no-mind; hence philosophy cannot deliver truth; only religion -- because philosophy remains confined in the world of the mind. It goes on jumping from one cloud to another cloud. It remains in constant hesitation, unclarity, indecisiveness.

Philosophy is non-conclusive, it never comes to a conclusion; it cannot by its very nature. It is only religion that can help one to see. And seeing needs all thoughts to be put aside, good and bad, both. Seeing means you have to be as innocent as a child, knowing nothing. In that state of not-knowing, knowing happens, real knowing happens.

That's what meditation is all about: attaining to clarity.

It is only through bliss that one becomes a messenger of god. The moment you are blissful you become a vehicle, a passage for god to descends into the world. you become an opening for god to pour into the world.

Every blissful person becomes a blessing to the world because he becomes a proof that god exists. There is no other proof; only the presence of a blissful person is an indirect proof that something more than the mundane exists, that something more than the so-called life exists.

It is only through a man like Jesus or Buddha or Krishna that the world becomes aware that god cannot be denied. Philosophers have argued much to prove god but they have not been able to, they have not succeeded at all. Their whole effort has been an utter failure. But mystics have proved it without any effort; their presence was enough.

Every blissful person is a gabriele, a messenger of god. And that's my whole effort heres to create as many blissful people as possible, because the world needs now as many proofs for god's existence as we can manage, otherwise god is disappearing. The misery is becoming too heavy and the night is becoming too dark, and man is losing all contact with the transcendental My sannyasins have to become bridges between this and that, between the ordinary world and the extraordinary world -- which is hidden within the ordinary. And the only way, and I repeat, the only way, is to become a dance of joy, a song of joy, a celebration. -- How long will you be here?

-- Forever.

-- Be here forever' All Gabrieles are needed here' Good, Gabriele.

Man can live in two ways either he becomes a stagnant pool of energy or he can become a dynamic flow, a river of energy. The stagnant pool never knows anything beyond itself because it never moves beyond its boundaries. The stagnant pool of energy becomes the ego.

The riverlike flow helps you always to go beyond yourself. It is a constant transcendence. It is 1/08/07

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movement towards the oceanic, towards the infinite, towards the unbounded. That is the way of a sannyasin.

the way of a meditator. Life should be like a river, always moving, never clinging, always ready to go into the unknown, always ready to risk the familiar for the unfamiliar.

The constant adventuring consciousness makes a man a sannyasin. It is the greatest adventure there is.

And this is the right time and the right age (she is fifteen) to become aware of this alternative possibility, otherwise slowly slowly people become so accustomed to being stagnant that they forget completely. they become oblivious that they could have been rivers. That's why people live small lives, very ordinary, of no significance and meaning, of no joy, of no surprise. They simply go on moving in a repetitive circle. doing the same thing again and again every day from birth to death.

That is not the right way to live. That is a slow way of committing suicide. The right way to live is to live dangerously, always exploring and always reaching for the stars. Then life becomes naturally meditative because each moment brings so much surprise and each moment is so new, you cannot think anything, you have to encounter it.

The repetitive person can think about his life, can plan his life, because he is predictable. Everybody knows what he is going to do tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. But the meditative person is unpredictable; not only to others, to himself also. He does not know what is going to happen in the next moment; hence there is no question of planning thinking. He lives an open life, he welcomes every moment... fresh, young. And with that welcoming heart one becomes aware slowly slowly of something which has been called god, truth, nirvana, enlightenment -- different names for the same thing But the best name has been used by Lao Tzu; he calls it tao.

He says 'It has no name, hence I have chosen an arbitrary name: I will call it tao.' He is very clear about it. He says 'It is an arbitrary name, t has no name -- I will call it tao' Tao means nothing. You can call it XYZ.

My message is love, my religion is love. In a way it is very simple. it has no complexity about it -- no rituals, no dogmas, no hypothetical philosophy. It is a very simple and direct approach towards life. The small word 'love' can contain it.

My sannyasins have to be constantly in a love affair with existence. It is not a question of whom you love -- it is immaterial to whom your love is addressed. The thing that matters is that you should love twenty-four hours a day, just as you breathe. As breathing needs no object, love needs no object. Sometimes you are breathing with a friend and sometimes you are breathing by the side of a tree and sometimes you are breathing swimming in a pool. In the same way you should love. Love should be your interior core of breathing, it should be as natural as breathing. In fact love has the same relationship to the soul as breathing has to the body.

The body lives through breathing; once the breathing stops the body dies. The soul exists through loving, but many people don't have any soul because they never started loving. They only assume that they have souls -- they don't Potentially of course they do; if they start loving it will become a reality. Love transforms your potential soul into an actual phenomenon. It is the greatest miracle, the greatest magic, the greatest mystery of life. there is nothing higher than love.

But when I use the word 'love' I am using it in a very special sense. It has no ordinary connotations to it.

It is just a loving relationship tot he whole, a friendship with everything, even with things which ordinarily are thought to be dead.

A Buddha treats even the chair as if it is alive. It is not a question of whether it is alive or not; the point is that the Buddha cannot be unloving, so whatsoever he does there is love. and that has to be the constant remembrance of my sannyasins. Remember it again and again because you will lose track of love.

We are not prepared for it, the society does not prepare us for it -- just the contrary: it prepares us for hatred, ambition, jealousy, possessiveness, domination, all kinds of ego trips and numbers. But it doesn't prepare you for love. Love goes against all these things. A loving person cannot be ambitious, a loving person cannot be egoistic, a loving person cannot be political, a loving person cannot be dominating, a loving person cannot be possessive. These are poisons to love, they will kill the very spirit of love. A loving person can only be loving. He exists as love.

And one need not be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan to be religious. All that one needs to be religious is to be loving, and through love slowly the soul is born. And you become aware when you become pregnant with soul. It is just as when a woman becomes pregnant: she soon becomes aware of the presence of the child. As the child starts growing in her womb she knows -- she even starts feeling the 1/08/07

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movements of the child. she starts becoming more and more alert and aware of another life within her.

In exactly the same way it happens when you become pregnant with soul: you suddenly start feeling a new quality inside your being, a new interiority, as if a door has opened and now you can see your innermost core, the very shrine where your centre of life exists. And it radiates with light. Slowly slowly it fills your whole being with life, love, light. Then one is reborn -- then one is really born.

That's the goal of sannyas rebirth, resurrection.

There is a vast difference between knowledge and knowing. Knowledge is always borrowed and acquired from others, knowing is yours. And that which is yours is true, and that which is not yours cannot be true.

Truth cannot be transferred -- that is one of the intrinsic qualities of truth. My truth cannot become your truth. The moment I give it to you, in that very moment it becomes false. It is like uprooting a tree: the moment you uproot it, it is dead. It is alive only when it is rooted. And the tree of truth cannot be transplanted, you cannot put it in other soil.

So Buddha's truth dies with Buddha and Jesus' truth dies with Jesus. Christianity is a false phenomenon, so is Buddhism. Each person has to discover his own truth. Learn from Buddha the possibility of truth, learn from Buddha the hope, learn from Buddha the confidence that 'Yes, it is possible. If it is possible for one person, why not me?' But don't try to borrow because whatsoever you borrow is nothing but words; it won't have any meaning in your life. Meaning comes from experience.

That's the difference between knowledge and knowings knowing is beautiful, knowledge is ugly.

Knowledge makes you a scholar, a pundit; knowing makes you a mystic Knowledge never makes you a knower, it makes you knowledgeable. Knowing makes you a knower but never makes you knowledgeable.

And bliss comes only through knowing.

Humanity now knows much more than it has ever known before; knowledge goes on accumulating. In fact you know more than Jesus. If you meet Jesus you can teach him many things. He will not know a thousand and one things. I don't think he will be able to pass the matriculation examination -- impossible!

But that does not mean that he is not a knower -- he knows, but in a totally different way. His experience has transformed his being. He is not as informed as you are but he is transformed, and that is the real thing.

Information means nothing. A computer can have more information than you have but the computer can never become a Christ or a Buddha. Or do you think a computer can become enlightened some day? That is impossible.

A computer can know everything possible but it will remain a computer and it will repeat only that which is fed into it. It cannot be blissful either -- what bliss can a machine have? It cannot be loving either --

how can a machine be loving? It may say 'I love you, I love you very much, I am ready to die for you' -- it may say beautiful things, but they will be simply words. It can be taught to hug you and kiss you but there will be no love at all. And you will know that this is just foolish -- a machine kissing you and hugging you.

You will look all around, embarrassed!

A machine can be taught these things and the machine can do these things very efficiently. But millions of people are doing exactly that: functioning like machines, computers. They repeat cliche's -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- beautiful words but all dead.

With me it is not a question of becoming more informed. I am not a teacher, I am not here to teach you anything. I am here to help you, on the contrary, to unlearn -- not to learn but to unlearn, so that you can be unburdened and you can start seeing on your own.

The moment you start seeing on your own, your life takes a quantum leap into a new dimension the dimension of eternity. the dimension of godliness, the dimension of bliss, truth, freedom.

Bliss and love are two aspects of sannyas, just like two aspects of a coin, be blissful within and be loving without.

One can be blissful and miserly -- then bliss starts dying. It has to be shared to keep it alive and flowing, to keep it fresh and young.

The old tradition of the so-called religious people has been very miserly; there was no place for love in it Of course they were all searching for bliss and they could find little bits of blissfulness here and there, but they were very greedy and miserly. And in their greed and miserliness whatsoever they found was killed, destroyed, poisoned, hence they remained sad. All the old saints look sad, they have long faces -- with no 1/08/07

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Query:-

laughter, with no love, with no sharing.

This is something very fundamental, that bliss grows as you share it, otherwise it dies. Even if by chance you discover a source of it, soon it will be exhausted. If you want it to become inexhaustible, then share, then share as much as possible. And never think whether the other person is worthy or not. Those are the considerations of a greedy person, a miserly person.

A person who wants to share never thinks whether the other is worthy or not. Who cares? The whole point is to share. If he is ready to share, that's enough. Be thankful that he allows you to share your joy.

The sharing of bliss is love, and it is through love that bliss grows. The more you love, the more blissful you become; the more blissful you become the more you love. They feed each other, they help each other.

And between the two you become an integrated being.

Bliss is a fragrance. You cannot achieve it directly. You have to grow rose bushes; when the roses arrive there will be fragrance automatically. Bliss is a fragrance of meditation. Meditation means becoming more and more silent.

The noisy person cannot be blissful -- one needs the music of silence. And our minds are too noisy. We are carrying almost a whole marketplace in our heads, all kinds of rubbish. And we are not one, we are a crowd inside, many people and they are constantly quarrelling, fighting with each other, trying to dominate.

Each fragment of our mind wants to become the most powerful one. There is constant inner politics. You cannot find bliss in this constant inner war.

Bliss is possible only if this continuous war ceases. And it can cease; it is not very difficult to get beyond it. All that is needed is awareness. We are not aware of this whole phenomenon that goes on. It goes on inside like an undercurrent. We are almost oblivious of it. It is always there, day in, day out, but we are not conscious of it.

Bring consciousness to it. Slowly, watch the subtle layers of noisiness, and slowly slowly you will become aware of so much chattering that it appears almost as if a madhouse is inside the head. And we are living in this nightmare!

Through watching a miracle happens whatsoever you can watch starts evaporating. And the moment it evaporates you are left with a deep silence. In the beginning there are only intervals, small gaps when thoughts cease, when you can look through small windows into reality. But slowly those gaps become bigger they start coming more often, then they start staying longer.

It has been calculated by the ancient mystics, and I totally agree with them, that if a person can remain totally silent for forty-eight minutes he attains to enlightenment, he becomes absolutely blissful. And then it lasts forever, then there is no going back. You have gone into the beyond, you have reached beyond time and its constant shifting sands. You have reached the rock of eternity. That's where one comes to realise one's immortality.

That is the ultimate target of sannyas.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #21

Chapter title: None

21 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007215

ShortTitle: GWIND21

Audio:

No

Video:

No

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Religions have not been able to create a synthesis between bliss and peace. It has been one of the greatest problems in the past, because they failed in creating a synthesis they failed in creating the whole man, because a man can be peaceful but if he is not blissful his peace is utter coldness; it is more death than life. It is the peace of a cemetery, the peace that prevails in a grave. It is convenient to others but to oneself it is suicidal.

Society prefers that kind of peace because then you are no more a nuisance to anybody. Society really wants you to be dead, not alive. The whole effort is how to kill you and yet use you as an efficient mechanism. And society has succeeded in that: it has destroyed aliveness and replaced it with mechanical efficiency. Its whole interest is in protection, even at the cost of life. It is more interested in commodities than in human growth. Hence society goes on preaching to people to be peaceful, to be obedient, to be undisturbing to anybody, and it praises such peace as if it is something divine, something of ultimate value.

But one call become peaceful in this way only if one is stupid, if one can't see the cost that he is paying for such a dead peace which is not worth anything at all. He is losing his freedom, his intelligence, his joy, his love, his whole quality of being adventurous. His whole being is lost; he becomes a convenient cog in the wheel, a replaceable part. If A dies he can be replaced by B, if B dies he can be replaced by D or C, anybody, because they are not individuals, they were only functionaries. And all the religions have tried for this. There has been a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to destroy humanity.

A few people have rebelled against this, and it is good that a few people rebelled, but then they fell into another extreme. They dropped the whole idea of peace as useless, worthless, as a political strategy to dominate, and they were not ready to be dominated by anybody. They chose to be blissful, joyous. But a bliss without peace is feverish; it is excitement but tiring and ultimately there is no fulfilment in it. It keeps you hot, burning hot; it gives an intensity to your life. And if this is the only possibility, to choose between a cold peace and a hot bliss, then I will say choose hot bliss. At least you will be alive -- feverish but alive; you will go crazy but you will be alive! You are bound to go insane sooner or later, but at least you will be alive! If this is the only alternative then I am all for bliss. But it is not the only alternative; it is the other extreme.

My effort here is to create a higher synthesis in which peace and bliss are two aspects of the same coin.

When a tremendously beautiful phenomenon happens: you have bliss but you are not hot and you have peace but you are not cold. You are exactly in the middle, neither hot nor cold, If you compare this state of being exactly, precisely in the middle with one extreme, cold, then you can call it warm; if you compare it with the other extreme of being hot, you can call it cool. Because it is exactly in the middle it is both warm and cool -- cool compared to cold, warm compared to hot. But it is both together: it is peaceful bliss or blissful peace.

Then your being is whole, you are rooted in wholeness. You are not partial, you are not lopsided. It is not that you have chosen one part at the cost of the other; you have chosen both in a higher synthesis. You have transcended both through the synthesis. To be exactly in the middle of any two extremes is transcendence -- synthesis and transcendence. Both are there and yet the extremity of both is lost. To know it is to know god. To know it is to know all.

If you repress all the factors that destroy peace you are never the master of the situation because your whole state is false: you are a slave of all that you have repressed. Repression never brings mastery. That is one of the most fundamental things to be understood: repression creates slavery. A man who represses sex will become more sexual, pervertedly sexual, than the normal sexual human being.

Hence monks and nuns and all kinds of repressed people are more sexual. They dream and they think only of sex and nothing else. There is a constant undercurrent of sexuality within them and they are afraid of it. And they think they represent humanity so they go on telling people beware of sex. It is the greatest 1/08/07

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danger, the greatest temptation of the devil. It is a temptation to them, but they know only themselves and they think they are representatives. They are not -- they are perverted people.

To them sex is the most tempting thing in the world because they have repressed it and it is constantly hammering on their heart: 'Release me!' The energy becomes stronger the more you accumulate it. It continuously forces itself to find a way out, and it is bound to find a way out, if not from the front door then from the back door. Then some kind of perversion -- homosexuality, lesbianism... They are all somehow related to religion; their origin is in religion. It is the repressive religion that has created those things, and then it condemns them.

The whole problem is 'the more you repress' the more you become afraid; the more you become afraid, the more you repress and the more you condemn. It becomes a vicious circle, and you go on moving faster and faster in the vicious circle.

The same is true about everything. If you repress your tensions you can attain to a very superficial peace, but you will not be the master of it, you will be only a slave. And you will know that at any moment your peace can be lost. It is not even skin-deep, it is an absolute farce. You know that perfectly well because you have repressed all that is against it and it is there, and it goes on accumulating energy. Just a thin layer of peace exists and you are sitting on a volcano. How can you be a master?

To be a master of peace means you have not repressed anything but you have tried to understand everything and through understanding comes mastery. This is the magic of understanding: whatsoever you have understood rightly has no more any power over you.

This is the miracle that I teach to my sannyasins. I don't teach any discipline. I believe in magic rather than in discipline. This is the magic: that if you try to understand anything... If you try to understand anger and if you come to a deep understanding of your anger, anger disappears, evaporates just like dewdrops in the early morning sun. Your understanding functions like the rising sun and dewdrops evaporate. You need not do anything -- just the presence of an understanding consciousness....

And that's what meditation is all about: creating an integrated consciousness so that you can watch everything undisturbed, unprejudiced, without any a priori conclusions, without being for or against from the very beginning just watching it silently without any interpretation, just looking at anger, at jealousy at possessiveness, at sexuality, everything that disturbs your peace -- and there are hundreds of things. You have to use the same method -- that of detached observation -- and you have to go to the very root of everything unafraid. There is no need to be afraid and there is no need to be in a hurry; it needs patient observation.

When you have reached the very root of any problem you will be surprised: at that very moment, when you touch the rock bottom of its causes, it disappears; you are finished with it. And a tremendous energy which was entangled in the problem, which was imprisoned by the problem is released. The more problems you go on solving, the more powerful you go on becoming.

This is how one day one becomes a master. Then peace comes, but it comes naturally, spontaneously.

Then it is not only a superficial thing, then it is your whole being. And whenever peace is your whole being, whenever your are the master of it, it brings bliss with it automatically, as its intrinsic part. Many flowers bloom.

Reach from any door... You can try to reach through peace, and bliss will come and love will come and compassion will come and a tremendous understanding of other people's lives, forgiveness, a great humility, humbleness, egolessness, truthfulness, sincerity, authenticity; they will all bloom. Just reach from any one angle... or try to reach from love or try to reach from compassion; it does not matter. There are many doors to the temple of god, but at every door you will need the same key to unlock it -- and that is meditation, that is awareness. And when you reach the temple, suddenly you see that all others who were trying and working on other doors have also arrived, and you have arrived at the same centre.

Jesus and Buddha and Krishna and Mohammed and Lao Tzu and Zarathustra all meet at the very centre.

The doors were so different and they were knocking on different doors and they were arguing when they were at the doors that 'I am right' or 'You are right' or 'Who is right.' But as they enter inside they suddenly know all doors are right. And the miracle of miracles is that they were all using the same key. The doors were different, the shape of the locks were different but they were using the same key.

Jesus says to his disciples again and again, 'Beware!' Beware means be aware. Buddha says to his disciples continuously, day in, day out, year in, year out... for forty-two years he was teaching a single word,

'right-mindfulness', another name for awareness. Krishnamurti simply calls it awareness. Gurdjieff used to call it 'self-remembering'; that is a Sufi word. Kabir simply called it surati, remembrance. There is no need 1/08/07

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to call it self-remembrance because when you are in a state of remembrance it is naturally of the self, of the centre. These are different words but they are for the same key.

Bliss is not something that can be added to you. It is not an achievement. it is already inside you. You have brought it with your very life; it is intrinsic to your being. It needs unfoldment. It is like a bud: just a little effort and it can become a flower. In the morning when the sun rises buds start becoming flowers.

