1/08/07

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The Old Pond ... Plop

Talks given from 1/1/81 to 31/1/81

Darshan Diary

31 Chapters

Year published:

The Old Pond ... Plop

1/08/07

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Chapter #1

Chapter title: None

1 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101015

ShortTitle: POND01

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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 truth is not known through mind and its turmoil. It is known through absolute silence, then the mind stops all its functioning, then the mind is no more. In that pause, in that silence, suddenly you become aware for the first time, of that which is -- call it truth, call it god, liberation, nirvana, moksha, different names for the same phenomenon. All that is needed is a deep silence.

Because of this a great problem has arisen. The secret has been known down the ages that silence is the most necessary requirement; hence people have escaped from the world thinking that it is impossible to be silent in the world. That was an absolutely wrong conclusion, a wrong logic, because silence has nothing to do with the outside world. It is something inner. You can grow it anywhere. You can go to the mountains but your mind will be the same; it will go on playing the same games. In fact, it will play the same games more in the mountains, because there you will not have anything else to do, so the whole energy will be available to the mind.

In the monasteries, in the deserts, in the mountains, the mind becomes more predominant than in the marketplace, than in the ordinary life; hence my insistence is that no sannyasin should leave the world. It is the right place to attain to silence. One has to learn the art; escaping is not going to help.

If you have cancer, escaping to the desert won't help. You have to go through the treatment -- through surgery, medicine -- because the cancer will go with you wherever you go. And the same mind will follow you anywhere. So the question is not of changing places on the outside, but of changing the inner attitude, approach, the inner gestalt.

Once you change the inner gestalt, the outside noise enhances your silence, it does not disturb it. It is not a distraction at all, it becomes a nourishment.

One of the old Zen haikus is 'THE OLD POND... PLOP!' -- vizualise it -- an ancient pond, very old.

You can see by the rocks, by the moss that has gathered on the rocks, you can see by the trees that are standing on the bank. Everything shows its very ancientness. THE OLD POND... PLOP!, a frog jumps in, Plop!' And you can go on sitting of the bank of the pond but the sound of the frog jumping in is not going to disturb you. In fact, it will enhance. You will see that from before the frog jumped in to after the frog has disappeared into the pond, the silence has deepened.

And the same can be done with everything in the world -- the traffic noise, the train passing by or the aeroplane in the clouds, the thunder, the lightning -- everything can become just a background. You have to be alert, watchful, relaxed, resting in your being. Just simply being, not doing anything, then nothing disturbs. Things go on happening and you remain untouched like a lotus leaf in the water. And that's what sannyas is all about living in the world and yet not being part of the world, living in the world but not allowing the world to live in you.

A sannyasin has to grow great love for silence. Unless you love silence totally, it cannot happen. And if you love, it is bound to happen. Love functions like a magnet. Once there is great love for silence you have created the magnet and then, from everywhere, from all the directions and dimensions, silence starts pouring in you like river, pouring into the ocean.

There are people who would like to be silent, but just liking is not enough -- love is needed. Liking is 1/08/07

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very lukewarm, it is so-so. Love means you are passionately involved. Love means it is a question of life and death. Love means intensity, totality.

And the great gifts of life are only for people who are ready to go totally into something, whether it is silence, freedom, truth -- it does not matter what it is. All the ultimate values require you to be a lover.

Sannyas is a love affair with silence.

The most unique experience of life is that of silence; otherwise life is very noisy. Outside there is noise, inside there is noise, and both together are enough to drive anybody crazy. They have driven the whole world crazy.

One has to stop the inner noise -- the outer noise is beyond our control and there is no need either to stop it. But we can stop the inner noise. And once the inner noise is stopped and silence settles in, the outer noise is no longer a problem at all; you can enjoy it, you can live in it without any problem.

The experience of the inner silence is the most unique, incomparable. There is no other experience which can be of so much value, because out of this experience all experiences grow. It is the foundation of the whole temple of religion.

Without silence there is no truth, no freedom, no God. With silence, suddenly things which were not, they are there, and things which were there are no longer there -- your vision has changed, your perspective has changed.

Silence makes you capable of knowing the invisible, of knowing the unknowable -- that's its uniqueness.

Bliss is a flower, a lotus, which grows in the lake of silence. If one wants to grow the lotuses, one needs the inner consciousness to become just a lake of silence without any waves, thoughts, desires -- just a lake without any ripples at all.

And it is possible! It can easily happen. It can happen through meditation; and meditation means only one thing: awareness. Be aware of your body, its actions, be aware of your mind, its thoughts, be aware of your heart, its feelings. With this three-dimensional awareness you will one day enter into that ultimate silence in which suddenly thousands of lotuses bloom. Life becomes fragrant, life becomes just sheer joy!

Shantirup means silence is our self-nature. It is not something cultivated from the outside; it is not something that we have to earn. It is already the case. It is just inside us waiting like a seed for the right climate, right soil and the right opportunity to sprout, to become alive, to be dynamic. It is in a dormant state, as if asleep; you have simply to wake it up. Hence it is not such a difficult project as people think it is.

If it was something to be created then it would have been really impossible.

We have brought it within us but we have never opened our innermost core, we have never made a well deep enough into ourselves so that we can see what is there. We are acquainted only with our circumference; our own center is unknown to us. This is the misery of man.

To know your center is to know silence simultaneously because it is our self-nature, it is our very being.

We are made of the stuff called silence; hence the longing for it. It is a longing for one's own being, it is a longing for one's own ultimate truth, and that's why it brings liberation. The moment you know your nature, you know there is no death, there is no need for worry. There is no need for hurry, the whole eternity is yours!

And when there is no worry, you can dance, you can sing. And when there is no hurry, you can enjoy the moment totally. There is nowhere else to go.

The Bibles, the Korans, the Vedas, are not real religion, because they are mere words. Of course, Moses has religion, Jesus has religion, the seers of the Vedas have tasted religion, because they were silent people, but the moment you communicate your silence it becomes words and it loves all truth.

Silence is incommunicable, it cannot be communicated through language at all. Yes, there is a way of communion. That's what sannyas is all about getting in tune with someone who has already become silent makes you silent. Just getting in harmony with a master, the disciple starts becoming the same. Just sitting by the side of the master, doing nothing, one starts imbibing the spirit. Nothing is said, nothing is heard, but a flame is transferred.

The Zen people call it the transmission beyond scriptures. The true religion is always a transmission beyond scriptures, beyond words, beyond philosophies. Hence the true religion can only be experienced 1/08/07

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with an enlightened, awakened master, with a Jesus, with a Buddha, with a Zarathustra, with a Lao Tzu you can experience it, but not through the words. Although the words belong to Buddha, still, the moment something is said -- something which cannot be said -- it becomes false.

And this is one of the problems man has to solve because we remain confined by theories, ideologies, words Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism -- these are all words now. Once when a man like Buddha was alive, the silence was there. And for the disciple, even those words were significant because they were not listening to the words, they were listening to the source of the words. But now the source is no longer available, only words are there.

Words are like pictures. A picture of a Buddha or a Jesus is not the Buddha or Jesus. You have to come in communion with an authentic, alive master.

And the only definition of the authentic and the alive master is that he is never traditional, he is always rebellious. So that can become a demarcation line; whenever you find a traditional saint he is phony.

Otherwise he cannot be traditional. Rebellion is the very spirit of a true master -- utter rebellion.

And to be a disciple of somebody who is living silence is the only way to taste religion, to have the first glimpse of religion, then certainly you can start searching for it within yourself. But the first ray, the first hit, the first shock that wakes you up has to come from the master, otherwise one can go on sleeping for lives together.

So wherever you can find a living silence, drink of it. And the only possibility to drink of it is to put your mind aside, because you cannot argue with silence. Either you fall in a deep synchronicity with it or you are not able to understand it. There is no question of argumentation. It cannot be proved, it cannot be disproved. Logic is absolutely impotent about it.

It is a question of love not of logic, a question of the heart not of the head.

Man lives in words, and to live in words is not to live at all. It is a fake life. To live in words is just to live on the surface; life has profound depths and you have to dive to know them. And there is no more end because there is no rock-bottom; it is depth and depth and depth. And as you dive deeper you become more and more silent; or, vice versa, the more silent you become, the deeper is your penetration into life.

The moment one becomes absolutely silent, one has found the home, now the journey is complete, the pilgrimage is over, one can relax, the full point has come.

But attachment with words is so deep because for thousands of lives we have lived with words only.

People don't love, they only know the word 'love'; people know nothing about god, they only know the word

'god'; they have not tasted anything of truth, but the word is there and they go on playing all kinds of games with it. And one can become very efficient -- that's what makes a person a scholar, a theologian, a philosopher. They become so skilful with words; and one word leads to another word, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, one can go on and on. But the whole thing is rubbish, just pure rubbish. There is no content in it. Words are empty shells; there is nothing in them.

The meaning is contained in a wordless silence. Hence three thousand years of philosophizing has brought man to a state where everybody is feeling meaningless. Life seems meaningless, love seems meaningless, everything seems to be just a nightmare. This is the outcome of three thousand years of great philosophers -- Plato and Aristotle and Kant and Hegel and Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein -- a long, long history of philosophy, much ado about nothing.

They have created great dust and they go on creating dust. And that dust does not help anybody to see; in fact, it makes it impossible to see anything. The philosophers are throwing dust into people's eyes, they are making them blind.

My work here consists in just the opposite; to take all the dust from your eyes, to clean your eyes of words, theories, philosophies, ideologies, religions -- these are all dust, nothing else.

Once your eyes are clean and clear, virgin, uncontaminated by anything, once you can see the immediate reality, your life is transformed into bliss, into a festival of lights, into a continuous ceremony.

1/08/07

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

Query:-

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #2

Chapter title: None

2 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101025

ShortTitle: POND02

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 not something that one can think about, it has to be been. It needs a different kind of seeing --

hence the symbol of the third eye. Not that the third eye exists physiologically somewhere -- it is only a metaphor. These two eyes are not enough, these two eyes can see only the material, the visible, the measurable. A different insight into reality is needed which can see the hidden,, which can see the centre, not only the circumference.

Hence in the East we call philosophy 'darshan'. Darshan means exactly what 'satyam' means the act of seeing.

The philosopher thinks about truth, the mystic sees it. And one can think for millions of lives; still, it will go about and about, round and round -- it will never touch the centre. It is like a blind man thinking about light or a deaf man thinking about music, they cannot even begin -- and whatsoever they think is going to be basically false. It is impossible for them to come to a conclusion. Hence philosophy has not arrived at any conclusions at all, it only creates new problems. The old problems remain and the new are created, and all the so-called answers that philosophy gives only trigger many more questions. The foliage of philosophy has become very thick but it has not solved any real problem. man remains as ignorant as ever.

Sannyas means we will be trying a different approach, not through thinking but through seeing. And meditation is the art of creating a new faculty of seeing. It helps you to become more clear, more silent, more transparent. And the deeper your transparency, your clarity, the deeper you can enter into reality -- in the same proportion. If you can touch your own centre, you become immediately capable of touching the centre of the whole universe. And that penetration brings immense freedom, immense bliss, and abundant life.

Ruth also means beauty, a vision of beauty. The person who is capable of seeing in a different way than the ordinary becomes aware of a tremendous beauty that always surrounds you; but your eyes are closed. it is showering on you, each moment, but because we are not vulnerable, we are closed, hence we become almost oblivious to the beauty of existence.

Once you can see, then the first experience if of truth, and the second experience is of the good, and the ultimate experience is of beauty.

We have two trinities in the Eastern mystic symbology. One is satyam, shivam, sunderam -- truth, good, beauty, the other is satchitananda: sat -- truth, chit -- consciousness, ananda -- bliss. But both start with the truth.

Truth is the door and then, on the second step, you experience good, virtue, real authentic morality on the one hand and on the other hand you experience consciousness- Consciousness and goodness are two 1/08/07

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aspects of the same coin. And as you go deeper or higher -- which are the same -- then you come across, on the one hand, beauty, on the other hand, bliss. Beauty and bliss are again two aspects of the same phenomenon.

So, in all, these two trinities give you five things, not six, because truth is the common ground for both.

Once you know the truth you become capable of knowing four ultimate values, the good, and simultaneously, consciousness, awakening, awareness, beauty, and simultaneously, bliss, joy, celebration.

And if these five things can happen, then nothing more is needed, life is fulfilled, one has arrived at this source and at the goal.

Jesus says in one of his most pregnant statements, Truth brings liberation. But it is only half the truth that he is saying, the other half has to be remembered, because people have forgotten the other half completely. Truth liberates, but the truth has to be your own -- only then does it liberate. If it is somebody else's then it creates new bondages. The truth of Jesus liberates Jesus, but becomes a bondage for all Christians. The truth of Buddha brings freedom to him, but to those who are blind followers, imitators, for them it creates only beautiful chains.

So one has to be very alert not to borrow truth. Borrowed truth brings slavery. Truth has to be discovered, it has to be yours. Nobody else's will go. Neither roses can give it to you, nor Jesus, nor Mahavira, nor Buddha.

Nobody can give it to you, it is not a commodity which can be transferred or given hence the function of the master is not to give you the truth but only devices to discover it within yourself.

The moment it is discovered all chains disappear, suddenly all walls have evaporated, there is no prison at all. And a great laughter arises in one's innermost core because that moment one realises that the prison was just an idea, a dream, a nightmare.

Truth comes like light and all nightmares and all dreams and all darknesses disappear. And to live in truth is the only way to live. All other ways are only ways to die.

The person who is not living his truth is simply living unnecessarily. He is a burden to himself and a burden to the earth, he is a curse to himself and a curse to others. The person who finds his truth and starts living it is a blessing to himself and a blessing to the whole universe.

Man lives in lies because he is not conscious, and unless he becomes conscious he can only go on changing his lies. He can become a Christian from being a Hindu or can become a Mohammedan from being a Christian or can become a Buddhist from being a Mohammedan or can become a communist from being a Buddhist, but he is simply changing his lies.

One gets bored with the old lies, no one wants to change them and for a few days one feels excited, because one has found new models of lies, the latest models of lies. But it is only a honeymoon, soon one finds the chains are the same. The shape may be different, the make may be different, but the slavery is the same. Whether you are in a church or in a temple or in a mosque -- it makes no difference at all. These are different prisons and people go on changing from one prison to another.

So it is not a question of changing your beliefs. It is a question of changing your consciousness -- that's what sannyas is all about. I don't give you anything to believe, I don't give you any consolation, I don't give you any rationalisation. I am not at all interested in replacing your old ideology with a new one, because that will be beautiful only for a few days, beautiful only because it is new, not because it is really beautiful.

Sometimes the new bondage can be more dangerous than the old, because the old bondage is bound to have many loopholes and the new bondage is going to be more technically efficient. The new bondage is bound to have fewer loopholes. From an old Indian prison you can escape very easily, but from a German concentration camp it is impossibles it is more scientific, more technically developed. It is almost impossible. I have never heard of anybody who has been able to escape from a Russian prison. It cannot happen. Even the walls have ears!

In Russia you cannot talk sincerely, authentically, even with your husband or wife -- you cannot open your heart. Nobody knows who is a spy. Your husband is a member of the Communist party, your wife a member of the women's section of the Communist party. Even your kids belong to the children's Communist party. One cannot even talk truly before the kids, because they will report, they are being taught to report, to spy.

In Russia there is no possibility of any revolution. Every precaution has been taken.

So sometimes the new ideology may appear good in the beginning but it is bound to prove far more 1/08/07

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dangerous in the end -- hence I am totally against giving you any belief. On the contrary, I have to take away all beliefs. I can help you to be more conscious -- and that is the only true help, this true love and the true compassion.

If you can become more conscious, more aware, then truth is not far away. It is within you -- a conscious person is bound to find it, it is inevitable. And the moment truth is found all is found.

A man lives without knowing his truth, his meaning, lives in utter futility, from one failure to another failure. He dies without ever really being born. He dies in the womb, millions of people are dying in the womb -- not physically but psychologically.

The function of the master is to give you a new birth, and it can only be of consciousness. You have to come out of your psychological bondage, your mental slavery. You have to drop all kinds of beliefs, superstitions, theories, hypotheses, assumptions, prejudices, you have to be utterly clean, empty. And in that nothingness you will discover your spiritual virginity -- and that is the truth. The purity of it is incalculable, the innocence of it is beyond praise.

And life takes wings the moment one his discovered one's truth. Then the whole sky is yours -- even the sky is not the limit.

The truth is vast, so vast that it can contain contradictions. It is so vast that it contains everything, from the smallest blade of grass to the biggest star -- it contains all.

And man can enter into this ocean very simply, just one small condition has to be fulfilled, one has to drop one's ego, the idea that 'I'm separate.' That's the only fallacy that keeps people away from God, away from truth, away from love, away from bliss. That's the only fallacy that creates hell and misery.

And it is good is one can become aware from this age, if one can become aware from one's childhood, then much can be saved, much unnecessary trouble can be saved. One need not go through all kinds of stupidities. One can find a short-cut. There is no necessity that everybody should behave like a fool.

And it is easier for a child to drop the ego, because the child is still learning. Every child is born without an ego, then he has to learn it. He force him to learn, we tell him 'You are separate, you are special, you are this, you are that,' and the child certainly starts accepting the beliefs of the parents, of the teachers. And they are all saying 'You have to be very special, extraordinary, you have to top the class in the school. In the college, in the university; you have to become famous.' So the child starts thinking 'I have to be ambitious,'

and ambition breeds the ego. Competition breeds the ego and ego brings misery. And you can see that everywhere all people are miserable.

Only once in a while they smile, and that smile is also phony, just on the lips. It is not coming from their heart, it cannot come from their heart -- they have lost track of their heart long before. They don't know where it is. They smile just to ba polite, to be formal, but there is no joy, there is no dance in their life. And life can be a great ecstasy. It is our birthright to be ecstatic.

Life should burst forth into thousands of flowers, roses and roses. Life should become a beautiful song, a dance. And it can all happen by a simple method: don't think yourself separate from the universe, know that we are one with the whole, we come from the whole and one day we will go back to the whole.

I call that whole the ocean and we are just small dewdrops. If the dewdrop slips into the ocean it becomes the ocean -- and that is the moment of bliss, ecstasy.

Gold has been an ancient symbol in alchemy, it represents the highest peak of consciousness, the most precious in man. Ordinarily man lives a very meaningless, valueless life, but this whole meaninglessness can be transformed into a great golden aura. One just needs a certain chemical process, a bridge, to transform all that is ordinary, mundane, into something sacred.

And meditation does exactly that, as you become more and more silent, you start seeing great miracles happening in your inner being, you start seeing stones turning into diamonds, the baser metal turning into gold. And suddenly you know now that you have found the key to the infinite treasure of your being. And that treasure of your being is what I call the truth.

To me truth is not some dry philosophical concept it is a lived experience. It is not dry like a desert, it is not empty, it is not abstract. It is overflowing, it is like a garden full of flowers and trees and greenery and springs and birds and songs and sun and the wind and the rain. It contains the totality of existence.

So by truth I mean your true being, your authentic reality. It is there but only in the seed. Meditation becomes a soil for the seed and then the seed starts growing. And the seed sprouting is a great miracle.

The seed looks so dead, so dry. If you cut it there is nothing in it, but out of that nothingness millions of 1/08/07

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flowers are possible. They say that a single seed can make the whole earth green -- that much potential. And the same is true about man, each man contains flowers of consciousness, truth, love, beauty, but they are only in a seed, We have not given them the right soil where the seed can die and the imprisoned splendour in the seed can become revealed.

Truth is not a thought, it is an experience. We are thirsty for truth, so just information about truth is not going to quench the thirst -- we need real water, living water. Unless we drink, the thirst is going to remain.

we can forget the thirst if we become too occupied with theories about water, but again and again it will assert, again and again it will be there. Unless you drink it is not going to be quenched.

Truth is a longing, a deep longing in the heart. One wants to know the meaning of life, one has every right to ask 'Who am I? Why am I here? For what purpose?' And unless one knows it one's whole life is bound to remain accidental, just like driftwood, no direction, no sense of direction, no destiny, just at the mercy of the winds and the waves, driftwood goes on moving here and there, not knowing why, not knowing where, not knowing from where... Such a life cannot be joyous.

One needs a deep undercurrent of meaningfulness -- and that's what I call truth, discovering the undercurrent of meaningfulness, from the grave to the cradle and from the cradle to the grave. I have been born many times, we have died many times, each death brings a new birth, each birth brings a new death.

We go on moving like a wheel. The same spokes come again and again and again -- life followed by death, death followed by life -- and everybody is utterly bored. You can see it everywhere all around the earth.

One thing which is common to all human beings is boredom, whatsoever their nation, whatsoever their religion, whatsoever their race, it makes no difference, they are all bored, bored to death.

And it is natural because they have lived so many lives and gone through the same routine and there seems to be no end to it -- it is the same routine again and again and again.

Unless one finds an undercurrent of meaning, boredom remains. The moment you discover the meaning, the moment you Experience the meaning, suddenly spring comes to your life. Then it is no more repetitive, it becomes very original. Then each moment is new and original and boredom disappears. The same energy that has entangled in boredom is released and becomes ecstasy.

But truth has to be an experience, not a belief not information, but a transformation!

Truth is a flowering of your being. It is coming to a blossoming state, when all the petals of your inner lotus open up. We in the East have called the ultimate opening of our consciousness the one-thousand petalled lotus -- One thousand simply represents infinity.

Man is an infinity. Man is not the body, not the mind, these are limitations. Man is consciousness --

which is unlimited, unbounded, in fact there is no possibility to define it, no way to express it, no word is adequate to contain it.

It can be communicated only in silence, hence the discovery of the master-disciple relationship. It is something absolutely Eastern, it has not happened in the West. The West still thinks in terms of a teacher-student relationship. Nothing parallel to it has happened in the West. Many times it has been tried because many times people have carried the message from the East to the West.

Jesus carried the message from the East to the West. For seventeen years continuously he was travelling in the East. The Bible contains only two small references to his life before he left for this pilgrimage. One is when he was born and another that when he was twelve years of age he argued with the rabbis in the temple.

Only two references, one about his birth and another about his argument with the rabbis when he was twelve. After that, for eighteen years continuously, up to the age thirty, there is no mention at what happened in those eighteen years? Something tremendous must have happened, because out of those eighteen years is born the man Jesus, who has been worshipped by the Christians for these two thousand years. So those eighteen years were of tremendous significance, the most important part of his life, in those years he was travelling all over the East.

There are documents ancient enough to prove the fact. He learned the art, a very subtle art, of a totally new dimension of relationship, and he tried to create that kind of phenomenon in the West. But he failed, because the whole context was missing.

The same was done by Pythagoras in Greece, but he failed too. So once in a while the attempt has been made but it never succeeded. But the East has lived the experience for thousands of years, and has grown it into one of the most significant phenomena. It is a totally different phenomenon than the teacher-student relationship.

1/08/07

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The teacher simply passes on the information that he has collected from other teachers, he simply hands over borrowed knowledge. He knows nothing himself, one ignorant person giving some theories to another ignorant person, one blind man giving theories about light to other blind men; and this goes on from generation to generation.

The master means one who sees, one who has experienced, one who has blossomed. And the disciple has just to be with the master, in deep love, in deep trust. The heart of the disciple has only to say yes, an unconditional yes -- and in that very unconditional yesness, something transpires. Nothing is said by the master, nothing is heard by the disciple, but something beyond the scriptures, beyond the words, reaches to the very heart of the disciple. The silence of the master triggers silence in the disciple, the fragrance of the master triggers a process which opens the lotus of the disciple too!

The master is a catalytic agent.

So learn how to be a disciple, how to sit silently in this commune, how to drop your ego, and how to be just a deep and total yes. And that's all. And then things start happening of their own accord.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #3

Chapter title: None

3 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101035

ShortTitle: POND03

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 basically a discord and there is no way to create accord in the mind. Its very nature is discord, because mind lives in duality, mind lives with polar opposites. If there is love, to balance it there is also hate. It is impossible for mind just to be loving without hating. It can love only in the same proportion as it hates. It can be compassionate only in the same proportion as it can be angry. They go together, all the opposites.

The mind can experience beauty only because it can experience ugliness. If the mind becomes incapable of experiencing hatred, ugliness, anger, it will also become incapable of love, of beauty, of compassion.

So to be in the mind is to be constantly in conflict. but there is a way to get out of the mind, to slip out of this turmoil, this constant tension, anxiety, anguish. That's what meditation is all about it is transcending the mind, going beyond the mind. And the moment you are beyond the mind there is harmony.

Just as mind is discord, no-mind is harmony. And to be harmonious is blissful. That is another meaning of your name, blissfulness, cheerfulness. it is a by-product of harmoniousness.

There have been two schools of seekers down the ages. The first school tries somehow to manage mind in such a way as to discipline it, to cultivate it, so that a certain harmony arises. That is the school of control, self-control, self-discipline. The ascetics down the ages have been doing that forcing the mind to be silent. They are trying to do something which is against nature, so they can only succeed momentarily, again and again the discord erupts.

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Query:-

Yes, for a few intervals they can repress the mind, but the volcano will erupt. In fact, while they are looking peaceful, their mind is gathering energy to explode. Hence the ascetic lives in constant fear, in constant guilt, in constant cautiousness. But a life of cautiousness, of fear, of guilt, cannot be cheerful.

That's why the ascetic becomes sad and serious and takes his revenge on the world, all that he is doing he has somehow to get rewards for, so he becomes holier-than-thou, he becomes condemnatory of all those who are cheerful, living life easily, without anxiety. He creates the same fear in others, the same guilt, the same anxiety. That has been the sole work of your so-called saints, they have only created a guilt-ridden humanity. That is their great work; they have created an insane humanity.

And the ascetic can fall any moment, just a little temptation is enough, that's why he is so afraid of temptation, of the devil. The devil exists nowhere. The ascetic has created the devil -- it is his invention.

whatsoever he has repressed becomes the devil. If he has repressed sex then the devil will tempt him towards sexuality. If he has repressed his desire to eat then the devil will tempt him with delicious foods --

spaghetti and all! (laughter) Then the devil becomes Italian! (more laughter) The devil depends on the ascetic. For example, the Jaina monks in India have been forcing themselves to fast -- continuous fasting. Naturally, after a certain period of fasting you lose sexual energy because sexual energy needs a certain nourishing of the body. After three weeks of fasting you become impotent. So the Jaina monk is not tortured by the devil as far as sex is concerned, but he is tortured by all kinds of delicious dishes, those dishes go on floating all around in the air.(laughter) But the Christian monk eats well and is even allowed to drink. in fact, the Christian Catholic monasteries have been the best producers of wine, down the ages that has been their business. Even today the Christian monasteries have the ancientmost wines in their cellars, the most precious wine. So he is not tortured by these foods he is tortured by the woman, because he has renounced the woman.

Whatsoever you renounce becomes your devil. You give shape and form and life to the devil by your repression, it is your unconscious which comes as a projection and tempts you.

A man who is trying tc control his desires is bound to be trapped into a thousand-and-one temptations.

His life becomes unnecessarily arduous, a self-imposed torture. So I am against that school. To me that school is the cause of all the misery that exists today. We have created enough technology and science to remove misery as far as the body is concerned, but these people for thousands of years have been creating a certain mind; even if you remove the physical causes of misery your mind is there which science cannot change.

Only a totally new kind of religiousness is needed, to undo the work of your so-called saints. And that is my work: undoing their work.

The second school is of those people who have not been trying to control, non-ascetics -- the mystics. It consists of a very small minority, but they are the real benefactors of humanity. They are life-affirmative.

They have not tried to control the mind they have discovered a totally different technique -- slipping out of the mind. They are meditators, they are mystics, not ascetics, but they have been very few and they have not been able to influence humanity at large. Their voice was drowned by the ascetics.

The second school believes not in controlling but in understanding. That's what meditation is all about: trying to watch your mind so that you can understand its functioning, its mechanism, its ways, its subtle strategies, its devices.

The more understanding you become, the more aware you become, the more you are out of the mind.

That transcendence happens through understanding nothing else is needed. One simply watches --

choicelessly watching one's own mind, not trying to impose any idea, any discipline -- just watchfulness, just to see what exactly is the case, what is this mind and what is going on? Unprejudiced, detached, one simply observes. That observation is meditation, that awareness is meditation. And the miracle is that whenever you watch something you are separate from it -- immediately, instantly you are separate.

Whatsoever you can watch, you become separate from.

So the day you are able to watch your mind totally you are out of it, without any other effort you have transcended the mind. And then there is immense harmony, great silence, profound peace. Not only are you harmonious within yourself, once you are harmonious within yourself you become harmonious with the whole universe too.

And that is bliss, that is ecstasy -- that's the goal of sannyas!

Meditation gives you the real taste of life. Without meditation life is only lukewarm, it has no intensity.

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intensity explodes in you -- as if suddenly spring has come in the inner world, flowers, songs, celebrations, for no reason at all. You have found the life-giving source within you.

Mind is a parasite, it sucks your energy, it deprives you of your life. Of course it does not kill you. No parasite can afford to kill you, because your death will be the death of the parasite, so every parasite only exploits you to a certain extent -- but it leaves you alive. But just to be alive is not enough. Every parasite keeps you at the minimum, and life blossoms forth only at the maximum.

And our mind is not one parasite but many parasites. We don't have one mind, we have many minds. We are multi-psychic -- there are many small minds. It is like a federation of many small minds, or more like a Rotary club, by rotation everyone becomes the king -- for a moment; or like a wheel moving -- every spoke comes to the top, every spoke has its chance to be on the top, but then it goes back and another spoke comes up. Exactly like that, every part of the mind has a moment when it reigns -- but it is momentary.

That's why there is so much confusion and mess you decide one thing today and tomorrow you cannot do it, you yourself cancel it, because now it is another mind. The mind that has decided is no more there, it is no more in power. In the evening you decide 'I will get up early in the morning,' and when the time comes to get up, you yourself decide not to get up. And when you get up again as late as usual or even later, you feel great guilt, you start condemning yourself. That is a third mind.

And this is how this sorry-go-round continues. (laughter) The person derides not to smoke; but he is not aware that the mind that is deciding it will not be in power long. Soon another mind will be there which will decide to smoke or do something else.

These many minds are many parasites -- they go on destroying your life. They leave only enough life for you so that you can vegetate, drag. They don't kill you, certainly, because it is against their vested interests, but they don't allow you to live totally either.

Meditation means finding the source of your life and disconnecting the source from the mind. Then mind is used by you, not vice versa. Right now the mind is using you, the mind is the master and you are the slave. This is the sole cause of misery. When you are the master and the mind is just a mechanism -- you can use it whenever you want and if you don't want it you don't use it -- then life flares up and the joy of it is tremendous. Then for the first time you know that to know life is to know god, that to know life is to know eternity. Then there is no death.

Death is only because we are existing at the minimum. When we exist at the maximum, death evaporates. And to live deathlessly is to live a divine life. Then naturally one is fearless, all anguish is dropped away, all darkness disappears. then life is light.

Your name also means a life-giving source. It is a beautiful name. To me it is equivalent to god!

Discover the life-giving source in you. The method is meditation.

Meditation is the door to the divine. To live in the mind is to live in the mundane. Mind belongs to the marketplace; in fact it is prepared for the market-place -- for competition, for ego trips, for politics, for money, power, prestige. From the kindergarten, school to the university we create the mind so that a man can succeed in the world.

Mind is basically mundane -- that's its purpose. It has no divine quality in it. And there are fools who go on reading the scriptures and they think they are doing some divine work. You read the scripture through the mind, you understand the scripture through the mind. And there are fools who go on praying to god and whatsoever they are praying for is nothing but the desires of their mind. They are asking for some desires to be fulfilled.

Neither the scriptures nor the prayers are divine. The only divine phenomenon is when you fall into utter silence, when the mind stops functioning, when the mind ceases and you are no longer with any thought, any memory, any fantasy, any desire. When there is not even a ripple of any kind in you -- when you are simply a no-mind -- you experience for the first time what god is, you experience godliness. That is the world of the sacred.

So move from the mind to meditation. There is no other proof for god, the only proof is your own experience. There is no argument which can prove or disprove god, but one can experience. But the experience remains individual. Those who have known, they have known, and others only go on believing.