The same happens with meditation in the inner world, in the inner garden of the soul. As your awareness rises, awareness gives some inner warmth. One can almost feel it. When it starts awakening in you you can see some energy moving within you, moving upwards against gravitation. The higher it comes, the more you can feel it. And as your inner world becomes warm and full of light, many buds start becoming flowers.

Suddenly the spring is there.

Bliss is the first flower to open and then many other things follow, as if bliss opens the doors of the temple. The first is bliss and the last is the experience of godliness, and between the two there will be many many flowers.

Love and prayer are two expressions of the same energy. Love is more earthly, prayer is more unearthly, but the experience is the same. Love has a limitation to it; it is person to person. Prayer is unlimited, it is from a person to the impersonal existence. And it is so, that it is from the person to the impersonal existence only in the beginning because when you relate with the impersonal existence your person is lost. It is like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean: it cannot remain, it is bound to lose its boundaries. It will become the ocean. It is not losing anything, it is gaining everything, but the old identity will be gone.

But the problem is, unfortunately very few people know what love is -- what to say about prayer? That's why prayer has become almost non-existential. Even love is experienced by very few people, rare people, because love also demands many essential things before you can experience it. If your mind is full of anti-love attitudes it is impossible for love to exist. It cannot co-exist with jealousy, with possessiveness, with ego, with hatred, with anger; it cannot co-exist. They arc all anti-love phenomena; they destroy the very possibility of love.

But mind is very inventive. If he cannot find the real thing he always invents something plastic and befools himself. Man is so clever in befooling that not only does he befool others, he befools himself too. If he cannot grow real roses then he goes to the market and purchases plastic flowers. They look like roses but they are not roses. But in a way they are very convenient: you don't need to grow them, you don't need to bother about them, you don't need to labour for them, you don't need any patience. And moreover, plastic flowers are very lasting; in fact it is very difficult to destroy plastic.

Now the scientists and particularly the ecologists are very much disturbed by the fact that plastic does not disintegrate into the earth; it remains. It is the only thing that we have found which seems to be almost immortal! And it is creating great danger to the whole existence because all the riverbeds and the ocean beds and the lakes are slowly becoming full of plastic things. And because of those plastic things the earth cannot go on recycling itself; they become barriers. Otherwise everything disintegrates. Man dies; you put him in the grave and soon things start disintegrating. The earth goes into the earth, the water goes into water; even the bones will disappear sooner or later. The phosphorous will become phosphorous and the aluminium will become aluminium, and everything will disintegrate and go back to its original source. But plastic never goes back to anywhere; it remains. It stops the cycle of nature. It is the most dangerous thing that man has yet brought into existence. Sooner or later it is going to destroy the whole ecology.

And the thing is true about the inner world on a far greater scale. There too we are full of plastic things.

To grow in real love needs guts; it is risky, it is dangerous. Its requirements are great; it demands, it challenges you. And you have to drop many things to become worthy of it. The first thing to be dropped is the ego -- and we cling to it. We would like to have love with our ego intact.

I have heard: A film actress was getting married to another film actor. When they were in the court just signing in the magistrate's presence for their marriage contract, as the man signed the woman said 'No, I don't want this marriage!'

The magistrate could not believe it. He said 'What has happened? Nothing has happened! You have both come, you just signed!'

But she said 'I want to apply for divorce''

And the magistrate said 'Can I ask what has happened? -- because I was here. Nothing has happened, not even a single word between you both!'

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She said 'Everything has happened. Look, he has signed with such big letters, I cannot tolerate it! He is trying to show his male chauvinistic attitude. I have signed just as one should sign. And look!'

And really the magistrate also saw that he had signed over the whole page.

This is the beginning of marriage! But that's exactly how it is. People may not sign so legibly, so manifestedly, but deep down they are all exhibitionists, all egoists. They are trying to move into a love affair, but they are not ready to drop their egos at all, so immediately their egos start conflicting.

For centuries marriage remained intact because man had killed the woman's ego completely. Not that it was killed, it went underground, that's all; it worked in an underground way. The woman became very subtle in her egoistic demands, hence the nagging and all kinds of feminine strategies. She had to invent them because the man would not allow her ego any direct expression; she had to find indirect ways, but she had to show the man who the real master was. And every day in every house the whole problem is: who is the master? It is almost impossible to decide because the whole thing is nonsense.

If love is there nobody is the master, love is the master. You both disappear into love. Neither the man is master nor the woman is master -- love possesses both. But nobody is ready for that. They would like to possess love and the object of love. Hence the man tries to reduce the woman to a commodity and the woman also tries to reduce the man to a commodity, and they have both succeeded. So the woman has become only a means for sexual exploitation and the man has become the means for economic exploitation.

The woman is very loving when the payday comes close by; then she is very loving! Once she has got hold of the pay, then who cares? Then for twenty-nine days you are nobody! And the man is very loving only when there is a sexual need, otherwise he is not interested at all. Once he has made love to the woman he turns on his side and goes to sleep; he does not even bother whether the woman has enjoyed it or not, whether she has attained any orgasm or not; it is none of his concern. His sexual tension is released, that's all -- he used the woman, and because there is a disparity between man and woman, man comes quickly to orgasm and the woman cannot come so quickly. So almost always she is just a means, she is not a partner.

She is being used and she knows it, that's why she suffers.

Love does not exist, and because love does not exist everything else higher than love is impossible.

Then people go to the churches and their prayer is false. Prayer is the ultimate flowering of love, it is the fragrance of love. A man who has known love deeply, intensely, who has been able to drop his ego, jealousy, possessiveness and all nonsense will naturally move towards prayer. If to love one person is so beautiful, how much more will it be to love the whole existence? That's prayer.

One need not believe in god to be able to pray. First one has to know prayer then one is bound to believe in god -- but prayer comes first, god is second, secondary. In the false world god comes first; you have to believe in god. That means plastic -- belief means plastic. And then you pray; you are praying to your own belief. Then you can make a statue of god or anything that you like -- it is your own toy. And you can compose a beautiful prayer or other experts, the priests, can compose it or you can find it from the ancient sources -- but they are all man-made. The whole of religion is man-made, hence it is false.

The real religion arises out of love, naturally. Then it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan.

My sannyasins are neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan. They belong to a totally new vision of religion: a religionless religion, just a religiousness, not a religion at all, not a church or a dogma or a creed but an overflowing love which becomes prayer. And ultimately prayer reveals god to you. Then it is not a belief -- it is a revelation.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #22

Chapter title: None

22 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007225

ShortTitle: GWIND22

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Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Mind is always mediocre. Mind is never bright, never brilliant. By its very nature it cannot be so. Mind is a dust-collector. Mind means the past. It is always dead; it is nothing but an accumulation of memories.

And how can dust be brilliant? How can the past be intelligent? It is dead. Only the living can have the quality of intelligence, brilliance.

Meditation is bright, brilliant, original. Mind is always repetitive, old; it is a junkyard. Through mind nothing has been achieved. All that has been achieved has been achieved through meditation -- not only in religion but even in science. Of course in science meditation is unconscious; meditative moments are just accidental in science, but all the breakthroughs have happened through intuitive gaps. They have not come through the mind but beyond the mind.

This is a confession by all of the great scientists; they are puzzled by it, that whatsoever original contribution they have been able to make is not really their own. It comes from somewhere they know not.

They are only vehicles, at the most mediums. But in religion meditation is very deliberate and conscious.

Religion practises meditation. In science it is accidental, in religion it is deliberate.

The whole effort of religion is concentrated on a single point: how to help you to be meditative. And that means how to help you to put the mind aside so that you can look into reality directly, without mind as a mediator. If you look through the mind, mind always distorts. You are never able to see that which is through the mind. When the mind is not functioning you see reality as it is. And that's what god is all about: seeing reality as it is.

God simply means that which is. But to know it you need to be utterly silent; and mind is a constant chatterer -- mind is crazy, noisy. Silence is original, intelligent. Whatsoever happens out of silence is good, is beautiful, is divine.

Christopher is a very beautiful name. The ordinary dictionary meaning is a Christian, a follower of Christ. But that is not its true meaning. Its true meaning is: one who carries Christ in the heart -- he may be a Christian, he may not be a Christian.

Christ himself was not a Christian. Even if he wanted to be he could not have been because there was no Christian church at all, there was no creed, no dogma. He was born as a Jew, he lived as a Jew and died as a Jew. But he was a Christ, he was not a Christian. His name is not Christ, his name is Jesus. In fact to call him Jesus Christ is not right; Christians go on doing that. But in the East we have never done that. We never say Gautam Buddha, we say Gautam the Buddha. Buddha is not his name is only one of the Buddhas --

Gautam; the Buddha. There have been many before him and there will be many after him. Buddhahood is a quality, a realisation, a flowering.

So is Christhood: Jesus the Christ... Jesus Christ is not right. But that is a Christian strategy. Their whole effort is to make Jesus the only begotten son of god. It is monopolistic, they want the monopoly. The very idea is ugly and unchristian.

Everybody can be a Christ because everybody is carrying the seed of Christhood in his heart. That is the meaning of Christopher: a Christ-bearer. But we are only potential Christs. That potentiality can be transformed into an actuality and then you don't become a Christian, you simply become a Christ, another Christ. Then Christ becomes equivalent to Buddha -- that's exactly what it is.

The word 'christ' means the crowned one, one who has achieved the ultimate goal of being totally conscious -- he becomes the crowned one. All the glories of god are his, the whole kingdom of god belongs to him; hence he is called the crowned one. The word 'buddha' means the awakened one -- it is the same.

Jainas have another name 'jina'; Mahavira the Jina; Jina means the conqueror, the victorious.

These are different ways of saying the same thing: one who has arrived, one who has reached the 1/08/07

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ultimate beyond which nothing exists, one who has come home. Call him Christ, Buddha, Jina, it doesn't matter; these words are just words. Good, if you understand their meaning but dangerous if you cling to them as dogmas.

Nobody need be a Christian, nobody need be a Buddhist. Everybody needs to be a Christ, but in being a Christ you become a Buddha and a Jina at the same time; you can become a Buddha, then you become a Christ and a Jina at the same time. They are different facets of the same truth. But the whole secret is in becoming more and more aware, alert.

By becoming a sannyasin one enters into the world of consciousness. I don't teach any creed, I only help my people to be more conscious of everything that is within and without. That contains my whole teaching: be conscious, be aware and live out of your awareness. Let your awareness be decisive. Don't impose any discipline from the outside; let it spring from within, let it well up. And then it is always fresh, young, alive.

And life becomes more and more intense, passionate. It becomes tremendously aflame with joy, with bliss benediction.

Martina means a loyal spirit. It has other meanings too but they are all ugly.

The most ancient meaning is god of war -- that is an ugly meaning. God and war? -- that doesn't fit at all. God can only be a god of love, never of war.

The other meaning is warlike, a warrior. A sannyasin is not warlike, he is not a warrior; he is not fighting with anybody. A sannyasin in fact becomes a sannyasin by dropping all fights. He is in love with the whole existence -- there is no need to fight. Hence I have chosen a meaning which is only metaphorically so.

This is my choice; this is one of the meanings and not the more prominent one: a loyal spirit... because it has something to do with sannyas and something to do with bliss too.

A man can live life either as a no or as a yes. If you live your life as a no you become a warrior; you are constantly fighting. Then life is just a struggle, a war, and you are fighting against everybody else. Of course it is a losing war, you are bound to lose. One cannot win against the whole; the whole idea is stupid.

But it appeals to the ego. The ego always wants to say no. No is a nourishment for the ego.

Love wants to say yes; yes is a nourishment for living. And love and ego are just polar opposites: if you say no you grow your ego bigger and bigger, and the more ego you have, the less is the possibility of love.

And without love there is no joy, without love there is no music, without love there is no poetry in life.

Without love life is a desert. One can fight as much as one wants but it is self-destructive.

Yes is creative, yes is the way of the creator, the way of the lover. Yes means surrender. If no means war then yes means surrender: surrendering to the whole, trusting the whole as a friend -- there is no need to fight -- trusting life and existence.

The moment you trust you can relax, you can be in a let-go. And that's exactly what sannyas is: a let-go, an unburdening of all tensions. There is no need to carry an unnecessary burden. One can relax with the whole and the whole takes care. All that is needed is a trusting heart. That's what a loyal spirit means.

Learn to say yes, learn to be yes, and a total yes -- don't hold back anything and don't make any conditions on the yes. And you will be surprised: life starts growing in leaps and bounds, life starts becoming such a splendour, such a beauty, such a grace that one cannot even imagine it.

Life can become an unending ecstasy. All that is needed on your part is to open your doors and windows.

Say yes to the winds, to the sun, to the moon, to the rain, to the whole.

We know songs which are composed of words, but they are not real songs. There are songs which are composed of silence and they are the real songs. Once you have heard the song of silence then all the great poets just look childish. Then Shakespeares and Miltons and Byrons simply fade away; they are just playing with toys. India -- and I think it is only in India that it is so -- we have two words for a poet. One is kavi, which Can be exactly translated as 'a poet'. The other is rishi, which is untranslatable. A poet moans one who composes songs with words and a rishi is a poet who has heard the song of silence. And it is the rishi who has really known the harmony of existence, who has seen the beauty of that which is. And not only has he seen it -- because the only way to see it is to become it -- he has become it, it is his own heartbeart.

You have to go deep within yourself to hear the song of silence. You have to leave all words far away, far behind.

The greatest barrier is that of words. You can enter Russia because they have only an iron wall; and 1/08/07

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China is even easier -- they have only a bamboo wall. But the real problem arises when you try to enter yourself. And the wall is very delicate. It is not made of steel, it is not even made of bricks; it is only made of words, but a thick jungle of words -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- millions of words. And when you start penetrating yourself you go on finding words and words and words.

The meditator has to go on peeling himself like an onion. Peel one layer, another layer comes up, but go on peeling till you come to the point where nothing is left in your hand. So go on peeling within yourself; when nothing is left , that nothing is the song of silence.

Once hoard it transforms your life. You go beyond time, you become deathless. All fear disappears and there is only freedom. All misery disappears and there is only rejoicing and celebration.

The only victory worth calling victory is to become absolutely blissful. Not even a trace of misery should be left, because if even a trace of misery is left it will grow again. It is like cancer: if even a small piece of some canceric growth remains inside you it will start growing again. It has to be totally removed.

And misery is cancer of the soul. Bliss is the health of the soul. Just as there is a well-being of the body, there is a well-being of the soul.

To attain to that well-being is real victory. It cannot be purchased with money, it cannot be conquered by power; the only way to it is through becoming more and more silent and watchful. These two things have to be remembered: become calm, silent and watchful. Just go on watching what goes on happening inside you -- the thoughts, the emotions, the sentiments. Just go on watching the whole procession of all kinds of things within you, without in any way stopping that procession, without creating any fight with it, without any interference.

It is just like you are sitting on the bank of a river and the river flows by; you are not doing anything just sitting on the bank, watching the river watch the river of your mind, sitting silently, doing nothing. And a miracle happens one day: you are sitting there doing nothing and the river disappears. When it happens for the first time one cannot believe one's eyes; one looks around and there is not a single thought. One starts feeling afraid, scared -- where has all that company gone?

That first shock makes you feel like you are dying because that's what you had always known as your life. Your very identity has disappeared as if the earth beneath your feet has suddenly disappeared: you look and there is no earth and you are falling into an abyss. But soon -- and you cannot do anything you have to go on falling, there is nothing to do -- soon you start feeling a great joy instead of fear. The shock disappears, and instead of the fear a great joy arises in you because now for the first time there is space for the joy to happen. It needs space, and thoughts are occupying your inner space so much that it is impossible for bliss to happen.

My sannyasins have to do only one thing, that is, they have to become watchers of the mind, not controllers, just watchers. and then allow the process to take its own course.

Whenever you have time, just sit silently and watch with no motive. Don't wait for any result, don't think that now great light will arise or a one-thousand-petalled lotus will open inside you and chakras and the energy will rise upwards. Don't be worried about these things. Even if they happen, watch them; they are part of the mind.

Everything that you can watch is part of the mind -- that's the very key to unlock the door. Everything that can be watched -- kundalini arising, lotuses opening, beautiful fragrances and light inside... all can be watched, so that simply means they are subtle processes of thought. Mind is playing, trying to play its last tricks, trying to enchant you that 'Look, what are you doing? Trying to drop me? I can supply such a good circus and I contain so many mysteries. What are you doing? Trying to go beyond me? Then watch this light, watch this energy and see: your third eye is opening. These are all tricks of the mind, subtle tricks.

One has to remain absolutely unaffected.

Those are the real temptations. There is no devil other than the mind. If one can go on watching and enjoying these temptations: 'Yes, you go on playing your tricks -- I am ready to watch, I will watch everything. I will watch even nothing...' Because that is the final and ultimate strategy. The mind says

'Okay, you are interested in nothing? Have it!' If you cling to nothing you are back in the mind; the mind has conquered you, you have been defeated.

So you say 'Okay, I will even watch nothing. I am not going to be entangled in anything again, even by nothing.' And then the real nothing happens; it is no more a thought. You don't see it, you can't hold it, you can't touch it. All has disappeared; even the idea of nothing is no more there. You are not feeling a great joy, 1/08/07

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'Look, now I have achieved nothing. That's what happens when a man becomes a Buddha.' Even that is not there; hence Buddha says 'If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately.' That's what he means: even if you come to the idea 'Now I have become the Buddha'. kill it immediately. That is the last temptation of the mind.

Go on watching and watching and watching till there is nothing to watch, not even nothing to watch.

Then the watcher is left alone, then there is no object, when subjectivity is left alone, in that absolute silence is the revolution.

Love is not something static, it is dynamic. It is not a stagnant pool, it is not a pond. It is a river, always flowing. The moment you stop a river, it starts becoming dirty. It is pure and clean only in flowing. And the same is true about love: love should be a constant flow. But our minds are always trying to make it something static.

We are clingers. We try to make love also something permanent. We destroy all possibilities of change.

We are afraid of change. We are afraid that if something changes who knows where that change will lead?

So we want our tomorrow to be exactly like today. That is trying to destroy the future and that is trying to destroy all possibilities of growth.

Tomorrow should be tomorrow, never today. You should not expect it to be the same. That very expectation is dangerous because in the first place it is never going to be so; hence you feel frustrated. And if by chance, by accident it happens to be just like today, then you will be bored, but neither frustration is joy nor is joy.

Let the future be open. Don't put any expectations on it. Leave it unknown, unpredictable and don't try in any way to make things permanent. The nature of life is change, and we have to flow with nature, with tao, with the ultimate law of existence.

Be in tune with it without any expectation on your part and you will be enriched -- tremendously. Each moment will bring new joy, new life, new light, a new god. And a person whose love is always flowing and who is never confined by anything becomes vast, as vast as the sky itself. In that vastness one knows what god is. That vastness is god.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #23

Chapter title: None

23 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007235

ShortTitle: GWIND23

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

One can help others only if one has come to realize one's ultimate nature; otherwise oneself remains in darkness. He cannot help anybody. He can wish to but his wishes will remain unfulfilled. He can intend to but all his intentions will be just an utterly futile exercise. He will not help others, on the contrary he will 1/08/07

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harm them. It is not a question of good wishes, it is a question of being fully alert, conscious. When you are conscious you cannot harm even if you want to; it is impossible. And the same is true if you are unconscious; you cannot help even if you want to.