Beliefs belong to the mind, experience belongs to meditation -- and these are worlds apart.

The sannyasin should remember again and again that he has to pull himself out of his mental traps, he has to bring all his energies out of the mind, he has to stop cooperating with the mind and enter into silence, thoughtlessness. And then the kingdom of god is yours!

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The mind functions as a wall it separates you from the whole, it is a divorce from the whole. And of course, the whole is not at a loss, we are at a loss. We could have been oceanic and we remain just small drops of water. We could have been as vast as the universe and we become confined to a small body-mind structure, it is imprisonment.

Mind basically is ego. To get out of the mind means to get in tune with the whole. Attunement or at-onement -- that's yoga. It is a marriage with the whole, melting and merging, disappearing as a separate entity and becoming one with the whole.

The mind is a wall, meditation is a bridge. The mind disconnects, meditation reconnects. And once you are one with the whole that means you are one with the trees and the mountains and the rivers and the stars and the sun and the moon. Then this infinity is yours and all its joys are yours. Life starts having freedom for the first time because all limitations disappear -- and that is the ultimate desire of the human heart.

We are searching continuously for the union, knowingly or unknowingly. We want to merge with the whole, because only with the whole does life come to its ultimate peak. Ecstasy attains its Everest.

A man without meditation is a beggar. He is bound to be a beggar -- it is inevitable -- because a man without meditation means a man who is identified with the mind, and mind is asking continuously for more and more and more, it is never contented.

Discontent is its very nature, so whatsoever you give, it sill ask for more. It does not matter what you give, its demand remains the same. It is like the horizon: the distance between you and the horizon always remains the same. It looks so close by -- just a few miles ahead -- and you think, if you run fast within hours you will reach, but you can never reach.

As you are running towards the horizon, the horizon is running away from you, because it goes not really exist, it is illusory, it is a hallucination. So the distance between you and the horizon is constant -- it cannot be more, it cannot be less. It will remain the same. The same is true about mind and its desire the distance remains the same.

If you have ten thousand rupees it asks for one hundred thousand rupees, ten times more, if you have one hundred thousand it asks again ten times more. And it goes on and on, so wherever you are, you are in misery, whatsoever you have only creates misery. The poor are miserable, the rich are miserable in fact the rich are more miserable than the poor, because the poor can hope, the rich cannot even hope. The poor man can think that tomorrow things will be better, but the rich man knows perfectly well by his experience that tomorrow comes but things are never better.

So many times he has been able to attain whatsoever the mind wanted, and again mind started wanting more. Hence a very strange thing happens, the poor seem more contented than the rich, for the rich become really very hopeless. Once a society is affluent it starts feeling utterly hopeless, desperate, because whatsoever the mind had always wanted is there, but there is no joy. Mind is a beggar, if one wants to be an emperor he has to get out of the mind.

Meditation allows you to be the emperor, because suddenly that desire for more is no more suddenly there is immense contentment -- wherever you are, whatsoever you are. There is no hankering for tomorrow at all. This moment is so fulfilling, this now, this here, is so immensely rich -- who wants to be anywhere else? It is so overwhelming that one disappears in the now and the here, and that brings your real nature to the surface for the first time. Otherwise the mind is hovering around your circumference and never allows your centre to say anything. Once the mind is put aside then your being, which is hidden at the centre like a seed, starts sprouting its branches, its flowers, start reaching to the circumference, your joy starts overflowing. Life becomes a festival of lights.

Mind is prose, meditation is poetry. Mind is businesslike, calculative, cunning. Meditation brings a totally different dimension of innocence, of a heart singing, dancing, rejoicing. Mind is interested in money, power, prestige, meditation opens a door to a totally different style of life -- the life of the flowers and the stars and the birds and the rivers and the mountains.

It is a total transformation to move from mind to meditation. There is no other transformation bigger than that. There has never been and there will never be. To move from mind to meditation is to have travelled the greatest distance possible. These two points are the farthest points in existence, but they both exist within you.

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heart is only a caravanserai -- just an overnight stay, a motel! (laughter) But it is a necessary state. It gives you rest from the tiredness of the mind, it rejuvenates you, it gives you great encouragement to go deeper, to go further. It opens to you a new vista, a new vision of the being. From the mind you cannot see anything of the being, from the mind you can at the most hear a few whispers from the heart. That too only if you are very alert, quiet; then the still small voice can be heard -- those little knocks from the heart. The heart does not speak loudly, it only whispers. It is a love-language, you cannot shout it. It cannot be like a political slogan! it can only be a whisper.

So if one is very alert, sensitive, then one can hear the whisper of the heart. It is constantly calling you, but it is like the distant call of the cuckoo: unless you are very very ready and listening for it, the traffic noise, the trains, the aeroplanes, the people, will not allow you to hear it. Once you are groping for it there is a possibility that you will be able to put aside all the noise and you will be able to hear the distant call of the cuckoo. That's exactly the heart's whisper, a very distant call, but very silent.

Once it is heard you cannot forget it. It becomes a magnetic pull -- that's what leads you into meditation.

First meditation becomes a feeling, a movement from thinking to feeling. First meditation becomes a love affair. And when you have reached to the heart then you will be able to see a totally different world, another peak with virgin snows. But it becomes possible to see it only when you have reached to the heart; then you can see the world of being.

Meditation begins in the turmoil of the mind, reaches to a certain maturity in the hear world of feeling, and reaches to its ultimate flowering in the world of being. And these are the three things to remember first, the prose of the mind, second, the poetry of the heart, and third, just the silent music, the soundless sound, what Zen people call the sound of one hand clapping.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #4

Chapter title: None

4 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101045

ShortTitle: POND04

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 to transcend two things, the first is knowledge and the second is ignorance; but knowledge comes first because it is knowledge that goes hiding ignorance. It is a cover-up. Unless you renounce knowledge, you will never be able to know your ignorance. Knowledge is a deception. It keeps one deluded.

One goes on thinking 'as if' one knows, but that 'as if' is too big; one knows nothing. Knowledgeability is not wisdom, it is all borrowed. And whatsoever is borrowed is ugly, it is a burden. It keeps you tethered to the earth, it cuts your wings, it does not allow you to fly into the unknown.

The unknown is like the sky and the known is like the earth. knowledge has to be transcended; and that is not only the first thing to be transcended, that is also the more difficult thing. To renounce ignorance is very easy because knowledge fulfils the ego, hence the difficulty. It is a nourishment for the ego, the ego cannot exist without it. So the ego will find every rationalisation to cling to knowledge.

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Once knowledge is dropped, once you become as ignorant as a child, then the second step is very simple. In fact you have not to do it, it happens of its own accord. The man who has the guts to renounce knowledge has earned, deserves, the help of the whole. He has proved himself worthy of the grace of the divine.

The moment you are ready to accept your ignorance, ignorance starts disappearing. Socrates says 'I know only one thing -- that I know nothing'; he has renounced knowledge. Now whatsoever man can do he has done. He has done the most impossible task.

Now the second thing happens as a gift because ignorance does not feed the ego, so there is no clinging to it, no attachment to it -- who wants to be ignorant? It starts slipping, like a dead leaf it starts falling from the tree, the tree need not renounce it. It is dead leaf; just a small breeze or a rain shower, anything can become the excuse for it to fall. And the moment ignorance also disappears then innocence is discovered --

that is the state of the sage.

Sannyas is the beginning, the beginning of the pilgrimage that ends in sagehood. I don't call the ultimate state the state of a saint -- that word has become ugly because of associations. The word 'sage' is still virgin, it has not been polluted by the so-called religions.

So these things have to be remembered: renounce knowledge -- that you have to do -- and then the second thing comes as a by-product, renunciation of ignorance. And the third thing is discovered when knowledge and ignorance both are gone. You are gone, the ego is gone. In that moment of egoless silence one discovers the primal innocence, the innocence of existence itself. That's the goal of sannyas!

Truth cannot be reflected upon. One cannot think it. One can think about it, about and about. The word

'about' means around. All thinking goes in circles, it never reaches to the centre. All thinking is superficial, it never touches the real, the essential. That's why philosophy is a failure, it has not contributed anything to humanity. It is the greatest exercise in utter futility. For thousands of years thousands of talented people have wasted their energies and lives in reflecting; and they have reflected about everything possible, out they have not come to any conclusion.

Philosophy, by its nature, remains inconclusive, because every conclusion creates more problems, new problems. It solves nothing, it brings more and more problems in. Hence I am against philosophy. My approach is anti-philosophical, it is existential.

Thinking has to be dropped if one wants to know the truth. Thinking is a barrier, not a bridge. So slowly slowly go on dropping the old habit of thinking. There will come small gaps, intervals, when you are utterly in silence and there is no thought. In those moments windows start opening into the unknown. And a few glimpses are enough; they become the proof that if just a moment's thoughtlessness can give you such immense insight into existence, then what is not possible if you can put all thinking aside and look directly, immediately.

Then one goes like an arrow, straight to the very centre of existence. And knowing it liberates.

Science is concerned with the objective world, with that which is outside you, it is not concerned with yourself at all. It is not concerned with your interiority. It is leaving aside the most significant phenomenon

-- it is ignoring you. It is concerned with everything else. It is really very strange that the scientist goes on working on everything possible but he never bothers about 'Who am I? What is this consciousness within me?' Science leaves the scientist absolutely ignored. The scientist remains utterly ignorant about himself; so whatsoever he knows is not of much value, because at the very core of his being there is darkness.

Sannyas is concerned with the inner, the discovery of your own centre. It is the greatest adventure there is; but one has to drop the whole scientific approach. One has to forget about the outside world, at least for a few moments every day, so that one can become more and more attuned with one's own being.

As you become more and more centred you become luminous. Your inner world becomes lighted up.

And then whatsoever you do in the outside world has significance, because it is coming from a source of light and not from a source of darkness. Science can be a great blessing to humanity, but it has not been so up to now, for the simple reason that science is a very lopsided approach. It has become the concern for the unessential, forgetting the essential.

I am not against science, but the priority has to be given to the inner. The inner comes first -- only then the outer -- because the roots of life are in the inside world, on the outside there are only leaves and branches, foliage. If you forget the roots the tree will die, if you go on feeding and nourishing the roots, then the tree will have thousands of flowers.

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history up to now is that the mystics don't care at all about science, and the scientists don't care about the world of the mystic. And because of the division the whole of humanity is suffering. I want to destroy that division, I want to bring things into a deep harmony -- but one has to begin from the inner.

So for the time being forget all about science, the outside world, the world of objects, and become absolutely concerned, totally absorbed with your consciousness. Once the inner is realised then do whatsoever you feel like doing, then do whatsoever is spontaneous to you -- and there will be virtue and there will be service and there will be love and there will be compassion, but they will be natural phenomena, not cultivated.

When virtue comes spontaneously it has a beauty of its own.

One of the greatest fallacies that happens to almost every human being is the misunderstanding between love and attachment. People think attachment is love; it is not. It is just the opposite of love; it kills love, it strangles love. When your being is full of attachment then love cannot grow; that is not the right climate and soil for love to grow. Love cannot blossom.

Even if something like love exists it will die. One has to learn lovingness and unlearn the subtle ways of attachment. One should not cling, one should not possess the other, because the moment you possess the other you destroy his freedom, and he will never be able to forgive you for that. He will take revenge. And if you possess the other then he will try to possess you. Possessiveness breeds possessiveness in the other; it becomes a challenge and a fight -- who possesses who?. And in this war of possessiveness, love dies because love is a very delicate flower. There is nothing more delicate than love.

And once your love dies your life dies. Then one can go on vegetating as long as possible, but there will be no splendour, no song, no fragrance. I am for love and against attachments -- hence I don't teach that one should leave the world and escape to the mountains or the monasteries. The people who have escaped to the mountains and the monasteries are the people who are incapable of drooping attachments so they escape from the very situation where attachment is bound to happen. They know it -- so they throw the baby with the bathwater. Just to avoid attachment they become anti-love, but this is sheer stupidity.

Without love there is no prayer, no god, without love there is no poetry, no music, no celebration. And there have been up to know only two kinds of people the majority, the people who are known as the worldly people -- they kill love by attachment, and the so-called other-worldly, the monks and the nuns of all the religions -- they escape from love because they are afraid of attachment, they also kill love, by escaping.

One kills by escaping, but both become loveless. That's why the whole of humanity is loveless.

And a life without love is a body without breathing it is a corpse.

My sannyasins have to learn the very subtle art of distinguishing between attachment and love; and all attachment has to be dropped. One has to be courageous enough to drop all attachment, all clinging, all jealousy, all possessiveness -- they all belong together, different faces of the same phenomenon. And when all that is dropped, love arises in its purity. And that ascending love takes you with it to the highest peak of existence, to self-realisation, to the experience of the infinite, to the realisation of the eternal.

The body is beautiful, the body is a temple; but it is beautiful only when you know that you are not it. If you become identified with it, it becomes ugly; it becomes an imprisonment rather than a temple.

If you know that 'I am not the body but only a guest and the body is the host,' then the body is a temple; and a temple has a beauty, a serenity, a sacredness. If you forget this you start thinking 'I am the body,' as millions of people think -- ninety-nine point nine percent of all people think that they are body. Even the so-called spiritualists who talk about spirit and god, etcetera -- if you look deep down in them you will find they are identified with their body. And all that they go on saying is mere jargon, it has no content in it, empty words. But words have their own fascination, words have their own hypnotic power.

There are words which can become obsessions, which can dominate your whole life. But reality is a totally different phenomenon.

People live identified with the body; that's how the body becomes an imprisonment. Rather than helping you to grow towards the infinite, your identification with the body makes you very finite, very small. And that is one of the fundamental causes of misery; the body will get old, then you will feel afraid, scared --

you are getting old; the body will be ill and then you will be in tremendous fear -- and sooner or later the body is going to die. You may not think about it, but it is there. You see people dying -- you cannot deny it; you may overlook it but you cannot deny it. You may no look at it, you may bypass it, but still it is there and deep down you know that you have to die. That creates a trembling, that creates a sadness inside that 1/08/07

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soon this life will be taken away from you -- and nothing is fulfilled yet, no flower has bloomed yet.

Identification with the body becomes identification with death, old age, sickness. The moment you are not identified with the body, when you know 'I am separate, I am consciousness,' you are immediately freed from illness, old age, death. They will happen to the body but you are just a witness to it all, just an onlooker; it has nothing to do with you.

And the experience that whatsoever happens in the body has nothing to do with you is such a freedom, is such a relief, that suddenly you become weightless. That weightlessness is one of the significant by-products of meditation.

Meditation simply means the art of witnessing. Start by witnessing your body and then your mind -- and get out of both! In fact by meditating you will be out of both. And the day one knows 'I am not the body, not the mind,' one has come home. Then one knows who one is.

The English words 'mind' and 'man', both come from the same Sanskrit root, manu.

Mind is our past. It has no concern with the present or with the future, it is simply a record of all that has happened in the past. And remember that to live through the mind is a wrong way to live, because life goes on changing every moment. To live through the mind means to live through the past, to live through the dead, to live through that which is no more. It will distort your vision and you will never be adequate to the situation you are in, you will always fall short of the challenge, your response will never be right.

Mind is the cause of all our failures, because mind goes on giving you ready-made answers. Those answers may have been right in some other situation in the past but they are no longer right because life has changed -- life is a constant change. Only one thing is permanent and that is change. Otherwise everything changes.

Heraclitus says 'You cannot step in the same river twice'; and I say to you, you cannot step in the same river even once, because the river is constantly changing. When your foot touches its surface it is one river, it takes time for your foot to go a little deeper -- it is another river. By the time you reach to the bottom, of the river it is still some other water, it is no more the same water that you had touched on the surface. So even to step once in the same river is impossible.

We have to learn not to function through the mind. Mind is good as a record, good as a computer which contains all your past experiences, it is factually helpful if you want to remember somebody's name -- unless the person has become a sannyasin! (laughter) Then nobody knows! (more laughter) The mind is good for factual information; somebody's phone number, somebody's address, somebody's name, geography, history

-- that kind of nonsense! But as far as reality is concerned mind has nothing to say to you -- so put it aside and look directly! Contact life immediately without any mediator. Only then will you be able to respond adequately, correctly; and each response will bring joy, and each response will bring immense fulfilment.

That's what mediation is: putting the mind aside and responding to reality freshly, not with ready-made answers.

Once you are free from ready-made answers you are again a child, innocent, full of wonder, full of awe; and the whole existence starts becoming more and more mysterious. The mind tries to demystify existence and meditation makes you aware of its eternal mystery. That's what is meant by the word 'god': god simply means that existence is mysterious, unfathomably mysterious; there is no way to demystify it. The more we know, the more it becomes mysterious the more we know, the more we know that we are ignorant. And ultimately one stops the whole effort to know, seeing its absurdity one drops it, and only then one starts living.

Knowing is of the head, living is of your total being and it is living that will give you the taste of existence, it is living; that will bring freedom, love, truth, god. Everything that is valuable comes through living -- not by thinking, not by mind, not by ready-made answers given to you by others. These answers gather around you like dust gathering on a mirror and the mirror becomes less and less a mirror the more dust gathers. One day comes when it is all dust and there is no mirror left.

My work here consists in helping you to cleanse your mirror. Mind is only dust and meditation is the mirror.

Religion is not religiousness. By religion I mean Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, the organised dogma, cult, creed, a certain doctrine which pretends to explain everything. Religiousness is not a dogma, it is not a doctrine. Religiousness is your flowering. It has nothing to do with Jesus or Buddha or Krishna; it has something to do with you, with your reality.

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To be religious the first thing necessary is to forget about the religions. It is religions which are preventing humanity from becoming religious, before a person can become religious, Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, or Mohammedanism is imposed on him. The child is covered with all kinds of conditionings, he is programmed. By the time he become young, independent, able to think, his whole being will be so conditioned, his unconscious will be so full of cliches, that he will not be able to find a way on his own. Somehow he will remain burdened with the conditionings.

By becoming a sannyasin one takes a tremendous step of de-conditioning oneself. A sannyasin is no more a Christian, no more a Hindu, no more a Mohammedan; a sannyasin is religious, but has no affiliation with any religion. His effort is to discover truth on his own. And that's the only way truth can ever be discovered. It cannot be given to you by anybody else. No church can give it, no priest can give it.

The master never gives you the truth, he only gives you methods to discover the truth within yourself.

And the moment truth is discovered you become a lotus flower, your life becomes fragrant with bliss, with beauty, with grace. And that life is religious -- but then there is no adjective at all. If somebody asks 'To what religion...?' you cannot answer.

We are not separate from existence, but we all live with the idea that we are separate. The idea of separation is the ego. The idea -- just the idea -- creates the whole hell, because then we become afraid for our own survival, we become afraid for the future, we become afraid that one day we will have to die -- and it is all concerned with the idea of the ego. We don't understand that we are one with the whole, that there has been no birth and no death, because we have always been here, part of the whole. It is just like a wave which rises in the sea: it was there in the sea even before it rose -- and when it has gone back to the sea to rest, it is still there. Birth and death both are false; the wave remains, sometimes latent, resting, sometimes manifest, but it is there, it is always there. It is part of the ocean.

We are also part of this existence, we are waves of this ocean. And once this is understood all anxiety disappears, there is nothing to worry about. We will be here, we have always been here. This is our home --

we are part of it. There is no way for us to be anywhere else or not to be -- there is no way at all.

And because it is only an idea it can be easily dropped, there is not much of a problem in it. But sometimes just an idea can create so much trouble that one cannot believe that only an idea -- which has no correspondence in reality -- can create so much trouble.

I used to live in a house for a few years and I never wanted -- there were many children in the family in that house -- that the children should come into my room and do their things, so I created an idea that in that room there was a ghost. (laughter) And I started talking about the ghost, of course, the children became afraid... about the stories. But I was surprised when even grownups started thinking that there was a ghost, and even they wouldn't come into the room. One day even the owner of the house wanted something and had to pass through that room; he asked me to come along with him. I said 'why?' He said 'I cannot go alone.

How do you manage', he said, 'to live in that room? One night you had gone out and I passed from the room and I saw the ghost!' (much laughter) when I left the house the family sold it; they immediately left the house.

I wrote a letter to them. I asked 'What is the matter?' They said 'We cannot live there. It was just because of you that we managed; we knew that if you could live in the room with the ghost then you have enough power! But we are ordinary people and you are gone -- now the ghost can do anything. He may start roaming in the house...' (laughter)

After two or three years I went again to see the place -- the house was empty. I enquired 'What happened?' The person who had purchased it came to know about the ghost! And when his wife saw the ghost he sold the house! Since then the house is empty; now it is known as the "ghost bungalow". Nobody is ready to purchase it, nobody is ready -- a beautiful house! And I had just invented the ghost for the small children. I tried to persuade those people that there is no ghost, nothing at all; it was just an invention to prevent the children from coming into my room, disturbing my things, putting my things here and there, and I didn't want any noise in the room -- that was just an invention. They said 'Don't you try to convince us --

we have seen with our own eyes!'

The ego is just a ghost. Even if you have seen it with your own eyes it is just a ghost. Once you understand, it disappears. And that very moment life is a dance, a celebration, a festival.

Mind is doubt, the heart is trust. The mind cannot trust, the heart cannot doubt; so the whole thing is how to move from the head to the heart. There is no question of creating belief because belief is not trust, 1/08/07

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belief is again part of the mind -- as much as doubt is part of the mind. Belief is just a trick to cover up doubt, but doubt is there, hidden behind belief. You can just scratch a little bit and you will find doubt coming out of belief.

Belief is absolutely useless. It has not helped anybody ever. So I am not telling you to believe; I am telling you to shift your centre of energy from the head to the heart. Then, just as in the head doubt is natural, in the heart trust is natural, because th heart is full of love and the head is full of logic. To be in the heart suddenly a new door opens -- the door of trust. And it goes on opening, it goes on becoming wider and wider and wider. It becomes so wide that it can contain the whole sky. Even the sky seems to be smaller than the trusting heart.

And the process is simple: just become aware of your thought processes; watch your desires, your thoughts, your memories, your fantasies, and just by watching you will come to feel a new sense, a new sensibility that as you watch you are moving towards the heart -- you are becoming more and more feeling-full. Thinking is left far away and feeling has taken its place.

The moment thinking is replaced by feeling, doubt is replaced by trust. And trust does not mean trusting in god or trusting in somebody; it is simply a quality. The doubtful person doubts everything, everybody. He simply doubts -- that's his quality. and the person of trust, trusts -- simply trusts. There is no question of any object -- not in the Bible, not in the Koran, not in the Gita -- he simply trusts... the trees, the mountains, the rivers, the stars, the people, the animals. He becomes incapable of untrusting. He will trust even the person who betrays him.

Jesus trusted to the last moment the disciple who betrayed him, Judas. In fact because of his trust, Judas committed suicide the next day. He could not exist any longer; he became so burdened with 'What have I done? and to whom? To a man who trusted me, knowing perfectly well that I am going to betray him, knowing exactly that this is the last night and I am going to betray -- still he kissed me with deep love, he washed my feet -- and there was no complaint, not even a question asked "Why have you done this?"' The crucifixion of Jesus became too heavy on poor Judas; certainly he is a poor man, a man full of doubts and logic and scepticism.

But he had to commit suicide, he could not live any longer. Life would have been far more difficult than death. The story of Judas is the story of doubt and the story of Jesus is the story of trust.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #5

Chapter title: None

5 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101055

ShortTitle: POND05

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.]

Compassion is possible without becoming conscious but then it is pseudo, cultivated, just on the outside.

It does not arise from the innermost core of your being; it is only a formal thing. And that's what the 1/08/07

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so-called religions have been doing teaching people to be compassionate, to be of service to others, to have to be dutiful, to be loving, out all these qualities are by-products, so when you try them directly they remain phony.

The real thing is consciousness. The more conscious you become, simultaneously, compassion starts growing. You need not think about it at all; it comes of its own accord -- and that is true religion. This is the distinction between the true and the false: the false is cultivated, the true is spontaneous, natural. The false is imposed from the outside, the true wells up from your within. And whenever something comes from your very being it has tremendous beauty.

That is another meaning of your name, beauty. And a really religious person will be beautiful. His whole life will be nothing but sheer grace; his actions will show his being, his gestures will indicate something invisible in him, his words will contain his silence and his silence will be his message. So whether he is speaking or not speaking, whether he is doing something or not doing, in every possible way grace will surround him. And he is not trying to maintain it, it is not out of effort -- he has not to think at all. It following him as a shadow follows one. he is not even half-conscious about it; hence he never becomes holier-than-thou. We never pretends that he is doing something great -- serving people, humanity.

Whatsoever he is doing is his joy to do. Nobody is obliged, nobody is made to feel owed to him; in fact he is thankful to the whole existence that it has given him the opportunity to live a beautiful life, blissful life, a conscious life.

Initiation into sannyas is initiation into consciousness. Become more aware, alert, watchful. That single word 'consciousness' contains the very soul of religion.

Consciousness is the only hope in life, the unconscious person lives hopelessly. His life has no wonder, no surprise, no ecstasy. It is dull, it is dead. He somehow drags himself. When one can become a dance just to go on dragging yourself is stupid. The same energy that becomes a burden can also create wings, the same energy that creates misery can open the doors of paradise. All that is needed is the key -- and consciousness is that key. It is a master key, it can open all the locks and all the doors and all the mysteries.

So my whole effort here is to help my people become more and more conscious. I don't give you any commandments, I don't give you any morality, I give you only a simple alchemical secret, be more conscious -- and that's enough, because a conscious person cannot do anything wrong. And the unconscious person cannot do anything right; the unconscious person may intend to do right but he will do wrong. And the conscious person has no intention left. The more you become conscious, all intentions and all desires are consumed by the fire of consciousness. The conscious person simply lives without any motive. And to live without any motive is to live an authentic life. When there is no motive, no expectation, one cannot be frustrated, obviously; every frustration needs as a prerequisite, expectation. The conscious person expects nothing, hence you cannot frustrate him. The conscious person never tries to succeed, hence he can never be a failure. The conscious person lives each moment for the sheer joy of living -- there is no motive, no desire, no ambition. And that is the true definition of a sannyasin living consciously is what sannyas is all about.

Misery is rooted in our robot-like behavior; it arises out of our unconsciousness. You become angry because you are unconscious; if you are conscious, to be angry is so stupid -- it is impossible to get into it.

One can get into it only unconsciously; hence even unconscious people later on repent. When they start getting a little bit alert to what they have done, how they have behaved, how ugly it was, then they start saying "I am sorry -- I did it in spite of myself!" But how can you do it in spite of yourself? Then who does it?

But there is a certain significance in that expression; it shows that when you are unconscious you are not yourself. Then you are at the mercy of anything that is happening outside -- it can drive you into any direction. You become driftwood. The moment you are conscious, only then you are; and then you cannot be angry, cannot be jealous, cannot be dominating, cannot be egoistic. All these things simply disappear.

And these are the causes of our misery. Once they are gone life is bliss. One should not settle for less than that.

One should keep oneself alert, so much so that one day your life becomes just a blissfulness. And it is possible, it is our potential, it is our birthright. And the whole of life is a challenge to get that which is our birthright.

There are a thousand and one fallacies prevalent all around the world about meditation. Meditation is 1/08/07

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very simple: it is nothing but consciousness; it is not chanting. Chanting can create a hypnosis. It is not using a mantra or a rosary -- that too is a hypnotic method; it can give you a certain kind of rest. Nothing is wrong about that rest; if one is just trying to relax it is perfectly good -- any hypnotic method can be helpful.

But if one wants to know the truth then it is not enough.

Meditation simply means transforming your unconsciousness into consciousness. Normally only one-tenth of our mind is conscious, nine-tenth is unconscious. Just a little part of our mind, a thin layer has light; otherwise the whole house is in darkness.

And sannyas is a challenge to grow that small light so much that the whole house is flooded with light, so that not even a nook or corner is left in darkness. And then the whole house is full of light, then life is a miracle; it has the quality of magic. Then it is no more ordinary -- everything becomes extraordinary. The mundane is transformed into the sacred and the small things of life start having such tremendous significance that one would not have ever imagined: ordinary stones look as beautiful as diamonds, the whole existence becomes illuminated. The moment you are illuminated the whole existence is illuminated.

If you are dark then the whole existence is dark. It all depends on you. You will find only yourself reflected in thousands of ways in existence; in people's eyes, in the stars, in the rivers, in the mountains, in the trees, in the flowers, you will find yourself reflected. If you are full of darkness then you will not find light anywhere.

Buddha is right when he says, "Be a light unto yourself." That's what I mean by becoming conscious: becoming a light unto yourself. And no special method is needed. Just watch. Watch the actions of your body: while walking, watch; while eating, watch. Watch the thought processes of the mind -- thinking, desiring, dreaming -- watch. Watch the subtle emotions -- feelings, moods, thoughts -- just watch. These is no need to choose that this is good and that is bad. The moment you start choosing you lose watchfulness; you are no more a sannyasin, you have become a puritan, a moralist.

There is no question of good and bad. Whatsoever is the case, simply watch it, without any judgement.

And then slowly slowly, from the body to the mind, from the mind to the heart... and then the ultimate jump happens one day: suddenly you become watchful of watchfulness itself -- and that is the moment when the house is full of light; one has come home.

Unconsciousness creates all kinds of ugliness in life; so whenever you find anything ugly in you, just look for the cause; somewhere in the roots will be unconsciousness. If there is ambition the person becomes ugly. Politicians are bound to be ugly, so much ambition, so much desire to dominate others, by any means

-- because time is short and competition is great. There are so many people who are trying to be the president, to be the prime minister in such a great competitive world, with such a short life, how can one bother about the means and the end? Then any means have to be used to fulfil your desire. Then one forgets all sense, all reason, all aesthetic sensibility.

If one has to murder people, one murders. Joseph Stalin killed at least ten million people, and the same is true about Mao Tse Tung, and the same is true about Adolf Hitler. The whole history of humanity is full of these monsters -- but everybody is a politician more or less. You may not kill thousands of people or millions of people but in your own small way you will kill a few people, you will kill your husband, your wife, your children -- whomsoever you can get hold of. You may not really murder but you may kill their spirit. The ambitious person is poisonous, whatsoever he touches becomes a poison.

But ambition exists because we are unconscious, otherwise who bothers to dominate anybody? It is enough to be a master of oneself. And one becomes an emperor, far greater than any Alexander the Great, because by knowing oneself one comes to know the inner kingdom of god -- which is eternal and infinite.

All that is thought to be valuable in the world suddenly becomes useless. When you know your inner world everything pales, everything starts losing all significance. Once you have real gold you will know that up to now you have been carrying an unnecessary load, it was not real gold, it was false. It only looked like gold, it glittered like gold, but all that glitters is not gold.

But one has to first know the real, then only can one judge what is unreal, otherwise there is no criterion.

Anger, hatred -- all are ugly. And if so many uglinesses are there in your mind, so many snakes and scorpions and dogs barking inside, and wolves and foxes (laughter)... it is impossible to become a human being with all these creatures inside.

Consciousness helps you in a very simple but very efficient way. The moment you start becoming ambitious, if you are conscious, suddenly you start laughing at the whole idea of ambition; it looks ridiculous, it drops like a dead leaf.

1/08/07

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If you are getting into anger and you become conscious, anger evaporates, just like dewdrops in the early sun, leaving no trace behind.

Once you have learned that to be conscious is the real miracle of life -- because it drops all that is non --

essential, all that is ugly -- then what is left is beautiful. Beauty has not to be cultivated, the ugly only has to cease and the beauty rises.

Beauty is natural, ugliness is unnatural. Beauty is your self-nature and ugliness is something foreign.

That's why nobody wants to be ugly -- but because of unconsciousness everybody has to be ugly.

Everybody wants to be beautiful, but not knowing how to be beautiful, people go on painting their faces, trimming their hair, trying this kind of dress or that kind of dress, dieting and all kinds of things, just to be beautiful. But they don't know that this is not going to help much.

Beauty is something inner. Hence it is there, discovered, it starts radiating from your body, from your mind, from everything that you consist of. Once your inner beauty is there everything is beautified.