The unconscious mind goes on harming because it is unconscious. Whatsoever it does comes out of darkness, confusion, unclarity. How can it be a help?

So the first thing is to be a meditator because it is through meditation that your inner being will become full of light, full of bliss, full of peace. You will attain to clarity, and out of that clarity whatsoever comes is virtue, is service, is love, is compassion.

Hence I don't tell my sannyasins to be servants of the people. I don't want them to become helpers of mankind. That kind of religious person has existed for at least five thousand years on the earth; he has not helped anybody -- he has not helped even himself. In fact, so much mischief has happened through these religious missionaries, helpers of mankind, public servants, that it is impossible to conceive any other source which has been more poisoning, more mischievous than religion. More wars have happened through it, more murder, more perversion, insanity. The whole history is full of the nuisance that the benefactors of mankind have forcibly imposed upon it. And the root cause was simple; the root cause was they were trying to do something of which they were not capable.

If you want to fly in the sky you will need wings, and just to provoke you to fly without creating wings is dangerous. You will kill yourself. The greater danger is that you may kill others -- you may fall upon somebody! The roads are crowded; everywhere people are moving. You have the right to kill yourself but you have no right to kill anybody else.

It happens sometimes when people take LSD or marihuana that they start feeling they can fly. One woman did it from a thirty-five story building -- she just flew out! She killed at least eight persons. Because of her there was an accident; the whole of the traffic was jammed. She killed herself, but that was her right.

But these eight persons were unnecessarily killed just because some stupid person got the idea to fly.

That's what has been happening to religious missionaries. Religion can function like an opium, it can give you great dreams, desires, ambitions to do this, to do that, without being aware whether you are capable of doing them. Do you have the wings?

My effort here is just to give you wings; then it is up to you. If you want to fly, fly; if you don't want to fly then there is no need.

So let meditation be the whole center of your sannyas. And out of it everything beautiful comes for you, for others. Through meditation one can really become Alexander the Great. The only thing that was missing in him was meditation; hence he was not great, and he was not Alexander either. So don't repeat that old, foolish man's pattern. He was one of the great leaders of your so-called humanity. History is full of such fools! They tried their best, but because basically they were unconscious they created more misery in the world than there was already. They only helped man to become more miserable.

It is time that we be finished with all that nonsense. Nobody needs to be a public servant or a helper; those are all ego trips. If you are silent, peaceful, blissful, loving, then it is a natural outcome; you need not make any effort for it. It is just a fragrance.

Your flower has blossomed, mm? -- there is going to be fragrance. And whosoever is capable, sensitive enough, will be benefited.

Mind is incapable of knowing the truth. It can gather all kinds of information about truth, but to know about truth is not to know truth. To know about love is not to know love.

To know love one needs to be a lover. No information can be of any help; one has to go into the experience itself. And the same is true about truth. You can know all the great philosophers of the world, you can accumulate great words, theories, hypotheses and you can come to certain arbitrary conclusions of your own. But remember, they are arbitrary because they are not rooted in your experience. So whatsoever you know will really hinder your search.

That is the greatest danger in knowledge: it can give you a false notion that you know. And once that wrong idea enters in you that "I know," then the inquiry stops.

One has to know that one knows not.

One has to put aside all information for and against, theistic, atheistic, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, religious, philosophical.

One has to put aside every kind of knowledge -- knowledge as such. Then the inquiry begins. Then one becomes a true seeker of truth because then one is open. Out of that state of not-knowing, one day the great 1/08/07

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blessing happens that one comes to experience truth, to live it; one becomes it.

That is the state called enlightenment, nirvana. In the West they have called it the state of Christ-consciousness, in the East we have called it the state of Buddha-consciousness, but it is the same.

By becoming a sannyasin you are taking a jump from mind to no-mind, from knowledge to innocence.

And once innocence is there everything else follows.

Any coward can be miserable, Misery needs no courage, it needs no risk. It is cheap, easily available; even if you don't seek it, it will seek you. And it is everywhere, all around; you can just kick it up from any place. It is not like diamonds, that you have to go to certain mines and dig it out. The whole earth is covered with it because every human being is carrying such a load of misery that you can get it from anybody.

But bliss needs courage, great courage. The first courage is not to follow the crowd, otherwise you will remain miserable because they are all miserable. But they have a certain power, the power of numbers. They are many millions; they can crush you, they can kill you. And they don't like anybody being an individual; they want you to be just like a sheep. They want you to follow their ideology, their conventions, their religion, their culture. They don't leave the decision to you, they decide it for you. Every crowd is dictatorial, totalitarian. Every crowd is against freedom, against individuality, against truth, against everything that is valuable.

So the first courage is to be an individual, not to follow the fools. Just because there are millions of them does not mean that they are right; in fact, they cannot be right because there of millions of them.

Truth is a rare experience; it has happened only to a few people in the whole history of humanity. God has been experienced only by a few people; they can be counted on one's fingers.

The second courage is to drop all that creates misery in you, It may be that we have become very much accustomed to it and we may not be aware that it is the cause of our misery. Sometimes we even now that this is the cause of our misery, but we are not courageous enough to drop it because we have lived so long with it that it has become almost our identity.

For example, everybody knows jealousy is a cause of great misery but nobody seems to be able to drop it. Everybody suffers again and again but still learns no lesson. Every person is trying to do the impossible: they are trying to be blissful with their jealous mind, with their possessiveness. Now that is impossible, that cannot happen in the nature of things, nobody can make it happen. It has never happened and it is never going to happen. And the sooner a person realises it, the better, otherwise his whole life will be wasted. And millions of people are wasting their life: they go on remaining jealous, possessive, dominant, and they go on suffering, but they never look at the causes. Even if you tell them to look at the causes they may nod their heads, but not really. They may say 'Yes' we know, but that is superficial; at the next opportunity they are jealous again. They don't see the connection between the cause and the effect; they think it is something else that is causing misery.

If somebody insults you and you suffer you think it is because he insulted you. 'If he had not insulted me I would have been perfectly happy, so he is the cause -- he should not have insulted me.' But now you are in an impossible cul-de-sac. You cannot move a single inch this way; there is no go because how can you manage it so that the whole world decides never to insult you. It is not that he is causing your misery, it is your ego, and ego is very touchy. Ego may not have meant to insult you, he may not even be aware that he has insulted you. He may be just joking or he may have just made an innocent remark not in any deliberate way to hurt you. But your ego is touchy; it feels hurt by anything. Unless one drops the ego one will remain miserable.

So one has to look for causes inside oneself. That is very basic if one really wants to go through a revolution. If one really wants to be blissful one day, these are the basics. The first: always remember that somehow or other you must be responsible. Whatsoever happens to you, you are responsible. If this basic truth is remembered you will be able to find the cause. Never throw the responsibility on anybody else. The others may just have caused a situation in which your inner misery was triggered; they were just excuses. If A was not going to be the excuse then B would have been, C would have been. This world is big enough: if you are carrying the cause within you then something or other is going to happen which will help you to become miserable. Better to drop the cause and then there is nobody who can create misery for you.

Jean-Paul Sartre has a very famous statement: 'The other is hell.' That's the idea of almost everybody in the world, except for a few Buddhas: 'The other is hell.' I cannot agree with him, although it is the experience of millions of people. It looks absolutely right but it is not right, not at all, not even an iota of truth in it. It is always you. You can be hell, you can be heaven -- it is always you, it is your decision.

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Sannyas moans a decision that 'Now I am going to create my own heaven.' And heaven is not somewhere else; you have to create it just as you create hell. It is a psychological state. And once you know that you are the creator there is great freedom; immediately you are free. If the other is responsible you are not free; you are always in bondage because the other can always create misery for you or can create happiness for you. In both ways you are dependent, and nobody likes dependence.

You have a beautiful name. How long are you going to stay?

If sometime you decide to stay forever I will have to change your name because in India it is a dangerous word. Gunda means hooligan.

What do you call it? 'Hooligan' in German? All Germans are hooligans! Adolf Hitler is a gunda!

So if some day you decide to stay then tell me -- I will have to change your name. Otherwise you will say to somebody 'My name is Gunda' and they will start laughing. But for a few days it is okay.... And think of coming forever'

One can live in misery and one can have all the wealth of the world, all the power that the world can confer upon one, but still one will not be victorious. There is only one victory and that is attaining inner bliss. Even our so-called great conquerors are just fools who have wasted their lives and other people's lives.

The wise man will not waste a single moment in anything else. His whole life will be a concentrated effort to attain blissfulness. And there are many things behind it. Unless you attain bliss you will have to come back again and again to the body; you will have to be born, you will have to go through the whole of life and death. Life is like a school: if you fail you have to go back to the same school again; if you pass then there is no need to. That's why buddhas never come back. Once a man has become awakened he never comes back to the world. Then he lives in eternity, in a bodiless immortality. He becomes part of the whole; he becomes oceanic, vast.

The body is a confinement, it is an imprisonment. I am not against the body, but it has a limitation. It is a beautiful house but very small -- cosy because it is small! It is so small really that nobody else can enter.

You cannot invite anybody 'Sometime come inside me' -- impossible. People try... and they all fail. That's what lovers go on doing all over the world: try to enter each other, but it never succeeds. Soon they have to recognise that this is not possible; then there is frustration. The whole effort of lovers is to become part of each other, and because it fails they feel frustrated and angry. But they are trying to do something stupid.

The house is so small, it is a miracle how it contains even a single person. That's why everybody feels suffocated; to be in the body is a kind of suffocation. And a thousand and one problems ... and then old age comes. If you want to know all the problems, read Buddha -- he is an expert in describing all the problems of the body' He starts from the very beginning in the womb, with those nine months that he thinks are a great confinement. In a way he is right. To live in a woman's womb cannot be much of a paradise! It can only be compared with hell, with all the urine and the shit and everything (much laughter) ... and one has to live in it for nine months! Buddha calls it a great suffering. So ho starts from there, saying that birth is a suffering.

To be in a womb is a suffering. Then birth is a suffering because to pass from the birth canal is really a suffering because the canal is too small and the child has to come out somehow; it is like a tunnel. The child suffers and the mother suffers. And growing is not very beautiful either... and then the frustrations of life, and then old age and diseases and illnesses... And they go on and on till you die; then there is the last misery.

It is good that in India people thought of rebirth. If you are born in a Christian country or a Mohammedan or a Jewish country then you have to live in the grave for eternity. Then the last day of judgement will come. Just think of that: living in a grave and waiting for the judgement! If Buddha had known about Christianity and Judaism and Mohammedanism ... he was not aware of them at all, otherwise he would have said that this is the last misery. Even death doesn't end your misery; it is the beginning of a new misery. Now living in the grave, tossing and turning and nothing to do....

The body is a confinement, hence the whole effort of meditation is to give you an experience of bodilessness, of going beyond the body, of feeling your consciousness, of knowing it. To know consciousness is to know something 'limited' unbounded, the infinite.

And with that comes bliss, with that comes benediction. That is the only victory; everything else is a fool's paradise.

So make it a point that this life you have to learn the lesson so there will be no need to come back again.

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And if my sannyasins are really trying to understand and live what I am saying to them, not a single sannyasin need come back. And the moment you become part of eternity, deathlessness, timelessness, you are victorious.

Lorraine (her name) has another meaning also: immortality. It is a beautiful word. It represents two things -- victory and immortality. They are synonymous: to know that one is immortal is to be victorious.

Man tries to be famous, but that is not true fame. True fame comes not by man's effort to be famous, it comes through surrendering oneself totally to the whole. Then man is no more there; then man becomes just a hollow bamboo and god starts flowing through it. Then the hollow bamboo is turned into a flute. Great song is born, great music, but it is not human -- it is divine.

All bliss is divine. And when one is full of bliss, when bliss is pouring out from every nook and corner of existence, when you are showered with bliss, when you are no more; then only can it be possible. You are a block; the ego is like a rock. Remove the rock, and the doors of the temple of god are open.

Then one shines with fame, but it is a totally different kind of fame. A Christ is famous, but in a different way than Adolf Hitler, A Buddha is famous, but in a different way than Alexander. Alexander, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, their fame is nothing but ego pretending to be very significant and important. The ego glitters, but all that glitters is not gold. The real god has nothing to do with gold.

The real gold is created in you when you are capable of dropping the ego, dying to the ego. When you start feeling a nobody, a nothingness, then you start shining with fame. But that is god's fame, god's glory. Then it has tremendous beauty.

Love makes everybody a great poet, and if love cannot make you a poet then nothing can make you a poet. Love opens a totally different dimension in your being. Without love you remain confined to the world of logic. Once love starts happening in your life, logic starts disappearing; a transcendence of logic happens.

That's why the logical mind will always call love a madness, a blindness. Logic has always condemned love as blind, mad. It has called it all kinds of names for the simple reason that intellect is incapable of conceiving it.

It is a totally different world. It has nothing to do with arithmetic, with logic, with science. It is immeasurable, uncharted. Nobody knows exactly, precisely what it is. Even those who have gone deepest into it have found themselves almost dumb -- it is inexpressible.

But the experience is so great, so ecstatic that it explodes in many ways. It may explode in dancing, in music, in poetry, in painting, in any kind of creativity. Love is always creative. And the world has been so destructive for the simple reason that we have taught people to repress their love energy. Love repressed becomes destructive; love expressed becomes creativity.

My sannyas believes in creativity, in love, in that almost transcendental world where mind is of no use and no help, where only heart can enter. So my sannyasin shave to move from the head to the heart -- that is true initiation.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #24

Chapter title: None

24 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007245

ShortTitle: GWIND24

Audio:

No

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Moses is one of the most beautiful names; it has three meanings and all are significant.

The first is the saved one, because Moses was saved from water. And the second meaning is delivered by god.

Unless god saves you there is no way to ba saved. Man is helpless, and to understand it is of great significance. The deliverance is through grace, not by our effort. What can we do? Our efforts are bound to be very tiny and our efforts will come out of our ignorance, out of our confusion. They are bound to create more confusion, they cannot lead us beyond confusion. Hence it is through the grace of god that one is saved.

All that is needed on our part is to be in a let-go, to allow him to save us. That is the trouble: very few people allow god to save them. They resist, they struggle, they fight. You have been struggling with me for so long!

I was dying to see your face here! And you were hiding and hiding. But now there is no way -- I am going to save you!

And the third meaning is servant of god. Once you are saved you have to serve!

There are millions of Christians -- they are only so-called Christians. They go to church but that is only a Sunday affair. It is a kind of sociality. It is good, it is helpful in many ways, because it is the most ancient kind of rotary club -- the church -- where all good people meet and praise each other and say nice things to each other and everybody feels good. But they are not Christians.

To be a Christian, really a Christian, one needs to be a Christ -- less than that won't do. Hence Nietzsche was right when he said that the first and the last Christian died on the cross two thousand years ago. His emphasis was on the first and the last. Of course he himself was a madman, but sometimes mad people have great insights which the so-called sane people go on missing. He had tremendous intuitive energy. In fact he had too much of it and could not manage it, could not control it, could not be a master of it.

Had he been a meditator he would have become a Christ. He had all the potential but he remained a thinker. And that is the calamity that has happened in the West -- and it has persisted for thousands of years now -- that all brilliant people become confined to the world of thought.

Friedrich Nietzsche or Ludwig Wittgenstein or Bertrand Russell or Jean-Paul Sartre -- these people have the potential but don't know what to do with it; they don't know how to transcend the mind. And only through transcendence can that potential be used, otherwise it is going to drive you crazy. That's what happened to Nietzsche. It is as if you give a one-hundred-watt bulb a one-thousand-watt voltage; it is bound to go crazy.

The energy that could have become a breakthrough became a breakdown. Nietzsche needed a master, he needed a Buddha, he needed a Christ. And he felt the need. For his whole life he was continuously thinking of Christ. In fact he was haunted by the idea of Christ, so much so that he became antagonistic to Christ. It became almost a torture. To avoid it he became anti-Christ. When he became mad he even started signing his name "Anti-Christ, Friedrich Nietzsche." First he would write "anti-Christ" and then "Friedrich Nietzsche". "Friedrich Nietzsche" became secondary; his antagonism to Christ became more essential to his being. That was just resistance. He felt a great pull towards the man but he had also a great ego.

So whenever there were some moments when he was not functioning like an ego, some moment of rest and relaxation. One cannot be an egoist for twenty-four hours a day; it is too hard a work -- sometimes one has to relax. Those are the moments when the windows open. And in those moments he had tremendous insights.

This is one of his great insights, that the first and last Christian died on the cross two thousand years before. He is saying all these Christians are bogus, false. They are simply paying lip-service, their heart is not with Christ.

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To be a sannyasin means to become totally involved with the phenomenon of being a Christ or a Buddha

-- which are the same thing. To put it exactly, it simply means becoming aware, alert; hence Jesus continuously says to his disciples, "Beware!" Beware means be aware.

Those two words contain his whole teaching and those two words contain the teaching of all the buddhas. Be blissful and be aware. They come together: if you are blissful you will be aware; if you are aware you will be blissful -- they are two sides of the same coin.

Man is mind, and mind can never be peaceful. In all the languages we have such expressions and phrases as peace of mind, mental peace, peaceful mind -- they are all wrong.

Joshua Liebman has written a famous book, but the title is wrong, and from that very point he starts going wrong. PEACE OF MIND is the title of the book -- and he never thinks twice about it, about what he is saying. But that is what the western approach is. The West has always thought that you can achieve peace through the mind. That's where East differs totally.

Through the mind there is no possibility of peace. You have to transcend mind, you have to go beyond mind. If you live in the mind you will live in noise. It can be lessened but the difference will only be of degree . So there are more noisy minds and less noisy minds, but they are both noisy.

Mind cannot be without noise -- that is impossible. Mind means thoughts. You can arrange them in a beautiful way but they are still there, and they will make a noise -- howsoever skilfully arranged. Mind cannot have peace.

Peace is divine, it is not human. Peace means absence of all mental processes: no thought, no desire, no imagination, no memory -- as if the whole mind has ceased completely. And then suddenly you know who you are and you know what this existence is all about.

It is not that the mind is not useful, it can be used, but it can be used only be a master. And the master is one who knows how to transcend it.

Once you know the ladder that goes beyond the mind you are a master. Then whenever you want to use it you can use it and whenever you don't want to use it you can simply put it aside. Right now you may go on saying "Please stop" It is not going to listen to you. In fact the more you try to stop it, the more the mind will go berserk. It will show its power to you, saying 'Who are you?' The servant has become the master --

and whenever a servant becomes a master, he is a very bad master.

Meditation simply means putting things in their right places. Mind is a mechanism; you are not the mind. You are consciousness, and you can become conscious of the mind. Mind becomes just an object of your consciousness. You are a mirror. You can mirror and reflect everything in the mind, outside the mind.

They are all objects in front of you; you are pure subjectivity. This is the whole definition of sannyas, that you are consciousness. And this is the whole effort here, to help you to go beyond mind. And it is not difficult.

The most difficult thing is to live in the mind and to make an effort to be peaceful. That will be just superficial peace; a very thin layer of peace can be spread, but deep down there will be a volcano and it can erupt any moment. A slight provocation is enough and all peace is lost.

But if you know how to go beyond it, then there is no problem at all: you can come into the mind, you can go out of the mind. Peace is never of the mind, peace is a state of no-mind, hence I call it divine, not human. A peaceful man is a messenger of god. He is no more himself, he exists only on behalf of god.

Meditation is our true home. Without it we are homeless. A man without meditation is without shelter.

He exists just like driftwood, he is accidental. He goes on moving from one event to another event, because one has to keep oneself somehow occupied. otherwise life is boring, meaningless and one becomes scared.

So one goes on moving and goes on doing thing, which are not really essential at all, but one has to do them otherwise one can see the emptiness inside, and that is very scary. Without meditation you are bound to remain empty. You can go on stuffing yourself with all kinds of stupidities; they will never make you feel fulfilled.

Meditation is the only way to become fulfilled, to know the innermost core of your being which is already perfect, which needs no perfection, which is already overflowing with joy and peace and love.

Meditation simply makes you aware of that which is already inside you. It is a way of awakening to one's own self. And the moment you know it you have found the home; then you are no more homeless. Then you are rooted in existence; then you know that you are not just a driftwood, then you know that you are not accidental. Then you know that you are part of a divine existence, of an organic unity of the whole.

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To experience it is to become holy, to know the whole is to become holy. And to know oneself as part of the whole, an intrinsic part of the whole, brings great joy because the most significant thing in man's life is to know that he is needed by existence, that he is not useless.

Jean-Paul Sartre says 'Man is a useless passion.' That simply shows he has not known meditation at all.

Without meditation man certainly is a useless passion but with meditation man is neither useless nor a passion. Man is tremendously significant an d is compassion, not passion at all. Passion rises to new heights and becomes compassion, it becomes love.

[A young Italian man has opted to keep his original name, Ganesh, as part of his sannyas name. Osho prefixes it with 'anand', then goes on to explain that Ganesh is the name of a mythological Hindu god.]

Ganesh is not a historical person, but it is far more significant than any historical person can ever be. It is a metaphor, it is very poetic. It has to be decoded, it carries a great message.

Ganesh is half man and half animal. This is the first thing to be understood, that no man is born as a fully grown-up man; every man is born half animal and half man. Hence the constant duality, the conflict in man: a pull towards animality and also a pull towards god, divinity. And man is torn apart; he lives in anguish. That is his anguish, his anxiety: What to do, where to go?

His lower being is always gravitating towards the past -- that is the animal -- and his potential is always hankering for a chance to grow -- that is man's future, his hope. Ganesh represents both; he is half man, half elephant.

This situation has to be changed. And one cannot go back, one cannot become an animal again, because there is no possibility of going back. Whatsoever you have known you cannot forget and whatsoever you have experienced is part of you; you cannot undo whatsoever you have done. Hence there is no going back, you cannot move backwards in time, you can only go forwards. But the pull of the past is great because the past is great; the future is only a possibility and the past has happened.

Hence if you look at Ganesh the animal is very heavy. It is the head part -- Ganesh has the head of an elephant. It is the head, the mind that is full of the past and very heavy, naturally. Just think of a man with an elephant's head. It is a miracle how he manages to sit -- he will fall down, he cannot carry that much load. He should be standing on his head!

There is another beautiful metaphor. If you look at the statue of Ganesh he is riding on a rat' Now the head is of an elephant; the man is top-heavy, carrying a mountain, and riding on a rat. The rat represents logic because logic is nothing but continuous hair-splitting, chopping. That's what the rat goes on doing, continuously cutting things. Whatsoever comes in front of the rat it starts cutting it. And that's what logic is.

In Indian mythology the rat represents logic. The head rides on logic, the head lives on logic, it goes on becoming bigger and bigger. The more logical you are, the more powerful and heavy and destructive your head becomes. One has to drop the head, one has to drop logic; one has to learn ways which can make one headless.

The whole methodology of sannyas is to help you cut your head. With the head gone the whole past disappears. You become light, you become very weightless. You can fly, your heart has wings. Your head is just like a rock, it cannot fly -- and to reach god you need wings. And you don't need logic, you need love.

Love is creative, logic is destructive. Logic means doubt, love means trust.

So try to understand this. I don't know who has given you the name... Some Hindu fool? -- Nimkoroli Baba. -- Some Hindu fool, certainly. But you wanted to keep it so I will try to dismantle you, because your head will have to be chopped off!

Carrying an elephant's head is dangerous. And the poor rat -- he has to be relieved, released. I have kept your name just so that I can go on remembering what has to be done with you!

Marion is a very beautiful but strange name. It is a paradoxical name.

It has two meanings. The first meaning is bitter grace and the second meaning is living fragrance. On the surface one cannot see how they are related. How can they be related? Bitter grace and living fragrance seem to be totally different words. But they are related very deep down.

Grace is bitter because you have to drop your identity. That's why it is bitter. You have to drop your ego, you have to drop your personality. You have to go through a kind of death, only then does your real life begin. Unless you die, god is not; when you die, god is. Hence it is a bitter medicine.

Buddha used to say that the journey to truth begins in bitterness and ends in sweetness. That's why many 1/08/07

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people never start the journey -- because it is so bitter they become scared. And their logical mind says 'If it is so bitter even in the beginning, how much more bitter it will be when you have reached the goal? If the first step is so bitter just think of the last step. And then it will be very difficult even to come back; you may have gone too far. Better, don't take the first step.'

So the mind does not allow people to take the first step because it is bitter. But the ultimate flowering is a great sweetness, it is living fragrance. The journey begins in death and ends in abundant life.

Jesus said to Nicodemus 'Unless you are reborn, unless you die as you are and are born again, you cannot enter into my kingdom of god.' Nicodemus never returned to him. He was a professor in the university and he came in the night when nobody was there. He could not even gather the courage to come in the day. He was a rabbi too, a well-known scholar -- what would people think of him going to this madman, Jesus?

So in the night when nobody was there he came, hidden. The first statement of Jesus was enough to stop him; he was not ready to pay that much of a price. And Jesus made it clear from the very beginning, 'Unless you are ready to die, forget all about it; you cannot enter into my kingdom of god, you cannot be a fellow pilgrim of mine -- it is impossible. The ego will have to be dropped.'

Drop the ego, howsoever bitter it is, howsoever painful it is, and you will be tremendously rewarded.

Meditation sharpens your brilliance. Ordinarily your sword is rusty. You have never cared about it, you have not even taken it out of its sheath. And it needs constant sharpening, otherwise it is not even useful in cutting vegetables' And it has great work to do -- it has to kill you! That's what sannyas is all about: cutting your head-off with your own hands. It is real suicide. It is not of the body, it is the suicide of the ego -- and the ego is very subtle and very cunning. Unless you are sharp enough it will go deceiving you. You throw it out from one door and it will enter from another. And it is so cunning that it can even come in the name of humbleness.

You can watch the so-called humble people and you can see their egos. They are egoistic about their humbleness, they are egoistic about their simplicity, egoistic about their saintliness, even egoistic about their egolessness.

A man without ego is neither egoistic nor egoless. Both are dropped. He is simply there. To create that state is very great intelligence is needed. Mind is not enough, only meditation can help.

So concentrate on meditation. Make it a point that this is the topmost priority in your life, everything else is secondary. I don't say anything else to my sannyasins, all that I want them to do is to become meditators, and everything else follows of its own accord. Freedom comes, bliss comes, peace comes, celebration comes, virtue comes, transformation comes, and ultimately the experience of god.

Become an image of meditation, become meditation. Walk in meditation, sit in meditation, eat in meditation, sleep in meditation. Let the flavour of meditation spread all over your life -- breathe in, breathe out, but meditation continues.

Meditation simply means an awareness of all that is happening. That which is happening outside -- that is the outermost circle of your life. Then that which is being done by your body -- that is the second concentric circle, closer to you. Then the third concentric circle is that which is done by your mind. And then the fourth is that which is done by your feelings and emotions. And within these four concentric circles is your centre, the fifth.

If you become aware of all that is going on, sooner or later you will become centred at the centre and you will be able to see the whole panorama, the whole drama of the outer world, of physical activity, of psychological activity, of emotional activity. And when you are able to see all this you become free of it because immediately you come to know that you are the seer, you are not the doer. That is the greatest revolution in life, when this shift happens, that you are no more a doer but just a seer, a witness. Than one becomes an image of meditation -- a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra.

Meditation releases great creativity. It is an explosion; all your seeds start sprouting. For the first time you see how much potential you were carrying within yourself: a great garden with so many flowers, such beautiful bushes and trees and so many birds singing... a whole paradise! But we are not ordinarily aware of it. We are completely closed, we have not opened up; we are living like a capsule which has no opening, no windows.

Leibniz has the right word for it. He calls man a monad, a windowless house; no doors, no windows.

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Meditation throws open all the doors and all the windows. Suddenly you become aware of the vast sky, the stars, the moon, the sun, the wind, the rain, the rainbows, the clouds -- the whole infinity of it, the whole spectrum of it. And the moment you become aware of it your heart starts singing and dancing.

That's what I mean by a poet. I don't literally mean a poet; not that one starts just composing poetry, but that one's whole life becomes poetic. To whatsoever one does there is the golden touch of creativity. You touch dust and by your touch it is transformed into gold. Wherever you move it becomes a sacred place; wherever you sit it becomes a temple, a shrine of infinite beauty and grandeur. Whatsoever you do releases the imprisoned splendour within you. And this goes on happening; it is not something that happens once.

Meditation starts an explosion which is infinite, which goes on and on, unending; there is no end to it.

There is a beginning in meditation but no end.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #25

Chapter title: None

25 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007255

ShortTitle: GWIND25

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Arunachalam is a sacred mountain. In the South no other place has so much sanctity. For centuries many people have become enlightened on Arunachalam, and one of the last and greatest was Maharishi Raman.

Wherever an enlightened person lives, the very space, the very earth becomes suffused with something of the known, of the mysterious. It carries the vibe for thousands of years.

Bliss is also a peak, a great peak of consciousness, it is a mountain. And it is an uphill task. We have made many sacred places on the mountains for the simple reason that people can know that bliss is a mountainous journey, it is a climbing towards the heights. And it needs tremendous courage, the courage to risk.

Going downhill needs no courage, no intelligence. Going uphill needs both courage and intelligence, and a constant effort. There is nothing higher than bliss; bliss represents the ultimate experience of god.

Sannyas is the uphill journey.

Make every effort, put your total energy into it, only then is the miracle possible. It certainly happens and every human being is capable of achieving it, but it needs constant effort. It needs not a wavering mind

-- unwavering. With great trust, with great hope one goes on dropping the known territory for the unknown, dropping the familiar for the un-familiar -- because god is the most unknown phenomenon.

Even those who have known him cannot claim that they have known him, because in knowing him the claimer disappears; one becomes utterly silent.

Those who say they have achieved are either deluding themselves or others. Those who have achieved can at the most smile -- because it is not an achievement in the ordinary sense, it is a realisation. It is not something added to you, it is something that blooms, blossoms within you. In a sense it was already there; 1/08/07

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in a sense now you have come to know it so now you have realised it.

Life is dull without love; it becomes bright with love. Life is dark without love; with love it becomes full of light. Love is the name of your inner light. That flame is already there but surrounded by much smoke. And the smoke consists of memories, imagination, thoughts, desire. The whole mind creates a long list, a thick wall around the flame, a thick wall of smoke.

The only way to reach your of flame is to disperse this smoke. And that's what sannyas is all about: getting rid of the smoke, getting rid of thoughts and desires and becoming so silent and desireless, as if there is nothing to be achieved, nowhere to go. In that relaxed state the smoke starts dispersing of its own accord because we are no co-operating with it. It is through our co-operation that it lives, gets food and nourishment, is nurtured.

Once there is a disconnection, once you are no more feeding it, it is bound to disperse. And as it starts dispersing, clarity arises, brightness arises, intelligence arises, and life becomes full of meaning and significance.

Life is life only when love is burning bright inside you, when the flame of love is so bright that it starts radiating around you, that it starts reaching others, that people can feel it, that your love becomes almost so tangible that people can touch it. Then it is not only a blessing to you, it is a blessing to everybody else too.

A real man is always an enrichment to the world, to existence; he contributes much. And unless you contribute something you will never feel blissful. It is through contributing something to existence that you participate in the work of the creator, because you yourself become a creator. To be a creator is to be part of god -- there is no other way.

Avalokita is one of the names of Gautam the Buddha. We have given many names to Buddha; each name shows one aspect of his multi-dimensional being. No single express his reality. Avalokita is one of his aspects. Literally it means one who is capable of seeing, observing, of detached observation, being neither for nor against, with no liking, no disliking -- a choiceless awareness, simply seeing whatsoever is the case without imposing any idea, any interpretation, allowing the mind to come and start spinning and manufacturing thoughts about it.

Once you say 'This is good,' the mind has come in; you say 'This is bad,' the mind has come in. If you don't say anything, if you don't make any statement but you simply go on seeing... If you see a rose flower and you say 'It is beautiful,' the mind has come in; now you are no more a pure seer, you are distracted in fact. The moment the mind says 'It is beautiful,' you have started thinking about beauty, you have lost track of the reality of the rose. A word, 'beautiful', has come in; now the word 'beautiful' will have its own associations.

You will remember the man you love, the woman you love, you will remember the dog that you loved when you were a child. Now the mind can go on and on; you have forgotten about the rose flower. And the moment you say it is beautiful you have remembered other rose flowers, Now this rose flower is far away; between this rose flower and you there is a long queue of roses which are no more. And they will contaminate your seeing, they will not allow you to see this rose flower which is unique, which is incomparable because no other rose flower has ever been like this and will never be like this again. This moment is unique but the mind is always a distracting factor.

Being choiceless means not allowing the mind to say anything, putting the mind aside, just looking at a thing without any barrier of words, so that you can have a contact, a direct contact with reality. That's one of Buddha's fundamental teachings, choiceless awareness; hence one of his names is Avalokita. And he says, and says truly, that if you can become a detached observer of existence, your life will be full of bliss.

It is bound to be so, it is inevitable: ais dhammo sanantano -- he says this is the ultimate law of existence, that bliss happens only to those whose consciousness is absolutely pure of thoughts, whose consciousness is just like a pure mirror, crystal clear, with no idea, with no a priori conclusion. And then a miracle happens: you start seeing everything in its true reality -- and that's what god is.

If you can see a rose flower in its true reality you have seen one of the faces of god. If you can look into the eyes of a child without any word, thought, coming in between you and those innocent eyes, you have looked into the eyes of god. And slowly one becomes aware that the whole existence is full of god, that god is not a person, that god is the reality of everything, the underlying reality of everything.

He is in that which you are observing and he is in you who are the observer. Knowing it the observer and the observed become one -- and that is the ultimate realisation of oneness.

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Mind divides, it creates a duality; the observer and the observed become two. When there is no mind they start coming closer, closer, closer, melting and merging into each other. Then it is not that you are seeing the rose flower, you are the rose flower. It is as if the rose flower is seeing itself. There is no distinction, no separation. That is union with reality or it is better to call it reunion, because once we were in that union, before we were born. But we have lost track of it. That is, we have been in the paradise, we have lost it -- we have to regain it, and this is the way.

So let your name remind you that this is going to be your path: awareness, watchfulness, observation, choicelessness.

[Osho gives sannyas to an Italian, Fabio, adding the prefix anand, which means bliss, he explains, then continues:]

Fabio is avery dangerous name. Yes -- it means a bean-grower! I am reminded of an Italian joke: Italians like to eat beans every Saturday evening to have a bubble-bath every Sunday morning!

You get the idea or not?

So please stop bean-growing!

We will make your name a little different, I will give you a new meaning; there is just a little difference: being grower. Forget the Italian meaning completely!

Let your being grow. And for bubble-baths there are other things!

One has to work for bliss but still, ultimately, it is a gift of God. This looks paradoxical; it is not logical.

Logic will say either you have to work for it -- then you are the achiever, then it is the achievement of your work. Or if it is a gift of God, then you need not work because whenever God feels like giving you the gift, he will. But life does not go according to logic.

Many people follow the logical line. For centuries they have done that and they have missed. The person who thinks it can be achieved through effort will never achieve it. Through effort he will become more and more egoistic.

There are religions that believe that it can be achieved only through effort. For example, Jainism in India believes that it can be achieved only through effort, there is no other way -- no grace of God because there is no God and no grace. You have to work hard and you have to achieve it. Naturally they say it takes many many lives, only then can you achieve it.

In fact it is because of this idea that the idea of many lives arose in India, because one life does not seem to be enough to achieve bliss. Half of life is lost in getting educated, getting married, getting settled; one third is lost in sleep, in eating, in talking, in fighting, in playing cards and chess and looking at the movies and a thousand and one things.

If one simply calculates, then out of seventy years, which is the normal span of life, you will not have even seven minutes left for yourself. And seven minutes meditation is not going to help; hence you will need many many lives. Indians believe millions of lives, eighty-four million lives, then one becomes enlightened. The very idea is such that one will fall flat and forget all about it. Such a long time -- who is going to wait? This is one of the logical standpoints.

The other logical standpoint has also been followed. There have been many religions which believe that you have simply to pray to God because everything happens according to his will. So all that you need is to pray. Go on begging and go on praising the Lord -- as if he believes in bribery and praise and all that nonsense, as if you can persuade him to give you the ultimate gift. Both are wrong. Both will miss because both are taking only half of reality.

My attitude is that one needs an effortless effort. There are reasons for thinking effort is needed and there are reasons, perfectly valid reasons, for concluding that the ultimate thing always happens through the grace of God. It can be understood only in this way, that efforts are needed to prepare you to receive the gift.

Ordinarily you are not ready even to receive -- your doors are closed, your heart is closed. Even if God shouts you won't listen. And God goes on knocking on your doors, but you never open the doors; in fact you don't think that there are any doors. You go on living your ordinary, mechanical, unconscious life. Efforts are needed to make you conscious, but efforts can only make you conscious, they cannot give you bliss.

But whenever you are blissful that means something has descended from above. And those who have 1/08/07

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attained bliss have felt that "our efforts have cleaned our hearts, opened our doors, removed all the barriers."

And then one day, suddenly, something starts pouring from the beyond, from some unknown source. And when you look back then you can see that your efforts were very tiny. You cannot say this tremendous ecstasy is an outcome of your tiny efforts, but still they were needed, they were essentially needed, they cannot be avoided.

So one has to meditate, one has to pray, one has to purify one's being. One has to bring clarity to one's mind and love to one's heart just as a preparation so that one is capable of receiving the gift when God is ready to give. And in fact, God is always ready to give, it is just that we are not ready to receive!

We are in search of a home. Everybody -- consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly --

we are all groping for a home. Somewhere deep within our being there is a remembrance that we had a home. It is very vague, not clear-cut; but you have not forgotten it completely, nobody ever forgets it completely. It goes on surrounding you like a shadow, like a nostalgia. It is like some far away country, sometime when you were happy, blissful, joyous, when there was no anxiety, no anguish, no responsibility, when life was pure bliss, when life was just a dance, a song.

Deep down somewhere that desire still lurks, still goes on goading you to find it again. All religions are born because of that longing, otherwise there is no reason for religions, they don't fulfil any practical purpose. That's why for a practical-minded man religion seems to be absolutely absurd. Science seems to be perfectly okay -- it serves many practical purposes. What is the practical purpose of religion? There seems to be no utility, it is a sheer wastage of time. You could have produced something and you are meditating, just sitting silently, doing nothing.

For the practical man it seems a wastage. But even if the practical man looks just a little deeply inside himself he will find hidden somewhere the desire, and he will find somewhere the feeling 'I am homeless.

This is not the place where I belong. This is not life; this cannot be all, something more must be there.'