The real virtue has nothing to do with so-called morality. There is one very profound and pregnant statement of Socrates: he says 'Knowledge is virtue.' By knowledge he means wisdom, knowing, because his whole emphasis was 'Know thyself.' That's what I mean by being conscious, because it is only consciousness that makes you capable of knowing yourself. And the moment you have known yourself you cannot do anything harmful to anybody. It is simply impossible. You cannot be destructive.

It is like a man who has eyes, how can you think that he will try to pass through the wall? He as eyes so he knows where the door is -- he will pass through the door. But the blind man can try. He will knock all around, and he can even try to get out through the wall or from the window. He does not know where the door is. He will ask others where the door is. But each moment you are in a different house -- as far as life is concerned -- and each moment the house is changing. Sometimes the door is on the right and sometimes it is on the left, and sometimes it is at the back and sometimes in the front -- no directions from others can be of much help, because the door goes on changing.

You need your own eyes. Then there is no need to ask, then there is no need to think about the door whenever you want to get out, you simply look and you know where the door is. That's what consciousness gives you: an insight, a new vision, a way of seeing, a new eye -- in the east we call it the third eye. That is only a metaphor but there are a few fools who try to dissect a dead body to find out where the third eye is.

These fools can be great experts, scientists, but that does not make any difference. They have not understood the metaphor, they have not understood the poetry of the word. It is only an expression. The third eye does not exist in the physical body, it is only a way of saying that you have found how to see directly into reality, you have become conscious. And out of that consciousness is virtue.

And remember: if virtue is imposed from the outside then it is a regimentation. When it comes from the within it has an individuality. It is not like ready-made clothes, it is made for you, it is made by your consciousness. Its harmony is total with your being.

Now Moses wrote the Ten Commandments three thousand years ago, and there are fools who are still following them. They were perfectly good for Moses but they are not good for anybody else. They come out of his consciousness. That's the parable, that they came out of an encounter with god, that's an old way of saying that one has become so conscious that one knows what truth is, what god is. His experience of the ultimate truth gave birth to those Ten Commandments; they were only applicable to him -- and to nobody else,

In India, Hindus have followed the rules and the discipline of Manu, who is even farther beck than Moses -- five thousand years old. They may have been perfectly good for Manu but they are not at all adequate for anybody else. And this is my insistence, that each person has to find his own religion, his own morality, his own virtue. Then your virtue has your signature. Then it is alive, breathing, and then you are doing it not for any other reason, but just because that's the right thing to do. Your very heart wants to do it.

Then you are not asking for any rewards in heaven, you are not greedy for anything and you are not afraid of hell, of any punishment. You are doing exactly what your insight is tell in; you to do -- whatsoever the result, whatsoever the ultimate consequence. Nobody of deep consciousness ever cares about the consequences. He acts immediately, responds to reality directly -- and that's all. And he enjoys the moment when he acts with reality, with his total being. He enjoys that harmony, that meeting, that merger, that union.

Consciousness changes everything from prose to poetry, from mathematics to music, from logic to love.

1/08/07

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It is a radical transformation -- and only after this transformation does one start enjoying the adventure of life. Then each moment is ecstatic, exquisite. Its beauty is immense, unfathomable, immeasurable, inestimable. One can experience it but one cannot express it. No expression is possible, no definition is possible. It is so vast and our words are so small; our words are like dewdrops and the experience of consciousness is oceanic. You cannot force the ocean into a dewdrop.

The experience of consciousness is absolutely wordless. It happens only in utter silence. The silence is so profound that even you are not there. It is just space. Everything is gone -- your mind is gone, your ego is gone, there is space full of light. This experience has been described as god or as nirvana or as truth.

And if one wants to catch some glimpse of it, then prose is the most inadequate thing; maybe poetry can reflect it a little bit -- just a little bit. Something of it can be communicated through poetry, something of it one can sing. One may not be able to say but one can sing it. It will not be in the words, it will oe in the very background of the song; not in the song itself, but in the gaps, in the pauses, in the intervals.

The poetry is not in the words, it is always between the words and between the lines. It is something surrounding the word like an invisible aura, but it is not exactly in the word. Or it can be experienced a little bit in music, even better than in poetry, because music is the highest form of poetry. Words are gone: only wounds are there and the harmony of the sounds.

It is not sounds that make the music but the harmony of the sounds. And the consciousness that I am talking about creates a harmony in your inner world among all your fragments, it joins them, it integrates them into one reality. Ordinarily we are thousands of thing, not one. we are many, a multitude, a crowd. But when one becomes conscious, slowly slowly the crowd loses its many-ness and becomes one, it becomes an integration, a crystallization and then there is great harmony.

First one has to become harmonious within oneself and then one can be harmonious with the universe, with the stars and the moon and the sun and the trees and the birds -- this whole vast infinite universe, one can merge into it. There are two mergers, one within yourself -- the first unity, and the second, with the whole -- the second unity. And within these two steps the whole journey is complete.

First become one with yourself, then become one with the whole -- and that's what I call holiness. To me that's the goal of sannyas, become conscious so your life becomes nothing but poetry, music, harmony, unity, oneness. And unless it happens one has lived in utter futility, in vain.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #6

Chapter title: None

6 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101065

ShortTitle: POND06

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.]

Life is a curse if you are not aware. Then it is nothing but misery. It is only thorns, not a single rose.

From the cradle to the grave there are hopes and man goes on living because of those hopes, but they are 1/08/07

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never fulfilled.

In the end there is only despair, hopelessness, anguish. That's our whole anguish. But this tragedy happens only because we are not aware. Awareness functions like magic: it transforms everything into its opposite. Anger becomes compassion, greed becomes sharing, hate becomes love, the very darkness of life becomes light. And then suddenly one discovers that the thorns were not there outside; they were our projection of an unconscious state.

Once you are conscious, there are only roses and roses. The person who coined the proverb that life is not a bed of roses must have been unconscious, unaware, because all the awakened ones say just the opposite: Life is a bed of roses. Hence all that a sannyasin has to do is to shift a gear inside himself from unconscious to consciusness.

And the process is very simple. It cannot be simpler than it is. In fact because it is so simple, people go on missing it. If it was a little complicated, difficult, there would be a challenge for the ego; but there is no challenge for the ego. Ego is always interested in something difficult. The more difficult it is, the better. The ego is interested in going to the moon, to Mars; it is not interested in going within oneself.

The process can be reduced into a simple formula: whatsoever you do, do it but remain alert. Walking, watch your walking; eating, watch you. eating just don't go on stuffing youself mechanically. The mind is somewhere else, you are thinking a thousand-and-one things and the hands go on stuffing and the mouth goes on chewing. That is a mechanical process. You are not aware of what you are doing.

If you are totally in the moment -- only then can you be aware. So forget the whole world while you are eating. Eating, just eat; walking, just walk; listening, just listen; talking, just talk and remain totally in it, alert, aware of each gesture, each nuance. And slowly you will get the knack of it, the hang of it.

It is not a science, it is not even an art. It is only a knack, like swimming -- you have just to start throwing your hands. First start in shallow water so there is no fear, then go deeper. First begin with the body -- that is the shallowest part of our being. Then go into the mind. Then watch your thoughts, desires, memories. Then go still deeper, dive still deeper -- watch your emotions, your moods. And then the fundamental and the ultimate plunge, the fourth, where your centre is. Then become aware of your awareness itself.

The moment one is aware of awareness itself the circle is complete . And that is the moment we in the East have called enlightenment.

Man is not imprisoned by outside forces. He is imprisoned by his own unconscious, by his own instincts, by his own biological past. So one can try to be politically free -- that is not difficult -- but it is not going to bring real freedom.

So almost every counrty is politicallty free but the people are in the same misery. One can try to be economically free. The moment you become rich you are economically free. You can purchase anything you want, you can have all the things of the world. There is no limitation. You can have the best house, the best of everything; still, something will be missing. You will not feel contented. You will not really feel free

. On the other hand, you will feel hampered by all your possessions.

The richer a person gets, the more and more he is imprisoned in his richness. He cannot even sleep well.

He cannot live in a relaxed way, although he always wished that when the money would be there he would live in a relaxed way. Then life would be just a long holiday. He now has a house in the mountains, a house on the beach, a beautiful yacht in the sea, an aeroplane and everything, but he has no will to relax. In fact in earning all this money he has learned one thing: how to remain constantly tense. He has been always on his tiptoes. Now it is too late to relax.

Relaxation needs a totally different kind of skill -- the rich person misses it. Hence the rich person only appears rich. Really he is as poor as anybody else, maybe far poorer than the poor ones. Apparently he has all but inside there is only nothingness, and the freedom that he was thinking would come through econonic prosperity has not arrived.

Money can be earned, freedom cannot be earned. Freedom has to grow within you. It grows simultaneously as a by-product of awarness. The more aware you are, the freer. The moment your awareness is at the peak, your freedom is also at the peak. So only a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra -- these few people -- have lived and known freedom.

And that is the goal of sannays: absolute freedom. The method is awareness.

God is non-existencial but godliness exists. God as a person is just a childish desire for a father figure. It 1/08/07

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is not accidental that god is called the father. The word is very indicative. We are brought up in such way that we elarn only one thing: how to remain always dependent on somebdoy. The child depends on the father, ont he mother. As he grows up he becomes independent -- at least outwardly -- but inside the desire for a father or a mother continues.

Hence in matriarchal societies where the woman, the mother, was dominant, there was the idea of a mother-god. The goddess-mother is far older than god the father, because the matriarchal system is older than the patriarchal system.

In the beginning; the woman ruled. The mother was more powerful than the father. There are even a few small aboriginal tribes in the world -- in India there are a few tribes living in the deep jungles -- who still worship god the mother. They have no idea of god as a father, because the woman is still predominant. And a strange thing...

I lived in a tribe for a few days just to study the difference, and it was shocking that there the men are weak and the women are strong. So the whole idea that man is basically strong just an invention. It all depends on the social structure .

In those tribes where the mother is still in power, the woman does all the hard work and the man is given soft work. In fact his whole purpose is to serve the woman. He is used as a sexual object. He is fed and taken care of and protected, but his whole purpose is to serve as a sexual object -- just the opposite of what is happening all over the world.

In the rest of the world whene the man has become all powerful, he seems to 'be stronger, more muscular and can do hard things; woman is the fair sex, has to be given softer jobs and is being used as a sexual object. She has to be taken care of so she remains beautiful and young; but the whole purpose is to serve the man.

Man is more or less a creation of his own ideas. When I saw those tribes I was puzzled because the women are taller and the men are smaller. Even in height, they are not taller than the woman; so it is not a biological phenomenon. And just as is our societies female prostitution exists, in those societies male prostitution exists. Male prostitutes are in much demand. And they charge much more (laughter). A woman can serve a few people every night, a man can serve only one woman -- of course he has to charge more!

(more laughter) And is those societies men are raped. Just three or four women will get hold of a man and rape him. He is just helpless!

The idea of god the father is a male chauvinist idea. In fact there is no god like he or she, but there is an experience which can be called godliness. But it is more like a frangrance, you cannot catch hold of it. It is not material, it is absolutely immatieral. You can experience it but you cannot encounter him. There is no he, there is no she, so there is no question of encountering.

You cannot pray because there is nobody to hear your prayers. You are just being stupid when you kneel on your knees and raise your hands towards the sky. You are just being foolish. It is idiotic. what you are going is just a sign of a retarded mind! (laughter)

Meditation is okay but prayer is not. Meditation simply means you are becoming silent, you are putting the mind aside.

That's what I call awareness: becoming silent, putting the mind aside, just becoming more and more aware. And when awareness explodes in you it islike an atomic explosion. All of your ego and the ideas that the ego has accumulated are simply onsumed by the fire of awareness. Nothing is left, or only nothing is left, but such a great nothing, such pure innocence, such space, that in that space one becomes aware for the first time of something transcendental. Youc an call it xyz; that is far better than calling god, because you cannot pray to 'x'. That will look stupid. Just think of puttting a big 'x' before yourself and praying... You will look all around, is anybody looking or not?

But you can make a statue of god and then that's perfectly okay -- but it is nothing more than xyz!

When you are silent, aware, you experience godliness; a fragrance comes like a breeze, overwhelms you, transforms you, gives you a new being, a new feel, a new juice, a new zest, a new dance. And life for the first time becomes a true, authentic, ecstasy.

I also use the word prayer but in a totally different sense than the Christians, Hindus and Mohammedans have used it down the ages. When this ecstasy has been experienced, when you are aware of godliness surrounding the whole world, then a thankfulness arises in your heart. That thankfulness is prayer, that gratitude is prayer. Nothing his to be said and there is nobody to say it, but you simply feel grateful, grateful to all that is!

1/08/07

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

Query:-

The state of unconsciousness is like the roots of a tree. The roots of the tree remain underground, you don't see them. That's how our unconscious is, underground; we don't see it, but it affects everything. It affects the branches, the leaves, the flowers. Our roots are hidden but they are very important; they are the most important part of a tree. And unless one understands one's roots one cannot have a real exerience of one's total being.

The branches of the tree are like our so-called consciousness: it is a very fragile, very thin layer, and can be destroyed casily by any accident; just a small accident and it collapses. Somebody insults you and you are no more conscious; somebody says something, and you forget all about your meditation, your awareness. You are mad! You can do anything; in that state of madness.

Anger is a temporary madness. Madness is nothing but anger which has become a permanent state. One can murder.

Many murderers have said in the courts that they did not do it. It used to be thought that they were all lying, but by and by psychologists became aware that a few of them were certainly lying but a few of them were not lying at all. Although they have committed the murder they don't remember it. They were so possessed by something from the unconscious that they were not themselves at all, so they don't remember.

It is like when somebody who is absolutely drunk says something to you and tomorrow does not remember it. He did say it, you may have a tape recording of it, but he is also right when he says that he has not said it; he has not said it consciously. And we are doing many of our acts unconsciously.

So just a thin layer of consciousness surrounds our unconscious . It is enough for our day-to-day, routine work: going to the office, working on a typewriter, driving, a car, talking to your husband or wife -- the same cliches that you have said so many times. And you will be repeating them without any consciousness.

But this is what we think; is consciousness; it is so-so, just lukewarm, not enough for any great flight to the unknown, to the ultimate.

One has to use this small fragment of awareness as a seed and one has to start growing it, nourishing it, helping it in every way, co-operating with it. And this in the world of a sannyasin: co-operate more and more with the small part of your being which is conscious and co-operate less and less with the bigger part of your being which is unconscious. Always choose the conscious, avoid the unconscious. Whichever makes you unconscious is wrong and whichever helps you to become concious is right. That's my definition of right and wrong, that's my whole morality. And slowly slowly if you co-operate with the conscious it grows and as you stop co-operating with the unconscious it becomes shrunken.

A moment comes when slowly slowly the territory of the conscious becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and the unconscious goes on shrinking, disappearing. Finally the whole unconscious territory is claimed by the consciousness. That is the moment you start growing flowers; for the first time your tree has flowers.

When almost ninety-nine per cent of your unconscious territory has become conscious you start growing flowers. And when one hundred per cent of the territory is reclaimed, when nothing of the unconscious remaing in you, your flowers release their fragrance. In the East we have called that fragrance Buddhahood, awakenedness. In the West the same phenomenon has been called Christ-consciousness. It is the same. Only the words differ.

And unless one has become a pure fragrance, one's life has gone as a sheer wastage. Only with this release of your innermost splendour do you enter into the kingdom, the kingdom of the infinite and the eternal. Then there is no death, no birth. Then you are here and now forever. The body will disappear but not you, the mind will disappear but not you. And to know that which abides and abides forever is to know the truth.

Awareness gives your life a new sense, a new insight, a new joy, a new ecstasy, unexperienced before, undreamt before. Life starts becoming more like a song. It starts having more and more music in it, it starts becoming harmonious; all discord disappears. For the first time you experience utter silence, so profound that it is absolutely unfathomable, immeasurable. One can dive into it and disappear, but that disappearance is not death.

That disappearance is, in fact, birth, resurrection. you had lived before almost as if in a dream; now you really live. And that dream was not sweet at all. It was more like a nightmare; you suffered all kinds of tortures in that dream. But when one is dreaming, everything in the dream lookk absolutely real. It is only when you are awake that you can see that it was a dream and nothing else. But only when you are awake, not before that.