Of course we don't know exactly what that more is, but a persistent feeling, an intuitive force goes on working inside. Sooner or later one has to listen to it, and the sooner one listens, the bettor, because one never knows when life will be finished. Any moment it may be. If a man becomes really committed and interested in religion while he is young, then there is a possibility that he finds the real home. Sannyas is a very scientific process to find it.

My effort here is to bring a synthesis between the scientific approach and religious values. On the surface they look very contrary, but only on the surface. Deep down there is something which makes them complementary, not contradictory. Their fields are different. Science works in the objective world and religion in the subjective, but the approach is the same. Science is trying to know the truth about reality outside, and religion is trying to know the same truth about reality inside. And of course religion is working on a higher plane because the scientist may know many things about objects, matter, electricity, this and that, but will be completely unaware of himself. The scientist knows nothing about the scientist himself but he knows everything about everything else.

This situation is very lopsided. Science will become perfect only when it accepts religion as the ultimate goal. And religion alone is not perfect either, because you cannot just live on the inside; you need bread and you need clothes and you need all kinds of things which can only be provided by science.

There have been only two kinds of people up to now: the people who believe that science is enough --

and they are wrong, they have created the whole mess in the West -- and there have been people in the East who believe religion is enough; they have created the mess in the East. The East is starving because it has never worked for scientific growth, and the West is going insane because it has no home. Houses, it has big houses, but no home.

My effort is to help East and West disappear into each other, to create a meeting. And that meeting is happening, very slowly, without any deliberate effort; almost spontaneously it is happening And this is the beauty of it, that my sannyasins are very deeply neither of the East nor of the West; they belong to the whole world and the whole world belongs to them. They can herald a new man on earth.

Bliss is music, music that arises when all your parts -- your body, your mind, your heart and your being

-- are functioning in deep harmony; then your life becomes an orchestra!

Ordinarily there is only noise, no music. The body goes on shouting out its own desires; they ask for their fulfilment, not taking any care of other needs. The mind goes on insisting on its own ambitions, desires, not bothering at all about the heart, always ready to sacrifice everything for its own fulfilment. The 1/08/07

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heart goes on hankering for its own feelings, emotions, love. And the being is an absolutely neglected part; we have completely forgotten about it. It goes on whispering in a still, small voice within you, but nobody listens because the body is very loud and the mind is very articulate, and the heart is very persistent.

Although the mind goes on saying that the heart is a fool, an idiot, mad and not to bother about it, the heart does not take any note of the mind; it goes on doing its things in spite of the mind. It will fall in love and it will do a thousand and one things about which the mind was saying 'Don't do it.' And the body goes on in its own way.

So we are almost a crowd; not one person, not a unity, not an organic unity. And that's what is missing.

His life can become a harmony. All these parts which are playing solo can become part of an orchestra.

You just need a guide which can bring all these four elements together, can help them understand each other, can help them to help each other. That's what happens through meditation, through awareness.

Awareness becomes the guide and slowly slowly it persuades every different section of your being to come into closer harmony.

So put all your energies into awareness. Only one thing I teach my sannyasins: be meditative. Out of meditation there is great music, and that music is bliss. Once you have heard your inner music everything else pales down. There is nothing which can be compared to its beauty and its benediction.

A man lives in defeat if he has not found bliss. His whole life is nothing but frustration and failure, writ large. And you can see it on peoples' faces: as they grow older, they grow sadder; as they grow older they start becoming very angry, angry at life, because it has shattered all their dreams. It has not fulfilled any of their desires. And the fault is not life's, they themselves are responsible for it. They were trying to achieve things which are meaningless: money, power, prestige.

If you don't achieve them you are frustrated, if you achieve them you are more frustrated. In fact the non-achiever is in a better situation because he can still hope. At least the hope is there that one day you will achieve these things and then everything will be put right.

The achiever is really in an absolute gloom because now there is no hope. He has staked everything on these stupid things and now they are there; his whole life has gone into achieving all this junk and now it is there -- and he is as unfulfilled as before.

By becoming a sannyasin one starts searching for bliss inside. You forget all other ambitions which lead you into the outside world because bliss is something inner, absolutely individual, personal; you can find it within yourself -- nobody else is needed for it. And once it is found you are victorious. Then life has a great splendour around it. Then the whole sky of your being is full of stars.

One knows that one has not lived in vain. And when one knows that one has not lived in vain then even death is beautiful. Then one does not die reluctantly, one dies absolutely blissfully. Then death is just a rest.

One has blossomed, one has released one's fragrance; now the time has come to rest, to disappear in the whole.

A sannyasin lives beautifully and dies beautifully. His life is a celebration and his death the ultimate in celebration.

It is one of the greatest mysteries of life that we are born with perfect bliss in our being and we remain beggars because we never look into our selves. We take it for granted, as if we already know all that is within. That is a great idiotic idea, but it prevails all over the world. We are ready to go to the moon to seek and search for bliss, but we are not ready to go inside ourselves for the simple reason that we already think without ever going in, 'What is there inside?'

We somehow go on carrying this notion, that we know ourselves. We don't know ourselves at all.

Socrates is right when he says: Know thyself. In those two words the whole wisdom of all the sages is condensed, because in knowing thyself all is known and all is fulfilled and all is achieved.

We are not to become perfect, we are born perfect. And we are not to invent bliss, we have only to discover it. Hence it is not such a difficult matter as people think; it is a very simple process of relaxing, resting, and slowly slowly getting centred.

The day you stumble upon your centre, suddenly there is all light; you have found the switch. It is just like groping in a dark room: you go on groping and then you find the switch and it is all light. But one can sit in darkness for the whole night, crying and weeping just underneath the switch. And that's actually the situation; we are unnecessarily crying and weeping.

Hence those who have known have a very strange feeling about people. They feel great compassion and 1/08/07

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also great laughter because they can see the stupidity -- that you have already got it but you are running hither and thither for no reason at all. And because of your running you go on missing. And they have great compassion also because you are suffering -- that is true, although your suffering is simply foolish. It is like a man who has seen a rope as a snake and now is running away and falls on a banana skin, and breaks a few bones and may be hospital. You know that he was simply a fool -- there was no snake at all! He may have even died from a heart attack... And without any snake; just a rope did the whole trick. This is the rope trick!

And that is the situation of man.

Initiation means that you have to change the situation. This absurd, ridiculous life pattern has to be changed completely. Look within, and if you cannot find anything there, then look outside. But I say categorically that nobody who has looked within has ever missed it, so there is no reason for your to miss it.

Nobody is an exception, it is an absolute law: one who goes within, finds it -- finds the kingdom of god, the perfect bliss, the absolute truth. And with it comes freedom and great fragrance. Life becomes a dance, a poetry, a constant ecstasy; moment-to-moment it goes on growing.

One is bewildered at how much ecstasy is possible, and 'Can I contain any more?' But one can contain infinite ecstasy. And it goes on becoming more and more. Unbelievable it is, because you think 'Now this is the limit, more is not possible,' but next day you discover that there is still more possible, and you go on discovering. It never comes to an end. There is a beginning in this journey but no end.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #26

Chapter title: None

26 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007265

ShortTitle: GWIND26

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

The search for truth is good as far as the beginning is concerned, but a moment comes when you have to go beyond it because the very search is a tension, a strain. The very search keeps you engaged, occupied, and truth is found only in a state of absolute non-occupation, in total relaxation. Then there is not even a search for truth. That is the paradox that has to be understood.

Sannyas begins as a seeking, as a searching. Jesus was talking to beginners when he said 'Seek, and ye shall find; knock and the doors shall be opened unto you, ask and it shall be given.' It is perfectly right for those who are just in the beginning. Lao Tzu says 'Seek and ye shall never find, seeking is the sure way of missing.' He is also right, perfectly right, as right as Jesus. And there is no contradiction. He is talking to the adepts, he is talking to those who have already gone deep in the search. Ultimately it has to be said: now drop seeking. First bring it to a climax, to the peak tension of search, and then from that peak relax, forget all about truth -- and suddenly you find it within yourself. Both are true.

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Lao Tzu, they will argue against him. Both are in a state of ignorance. As I see it these are two aspects of the same coin.

But I want you to remember the end; the beginning has already begun. Sannyas is an initiation, a beginning of the journey. But if you can remember the end then you will never go astray.

Prayer begins in bliss and ends in an explosion of fragrance. Bliss is the seed, prayer the flower, and then naturally when the flower opens there is fragrance. That fragrance is called Christ consciousness, Buddha consciousness, Krishna consciousness -- they all mean the same thing. They only indicate one thing, that the consciousness has become a fully opened lotus. But first remember blissfulness.

Many people pray but their prayer goes wrong from the very first step. They pray out of misery, confusion, sadness, frustration. They pray to get something, their prayer is nothing but a disguised form of desire. It is not thankfulness, on the contrary it is a complaint. True prayer is simply thankfulness for all that has already been given to you. True prayer is a dance, a rejoicing because life is so beautiful and existence is so exquisite and each moment is such ecstasy.

My sannyasins have to become singers, dance, rejoicers. The materialists have always been condemned by the so-called spiritualists as people who believe in drink, eat and be merry. But I say to my sannyasins

'Eat, drink and be merry.' There is nothing of materialism in it, in the beginning of spirituality because only a cheerful person can thank god. Thankfulness can come only when you are feeling a kind of fulfilment, joy.

Live your life with such intensity and passion that you can feel thankfulness, then everything is on the right track, in the right direction. Once you are blissful prayer is bound to follow; a blissful person cannot remain unprayerful. And when there is prayer the flower is opening.

If one can manage blissfulness then everything else follows of its own accord: prayer and fragrance, prayer and fulfilment, the flower and the sharing of the beauty of the flower with existence.

Ordinarily man is just a heap of flowers. The flowers are not interconnected, they don't have any organic unity; he is not an orchestra. Many instruments are being played but everybody is playing solo; hence there is great noise but no music. And all his instruments are beautiful. All that is needed is to create an organic unity between them, a harmony.

Sannyas me ans transforming the heap of flowers into a garland. When you make a garland all the flowers become joined by an invisible, hidden thread. That's what meditation is. It helps you to bring your body, mind, heart, and soul into a kind of deep harmony. And once your whole existence is in harmony, great bliss arises, great benediction.

That's what religion is all about. It has nothing to do with god, nothing to do with heaven and hell.

Those words are all theological nonsense. Basically religion is concerned in creating integrated individuality, it is a science of integration. And once you are integrated you are a conqueror, you are victorious, you have succeeded. You have used the opportunity that life gives to you. You have not wasted it and lived in vain.

Daniel is a beautiful word. It is not really a word but a whole philosophy. Daniel means, god is my judge.

Now, it contains in essence the whole of religion. It means surrendering yourself to god. It means not living the isolated life of the ego, it means becoming one with the whole.

And that's what sannyas is too: it is saying yes to existence. And then there is no fear. When you drop your ego all fear disappears; then whatsoever god wills you do. You are no more responsible because you are no more. Then it is all up to him.

With this trust a great revolution happens. You don't exist as a separate entity any more. It is like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean. Of course it loses something, it loses its limited definition, its identity, but it gains tremendously -- it becomes the whole ocean! So the loss is not much, the gain is infinite.

Meditation is two things together. It is a death and a resurrection -- the death of the ego and the birth of the soul. And it happens simultaneously: here you die and here you are reborn. I cannot say 'Here you die and there you are reborn;' it happens simultaneously, in the now. There is not even a gap of a split second. It is as if the clouds disperse an d suddenly the sun is there. It was always there, it was only hidden behind the clouds. Your real life is already there, just hidden behind the cloud of the ego. Ego is a dark cloud, but just a cloud; nothing very substantial in it. It can be dispersed very easily, and the art of dispersing it is 1/08/07

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meditation.

Meditation means becoming aware, alert, watchful. The more alert you are, the more you become aware that there is no ego. You are, but you are not separate from existence, you are part and parcel of it.

This feeling of oneness with existence brings great ecstasy because it means you are eternal; you have always been here and you will always be here. That means immortality.

If the ego dies we disappear as mortal beings and we appear as immortal beings. So die to be reborn'

That's the meaning of the Christian symbol of the cross. But Christians have missed the meaning of the symbol as all religions have missed the message of the founders. Buddhists have missed Buddha, Christians have missed Christ, Mohammed ans have missed Mohammed. It is a very strange phenomenon that the followers are doing something totally opposite.

They go on calling themselves Christians but they are really killing the very spirit of Christ.

Christ was not crucified by the Romans and the Jews. They could not kill him, they only killed the body.

But if you want to know where exactly he has been crucified, the place is the Vatican; he has been crucified there by the popes. And they have been continuously killing him.

The cross has nothing to do with a literal meaning, the cross simply means meditation. It simply means dying to the ego; hence the story that after three days Jesus is resurrected. Between death and resurrection there is a gap of three days. Those three days simply represent the body, the mind an d the heart.

First the body dies. You start dropping the idea of a separate body; you can see the stupidity of it. Each moment existence goes on pouring new energy into you -- how can you think yourself separate? If your breathing is cut off you will be dead. And it is not only breathing; every day you are taking in food and water, and existence goes on pouring into you. Every day you are dropping out everything that has died; life goes on pouring in and dead things are being thrown out of the body. The body is like a river, continuously getting more life and dropping all that is dead. That represents the first death, the first day.

Then the mind, which is a little subtler, thoughts -- they also come from the outside. Just as air and water and food come from the outside your mind goes on collecting thoughts from everywhere. The mind dies as a separate entity.

And then the most subtle thing happens on the third day -- they are just symbolic these three days --

feeling, emotion, the heart dies. And then there is resurrection. In the East we call it the birth of the fourth, turiya: turiya means the fourth.

When these three have disappeared, have become one with existence, suddenly you become aware of a being which is not yours, which is universal. That is resurrection.

My idea of prayer is not the ordinary idea of so-called religions. Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians --

they all go on praying. But that is not my idea of prayer and I don't think it is the right kind of prayer.

Prayer does not need any words. What is there to say to god? -- he knows it already. What is there to ask? -- he has given it already. And if something is not given, that simply means it is not needed. He is wiser than you, but people go on advising him: Do this, do that, give me this, give me that -- as if god is not wise enough. All your prayer is just advice, and people go on persisting every day. It is a kind of nagging, nagging god 'How long will you not listen? I will go on asking morning and evening.' Mohammedans are the most persistent -- five times a day. They must have driven god mad. Christians are better; at least they do it only on sunday. Hindus are even better; they do it only once in a while, on the festival days, otherwise they don't bother much.

To me prayer has nothing to do with words. It is a silent gratefulness; it is utterly silent, but a deep gratefulness. It is possible only if you learn how to be blissful, otherwise there will be nothing to be grateful for.

So I teach my sannyasins not prayer but bliss. Dance, sing, be blissful, be of great cheer. Let your life be a life of love and laughter and you will start feeling a subtle presence of prayerfulness in you. And that prayerfulness will not be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan, it will be simply prayerfulness.

A true religious person cannot be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan; he is simply religious. He has a prayerful being -- that's all.

It is only possible for a blissful person to trust in god. But for centuries our saints have been sad, they all carried long faces; hence I say that they were not religious. They were just egoistic people, they were using religion to fulfill their egos. They were pretenders.

True religion is bound to be a rejoicing. One needs not believe in god, one needs to believe in bliss, and 1/08/07

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then god comes in from the backdoor. And remember: god always comes from the backdoor like a thief.

You know who is translating for you - his name is Haridas! and Hari means a thief! Now I am coming in through the thief. He comes in from the backdoor and snatches your heart and runs away!

I have already done it with you! And whatsoever remains Haridas will take.

How long will you be here?

- I will leave on the fourth of August and come back in October.

- Come back because Germans are needed!

Hitherto the whole past of humanity has been in some way or other condemning life and its joys. It has been a life-negative approach, and to be life-negative is to be against God because life is God.

Hence I stand against all so-called religions; not against Christ, not against Buddha, not against Krishna, but certainly against Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, because these people are all life-negative. They destroy something very delicate and valuable in you; they make you feel guilty about your joy. My effort here is to help you be free of all guilt and rejoice in life like small children. Rejoice in everything, even small things. If you start rejoicing, even a cup of tea starts having a sacred significance.

You can sip the tea in such a prayerful way, with such gratitude, with such meditativeness, that there is no need to go to any church. And in fact they won't allow you in with a cup of tea... or a bottle of beer! Beer is a little higher. For the beginners a cup of tea, for the adepts a bottle of beer.

My whole approach is to rejoice in everything and help others also to be happy, because bliss is divine.

Love is the only bridge to victory. But a very strange bridge it is, because the first requirement of love is surrender. It is victory through surrender; hence it has a tremendous beauty. It is non-aggressive, it is receptive; it wins not by conquering, it wins by being conquered.

Those who are trying to conquer God are fools, they cannot do it. The wise people have surrendered to God; they have invited him to conquer them, to possess them. God cannot be possessed by you but you can allow him to possess you. That's what love is: it allows one to be possessed. It is non-possessive, it has no desire to possess. Its only longing is to be possessed, totally possessed, so nothing is left in oneself of one's own.

That's what sannyas is all about: a tremendous and total surrender -- and in that very surrender victory happens.

Hari is one of the names of God, and one of the most beautiful. There are thousands of names of God in different languages of the world. Sufis have ninety-nine names of God. All are beautiful, but Hari is unique.

There is no other name which can be compared with Hari. It really says something about God, and to say something about God is almost impossible. But it manages to say something about the unsayable: it says God is a thief.

And if you allow him, he is always ready to steal your heart. And the moment it happens you have come to know the greatest splendor of your life. All else is ordinary. When you have lost your heart to God, when his arrow has penetrated your heart totally, you have come to know that which is immortal, deathless.

To be stolen by God is the greatest honor. There can be nothing higher than that, that you have been thought to be worthy, that you have been chosen, that your heart has been thought to be precious enough for God to steal it.

The whole preparation of sannyas is so that God is tempted to steal you and your heart. And my sannyasins can rest assured: they are becoming more beautiful every day, and God is bound to be tempted.

Many hearts are going to be stolen in these coming few years, twenty years; in the last part of this century millions of hearts are going to be stolen by God.

Harimurti means an image of God. So first let God steal your heart and then you also become a thief!

The Golden Wind

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Query:-

Chapter #28

Chapter title: None

28 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007275

ShortTitle: GWIND28

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

There have been two kinds of religion in the world: the religions of meditation and the religions of prayer. And they have existed like enemies; they have divided the whole of humanity.

For example, Buddhism is a religion of meditation, Christianity is a religion of prayer, and up to now there has been no bridge between them. It has not only divided humanity, it has divided each human being into two parts -- because man's wholeness needs to be fulfilled in its wholeness. And man has both aspects his being.

One aspect is fulfilled by meditation, another aspect is fulfilled by prayer. And if one sticks to one against the other, then he remains only half. Hence in the past the so-called holy men were not really holy, because they were not whole. It is because of this schizophrenic division that religion has not been able to bring the revolution it is capable of.

My effort here is to create a bridge. My sannyasin has to be both a man of meditation and a man of prayer, together.

Meditation means a state of thoughtless awareness. It is in a way negative; it rejects thoughts and creates a silent state inside you. It is beautiful, that silence, but it is lacking something. It is lacking music, there is no poetry in it, there is no dance in it. It is a kind of dead silence, no song arises out of it.

Prayer means the heart is full of love. It is a positive approach. Prayer can dance, prayer can sing, prayer can be a celebration, but without meditation all that celebration remains superficial, noisy. Yes, there is a great liveliness in it but that liveliness is childish, not mature.

Maturity comes through meditation, joy comes through prayer. Centering comes through meditation, dancing comes through prayer. A man is really blessed who can remain centred and yet in a dance, who c an become the centre of the cyclone. And that is my vision of a sannyasin, a true religious person, the whole person.

And it is possible, there is no difficulty in it, there is no intrinsic problem in it. Of course because it has to fulfil two apparently contradictory dimensions together, in the past people chose one. It was easier, less complicated but less rich, obviously.

Man has to grow from simplicity to complexity, but the complexity should not lose track of simplicity, otherwise it becomes insane. It should remain rooted in simplicity and yet it should be complex. Then one has a tremendous beauty because when opposites meet as complementaries they give you dimensions; you are not one-dimensional.

So remember it: be meditative, be prayerful. Through meditation create emptiness and through prayer create love to fill it, so the emptiness becomes an overflowing of love.

One can be rich by possessing many things but that richness is pseudo, it is just befooling oneself. You come empty-handed into the world and you will have to go empty-handed; all your possessions will have to be left behind. So you can waste your life in accumulating them but you are not really gaining anything through life. On the contrary you are wasting a tremendous opportunity to be rich.

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The real richness is something inner; it has nothing to do with things. And remember: I am not against things -- use, enjoy things, they have their utility. I am not anti-world, not anti-life, not anti -- enjoyment --

enjoy life in all its beauty. But remember that's not all, that is only a very peripheral world. Your real treasure is within you. So don't get lost in the jungle of the world, otherwise you will remain poor and you will die poor.

Jesus says 'Blessed are the poor for theirs is the kingdom of god.' I would like to say 'Blessed are the rich for theirs is the kingdom of god,' although what he means by poor is exactly the same as what I mean by rich, but I am talking more directly.

When he says 'Blessed are the poor in spirit,' he simply means those who are egoless, humble, simple.

innocent -- but that is what I call richness. Why call it poverty? -- it is not poverty. The person with an ego is poor; the person with pretentions is the poor person, Alexander the Great is a poor person, not Jesus; Jesus is the richest person the world has ever known. But I know by his idea of poverty he means exactly what I mean by richness. But I like a direct approach. Why go round about? -- first calling it poverty and then explaining it so that it becomes richness. Why not say it directly? But there is a reason why he used the word 'poverty'; that word has a tremendous appeal for the so-called religious people. They have always worshipped poverty, although their poverty is totally different from what Jesus calls poverty; hence there is bound to be misunderstanding.

Once a young man, a Jesus freak, came to me. He was living as poor a life as possible, without shoes, with rotten clothes. And he was travelling on foot all over India. From the Himalayas he was going to the south, and just living by begging.

When he passed the town I was in somebody told him about me and he came to see me. And I said

'What are you doing? What is this nonsense?' He said 'You call it nonsense? Jesus says "Blessed are the poor in spirit."' I said he does not say that just by not wearing shoes you become poor in spirit or just by begging you become poor in spirit. As far as I can see you are tremendously egoistic. The moment I said this he became very angry, almost ready to fight.

I said 'Sit down. That's what I am saying -- that you are not humble. Your humbleness is just a strategy of the ego and you are using Jesus' words in a totally wrong context; you have not understood them.'

But that's what Christians down the ages have been doing with the words of Christ. And that is going to be done to almost all enlightened people and their teachings. Hence my effort is to be as direct as possible, so there is less possibility of misunderstanding.

I don't want to be metaphorical, I don't want to use parables because they can be interpreted in many ways. I don't want to use traditional words, or if I have to use them because there are no other words available then I want to make my meaning as clear as possible, as definite as possible. In that sense I am very logical and mathematical.

I call meditation the greatest richness because it makes you aware of your own infinite treasure. It makes you a master of the kingdom of god. And the only key to that kingdom is through meditation, through silence, watchfulness, awareness.

Man can have knowledge but not wisdom. Man can achieve as much knowledge as he wants. It is easy, you just need a little mind effort, a little exertion. You can go on feeding your memory system. It is a computer; you can accumulate whole libraries. But wisdom is not something that you can accumulate because it does not happen through the mind at all. It happens through the heart, it happens through love, not through logic.

When the heart is open with love, with trust, when the heart is surrendered to the whole, then a new kind of insight arises in you, a clarity a tremendously deep understanding of what life is all about, of who you are, of why this whole existence exists in the first place. All the secrets are revealed, but through love not through logic, through the heart not through the head. God has a direct connection with the heart, no connection with the head at all. So if one wants to approach god the way goes through the heart.

Once you have known wisdom through the heart then you can use your mind also as a good servant, then you can use even the knowledge accumulated by the mind in the service of wisdom -- but not before you have known through the heart. Hence, rather than wasting time in accumulating unnecessary information, and people go on accumulating such stupid information, which is utterly ridiculous. If you look in the history books ... children are forced to remember the names of stupid kings and queens and their birth date and their death date -- and what do they have to do with this poor child?

Once a teacher asked a child 'If Adam had never left the garden of Eden what would have happened?'

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child said 'One thing is certain: there would have been no history and no history class! It all began with Adam getting out of the garden of Eden.'

It is rumoured that the first words that Adam uttered when he was coming out of the gate... to Eve he said 'We are passing through a great crisis.'And since then we have always been passing through a great crisis. It is always a crisis. Not for a single moment have the crises stopped: one crisis after another crisis.

And the poor children have to read history.

When I was a student in the school that was a constant problem for my teachers, because I would insist

'What is the purpose? Why should I know about this man? Did he know anything about me? Then why should I bother?' My history teacher would simply close his eyes and sit silently -- what to do? Many times he sent me to the principal saying 'Please explain to this boy. He asks such questions that cannot be answered. And in a way he is right...' because what do I have to do with some Henry, some Edward? What do I have to do with these people/ And still I am wondering because I have not come across any situation in which they were needed. And I don't think they will ever be needed. And all kinds of geographies...

Don't waste your time with information. All the universities are wasting peoples' lives. Almost ninety-nine per cent that they teach is rubbish.

The one per cent, it seems enters the rubbish without their knowledge, otherwise they would stop that too. Somehow it gets mixed into the rubbish and enters the curriculums and the texts; otherwise it is all absurd.

D.H. Lawrence had the suggestion that if for one hundred years we could close all the schools and universities humanity would be immensely benefitted. And I agree with him: it would be the greatest blessing to humanity if for one hundred years there were no school, no college, no university -- all were finished. For one hundred years, a holiday. Man would become fresh, young again and he would forget all about Alexander the Great and Napoleon and Ivan the Terrible and Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. It would be such an unburdening and man could start from ABC.

But each person can do it. It may not be possible to persuade the whole of humanity to stop all the colleges and universities, but individuals can be persuaded. And that's what I go on doing with my sannyasins: I persuade them to drop all nonsense and give the uttermost priority to their heart.

Move your energy to the heart, be more loving and you are in for a great surprise. As your love grows, as your love petals open and your heart becomes a lotus, something tremendously beautiful starts descending on you -- that is wisdom. And wisdom brings freedom.

Knowledge brings information, wisdom brings transformation.

Even a drop of bliss is an ocean. One can be drowned in a single drop of bliss. In fact a single drop of bliss is immeasurable. It is enough, more than enough, because bliss has no boundaries, it is infinite, and even a drop of infinity is infinite. It is as vast as the sky.

The only reason why we cannot attain it is that we are clinging to the ego which keeps us confined, which makes us very small. If we want to be blissful we have to drop our boundaries. We have to forget that we are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, that we are communists, socialists, fascists. We have to forget all boundaries that ideologies draw around us -- religions and cultures, traditions, conventions, moralities.

Once all these boundaries are dropped, suddenly you are moving into a totally new world, a world which is unbounded. You are getting out of the prison.

To be a Christian is to be in a prison. Jesus was never a Christian, remember. And he rebelled against the Jews, that's why they crucified him. He rebelled against all boundaries, against all that was past, He was a rebel. So was Buddha, so was Lao Tzu, and so is the case with everyone who has ever experienced bliss.

Drop the boundaries, definitions, identities and the doors are open -- there is nobody barring the path --

and one immediately plunges into the world of bliss.

Knowledge never makes you blissful; on the contrary it makes you more and more miserable. And it can be easily observed, it is a factual phenomenon. As man has grown more and more in knowledge, he has become more and more miserable. Whenever a society is well-educated, people start feeling life is meaningless, people start feeling a kind of deep boredom.

Move to the primitive societies, go to the aboriginals who are still living five thousand years back and you will be surprised by one thing: they don't have anything to be blissful about but they are blissful. They don't have big aeroplanes and palaces and television sets, they have no technology, they are living in a primitive way, but one thing is very clear, very obvious, they are blissful -- poor, but blissful. Why is it so?

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Query:-

Move to a very knowledgeable society where education has become available to almost one hundred per cent of the people and you will be surprised: people look very miserable. They have lost something rather than gaining. In accumulating knowledge they have forgotten to move into the world of wisdom. They have made knowledge a substitute, and remember substitutes never fulfil.

You love a woman -- that is a tremendously beautiful experience -- but you can get a substitute through a prostitute. Now in America they have substitute wives. And psychologists are suggesting to people to go to a substitute just for a change because they are so bored with their wife, bored with their family. But a substitute wife is after all a substitute; it is a plastic flower. She does not love you, you don't love her. At the most it can be a superficial meeting. At the most it can be sexual, but it can't have intimacy; it can never be spiritual. You use the woman and the woman uses you. It is a monetary relationship; you are ready to pay, she is ready to sell.

Now there are male prostitutes also! Of course not in poor countries like India, but in England, in America you can find male prostitutes. These are the great things that are happening through women's liberation. If men can have women prostitutes, why cannot woman enjoy male prostitutes? -- equality after all is equality. So people can go to foolish extremes, absurd extremes.

But slowly slowly everything is becoming a substitute, The true thing goes on disappearing. Instead of the true thing some substitute takes its place because a substitute can be manufactured, it is easily available, sellable, marketable. The real thing is not sellable or marketable; you have to deserve it.

Knowledge is a substitute. You can go to any university, to any library, to any museum, and you can accumulate much knowledge, but for wisdom you cannot go anywhere. In fact you have to stop going, you have to be very still and silent. You have to dig deep within yourself, to the very rock-bottom of your being.

It is arduous, but when you are absolutely silent, when all thoughts have disappeared, when your eyes are as clear as a mirror without any dust, you become capable of seeing that which is. That is wisdom.

And simultaneously, as wisdom happens your heart starts dancing. In fact for the first time you hear the REAL heart beat. For the first time you hear the song of the heart. For the first time your whole being --

body, mind, heart, soul -- are all dancing together and there is tremendous grace. My sannyasins have to achieve it. That's the only thing worth achieving, a blissful wisdom.

Blessed are the blissful, because they have already entered into the kingdom of god. Not knowing that they are entering into god's heart they have entered. In fact god can never be found directly. You cannot approach god directly, he has no address; he has no name either, no form. If you search and seek god you will never find him.

It is because of this fact that humanity has slowly slowly turned atheistic, because people have looked for god and they have not found him. They searched, they wasted their lives and finally they discovered it had been an exercise in utter futility.

But the whole responsibility falls on the shoulders of the priests, the popes, the shankaracharyas, the imams, the ayatollah, the so-called religious people, the religious preachers, because they go on telling people to search for god, to seek god -- and that is patent nonsense'

I say seek bliss and you will find god. Seek god and you will not find god and you will become more miserable than you were ever before because not finding something on which you have staked your whole life is bound to make you very frustrated. Forget all about god; just search for bliss, find the causes of your misery and drop those causes, remove those causes from the very roots.

And you will be surprised: as all the causes of misery are dropped bliss starts growing in you. And in blissful moments you will become aware of a new presence surrounding you -- and not only you but the whole existence. That presence is god.

God is not a person but a presence. God is not god but godliness.

Bliss comes like a breeze, it comes like fresh air. You cannot see it but you can feel it. It is not tangible, it is not material. You cannot show it to anybody; it is not objective. But you can breathe it and you can be tremendously enriched and nourished by it. In fact if somebody is open to you he will also feel your bliss. It cannot be proved -- that is true. It cannot be proved in a scientific way because it is not an object, it is a subjective experience, something inner, very inner. But when one feels it there is absolute certainty, there is no doubt at all. Doubt is impossible in those moments. It is impossible even to ask a question about it. It is so self-evident and so totally convincing that it is not possible for there to be any question mark. It is only in such moments that trust is born.

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Query:-

God cannot be believed in, and those who believe in god are simply deceiving themselves, they are dishonest people. My observation is that the so-called religious people are the most insincere and dishonest people in the world. Atheists are more sincere, honest, authentic; theists are hocus-pocus, bogus, pretenders, hypocrites, living a double kind of life: saying one thing and doing exactly the opposite. They have two doors to their life; the front-door, where they are Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans and are reading the Bhagavad Gita and the Koran and the Bible and having all the paraphernalia of their religious ritual.

And they have a backdoor also where you will find their reality. And you will be surprised: you were thinking this man was one and this man is not one, this man is not even two, this man is many. He has many masks and he goes on changing his masks.

In fact people have become so skilful that they don't need to change their mask, it is almost an autonomous process. The mask changes itself; as the situation changes the mask changes. You can observe it in others, you can observe it in yourself. You know when you are smiling truly and when you are simply smiling just to deceive, because a smile is expected; you are fulfilling a certain expectation. But it is only on the lips, an exercise of the lips maybe but it has nothing else behind it, it is a facade.

A real trust is not a belief, it is an experience. God has to be experienced. And never believe before you come to experience -- never never -- because once a belief enters your being it poisons you. Drop all beliefs because god is -- why believe? Why not experience?

I am not a teacher. I don't give you a dogma or a philosophy; I am simply a witness. I say 'I have experienced, so YOU can experience.' And there is no need at all to believe.

I was absolutely atheistic and I am tremendously fortunate that I never believed in god because if I had I would have never known. I never believed in anything at all. I was such a sceptical person that I would even ask things which nobody seems to ask. I would even ask about the existence of the other person, whether the other person really existed or was I just dreaming. Because sometimes you dream and there are persons in your dream.

I have always loved Chuang Tzu's famous statement: 'One night I dreamt that I became a butterfly, and since then I have always been in trouble because I have not been able to figure it out: if Chuang Tzu can dream that he is a butterfly, who knows? -- in the morning the butterfly may fall asleep and start dreaming that she is a Chuang Tzu. Who knows?'

I had it written just behind my desk when I was the university. One of my professors came to see me one day. He saw that and he said 'Why have you written this Chuang Tzu statement?' I said 'This is my statement too. I don't believe that you are.'

He said 'What are you saying?' I said 'Because sometimes you come in the dreams also. And now the thing has become more complicated.' He said 'What do you mean?' I said 'In the dream also you asked about this board, "Why do you have this board?" -- and now you are asking again. Now which one to believe?'

He simply went out. He said 'You will drive me crazy! Are you mad or something?'

But I am happy that I was that mad. Because I could not believe in anything I was free, totally free, and in that freedom something transpired; in that utter emptiness something came from the beyond like a breeze.

I could not see it but I felt it; I felt the freshness of it, I felt the fragrance of it and it transformed me. I am still not a believer because now god is a certainty to me.

Now I don't say God exists, 'I say 'ONLY god exists and nothing else.'

The Golden Wind

Chapter #29

Chapter title: None

29 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007285

ShortTitle: GWIND29

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Query:-

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

What is the meaning of your name? -- I don't know. -- That's good. I don't know either! -- This will be your name: Ma Anand Waveney. Anand means bliss -- that much I know! And that's all that is worth knowing.

Seek bliss and all else will follow. Whatsoever Waveney means doesn't matter, but remember that religion is basically a search for bliss, not a search for god, not a search for truth.

Once bliss happens, once you are totally blissful you become aware of many things you were not aware of before. You become aware of truth, you become aware of beauty, you become aware of a music that permeates the whole of existence. In fact that music is called god. Hence the Bible starts 'In the beginning there was the word.' That word is not the right translation of the original. In the beginning there was music, sound, celestial sound. And god was with the word and god was the word.

Now 'word' seems to be absolutely irrelevant. The word cannot be in the beginning because word needs meaning and meaning can be given only by people. No word has intrinsic meaning, all meanings are given meanings. And god certainly is not a word; the word 'god' is not god. But god is music, harmony, rhythm.

So if I were to translate the Bible from the original I would say 'In the beginning there was music, great harmony. And god was with that music and god was that music.'

We can hear it again because it is something eternal. It was in the beginning, it is in the middle, it will be in the end -- it will always be. All that we need is the right approach, the right state of receptivity. That's what bliss creates in you.

A miserable person becomes closed. And that is our usual observation, everybody knows it: when you are miserable you are closed, all communication is lost, all communion is lost. And when you are blissful you want to relate, you want to commune, you are open, you are available, you are vulnerable.

Hence to me religion is basically a search for bliss and then everything else follows. Jesus uses a different terminology but he means exactly the same thing. He says 'First seek ye the kingdom of god, then all else shall be added unto you.' By the phrase 'kingdom of god' he means exactly what I mean by bliss.

Bliss is the kingdom of god, and to find it is all that is needed, then everything else simply follows of its own accord.

We know a love that is momentary. One day it is there, another day it is gone. Its very momentariness shows that it is not real love, it is something else masquerading as love -- maybe lust, some biological urge, some psychological need, the fear of being alone, an effort to remain occupied with the other, an endeavour to fill one's emptiness in some way or other. It can be a thousand and one other things but it is not love. If it is love... the most essential quality of love is its everlastingness.

Once you have tasted the eternity of love, the timelessness of love, you are transformed. Then you are no more part of the mundane world; you enter into the world of the holy, the sacred. Of course you go on living in the same ordinary way, in fact you become more ordinary than you ever were before. You lose all pretensions, all egoistic trips. You forget all about your being somebody, you become utterly ordinary. But in that ordinariness there is a glow, a grace, a beauty, a great splendour. You are full of light because you are full of love, you are full of joy because you are full of love. You are always ready to share because you have stumbled upon an inexhaustible source. You cannot be miserly any more.

The love I am talking about has nothing to do with our so-called relationships. Our relationships are arbitrary. The love which is eternal relates but it never creates relationships. It relates -- it relate-q to trees, to the sun, to the moon, to the wind, to people, to the animals, to the earth, to the rocks -- it is a twenty-four-hour-a-day relating, but it does not create any relationship.

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Relating is like a rivers it is a flow, it is a movement, it is dynamic, alive, it is a dance. Relationship is something stagnant, something that has gone stale, something that has stopped growing, something stunted.

And whenever there is something which has stopped growing you start feeling bored, you start feeling sad.

A despair surrounds you and a great anguish arises in you because you start losing contact with life.

Life is always riverlike and now you are tethered to something -- a wife, a husband, a friend. Whenever one is tethered one becomes angry because nobody wants to lose his freedom. Man's greatest joy is in being free. And the stupidity of the human mind ;s such that it goes on continuously creating situations in which that freedom is lost again and again. Then you are like a bird whose wings have been cut: you look like a bird but your soul suffers because you cannot fly -- and what is a bird which cannot fly? And what is a being who is not in a flow, who is not growing?

Being is alive when it is becoming. Being is becoming. If you stop becoming, your being becomes like a dead rock, and if you go on moving then you are like a lotus which goes on opening.

My sannyasins have to know the great difference between relating and relationship. And it is not only about love that I am talking, it has to be your very style of life. Never, never for a single moment lose your freedom. And never destroy anybody else's freedom. That's what religion means to me. A really religious person remains free and helps the people who come in contact with him to be free. He never possesses anybody and he never allows anybody to possess him.