Hence the awakened ones have said again and again that the whole world is maya, an illusion, a dream, 1/08/07

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made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. But the awakened ones cannot give any proof for it. How can you prove to the person who is fast asleep and still dreaming that what you are dreaming is a dream. There is no way.

The only possible way is to shake him, to wake him; once he is awake there is no need to prove. First you cannot prove when there is need, and when you can prove there is no need at all.

To be with a master simply means to live with someone who is awake, who is no more asleep, whose dreams are finished, whose nightmares are over. And just being in tune with the master slowly slowly wakes you up. The very energy of the master starts penetrating your being. Slowly slowly it seeps into your heart, slowly slowly it gives you a new heart, a new beat. And you cannot remain long with a master without becoming awake, because he is continuously shouting, calling you forth to wake up, calling you forth to come out of your grave.

And if you can open your eyes even once, suddenly for the first time you experience the music, the song, the dance; and it goes on increasing, it goes on moving towards a crescendo, towards a height which is absolutely unimaginable to the ordinary mind. It is beyond the mind, far beyond; hence the mind cannot say anything about it. It is indescribable, indefinable. the mind simply falls short with all its logic, language, words, with all its efficiency as far as the world is concerned.

In the encounter with the beyond, the mind feels for the first time utterly impotent. The impotency of the mind releases a new energy in you. That energy I call the song, the dance, the ecstasy. This is what Jesus calls the kingdom of god. His expression is a little bit old-fashioned but what he is indicating is exactly what I am indicating. It is a kingdom. You become an emperor only when your heart is full of songs, ready to burst forth, when the energy is so much that you would like to dance and share it.

Life can be a bliss -- it depends all upon you. And just a little effort, very little effort, just a little tossing and turning and one can wake up!

It does not take much and we come very close to the point from where waking can happen but we become afraid and we escape back into our dreams. Many people come here and escape.

Just this morning I received a letter from the father of one of my sanyasins. Krishnadeva is one of my sannyasins; his father has come to visit. He writes in a letter 'I want to escape as quickly as possible because I am becoming aware of the fact that if I remain here a little bit longer I will be trapped! (laughter) I am feeling so joyous for the first time and the people are so beautiful and the whole space... I had heard about you, that you hypnotise people; now I know! (more laughter) Before it happens I want to leave this place!

Now he is very close. He can escape. And the fear is natural and human.

So remember, when you become a sannyasin you are taking; a plunge into a very dangerous ocean!

Take the plunge with the absolute decisiveness of never turning back, of never looking back. Look ahead to the further shore, because it is only on the further shore of awakening, that you will find all that you have been seeking; for many many lives. And it is only alittle bit of courage that is needed.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #7

Chapter title: None

7 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101075

ShortTitle: POND07

Audio:

No

Video:

No

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

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

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 disconnects one from existence. It creates a wall around you. One starts living in a capsule, encapsulated, one shrinks within one's own self and creates a hard shell around, just to protect, just not to show one's wounds. It is humiliating to be exposed, to show that you are miserable, hence people hide their tears in smiles, they wear masks. That's what our personality is: an effort to hide the reality. It is not our individuality, it is just a facade painted beautifully. So at least we can deceive the world but we cannot deceive ourselves. We know those wounds -- they hurt. We know they are there continuously, but we keep ourselves occupied with a thousand end one things so that we can keep our misery hidden.

It is because of misery that for thousands of years man has been addicted to all kinds of drugs, simply to forget, simply to become utterly oblivious. When it becomes too much then the only way is to fall into unconsciousness.

Alcohol has become the way for millions of people around the world. Bliss does exactly the opposite.

The same energy is used, the same bricks are used, but one does not make a wall around oneself. One makes a bridge. And the more bridges you create, the more alive you are. When you are totally bridged with existence life becomes a sheer ecstasy.

And that is another meaning of your name; it is the name of the Celtic goddess of wisdom and song.

When one is bridged with existence one knows for the first time what it is all about, the meaning, the significance. And once that meaning explodes in you, you are so full of songs, dances, creativity, that one cannot imagine it unless it happens. There is no way to dream about it.

It is not possible to communicate to somebody what it is, because it is an experience. The master helps the disciple to experience it, not to believe in it. That's my work here: to help you become bridged with all the planes of existence and all the dimensions of existence, to all its depth and height. My whole approach is life-affirmative, because that is the only way to become bridged. If you deny something you close yourself towards it; hence I don't deny anything at all. All is beautiful, all is divine and all is perfect as it is.

Rejoice in it!

A life without love is a life full of darkness no moon, not even a star, not even a candle. It is the dark night of the soul and we are born into this dark night of the soul. Unless we make some effort to come out of it, we are going to live in it and die in it without knowing the light, without ever encountering the day.

The word 'day' is very significant. It comes from the same sanskrit root as 'divine'. Both mean light. And the only light is love. The moment you are overflowing with love darkness disappears. Love becomes a flame. It consumes all that is ugly, all that is meaningless, all that is rubbish -- and it leaves only the pure gold.

When love comes to its climax it is a full moon. It is not accidental that the full moon has always represented -- in all the cultures, all the societies, in all the ages -- the night of love. In fact, we call the lover mad and we also call the madman lunatic, moon-struck. Lunatic cones from lunar. Both are mad! Both have been struck by the moon.

The latest research says that many more people fall in love when the moon is coming closer to its peak; and very few people have become enlightened on any other night, except the full-moon night.

Buddha was born on the full-moon light, became enlightened on the full-moon night, died on the full-moon night, the same full moon, the same month. He represents really all the Buddhas of all the ages, past, present and future too.

The full moon has always attracted the poets, the painters, the lovers. People who have some aesthetic sense, sensitivity, have always felt a magnetic pull towards the moon. It is not only the ocean that becomes affected on the full moon. Inside us also there is some ocean that becomes affected and great waves start rising. The full moon has become representative of the absolute expression of love and light.

This has to be your path. This small word 'love' contains all that is worth having. It contains all the scriptures -- it is a code-word, condensed. One has to decode it in one's life.

Love as much as you can and the more you love, the more you will be centred, rooted, grounded, crystallised, integrated. Love for no other reason, for no other motive, except for sharing your life and joy, 1/08/07

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except for sharing your song and dance. There should be no desire for any reward, because only then the reward comes. If there is a desire the very desire prevents it. Love is immensely rewarded, it is inevitable.

Hence we need not think about it, we need not bother about it.

And once you start loving people, trees, rivers, stars, mountains, for no other reason, but just because you are here and the tree is here -- then why not commune, why miss this opportunity of relating, why remain dull and dead? Why not become alive and dance with the tree and sing with the tree and blossom with the tree?

Yes, you will look a little mad to people but it is worth it. Let the whole world think you mad. The world is living in such an insane way that to be called insane by the world is a certificate that you are sane.

It is really a great compliment! The world has called Buddha insane, Jesus insane, Lao Tzu insane, because the world consists of insane people.

One of my friends became mad and he was imprisoned in a madhouse. He was mad, so one day he drank something that was kept there to clean the bathrooms, not knowing what it was. It created such vomiting, diarrhoea, that for fifteen days he suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting and could not eat anything. That long fast and the diarrhoea and the vomiting cleansed his whole being. He cooled down, his madness disappeared.

And for the first time he became aware that he was in a madhouse, because there were at least nine hundred mad people all around and he had been with them for six months. Not even for a single moment had he thought that anything was wrong. Everything was perfectly good. Somebody was pulling his leg and somebody was cutting his hair and it was perfectly right, there was no harm. Somebody was massaging him, somebody was sitting on his shoulders... It was perfectly okay. He was himself mad. But now what to do?

He told the doctor, 'Now it is impossible for me to be here. I am absolutely sane and that is becoming difficult. Either make me insane again so I can be with these people, because I have to be here for three months more' -- he had been sentenced for nine months' imprisonment in a madhouse. But the doctor laughed, the gaoler laughed, and they said, 'Every madman says this -- that he is not mad.' He tried hard but he had to live there those three months. He told me, 'Six months were really beautiful because I was in tune with the whole madness that was all around. Once I became sane then things were very difficult; for those three months it was such a nightmare. Those three months felt as if I had been living there for thousands of years. Neither sleep nor anything else was possible.'

His becoming sane created the whole trouble. Jesus is crucified because he becomes sane. That is his fault, the only crime.

If you start loving you will be thought mad, but don't be worried about that. To be my sannyasin is to risk prestige, respectability, sanity -- the so-called sanity -- is to risk all that is important in the eyes of people. But life begins only then.

So let the world think you mad, but start in every possible way connecting in every direction, in every dimension, with love. And you will start feeling the magic of it. Soon you will be overwhelmed by it.

To be totally love is to know what god is, because there is no other god except love. To be just love is to be enlightened. There is no other enlightenment, because to be pure love is to become afire. The intensity of life is such then that even a single moment of that love is more significant than living thousands of years of drudgery and drag.

Make it a point that except love there is no religion. Love is my poetry, love is my philosophy, love is my religion, love is my message.

Meditation is the only way to find the beloved. Everybody is searching and seeking for the beloved, but the search if unconscious and the unconscious search cannot lead you anywhere. One can go on stumbling, groping in the dark, but it cannot take you anywhere.

The search has to become conscious. That's what meditation is: awareness, alertness, becoming aware of your body -- its actions, your mind -- its thoughts; your heart -- its feelings. These three you have to do, and the fourth comes as a gift from the ultimate. And the fourth can only be called the fourth.

In the East we have called it 'turiya'. It means simply, the fourth, just a number. We have not given it a name for a specific reason, because any name will give it a limitation -- and it is unlimited. So we have called it the fourth. It is like calling it xyz, not giving it any word because every word brings its limitation.

The fourth means awareness of awareness itself. You start from the grossest -- the body and its actions

-- and then you start moving to the subtler planes. The mind is the second station, deeper than the body, then feeling -- it is deeper than thinking, than mind. And after these three you cannot do anything. After the third 1/08/07

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all effort ceases, because effort can either be of the body or of the mind or of the heart. Now all three have been transcended so no effort is possible. In fact even the ego is no more there. There is nobody to make the effort. Neither doing nor the doer is possible. Both have disappeared. Now there is absolute silence, a state of utter stillness. But that is the right space, the space in which the beyond descends and awareness becomes aware of itself. And to become aware of awareness itself is the ultimate experience. There is nothing beyond it. It brings freedom, it brings compassion, it brings prayer, it brings love, it brings truth. All these have been expressed in a single word, and that word is 'god'.

God is only a combination of all the great values. God is not a person, but a word to indicate all the ultimate values. Becoming aware of awareness itself, life is fulfilled, one has arrived. That's the home for which we all are seeking, searching, but our search is unconscious. Hence we search but we fall. Make the search conscious and success is sure.

The Vedas represent the ancientmost scriptures of the world. In fact the Bible is also a Veda and the Koran is also a Veda, because the word 'veda' means that which contains knowledge. So the Vedas have been growing, there are not only four. There are three hundred religions on the earth and every religion has its own Vedas. But knowledge is not wisdom, and to know the scriptures can make one a scholar, but not enlightened.

One can accumulate as much information as possible -- and we have a memory system which can accumulate incalculable knowledge.

The scientists say that a single memory system, a single human mind, can contain all the libraries of the world. That much capacity is there. But even if one contains all the libraries of the world one will not be a Buddha. One will still remain the same fool! -- the same donkey loaded with all the scriptures. It won't transform his being. If one wants to transform the being one has to go beyond the word, one has to go beyond all theories, ideologies, doctrines, scriptures. That is the meaning of Vedant: the end of the Veda.

Be finished with information, put a full stop to information, because that only makes a man a parrot. We call those parrots pundits. But it does not make one contented, blissful, loving, knowing. Put an end to all information. That means put an end to the mind. And putting an end to the mind is the beginning of meditation. The cessation of the mind is the birth of meditation. And once meditation iq born then miracles start happening, then life starts taking such quantum leaps, unbelievable. One starts becoming aware of so many mysteries which are all around, which are so abundantly here. But we are closed because of our knowledge. Our eyes are closed. We are blind because of knowledge. Knowledge is making us blind.

One has to become innocent like a child, and the moment one is innocent -- clean, completely clean like a mirror -- then one reflects the truth. And to know the truth is to become it.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #8

Chapter title: None

8 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101085

ShortTitle: POND08

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.]

1/08/07

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

Query:-

Pleasure is from the outside and bliss is from the inside. Pleasure depends on others. Bliss is independent. Pleasure inevitably brings bondage. Bondage is sbsolutely part of pleasure, because the source of pleasure becomes more important than you are, and the fear arises that today it is available, but what is going to happen tomorrow? So make sure that it remains yours tomorrow too -- but then you have to bargain, you have to lose something, you have to pay for it. And then too it is never absolutely certain --

hence fear, anxiety. And when there is fear and anxiety and bondage, what pleasure can you have?

It is all destroyed. So it remains only a hope, just a carrot hanging in front of you. As you move the carrot goes on moving. You never achieve it, it never becomes a reality. It is always a dream. But it keeps you occupied, keeps you so much occupied from the cradle to the grave that you don't have any time left for the real search. You fail again and again, but the hope goes on living. After each failure it resurrects, it is again there.

Hope never dies. Even when we say 'I am hopeless,' it is not really true, because if one is really hopeless, if the hope has completely disappeared, then you cannot even feel hopelessness. The feeling of hopelessness is possible only with the background of hope: you are still hoping but becoming desperate, seeing all the failures. You are becoming less and less certain, less and less do you see the possibility of its ever becoming a reality, but somewhere, in some corner of your unconscious, the seed of hope still lives. It will sprout again. That's what they mean by the proverb that time heals; what it heals nobody asks. It simply heals the wounds that have been left by past hopes, it heals them so you can start hoping again, but it is the same game. It is moving in a circle.

The pleasure-seeker goes on seeking but he never arrives. To understand the utter futility of pleasure, the impossibility of its ever happening, becomes a revolution in your life. Then you move towards the inner from the outer. Then you move from dependence to independence. Then you start searching into your own nature, into your own interiority.

And one is simply in for a great surprise: the moment one turns in, the very turning in -- a one hundred eighty degree turn it has to be -- and one is dazzled, puzzled, that this is what one has been seeking maybe for millions of lives. It was within oneself and we have been seeking it everywhere else. If we could not find it, there is no wonder in it, because it was within us. The search was without and the real source was within.

Just a glimpse of it brings freedom, brings a new breeze. For the first time you feel alive, free, joyous, for no reason at all, simply joyous, because now the understanding dawns that joy is our self-nature. That is the meaning of your name: turn from pleasure to bliss, turn from the objective reality to your own subjectivity -- and the kingdom of god is not far away!

Love is the bridge which takes you beyond your self. Love is the fire that consumes all your boundaries, makes you unbounded, infinite, eternal. Love is the alchemy that transforms the baser metal into gold, the mundane into the sacred, the ordinary to the extraordinary.

We are born with a great potential, but it is only a potential. We can die without realising it, we can miss the target -- if we don't move consciously, with awareness. If we just remain driftwood at the mercy of the wind, and the waves, if we remain accidental, then there is every possibility we will miss. And that's why you see so many people in such misery, the misery has no outer cause, it is rooted in their missing the target.

They are all feeling something is being missed. They are not even aware what it is exactly, but one thing is certain everybody who is miserable feels that something of which we have been carrying the seeds has not grown. Something has not blossomed.

The seed is bound to be miserable; only a flower can dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun. Only a flower can sing its song -- the song of bliss. Only a flower knows fulfilment, contentment. Only a flower feels at ease with existence. The seed cannot feel at ease, it is closed, it has no connection. It knows nothing of the moon and the sun and the stars, it has not even heard about them. It knows nothing of the flowers and the colours and the rainbows and the songs of the birds and the humming mantras of the bees -- it knows nothing of it, but somewhere hidden in it there is a longing to know it all.

A very deep longing to open up to reality -- that's w what religion is all about. Religion has nothing to do with churches and temples and mosques, nothing to do with Vedas and the Bible and the Koran, nothing to do with all kinds of games that go on in the name of religion. They are all political games. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Jainism, these are all political parties hiding behind religious labels. At least a political party is sincere enough because it says it is a political party, all these religious organisations are 1/08/07

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Query:-

basically political but they play the game behind the name of religion -- they are far more cunning.