It needs constant vigilance because our minds always want to cling and in clinging we lose. In clinging we start committing suicide. Then a very strange situation arises: we hate the person we love, we want to destroy the person we cling to. A very strange situation, but if you understand it, it is perfectly clear and logical. You hate the person because he has destroyed your freedom. You hate the situation because you are imprisoned in it, you are a prisoner. And you are a clinger because the known, the familiar, gives you a certain comfort and you are afraid of the unknown, the beyond.

So you go on doing something which is self-contradictory: on the one hand you cling, on the other hand you want freedom. And that is what all the people of the world are struggling with. They cling to the very cage of which they want to be free and their whole life remains just a futile exercise. They cannot be free because they cling, and they cannot destroy the cage because then there is nothing else to cling to. And they cannot drop the idea of being free because that is our intrinsic nature. It is impossible to drop it; there is no way to do it.

Not a single human being has been able to do it up to now and nobody is ever going to succeed in doing it, because it is not that we love freedom, in fact we are freedom and only in freedom can we grow.

So this is true about love, this is true about everything else in your life too.

My suggestion to all of my sannyasins is don't trust in nouns, trust in verbs. Become a verb rather than becoming a noun. Rather than love, think of loving. Rather than being, think of becoming. Rather than of a flower, think of flowering. Always think in terms of verbs and you will never be frustrated. Your life will become a constant growth from one peak to another peak, and those peaks go on becoming higher and higher.

The search for god, truth, bliss, or whatsoever one likes to call it, is really a search for a union with the whole.

We are brought up by every society, civilisation, religion, in such a way that we are given a false identity. We are all deceived and cheated. And the people who cheat us are very powerful; in fact their power depends on cheating and they have been cheating for centuries. They have accumulated great power

-- the politicians, the priests -- and they are afraid of allowing anybody to know the truth. Their whole business depends on people who are gullible, ready to be deceived, very willing to be deceived, in fact asking to be deceived, hankering to be deceived.

From the very childhood they create such situations that slowly slowly the child becomes aware that if he wants to survive in the world he has to compromise. It is not very consciously -- you can't expect that much consciousness from a child, even old people are not so conscious -- but a vague awareness starts growing in the child that 'If I am going to be true I will be in constant trouble.' If he says anything true he is immediately punished.

My father used to ask me when I was a child 'Have you done this?' And I would always answer him with another question. And he said 'What is this nonsense? You always answer me by another question.' I said 'I want to be perfectly clear about it. Am I going to be punished if I say the truth? About this I want to be very clear. If I am going to be punished by being truthful I need not be truthful; there is no proof, there is no 1/08/07

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evidence. I can lie and I can lie perfectly! So you can choose: If you want a beautiful, nice lie, I am ready to lie. And I challenge you: you will not be able to find out that I lied. Or if you want the truth then you have to be in control a little, then you cannot punish me. So choose: if you love truth I am ready to say exactly whatsoever it is, as naked as possible.'

He would ponder over it: 'What to do with this boy?' 'It is clear-cut,' I said 'It is so clear -- I am ready to do anything that is going to make you happy. If truth makes you happy then you have to be a little more alert. You cannot misbehave with me, because you have chosen it. Otherwise I need not say the truth. I am not hiding anything; I am simply making my situation clear, that I have become aware of this fact that it is going to be a constant problem. So it is better to be clear from the very beginning.

So one day he said 'Okay. I want the truth,' and I told him the truth and he became so angry that I said

'Just be watchful! I am not going to tolerate this anger. This is your choice. If you want to be angry you can close the room and you can be angry at yourself for choosing a wrong thing. f d that was last thing, he stopped asking me, because this was the first thing to be decided every time.

This is the situation of every child. Every child comes to a point many times almost every day when he has to decide that if he wants to survive he has to lie, he has to compromise, he has to adjust; if he says the truth then he is unnecessarily getting into trouble. And the people who surround him are powerful; they can torture him, they can make him suffer. And almost every child choose survival because that is a very fundamental need of life, to survive.

By the time you are strong enough to be truthful you have lost all sense of truth. Your lies have gone so deep in you, they have become so unconscious, they have become part and parcel of your blood, bones and marrow, that it becomes next to impossible to get rid of them.

That's the whole process of being a sannyasin: what the society has done to you-has to be undone. You have to be reborn, actually reborn; you have to be a child again, you have to start learning things from ABC, only then will you be aware that the ego is a false entity imposed on you, that you are not a separate unit at all, that you are part of the organic whole.

And to know it brings great rejoicing, because when you are not as a separate entity, how can anxiety exist, how can anguish exist? Then life becomes a sheer celebration. Then there is freedom without any fear.

Bliss is equivalent to god. 'God' is a beautiful word but it has become ugly because of wrong associations. It has fallen into wrong company. The priests have exploited it so much that I appreciate very much Friedrich Nietzsche's declaration that god is dead and man is free. In fact he is saying the god of the priests is dead because he only knew about the god of the priests. He had no idea about the god of the buddhas because the god of the Buddhas has nothing to do with any super-human person; it is a state of bliss. One need not believe in god at all.

Buddha himself never believed in any god, he was as atheistic as one can be, and yet there has never been such a holy man on earth as he was: so godless and so godlike. His godlikeness is superb, unique.

Nobody even comes close to him.

Jesus is beautiful, Zarathustra is beautiful, Mahavira is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, Moses is beautiful, but Buddha has some tremendous beauty around him, some inexplicable grace, something very much of the beyond. And it became possible only because he never believed in the stupid idea of god. He went directly into the search, into the enquiry of the existence of bliss. And because he became blissful he became divine. He knew that god is, not as a person but as a quality.

It is as when the sun rises -- the same quality. It is as when the cuckoo starts calling from the distance --

the same quality. It is there in a rose flower. It is in the eyes of two lovers. It is there when a dancer loses himself in the dance, when the dancer disappears and only the dance remains.

Once you have experienced it you will find it everywhere. You will stumble upon god from all sides.

Wherever you will go you will encounter him. It is impossible then to avoid him.

Since I have known him I have not been able to avoid him for a single moment. Even if you are alone in your room he is inside you. He does not leave you alone: even if you go to the bathroom he is there' Even if you are asleep in your bed he is sleeping with you. Once you have known, he is always there, in your very breathing, in your very heartbeat.

But seek him through bliss, otherwise there is a danger of becoming just a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. And I want my sannyasins to be aware of all those pitfalls.

There is only one way to find truth and that is through bliss. A miserable person cannot find truth. He 1/08/07

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can theorise about truth, he can think about truth, he may create great systems of philosopher. But all those are just sandcastles or palaces made of playing cards: just a small breeze and the whole palace collapses.

All great systems of philosophy have no foundations because the person who created them had no experience of truth. Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Vico, Feverbalh, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Bertrand Russell -- all these people have created beautiful theories, but they are all words; they are not sustained by any experience..

There have existed two rivers of consciousness: One is of the philosophers Aristotle in the West is the father of that, the originator. The other is of the mystics. That is a totally different kind of river. It has nothing to do with philosophising, it is rooted in existential experience. And it has almost always happened that whenever there was a great mystic his followers always became divided between these currents.

The real ones, those who have understood the master, those who have really loved the master, became mystics. And those who have understood only the words of the master have become very knowledgeable; they became the philosophers.

Socrates was a mystic. Plato was his disciple but he lost track; he became a philosopher. Aristotle was Plato's disciple.

When Buddha died thirty-six systems of philosophy were born amongst his followers -- thirty-six!

Almost all kinds of possibilities are exhausted by those thirty-six systems. In fact there cannot be more than thirty-six systems. That is all the possible combinations, the whole world of philosophy exploded.

And the real people... Mahakashyapa, one of Buddha's most authentic disciples, remained silent, he didn't say anything. He started a totally different tradition, the tradition of the mystics. He transmitted his experience not through words, not through scriptures, but through a totally different kind of communion: the communion of the master and the disciple.

It is through Mahakashyapa that the tradition of Zen was born. He was the first, and very great mystics followed. But it is a totally different world: there is no argument about god, no argument about truth, no argument at all. mere, argumentation is not the way but meditation, not mind but meditation.

These people became more and more silent. And as you become silent your inner source of blissfulness start exploding. It is the words and theories and the philosophies which function like rocks and don't allow your springs of bliss to flow.

So from this very first moment remember it, that my way is the way of a mystic, not of a philosopher. I believe in bliss, not in theories about bliss. And I want you to taste it, not just to think about it. It is pointless to go on thinking about food -- it won't nourish you. It is stupid to go on thinking about water. Why? --

when the river is flowing? You can drink and you can quench your thirst and you can swim in the river and you can become the river and go to the sea.

There are foolish people who are standing or sitting on the bank and thinking about water, theorising about water, finding what water consists of and dying of thirst'

So don't be a thinker, don't be a philosopher, be a mystic. My sannyasins have to be mystics, existential experiencers. It is a part of realisation.

Mind is misery. If one wants to be blissful in the mind there is no possibility. Mind is a dis-ease, exactly a disease, a restlessness. But one can transcend mind, one need not remain in it, one can jump out of it. It is our decision whether to be in it or not.

The whole phenomenon of religion depends on this possibility, that man can take a jump out of the mind. And that's what meditation is all about: the art of getting out of the mind. And it is not difficult at all, it is very simple. Just watch the mind, with no judgement. Don't be a judge, just be a witness, mirrorlike.

The mirror does not say 'How beautiful, how ugly, how disgusting, the mirror simply reflects and remains silent. That's the way of the meditator: he becomes a mirror, he looks at the mind. Thousands of thoughts and desires and memories go on passing day in, day out -- he goes on watching, with no judgement at all. He does not say 'This is good, this is bad, this should not be, this should be, I should choose -- this is a gem, what a beautiful thought! And this is a disgusting thought, this should not be allowed to enter my mind.' If you say those things you get involved. You start getting inside the mind; you become entangled and you lose meditation.

Meditation simply means a choiceless awareness. It takes a little time because it is a knack to learn, but if one goes on trying -- whenever you have time just go on trying. Whenever you have any time close your eyes and watch the mind. Enjoy it. It is far more interesting than going to any movie, than sitting like a stupid person before a TV set.

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It is good that in the West the TV set is now being called the idiot box; in fact only idiots sit before it.

The box is not so much of an idiot as the people who Bit before it. And they go on sitting...

Now the average American sits before the idiot box five to six hours per day, glued to the chair. If this goes on and on then America is going to become the most stupid country in the world. They have somehow to get rid of this nonsense.

And what do they go on watching? -- the same murder and the same violence and rape and the same old stories, the same triangles: two women, one man or two men, one woman. It is such a stupidity! Man has been writing the same story again and again and there are fools who go on watching them. The story is the same, the plot is the same, the strategy is the same, nothing is new in it.

It is far more interesting to watch your own mind because it is far more insane and far more inventive too. If you simply go on watching it you will be surprised. You will find more postures for love-making than any psychologist has ever discovered. You will defeat all Masters-and-Johnsons and Kinsey reports and the old master Vatsyayana and all his postures for love making. Your mind is perfectly capable of inventing such absurd postures. And the mind is so interesting... You will do all kinds of violence and all kinds of murders and you will commit suicide and everything will happen -- simply go on watching. And the miracle is you don't have to pay for it!

Then slowly slowly this whole scene starts disappearing. As you become more alert it starts disappearing, as you become more conscious it loses its grip on you. One day the greatest miracle in life happens: the mind simply disappears and there is vast emptiness and nothing to observe. You are left in absolute solitude -- that is meditation -- and out of that solitude thousands of flowers of bliss, of beauty, of truth, of god, bloom.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #30

Chapter title: None

30 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007295

ShortTitle: GWIND30

Audio:

No

Video:

No

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

One of the meanings of Myriam is the exalted. The moment a person becomes blissful he is exalted to the highest peak of consciousness, victory. He may live on the earth but he is no more part of the earth, he belongs to the beyond. He may be still in the body but he is no more the body; he is a Buddha, he is pure awareness. Now he knows his immortality, now he knows that he was never born and will never die; bodies come and go, but the innermost core remains, abides. Knowing this all fear disappears, all anxiety drops away, all anguish, all despair withers away. For the first time you start experiencing life at its highest crescendo. For the first time you blossom, for the first time Spring is experienced. That is the goal of sannyas.

And the second meaning is also beautiful; the second meaning is living fragrance.

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Man is born as a seed and unfortunately millions die as seeds. They never find the right soil, they never make any effort to find a gardener. They take themselves for granted. They think that whatsoever they are, this is the end -- and this is not the end, this is only the beginning. And to think of the beginning as the end is the utmost stupidity. But ninety-nine point nine per cent of people live in this idiotic way. They never search for their potential, they never become explorers of their inner world. And there are infinite possibilities.

The seed can become a tree. The tree will have great foliage, beauty, form, joy. It will dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. Birds will sing, birds will make their nest in it; people will rest underneath its shade; flowers will come, fruits will come. And when a tree is full of flowers there is great contentment in the very being of the tree. It has arrived, it has fulfilled its mission.

The same experience happens to man when he becomes a Buddha or a Christ. He is just all flowers and at the deepest core of his being there is only hallelujah, there is only joy, tremendous bliss, inexhaustible bliss. He becomes a living fragrance.

My sannyasins have to become living fragrances. But the journey is an inward journey. The exploration is not scientific but mystic, it is not extrovert but introvert.

The Indian word 'babu' was invented by the Britishers. When they came to India their first capital was Calcutta; Delhi became their next capital. Only afterwards did they move to Delhi, otherwise the first capital was Calcutta. And Bengalis, the people who live around Calcutta, oat rice and fish, and fish smells badly.

bu moans bad smell and ba means... 'ba' means with and 'bu' means bad smell.

They had to give employment to Bengalis and they invented the word 'babu'. They started calling the Bengalis, babus: with bad smell. But because these Bengalis, these babus, became important people -- they became the via-media between the Indian society and the rulers -- the word 'babu' slowly became important.

It lost its original meaning. Now to call somebody babu means he is an important person.

Now it has become very honourable. So whenever somebody has to be honoured they call him 'babu', for example, Babu Jayprakash Narayan. The first President of India was called Babu Rajendra Prasad.

These people were utterly ignorant of the meaning, just because every parent wants a child also to be very important some day, parents started calling their little boys babus, important people; hence it became associated with the child. Then babu became equivalent to a child.

So I will give you the name: Swami Atit Babu. Atit means one who has gone beyond... bad smells'

(much laughter). Otherwise everybody stinks'. And my whole purpose is to help you to go beyond all kinds of smells.

Do you know why you are checked at the gate? It is a very esoteric thing -- because your smell gives indications of your spiritual growth, of what centre you are at. If your smell is foul that means you are just at the lowest centre. As you start rising the bad smell starts changing into a beautiful fragrance.

And it is just a coincidence that just now the first person, Myriam ... her name meant living fragrance.

And suddenly you come here... (much laughter). But every mountain is followed by a valley!

If you can go beyond the meaning there is no need to worry.

So remember that one has to go beyond all that stinks. Mind stings, ego stinks, jealousy stinks, possessiveness stinks, hatred, anger, greed -- these are all stinking things and if you cling to them you remain stinking. And people cling! People cling to everything, whatsoever it is. Even if they are drowning in an ocean they will cling to a straw -- and they know the stupidity of it, that by clinging to a straw you cannot be saved. But man goes on hoping against hope.

The idea is that something is better than nothing -- and that is a whole wrong approach. Nothing is always better than anything because nothing means purity, unadulterated purity. Nothing means silence, no noise, no mind. Only nothing can give you fragrance. It arises only when one has moved from the mind towards no-mind. But people go on clinging to each block which is hampering their growth. They hold on to it; they will fight if you try to take away their support, although it may be only supporting their misery. And whatsoever belongs to them they become proud of. Even if it is hell they will be proud of it because 'It is my hell.'

I have heard about a Jewish couple. They were sitting in a movie-house. A very beautiful woman came by and hugged and kissed the man. The wife was very angry and the husband was at a loss as to how to explain who she was. But Jews are Jews clever, cunning, calculating. He immediately invented. He said

'Don't be disturbed. In our business life everybody has to have a girlfriend. And you can enquire of other people also who are in my business. Look -- that woman sitting there is my partner's girlfriend, and that 1/08/07

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woman on the other side is my ex-partner's girlfriend.' He told her about many of the other women and then he asked 'What do you think? Which one is the best?' And the wife says ' ours is the best.'

"Ours" -- now the whole thing has changed, now it is a question of pride.

A psychoanalyst was going into an elevator with a young woman, his patient, and he farted so loudly and the smell was so foul that the woman said 'Was it you?' And the man said 'What do you think? Do I smell like that the whole time? It is only once in a while.'

People defend everything! And the sannyasin has to learn not to defend stupidities. He has to drop them, he has to go beyond them. He has to become aware that 'Nothing belongs to me,' that 'Nothing is mine,' that

'In fact I don't exist. There is no such entity as I. There is a consciousness inside but it has no idea of I at all.'

When you become silent and meditative you simply know you are but there is no notion of I, not at all.

You have an existential feeling, but there is no ego at all. That is the moment when one transcends all kinds of stupidities and then great fragrance is released. And that fragrance is not only a blessing to you, it becomes a blessing to the whole existence.

Whenever there is a man like Buddha or Jesus, the whole existence takes a tremendous leap towards the heights. Just a single man becoming a Buddha takes the whole humanity upwards. People may not be aware of it at all, but whatsoever humanity is now, whatever it is today, it is only because of a dozen people -- not more than that.

Those dozen people are the very salt of the earth. Remove them and man will be hanging from the trees, he will be a monkey again; all evolution will disappear. Even Charles Darwin will be hanging from the trees. It is because of Buddha, Lao Tzu, Bahauddin, Basho, these few people, that humanity has slowly slowly come to a point of growth. But it is still individual effort that can make you a Buddha; it has not become a universal phenomenon.

Of course, we are more fortunate, because the pioneers were in more difficulty. And if we miss, then it is really unfortunate.

My observation is that each of my sannyasins can become a Buddha. Just a little effort and just a little understanding and we can fill the whole earth with people aflame with love and joy, aflame with godliness.

These two words, experience and belief, have to be very well understood. Ordinarily people think to believe is religious. It is not, not at all; it is just the opposite. To believe is to miss religion because belief means covering your ignorance, not transforming your being. You remain the same, you just change something superficial. You start believing in god knowing perfectly well that you don't know.

How can you deceive yourself? Then you don't know you don't know. You may enforce your belief, you say auto-hypnotise yourself by repeating it every day, praying in the morning and evening or five times a day and going to the church or the mosque or the temple, but still, somewhere you will know that it is only a belief; you don't know. And without knowing there is no transformation. Belief simply helps people to deceive themselves. And all so-called religions are based in belief.

Hence the world is full of religious people and yet there seems to be no religious flavour at all. These are pseudo-religious people -- Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists.

Christians believe, Christ knew -- and the difference is tremendous. The Buddhists believe, the Buddha experienced. And you cannot quench your thirst by believing in water. You may go on writing 'H2O, H2O, H2O...' in your book like a mantra and you may start doing transcendental meditation, sitting with closed eyes and repeating 'H2O, H2O, H2O....' That is not going to help, your thirst will remain there. You need real water. Whether you know about H2O or not doesn't matter: you need real living water to quench your thirst.

You cannot go on reading a book on food recipes. For how long can you? It cannot fulfil your needs.