The priest is more cunning than the politician. The priest plays the game in a more subtle way. True religion has nothing to do with all these games, true religion is simple, it is just the longing of the heart to blossom. It needs no rituals. it certainly needs a certain intelligence -- that's all that is needs. The only quality that is required is intelligence, and that is the only quality that is being destroyed by the priests; they don't like intelligent people, they like unintelligent people -- only lukewarmly intelligent -- so that they can become good servants, obedient slaves. That much intelligence is okay, very minimal.

They are not interested in great intelligence because great intelligence means rebellion. Great intelligence means a person has started thinking on his own. He cannot be dictated to, he cannot be ordered.

He will follow only according to his light, he will say yes only because his intelligence says yes, otherwise he will say no.

And the people who are powerful don't want anybody to be rebellious, hence they have all crippled humanity's intelligence. These are the real criminals. One day history will take account of them and they will be counted as the greatest criminals. The people who murder and cheat and steal are nothing compared to these people. These people don't murder, don't cheat, don't rob anybody, don't rape anybody, but they are doing such harm as no rape can do, no murder can do, they are destroying the very possibility of human beings flowering.

Intelligence is the only quality required. And that's what my work here consists of: to help you to become more and more intelligent, to help you to sharpen your sword of intelligence, to live at the maximum of intelligence. Meditation is only an art to help you towards intelligence. It is a ladder towards intelligence. It helps you to get rid of all the nonsense that others have imposed on you. It is that nonsense which is not allowing you to be intelligent.'

Once all those superstitions are dropped, all that holy cow dung is thrown out and you are emptied of all rubbish, rotten ideas of the past -- once you are empty, clean, you can begin to be intelligent, you will have to be intelligent, because you will be thrown upon your own source, you will have to respond to life and its situations not according to ready-made answers. They have all been taken out. You will have to find your own answers.

And remember, even if your own answer is wrong it is far better, anybody's answer which is right. It is not a question of right and wrong, the question is whether it is yours. A parrot can repeat a right answer but that does not mean that the parrot is intelligent. It is better to commit mistakes but be on one's own, because one learns through mistakes. There is nothing wrong in committing errors. One should learn. Commit as many errors as possible -- and don't commit the same error again! That is learning, that sharpens your intelligence.

Become silent, become aware, meditative, and your intelligence will start growing -- and the seed will burst forth one day. That day is the greatest day of rejoicing, when your flowers come, when the spring comes to your inner world, when you become a garden.

The moment you become a garden you have become a paradise. That's exactly, literally, the meaning of the word 'paradise'. It comes from the Persian word 'firdaus'. Firdaus means a walled garden.

The moment you blossom, paradise has come to you. it is not true to say that people go to paradise --

that is not right. Paradise comes to people when they are ready. Paradise can come right now, this very moment... whosoever is ready, whosoever deserves it. Remember a fundamental law of life, that you get only that which you deserve. If you are living in hell that's what you deserve. If you want to live in paradise then deserve it: then create intelligence, courage, and work upon yourself to undo all that others have done, so that you can be free from all bondage and slavery, so that you can have the innocence of a child and the wisdom of a sage.

Meditation does both things. On the one hand it gives you the innocence of the child and on the other hand it gives you the wisdom of the sage . And the circle is complete: when you are a child and also a sage the circle is complete, your journey is fulfilled, you have arrived home.

1/08/07

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The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #9

Chapter title: None

9 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101095

ShortTitle: POND09

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 body has a limitation, it is confined between birth and death, and so is the mind. Mind is not separate from the body. It is its inner aspect, the inside of the body is mind, the outside of the mind is body.

All the languages have to be changed sooner or later as far as the words 'body' and 'mind' are concerned.

Languages give the false idea that these two are separate entities. It is not like body and mind. The truth is bodymind. It is one word, it is one reality. Just as every coin has two aspects and every wall has two sides, so is the case with bodymind. The body is limited, the mind is limited, hence the fear of death.

The body cannot be afraid because it is unconscious, but the mind can be afraid. The mind is constantly trembling. The fear is there that sooner or later the full stop is going to come. And more than the full stop, the problem is that we have not achieved anything yet and life is going down the drain, every moment death is coming closer and life is slipping out of our hands. Hence the fear, the anxiety, the anguish.

But beyond the bodymind complex, fortunately, there is something more in us too -- and that is consciousness. The consciousness is unlimited, it is oceanic, it is vast. The body mind is just like a dewdrop and the consciousness is like an infinite ocean. The bodymind begins at the time of birth and ends st the time of death, but the consciousness has no beginning, no end.

To know this consciousness is to be free from all fear, anxiety, anguish. To know this consciousness is to become deathless, eternal, timeless. To know this consciousness is the very search of sannyas.

Sannyas is an enquiry into consciousness, but to know it one has to drop the idea of being a bodymind.

One has to slowly disidentify oneself from the bodymind that surrounds us. It can be done. It has been done.

And everybody is capable of doing it. It is not impossible -- difficult, certainly, but not impossible. And it is good that it is difficult because that gives us a challenge.

Sannyas is an adventure, an adventure into the unknown realm of our own being, into our own transcendence.

Sannyas is a surrender of the ego -- and the ego can surrender only if love arises. It is the miracle of love that makes it possible far us to surrender the ego. Without love there is no possibility of surrendering the ego because without love, ego is the only reality that we know of. It is the only thing which supports us, it is the only thing we can cling to. It may be just a straw in the ocean, it may not be capable of saving us, but something is better than nothing -- even a straw can keep us hoping. Although it is hoping against hope, a person who is drowning in the ocean, if he clings to the straw, has to be forgiven. What else can he do?

There is nothing else to cling to.

The shore is far away, beyond his vision. He cannot see where it is, whether it exists or not. And thE

ocean is drowning him, then anything to cling to gives him a little consolation.

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It is only by the birth of love that one can drop the straw. The birth of love is just as if suddenly a boat has arrived. Now there is no need to say to the person 'Throw that straw'; he will throw it himself. In fact he will not even give it a second look. The moment the boat arrives he forgets all about the straw.

The same happens with love: love is a boat which can take us to the further shore. Once you start feeling love then it is very easy to surrender the ego. People ask me again and again how to surrender the ego. It is not a question of how at all. Those who love never ask, those who ask cannot drop it. The very asking shows that they have never tasted of love.

Sannyas is a love affair. And just a ray of love is enough. More than that is not needed. One can catch hold of that ray and can reach to the very source of light.

Love is like a ray and when we reach to the source you can call it god, godliness, nirvana, liberation, truth, or whatsoever one chooses to call it.

Lao Tzu says 'I call it tao because it has no name.' Tao is just like xyz; it means nothing. In India we have called it aum. Aum also is like tao, it means nothing, it is not a word at all. Hence aum cannot be written alphabetically. It is only a pictorial phenomenon. That is the only symbol in India which is written pictorially. Lao Tzu had noa difficulty in writing tao, because the whole Chinese language is written pictorially, there is no alphabet at all. Even other words are written pictorially.

For example, 'fight' or 'war', 'quarrel' -- a picture is made. A simple picture, very simple, because it has to be written, just one line giving you the idea of a pillar and a small roof -- two lines -- giving you the idea of a roof, and sitting under the roof are one man and two women -- that is war! (laughter) quarrel, conflict, argument -- it contains the whole range of everything. even the word 'war' has to be written in the same way because that is the only symbol -- it is just a little bigger phenomenon, that's all.

Chinese is a beautiful language because it is non-alphabetical. And tao was written just as a picture. but in India we had to invent aum, a special symbol so that it can be demarcated from language; it is not part of language, it is not a word. So one can call it tao -- tao means nothing; one can call it aum -- aum means nothing; one can call it any name, one can invent one's own name -- it will do -- because it is a nameless reality.

Love is the beginning; god, tao, aum, is the end. Love is the boat god, aum, tao, is the further shore. So when love arises... and it is bound to arise if you are near a master. Unless you protect yourself, defend yourself, unless you escape from the situation -- that's another matter -- It is bound to arise.

It happens exactly like in the morning when the sun risen the birds start singing, the flowers start opening. In the presence of the master love naturally arises, the heart starts opening like a flower, the heart starts singing like a bird -- the morning has come!

And once a little taste of love is there the ego can easily be disposed of. And the disposal of the ego is the beginning of the journey, of the real journey life is meant to be.

The state of blissfulness is the true god. All other gods are false, invented -- invented as consolations, invented as father-figures, invented as wish-fulfilment, but they have no reality. The gods of the Christians and the gods of the Hindus and the gods of the mohammedans are just fiction -- religious fiction, spiritual fiction. Just as there is science fiction, there is spiritual fiction, and of course spiritual fiction can be more fictitious because a science fiction writer has at least to be a little bit scientific. At least he has to pretend.

But once you move into the world of so-called spirituality, esotericism, then the whole imagination can play all its games. You can invent anything and nobody can argue with you because nothing can be proved, nothing can be disproved. That's why there are so many religions in the world and so many gods.

The Hindus alone have three hundred thirty million gods! (laughter) What to say about others? As many gods as there are Hindus; each Hindu has a god to himself. That's a good idea! (much laughter) Have your own private god. Why use a public vehicle when you can have your own car? But this is all stupidity.

The true god is only one and that true god has no personality at all, no face, no body, no form, no definition. It is the state of blissfulness, it is an experience. That's why as far as bliss is concerned there is no quarrel. Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Buddhists, Jainas -- all agree that when you achieve god you achieve the ultimate bliss. In fact people are trying to know god just in order to achieve bliss. Even the atheists are not against the idea of bliss. Who can be against the idea of bliss? -- it is everybody's longing.

And that's why I say this is the only natural, spontaneous vision of god. Everybody is searching for bliss. So there is no need to worship. You don't worship love; you love. There is no need to worship love. You don't worship freedom, you live it.

Bliss also has to be experienced, not worshipped. All the temples and the mosques and the churches are 1/08/07

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just out of date, primitive, relics of the past. We can save a few just as antique pieces, for the museums --

otherwise they are not needed at all, they are unnecessarily occupying space. The same space can be used for more purposively, far more creatively. The churches and the temples can become places to dance and sing, to play music -- and that will be far more religious. Because people dancing, singing, playing music, will be more blissful than the phony, so-called religious people who gather there.

If you want to see the real phonies, just sit outside a church on Sunday, and you will see all the Sunday-religious people. They are only religious on Sunday morning. For six days they do everything that is against their religion and on the seventh day they ask forgiveness, so that they can do the same things again the next week, because Monday is coming and they have to start their business again. You can see the phoniness... and they look very religious, very serious, sombre, holy.

I have watched churches, temples, mosques, you meet the same people somewhere else and you will see such a change in their faces. They start wearing a certain mask when they enter into a temple or a church.

My whole idea of religiousness is of experiencing, A sannyasin has to live in such a way that his whole life becomes a song; not only his life, but even his death becomes the very crescendo of his dance, his song, his celebration. It is a question of learning the art of how to live, and how to die. And this has to be done every moment, every moment you have to die as far as the past is concerned and you have to be reborn as far as the present is concerned. Die to the past every moment so that in the present you are fresh, young, alive, vibrating, clean, clear, virgin.

And never allow the past to accumulate its dust upon you -- keep your mirror clean. And slowly slowly blissfulness deepens. As bliss deepens in you god deepens in you. The moment you explode in absolute bliss you have attained the ultimate.

The only problem in life is love. Either people are missing love -- then their life is empty, then their life has no meaning, no significance, no joy -- or people are full of love but their love is contaminated by attachment. Again they become miserable;t again, anguish arises, because that attachment, that clinging creates possessiveness, jealousy, poisons love completely. It is like a garden which is full of weeds and you are trying to grow roses in it. If your mind is full of jealousy, possessiveness, domination, ego trips and all those numbers, then you cannot grow roses of love. The whole soil is being exploited by the weeds -- and weeds are cunning people, very cunning people!(laughter) You need not sow them, they come on their own, uninvited. You need not water them, they survive on their own, they find ways and means to survive. Even if you uproot them they will appear again. They are very clever as far as survival is concerned.

I don't believe in Charles Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest, because the rose cannot survive and the weeds survive. That means the weeds are the fittest! The rose cannot survive on its own, you have to help it, you have to water it, you have to give it fertilisers, manure, you have to protect it. Too much rain may disturb it, too much rain may kill it. It is against many odds that you have to protect it.

And love is a rose flower, far more delicate than any rose can ever be. It is the subtlest flowering of consciousness. It is the flower of your innermost being. It is the opening of your heart. Just as petals open, your heart opens in love. But there are dancers for it, and those dangers all come from attachment.

Attachment is the root of all the dangers for love.

One has to destroy attachment mercilessly.

So these are the two situations people are in: either they are loveless, living a loveless life, because they don't want to get into the troubled waters of jealousy and possessiveness, so they remain aloof, isolated.

These people become monks and nuns, afraid of relationship, they move away from the world. They start living in closed quarters. Not only is their monastery closed to the world, they themselves become completely closed to existence. They are not available to the wind, to the rain, to the sun, to people, to animals -- they are not available to anything. They are very much preoccupied with themselves, they are completely closed, windowless, afraid that something may come in and they may get disturbed, distracted.

There are monasteries where for a thousand years not even a single woman has entered. Not even a six-month-old baby girl is allowed in the monastery of Athos. For one thousand years no woman has entered. And the monk who enters the monastery enters forever, he does not come out. And there have been such monasteries in Tibet, in the Himalayas, everywhere. So much fear of the world is nothing but fear of love!

And the reason is not that love is dangerous; the reason is that they are not capable of destroying the weeds; hence they become afraid of the very idea of the garden. They start escaping from the garden. These 1/08/07

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are one kind of people. Then there is the other kind, the whole world consists of the other kind, the worldly people. They love but their love does not bring any bliss, it brings only misery, conflict. It makes their life a constant nightmare. It drives them crazy, insane.

My effort here is to bring about a totally new kind of person. That's my vision of a new man, that he should be able to love. He should not go to a monastery. He should live in the marketplace and yet he should be able to drop all possessiveness, all attachment, all clinging, all jealousy.

It can be done because I have done it, so you can do it! (laughter) I never say a single thing which is not my own experience. I speak on my own authority.

There is a Sufi story of an old master, a woman came to him dragging her small child and said to the master, 'I am tired of this boy. He eats so many sweets that I am afraid he will become ill, his teeth will become rotten. And he suffers very much -- stomach ache, this and that -- but he eats only sweets and nothing else. So you do something. I know if you say he will listen to you.'

The master looked at the boy and said to the woman, 'You come after a week.' The woman was very much puzzled because many times she had visited the master and asked him very difficult questions about life and death and incarnation and god and heaven and hell and he has already ready to answer instantly.

Now just a small thing, he has to say something to this boy, and he needs seven days!

But then she thought, 'These Sufi masters are little crazy. There may be something in it, so one week I have to wait.'

She came after one week, and the master said, 'Sorry. You come after two weeks. I am not yet ready.'

Even the boy was puzzled.

After two weeks they came back and the master looked at the boy and said, 'You can do it.' The boy said, 'But why did you take three weeks to say this much, "You can do it," The master said, 'because I love sweets myself. So first I had to try, whether I could do it or not, otherwise how can I tell you? That would have been false. And it is hard, I know, it is difficult. I was thinking that one week would be enough but it was not. I could not drop sweets, I love them! It took three weeks for me and I am an old man, so I can understand your trouble but if I can do it, you can also do it -- maybe it will be a little more difficult.'

But the boy became immensely interested in the master, here is a man who could have simply said...

nobody knew that he loved sweets, even the woman was surprised. But she said 'You could have told him --

there was no need for you to prove it.' He said, 'I cannot say anything that I have not experienced myself.

This is my way, my whole life. I have never uttered a single thing which I have not experienced, because when you utter something which you have not experienced it loses something it has no truth in it. It may be put in beautiful words but it is only words. It may have a beautiful container but it has no content at all. And it is said that the boy was able to drop sweets that very day. He felt, 'If this old man took so much trouble just to say to me, "Yes, you can do it,"' And the next day the boy came and said, 'You are right -- I can do it!"