You will remain hungry. You may have a whole library of books on food, exotic foods, you may have pictures in your room of beautiful food, colourful. That too is not going to help. You go on worshipping those beautiful pictures, but you will remain hungry and you will starve and you will die. You need real food.

And that is exactly the case with religion: you need real religion, and real religion comes through meditation. Meditation is an experience.

So I don't say to you believe in anything. There is no need to believe in anything at all. In fact it is good to drop all beliefs so the your slate is clean, so that your heart is no more full of stupid theories and ideologies, so that you are completely free from all dogmas and creeds and able to enter into a personal experience of existence Meditation is a personal experience. Meditation simply means becoming silent, 1/08/07

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watching your thoughts, because through watching, thoughts disappear. And the day comes when there are no thoughts but only the watcher and nothing to watch.

In that very moment the conversion, the transformation, the revolution... In that very moment you become light, you become god. That is our birthright, and only when we become it do we know it. Then it is not a belief.

I don't believe in god. I simply know -- there is no need to believe. My knowing is not based on any arguments or proofs, it is simply based on my own experience. So even if the whole world says there is no god it is not going to affect me, because I know.

Even if the whole world is blind and says there is no light, a man who has seen light will simply smile.

He will say 'Okay. Go on believing in your darkness, but I know -- what can I do? I know light is and you are simply blind.' And a blind person can believe in light but that is not going to help him to see.

Meditation gives you the eyes to see, the heart to feel, perspective, clarity, understanding, awareness. It opens the doors of great mysteries and treasures. Hence I say to my sannyasins only one thing: meditate.

Nothing else is needed, everything else follows in its own time. Simply prepare yourself through meditation.

A blissful person is inevitably good, inevitably virtuous, and a miserable person is bound to be evil. A miserable person may try to do something good but he cannot.

You cannot give to people what you have not already got within you; you can give only that which you have. So the miserable person many times thinks to be good to people, he intends to be good but the outcome is always bad because he will act out of his confusion, darkness, misery; his action will be full of his darkness. Notwithstanding his intentions he will create more and more hell in the world.

In the past in almost all societies man has been told by all the priests 'If you want to be blissful, be good.' That is patent nonsense. I say just the opposite: 'if you want to do good, be blissful.'

If you are blissful it is impossible, categorically impossible, to harm anybody. Your very bliss will prevent you. You will feel sympathy, compassion, love. You would like everybody to be blissful, because if you are blissful you will know clearly that if everybody else is also blissful your bliss will be multiplied a thousandfold.

It is as if you are clean but everybody else is dirty. How long can you remain clean? You are healthy but everybody else is ill. How long can you remain healthy? You have made a beautiful house, a garden, a swimming pool, a fountain, but the whole neighbourhood is dirty. How long can your garden be in existence? It cannot survive. We live in a world together with others.

So the blissful person becomes aware that it is good to help people to be blissful. It is not only altruistic, it is selfish too, because he knows 'If more people around me are blissful, then my bliss will be multiplied, naturally.'

Remember the mathematics of bliss ... and the same is true about misery: when you put two miserable persons together their miseries are not doubled, they are multiplied. Hence every Buddha has tried to create a sangha, a commune, where thousands of blissful people can be together. Then everyone's bliss will be a millionfold, it will become almost immeasurable.

This is one of the fundamentals of my sannyas: be blissful and you will be virtuous. Forget all about virtue, character, morality. They will all come with your blissfulness, they are bound to follow like shadows following you.

Love is the highest form of poetry -- and by poetry I don't mean anything literal. To me poetry is far more than just composing poems. Poems can be composed even by someone who has no poetic life, who has no poetic grace. He can compose poems because to compose poems you only need a certain technique.

He will be a technician, not a poet; and out of one hundred poets ninety-nine are technicians. And the same is true about every art: out of one hundred musicians there is only one who is a musician, ninety-nine are technicians. Out of one hundred scientists there is only one who is a real scientist, ninety-nine are just technicians. And it is so about sculpture, painting, architecture, about every dimension The real poet has of necessity to compose poetry -- he may, he may not. A real painter may paint, may not paint, but his life will be very colourful, his life will have a proportion, a symmetry, a balance. He himself will be his painting, he himself will be his poetry, he himself will be his sculpture.

That's why I mean when I say love is poetry. it gives you a new dimension; it makes you more aesthetic.

It makes you aware of many things of which you were not aware before. It makes you aware of the stars and the flowers and the green and the red and the gold of the trees. It makes you aware of people, their eyes, 1/08/07

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their faces, their lives. Each person is a tremendous phenomenon with infinite possibilities. Each person is an incredible story, each person is a living novel. Each person is a world unto himself.

If you have the eyes to see you will be surprised, even a beggar is not just a beggar, he is also a human being. He has experienced love, he has experienced anger, he has experienced a thousand and one things which even emperors may be jealous of. His life is worth reading, worth observation, worth understanding, because his life is also a possibility of your life. Each person is living a possibility, transforming a single possibility into actuality. And all those possibilities are yours too. You can be an Adolf Hitler and you can be a Jesus Christ -- both doors are open. One has entered through one door, the other has entered from another door; both doors are open for you. Hence I have been as interested in Gautam Buddha as I have been interested in Adolf Hitler. I have been interested in Jesus but I have always been as interested in Judas too, because each human being is also my possibility.

One has to understand this, then the whole universe becomes a university. That's exactly the meaning of university; it comes from the same word 'universe'. Then all situations become learning situations and all challenges become growth challenges. And it is slowly slowly that one creates oneself.

We are born only as opportunities, then everything depends on us, what we are going to become, what the end result of it all is going to be.

By being a sannyasin you are choosing a certain possibility against other possibilities. You are choosing to become a Buddha, a Christ, a Lao Tzu. You are moving in the most exalted dimension; everything else is superficial compared to this dimension, mundane. This dimension is sacred.

The Golden Wind

Chapter #31

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31 July 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8007305

ShortTitle: GWIND31

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

The old idea of nobleness is based in a very false notion: it is rooted in birth, as if a person is born noble.

Nobody is born noble; nobility is something which one has to learn. It is an art, it has nothing to do with birth.

You can grow to be noble, you can die in a noble way, you can live in a noble way, but birth is bound to be the same for all; nobody is noble, nobody is ignoble. Birth is only an opportunity to grow, then everything depends on you.

And because the idea has persisted for centuries that a person is noble by birth very few people have ever tried to practise nobility as an art. What can you do about your birth? -- somebody is born as an aristocrat, and somebody is not. Now nothing can be done about it, it has already happened. You don't have any choice any more, the chapter is closed. But that is absolutely wrong.

Aristocrats all over the world have disappeared, are disappearing, kings have disappeared, queens have 1/08/07

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disappeared, or if they have not disappeared they are on the way! In the end there will be only five kings: four of playing cards and one of England. And those four of playing cards are far more powerful!

But the idea of nobleness continues, the old idea is like a hangover. We have to drop it because by dropping it a tremendous openness happens. Then you start looking for ways and means to grow noble. And nobleness is something beautiful -- it is a flowering, it is fragrance.

When your life is full of light and love, awareness and truth, compassion and a sense of godliness, then you are noble. All these things happen through meditation. Meditation makes you aware of all that is potential in you and also gives you keys to materialise it, to realise it. It is the greatest art and it is the greatest science because it creates human splendour.

Love is the first experience which gives you a glimpse of the vastness of life, of its unboundedness, of its oceanicness. Without love a man remains confined in a very small capsule, like a dark prison cell --

without even a window to look at the stars, at the sun, at the moon.

A man without love is a man yet unborn, he is still in the womb. In the womb there is no sun, no moon, no stars, no wind, no rain. You are closed from everywhere. The womb is like a grave, and it is not accidental that it is like a grave.

Life is a circle. It begins in the grave, it ends in the grave -- that's how the circle becomes complete. And there are very few fortunate people who really try to get out of the womb. Even though they are physically born, they remain surrounded by subtle walls, boundaries. Somebody is a Christian, somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan -- these are wombs.

There is no need to be confined. Christ is beautiful, so is Buddha, so is Krishna, so is Zarathustra -- why be confined to Christ or Krishna? Why be confined at all? Why not claim the whole heritage of humanity?

Why not become oceanic? When one can absorb Krishna and Christ both, Mohammed and Mahavira both, Lao Tzu and Zarathustra both, then why choose, why choose at all? -- because they all bring tremendous richness to you. They are like beautiful rivers falling in the ocean bringing different chemicals, different colours, different fragrances, different experiences, different worlds. A man should be like an ocean, absorbing everything.

Why be Indian, Chinese, German, Italian. Why? -- there is no need. Why create these small boundaries around yourself? But everybody goes on creating more and more boundaries and then people suffer and they say they feel bored and life has no meaning: 'Why are we here? What is the purpose of it all? All these questions arise because of a basic stupidity. If you drop all the boundaries all these questions disappear because then life is so beautiful, so blissful ; one cannot ask what the purpose of it is.

This is something to be understood: you ask the purpose of life only when something is wrong, otherwise you don't ask. If you are living in a beautiful love relationship you don't ask 'What is the purpose of life? -- you know! If you are flying high in your life, if you are not feeling frustrated, you don't ask 'What is the purpose of life? ' You know.

When you are happy you never ask the purpose. It is only the unhappy people, the miserable people, who ask these questions. And they cannot be answered; they have to change their life-styles.

So this has to be your initiation into sannyas: drop all boundaries, come out of all kinds of prisons --

political, religious, ideological -- be free of all this rubbish. Just be without any definition, without any label, without any category. And you will be surprised -- life immediately becomes ecstatic.

Religion to me is a merging and meeting with bliss. It has nothing to do with your beliefs in god, heaven or hell, it is a search for bliss. Hence whether one is a theist or an atheist does not matter; what you believe in and what you do not believe in is irrelevant.

I have never come across a single human being who is not searching for bliss. Hence bliss is the universal religion. I don't teach Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, I teach the universal religion, the natural religion, the religion of bliss.

Becoming a sannyasin means that now you will be seeking only one thing and that is how to be more blissful. One has to be a little conscious, that's all. It is out of our unconsciousness that we go on creating misery. As you become conscious of your acts, of your thoughts, of your feelings, bliss starts coming of its own accord.

Man is born with a diamond within his soul, but we never dig within ourselves, we never seek and search there. Hence our life remains poor, hence we go on searching in money, in power, in prestige, in all 1/08/07

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kinds of ways, running neither and thither because there is a constant inner urge to find something. But we go on searching in the wrong direction. The longing is right, the direction is wrong. And the direction is wrong because everybody else is doing the same so we imitate them.

Every child is born amidst a society in which people are already running after things and the child starts running after things. The child learns from people; whatsoever others are doing, he starts doing.

Anthropologists have discovered a few very primitive tribes in the thick forests of Africa, Burma, the Philippines and other places, small tribes which have not come in contact with the greater humanity -- and they have been puzzled, puzzled very much, shocked to see many things of which they were not aware at all.

For example, there are tribes in which violence does not exist at all. Nobody has ever been murdered, nobody has ever committed suicide. The people have not heard about these things, they don't have words for murder and suicide. Naturally, it was a shock to the anthropologists: how had these people managed it?

It is a simple phenomenon -- children learn from their elders, so whatsoever the others are doing, children start doing. Now our children are seeing movies and TV and murder and suicide and robberies, and all kinds of things. They will learn, they are learning... they see violence everywhere, violence everywhere, rape, murder -- they start learning it and they start repeating the same pattern. Their children will learn from them. It becomes a routine phenomenon. Because we find that everybody is searching outside we start searching outside. But the treasure is within.

Jesus says again and again 'The kingdom of god is within,' but even his followers, his very close followers, never understood him. I don't think that his apostles ever understood him. Even when the last night came and Jesus was going to be caught they were asking about the kingdom of god in heaven and for his whole life the poor man was saying that the kingdom of god is within you!

This was the last conversation with the disciples and they asked 'Just tell us one thing, master: in the kingdom of god you will be sitting on the right side of god, and out of us, your twelve close disciples, who will be sitting next to you?'

You see the stupidity? -- the politics, the question of hierarchy. And the poor man had been saying for his whole life, 'Blessed are those who are capable of standing at the very back, who are not hankering to be the first, because they will be the first.'

But people go on listening to words, beautiful words, they appreciate them also but they don't understand. We have missed Buddha, we have missed Jesus, we have missed all the great masters -- that's why there is this miserable humanity.

My whole effort here is to help you to find it within yourself: it is there, it is already there. There is no need to go anywhere, one has just to go within. And the journey is not a long one at all. If it were far away the , of course, it would be a long journey and you would need all kinds of maps and guides. But there is no journey in fact. You just have to be silent, still, and it is there. And when one has found the inner diamond one's life radiates the light of god.

Man has raw energies. They have to be refined, and then the same raw energies which ordinarily create misery, darkness, despair, start creating great bliss, great celebration. They are the same energies; they have to pass through a subtle process of meditation, just a little refinement.

For example, the sun has the same light as the moon. In fact, the moon has no light of its own -- it simply reflects the sun's light -- but you can see, the difference is tremendous. The sunlight is harsh, aggressive, hot, violent, fiery. The same light reflected by the moon suddenly becomes cool, soothing, peaceful, serene. You can look at the moon for hours but you cannot look at the sun. If you look it will burn your eyes, it will destroy the subtle nervous system of your brain. But the moon is very soothing, nourishing.

The moon's light is not basically different but it has passed through the moon. Meditation is like the moon: it transforms the energy of lust into love, anger into compassion, greed into sharing, aggressiveness into receptivity, ego into humbleness. Moonlight represents something very significant because you have to pass through the same process, from the sun to the moon, from the extrovert towards the introvert, from the out-going into in-going. And then miracles start happening, unbelievable miracles start happening. One may have never dreamt, never imagined that such beauties were possible. Then for the first time one feels thankful to god and prayer arises naturally.

Religion is not theology, it is love. Theology is nothing but logic hence it is called 'logy'. And logic has 1/08/07

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nothing to do with religion, in fact it is against religion.

Logic is a mind exercise, hair-splitting, word-chopping. It can create beautiful, wordy edifices but they are just castles made in the sand; they are of no use. They can keep you occupied, they serve the same purpose as when you are sitting on a beach and you start playing with the sand and making sandcastles just because you have nothing else to do. You can enjoy the occupation but it is not beneficial at all, it is childish.

Theologians are never mature people. Jesus is not a theologian, neither is Buddha. No real master has ever been a theologian, but he is a lover, a tremendous lover, he loves the whole existence. Love is his prayer, love is his worship and through love existence can be communicated, you can have a dialogue. All that is needed is a deep love affair, a mad, mad love affair.

Sannyas has to become a love affair, only then will you know the mysteries of life and death. The mysteries are millions, in fact inexhaustible.

The people who feel bored are the people who are living in the world of logic; logic is boring. But love is never boring. Love gives you constant surprises. Love keeps your wonder alive and love keeps your poetry, your dance, your celebration nourished, otherwise all that is beautiful in you starves, dies. Avoid logic and always choose love. Love is the path of the sannyasin.

We have nothing to offer to god but we can sing, we can dance, we can play on some musical instrument. We can transform our whole life into a song, into a dance, into a festival -- and that is the only true offering to god. Plucking flowers from trees and offering them to god is stupid, because those flowers are the trees, not yours; in fact they were already offered to god by the tree. And they were alive on the tree

-- you have killed them, you have destroyed their beauty. You are offering god corpses.

You cannot offer words of Jesus to god; they are his words, his songs. They are beautiful but they are borrowed. They have not arisen in your own heart, they don't have your heartbeat, they don't have your signature on them. You can offer beautiful songs of Krishna, Buddha, but all are borrowed.

My basic approach towards god is that every person has to have his consciousness grow into a flowering tree. Each person has to come to some blossoming. And of course, man's flowers will not be like the flowers of trees; they will not be like roses or lotuses or marigolds. Man's flowers will be of a totally different category: they will be of love, they will be of freedom, they will be of joy, they will be of a higher quality.

I call them songs.

When the singer loses himself in his song, in that moment he has offered the song to god. When the dancer loses himself in the dance, the dancer has offered his dance. These are the only offerings which are accepted, these are the only prayers which are heard and fulfilled. And when you start offering your joy, your love, your songs to god, you will be surprised that the more you offer, the more goes on showering on you; a millionfold it comes back.

That is the only sign that they have reached, that your offering has been accepted, that your prayer has been heard.

[Osho gives the name Prem Amrita -- love, immortality.]

Love is the only experience in life which gives you a sense of immortality, which makes you aware that there is something which begins but never ends. It is the first lesson, it is the beginning of an incredible journey into god.

Once a man has tasted even a drop of love he cannot remain stuck: he has to go in the great exploration of god. It becomes an urgency because now he knows from his own experience that life is not the ordinary routine thing that we had always thought it was. There is something more to it, something hidden in it; the superficial is not all, the superficial is only the circumference of life and there is a centre also. In love we have only a glimpse, just like lightning: suddenly there is lightning and all darkness disappears and for a split moment you can see the trees, the flowers, the road and everything and then again there is darkness.

But now the darkness is not the same; you know that there is something tremendously beautiful hidden behind darkness.

It is love that has given the first glimpse of god and then people have felt the urge to seek and search deeply. It is through love that they discovered meditation. Love is a natural phenomenon, meditation is a deliberate science. In love you are just at the mercy of the winds: sometimes there is lightning and sometimes there is not, and you cannot do anything about it.

Meditation makes lightning controllable; you can switch it on and off. It makes electricity serve you.

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Just as science has made electricity serve you... electricity has always existed but it was beyond our control.

Now, it is serving you in thousands of ways.

Love is like lightning, a natural phenomenon; meditation makes it a scientific understanding. Then you can turn it on and off. And in fact there is no need to turn it off; one can live in love for twenty-four hours a day. And when one can live in love for twenty-four hours a day, why should one not live in love twenty-four hours a day? Even a single moment is not worth missing.

My message is of love because I know love is the only phenomenon which can have universal appeal --

because it is natural. You may argue with Christianity, you may argue Hinduism, you may argue Buddhism, but you cannot argue against love.

And once you have felt love, meditation starts of its own accord; then you can be easily persuaded towards meditation. In fact you are already persuaded: love seduces everyone into meditation. And if love cannot seduce you into meditation, then nothing else can. That is the only hope, the only promise. But it always succeeds, it has never failed, it cannot fail. It is inevitable that after a deep experience of love meditation follows. And meditation opens the doors of the temple of god.

Hari is one of the names of god. Prem means love -- love for god. Hari is a rare name for god; nothing comparable to it exists in any language of the world. Hari means a thief. Now to call god a thief is something... something far out! But it is true. It is psychedelic but very true because god steals your heart.

And that's what I go on doing on his behalf, that's my work too, the work of a thief.

Now you have fallen into the hands of a thief, so be careful! Not that you have to protect your heart.

When I say 'be careful' I mean let me steal it. Don't be afraid, be care-full! Don't be a coward, be a brave man, a courageous man.

If one wants to love one has to surrender oneself. And to be with a master means one is ready to surrender. One is ready to lose oneself totally, with no strings attached, no conditions. The disciple cannot make any conditions because a conditional surrender is not a surrender at all. One simply has to be in a let-go and allow the master to do the operation.

It is surgical, because to remove your heart is not going to be an easy task. And we never replace it! You can see my people: their hearts have disappeared and they are still alive, fully alive, more alive than they have ever been. But don't get too afraid. The surgery is done and without any chloroform. You are kept fully awake!

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