And the master said, 'When one says by one's own experience it goes deep. I knew it. I had looked into your eyes and I had felt that you would be able to do it. And I am an old man -- I am weak -- it took three weeks for me. You are young, you can do it in one day!'

This is my way also.

Love can be absolutely free from attachment. And the moment it is absolutely free from attachment, it is the greatest thing in life -- because it brings all kinds of truths in its wake. It brings freedom, it brings bliss, it brings great poetry to your heart, great music to your being. It simply makes you available to all that is beautiful, true and great, all that liberates.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #10

Chapter title: None

10 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

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Archive code: 8101105

ShortTitle: POND10

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.]

A life becomes really alive only when love blossoms, otherwise it is a tree with no flowers, it is a bird who is dumb, cannot sing, or a bird without wings. A life without love is crippled inwardly, paralysed, from the outside everything will be as it should be but from the inside something is missing -- something which makes everything valuable, something without which it is all dark.

Love is the lamp of the interior world, the light of the within. But love brings many problems, sometimes so big that it seems safer to avoid it. It brings anxiety, conflict, fear, bondage. It is absolutely needed. The person who avoids it is committing suicide, but the people who live calculatedly, whose lifestyle is rooted in arithmetic, whose vision is not more than the material, the worldly, the outside, whose vision consists only of the miserable, the logical -- they are bound to decide against love. They will call love madness ... And they are not absolutely wrong either.

They are right because love brings so many problems that life becomes a turmoil, an insanity. One loses all balance and then to get out of it is very difficult -- one thing leads to another, one problem to many other problems. Hence the cautious person decides against love, but then he has decided against life itself. Then he is living meaninglessly. Then he simply vegetates and calls it life. He drags and he feels continuously that there is no dance, no significance, but he consoles himself 'It is so because life itself is meaningless --

what can I do?'

That's what Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialists say: life itself is meaningless, it is not our fault!

Life is absurd, it is not our fault. But they are utterly wrong! Life is not absurd, life is not meaningless, but meaning comes through love. Life is only an opportunity to grow into love. Love brings problems -- hence all the religions of the world have decided against love. These religions have been invented by very Jewish people -- calculating, businesslike.

As far as I can see all the religions have been founded by Jews! (laughter) They may be known or hidden -- that's another thing -- but it is a Jewish conspiracy, because they all live with such calculation. The monastery is nothing but an escape from love.

Love can become without any problems if one more element is added to it -- that is awareness.

Unconscious love creates problems. In fact it is not love that creates problems, that is a misunderstanding. It is the unconsciousness in it which creates problems.

Rightly analysed one can see clearly from where the problems come. They don't come from love itself, they come from unconciousness. It's unconsciousness that creates jealousy, that creates possessiveness, that creates domination, that fear, that creates anxiety about the future, that creates suspicion, doubt. It is unconsciousness that brings anger, hatred, conflict -- it is not love at all. But we are such a mixture that unless you are very aware you will not be able to separate them.

The moment you become alert they can be separated. And once you are able to separate what love is and what unconsciousness is, once you are conscious of your unconsciousness it starts disappearing, because that is the only way to make it evaporate. To be conscious of unconsciousness simply means that consciousness cannot allow unconsciousness to exist any more. It is like bringing light into a dark room; the moment the light is inside the room the darkness disappears. Yes, when you are bringing the lamp and the room is still far away you can see that it is dark. The closer you come the more you can see that it is dark.

but the moment you enter into the room the darkness disappears.

In a Sufi parable, a mystic asked one of his disciples, 'Go out and see whether the sun has risen yet or not!' It is very early, the last phase of the night, and the disciple says, 'There is no need to go. I can see from 1/08/07

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the windows it is very dark and the sun has not risen yet.' But the master says, 'Then you take a lamp with you and go and look for the sun -- whether it has arisen yet or not. If it is dark then take a lamp.'

The disciple feels very puzzled. The master looks crazy, but he is giving an indication to the disciple. He is not talking about the outside world, he is talking about the inside world. He is saying, 'If it is dark then take the lamp and look, whether it is really dark or not. And the moment you take the lamp it is no more dark.'

The same happens when you become aware. The first thing is that unconsciousness and love are separated.When all the misery that has remained associated with love is no more associated with love. Love becomes purified, a fragrance, and the unconscious starts disappearing because you start becoming more and more conscious of it.

This is the whole process of sannyas. Only two things to be remembered, love and awareness. Love plus awareness is equal to sannyas.

Religions in the past have lived in a very uncreative style. The very orientation of the religions has been uncreative, escapist, life-negative. That's why so many centuries have passed and man is still irreligious (laughter). There are two kinds of irreligious people, those who are honestly irreligious and say so, and those who are not honest enough and go on pretending that they are religious but are not.

It is very rare to come across a person who is religious. In the temples, in the mosques, in the churches, in the synagogues, you will find phony people, pretending to be religious -- they are not. But it is not their fault. They have been conditioned in a wrong way, and each generation goes on conditioning the new generation. That becomes almost a heritage. All the diseases of the older generation become part of the mind of the new generation. This heritage has to be disowned -- only then one becomes a sannyasin.

One has to disown the whole past. One has to learn a totally new style of religiousness. To me life-affirmation, blissfulness, creativity -- these are very fundamental, the very roots of an authentic religious consciousness. And then life certainly becomes a song, a celebration.

The old saints lock so sad and so serious, so dull, so dead, that I would like my people to get rid of all those saints. It is better to be with a sinner who knows how to laugh than to be with a saint who has forgotten how to laugh.

It is better to be an ordinary person but capable of singing and dancing and loving and sharing, than to become closed into a very subtle ego of holier-than-thou.

My sannyasins have to be blissful and they have to create their life in such a way that slowly slowly it starts having the flavour of music, the rhythm of a song, the harmony of a dance. And it is possible It is our birthright. We have been denied and we have been taught wrong things which are functioning like hindrances. They can be immediately removed -- one need not wait for tomorrow. It is only a question of clarity.

Once you are clear about what the impediment is, you either remove it or you by-pass it or you step over it. You need not be hindered by it because it is dead and you are alive and life can always find ways and means. And that's what we are doing here, trying to find out as many ways, as many means as possible, so that all kinds of obstacles can be either removed or by-passed or stepped over.

But once the decision settles in the heart that 'I have to make my life a song, a celebration, a festival of lights,' then nothing can prevent you, then nothing is impossible.

The ultimate truth cannot he conquered. we are too small and it is too vast. moreover we are just part of it and the part cannot conquer the whole. But we can invite. Even the poorest person can invite the richest man. Even a beggar can invite the emperor. And if there is a sincerity, intensity and passion in the invitation, it has never been rejected.

It happened on the last day of Gautam Buddha's life on earth, a very poor man invited him to take his meal at his home. This was the routine way -- Buddha will open his doors early in the morning and whosoever will invite him first, he will accept his invitation for that day. He will go to his house. He used to take only one meal each day. It was almost impossible for a poor person to invite him, it was just accidental.

The king was coming to invite him out just on the way some accident happened and the chariot in which he was coming, broke, so he was delayed. He reached there just one minute late. But by that time Buddha had already accepted the invitation of the poor man.

The king said, 'I know this man. He has been trying his whole life to invite you. Whenever you come to this town'... and Buddha loved a few places very much, Vaishali, one of the cities, was one of the most 1/08/07

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loved by him. In his whole forty-two years as a master he visited Vaishali at least forty tines, almost every year. And he remained in Vaishali for at least twelve rainy seasons, for the whole rainy season, because in the rainy season he used to stop his journey -- it was too difficult to walk. So for three or four months he would remain in one place; for eight months he would move around.

The king said, 'I know this man, I have seen him many times. He is always trying and he has nothing to offer! Please reject this idea of going to his house.'

But Buddha said, 'That is impossible. I cannot reject the invitation. I have to go.' And he went. And that, very going, became fatal to his body, because in Bihar where Buddha moved... the name 'bihar' comes from Buddha's movements. Bihar means 'the place where a Buddha moved'. This is the boundary where for forty two years he continuously moved. That boundary makes the whole state of Bihar.

Buddha went. The poor men in Bihar collect mushrooms, dry them and keep them for the rainy season.

They use them as vegetables. Sometimes mushrooms are poisonous. And he had prepared mushrooms for Buddha -- he had nothing, else, just rice and mushrooms.

Buddha looked at what he offered him, but saying no to the poor man would be hurting him, so he ate those mushrooms. They were very bitter, but to say that will hurt the poor man, so he ate the whole thing without saying anything, thanked the poor man, and came back. He died of food poisoning.

And when he was asked at the last moment, 'Why did you accept? You knew, the king, had warned you, other disciples were warning you that he is so poor, he will not be able to offer you the right food, and you are old, eighty-two years old -- you need the right nourishment -- but you didn't listen.'

Buddha said, 'It was impossible. Whenever truth is invited he has to accept. And he invited me with such passion and love as nobody has ever invited me -- it was worth risking my life!'

This story is beautiful. It is true about the ultimate truth also: all that is needed on our part is a total invitation, not holding back even a small part of our being. If we are totally available, open, ready to receive the host, the host comes. It has never been otherwise.

This is the law of existence: truth cannot be conquered but can be invited. One has to be just a host for the ultimate guest. And that's what I call meditation; it simply makes you empty of all rubbish, it empties you completely so you become spacious, receptive, sensitive, vulnerable, available. And all those qualities make you passionately inviting -- an invitation for the unknown, an invitation for the unnameable, an invitation for that which will make your life a fulfilment, without which life is just an exercise in utter futility. But one cannot do anything more than that; just an invitation and waiting.

This is what I call prayer: invitation and waiting in deep trust that it is going to happen. And it happens, it has always happened! Ais dhammo sanantano, says the Buddha -- this is the ultimate law of existence.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #11

Chapter title: None

11 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101115

ShortTitle: POND11

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.]

1/08/07

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Query:-

Power is dangerous without meditation. Any kind of power is bound to become destructive if there is no meditation involved in it.

Lord Acton's famous statement is basically true, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, because power means energy, but what is one going to do with energy if one has not the understanding to use it rightly, if one has not the perspective to see clearly where to go, what to do, what not to do? Then power gives a certain kind of intoxication. The unconscious person becomes even more unconscious, the mad person becomes even more mad.

For example, Adolf Hitler would have been mad even without power, but the world would not have suffered so much. Once he became powerful then what happened was inevitable. A madman in power is bound to be a calamity. And we all have immense power, it is good that we are not aware of it, it is good that it is only potential.

Latest researchers into psychiatry have come to a very significant conclusions that many people who are insane are really insane because they have so much power that it is beyond their control. They cannot cope with it. Basically they are not bad people, not evil, but their power is like a sword, a naked sword in the hands of a child. What is the child going to do with the sword? Either he will harm somebody or he will harm himself hence power either becomes murderous or suicidal. These are the only two possibilities without meditation. But once meditation becomes the foundation then power is creative, then it brings great poetry and great music and great dance in your life. And not only in your life, it starts overflowing you, it start reaching others.

When the poetry is born in you, you have to share it. When the flower opens, the fragrance is bound to be released.

Humanity is suffering from too much power. Technology, science -- they have given immense power to man, and man is insane. Man has no meditativeness, no silence, no peace within himself. He knows nothing of awareness -- hence we are standing on the verge. Any moment the world can plunge into a suicidal act, global suicide is possible.

In the past, wars were never so dangerous. They were local. Now it is going to be a total war. It can consume not only humanity all the animals, trees, all life on this earth can evaporate within hours or even within minutes.

For the first time humanity is in immense need of meditation, to balance what technology has given.

Never before was humanity in such a need of sannyasins. They have to balance the soldiers. Unless we can keep soldiers and sannyasins balanced, technocrats and meditators balanced, there is no future, there is no hope.

Initiation into sannyas is not only your individual affair. It has far-reaching consequences. It will release, certainly, your energy, it will transform your personality, but it will be a blessing to the world too.

And the only thing that I insist upon is meditation. I don't give any other discipline because no other discipline is needed. Once you know how to be silent and aware, everything else follows of its own accord.

Love comes, compassion comes, service comes, prayer comes. You need not seek for them, truth comes, freedom comes, godliness comes, but they come of their own accord. And remember, when these things come of their own accord -- without any effort on your part -- they have a tremendous beauty.

-- How long will you be here?

-- Six months or longer.

-- That's good. You will be here longer -- you are finished! (laughter) Good!

Man can make efforts for pleasure but not for bliss. Pleasure will not come on its own. You have to make efforts for it, because pleasure belongs to the outside world. The pleasure that comes through having money, the pleasure that comes through food, through sex, through political power, respectability -- these things never come as gifts. One has to work hard, struggle for them, one has to be aggressive and violent.

If one simply sits silently and waits for a miracle to happen those miracles never happen, they have never happened. You have to run and you have to run faster than others because it is a competitive game.

You are not alone; millions of people are running for the same goals.

Pleasure is of the outside -- competitive; hence one has to make a tremendous effort to gain it. And then too what is gained is not of much use. Once you have the money that you were hoping would give you all that you need, once you have it, all hopes evaporate, one is simply disillusioned.

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So pleasure exists only in the hope. When the hope is fulfilled there is only pain and nothing else. So much effort is needed to attain to pleasure -- and what one really attains is pain. Just on the way while you are journeying you can dream all kinds of fantasies, you can imagine, project; but by the time you. have reached, it always proves a mirage.

Bliss is of the inner, just the opposite of pleasure. There is no competition because there you are alone, nobody else is there in your being. Nobody can ever be there except you. It is absolute privacy, so no competition, no struggle... If you just turn in and sit silently inside, bliss starts happening. In fact it is your self-nature; that's why it is said bliss is a gift: it comes from the beyond, not because of your efforts but because of your effortlessness. You are simply sitting doing nothing and it starts showering.

And once you have known the secret then any moment you can close your eyes and it is there. It is a divine gift. You need not deserve it, you need not be worthy of it, you need not fight for it. In fact all these things are hindrances. You have to be just open, empty, so that when it descends in you there is space for it.

Bliss comes ns a guest. All that is needed is a spaciousness so that you can function as a host. And this is the paradox of life; much has to be done for pleasure and nothing is attained I nothing has to be done for bliss and all is attained!

Knowledge is not knowing. Knowledgeability is just the opposite of knowing. Knowledgeability hides your ignorance. It does not destroy it, it only covers it up. The wound remains, but covered and the wound goes on growing and you have to go on uncovering it. So the knowledgeable person has to go on accumulating more and more knowledge, more and more degrees, more and more qualifications, to cover it up. But whatsoever you do it is there.

Knowledge cannot destroy it. Knowing dispels it exactly as light dispels darkness. Knowing is wisdom.

It has nothing to do with scriptures, nothing to do with information. It is an inner transformation. One has to become as innocent as a child. One has to drop all knowledge to become wise. Hide the ignorance and you become knowledgeable. Become innocent, accept your ignorance, be aware of it and it starts disappearing.

Not that you will have all the answers to all the questions. You will not have even a single answer for a single question, but in that innocence you will be able to respond spontaneously to reality. Your response will be always total, your action will be total.

And the total action is the right action and the total action is virtue. And a life which functions through innocence becomes sheer blissfulness. It has all the perfume of all the flowers, the freedom and the vastness of the sky, and the beauty of the stars. It is not confined within your body or within your mind. Knowledge is confined within mind but wisdom is vaster than you, bigger than you.

Knowledge is something in you, the moment wisdom is there, you are within it -- just a small dewdrop in the vast ocean. It frees you -- from misery, from anxiety, from death. Not only from these things it even you from yourself. One simply disappears. And that disappearance we have called nirvana, that disappearance is real liberation. That's our deepest longing of the heart, that's what we are searching for, and that's what sannyas is all about.

Sannyas is only a jump into nirvana.

The Zen haiku says The old pond, the frog jumps in -- plop!

And then there is all silence. Plop, and all silence. Soon the ripples on the lake also disappear, as if nothing has happened, as if you have never been there.

Nirvana is disappearing into the total, and that is possible only out of innocence. So to me innocence is knowing wisdom, and innocence has to be discovered. And it is not very far; it is just at the very core of your being. Layer upon layers of knowledge... we are just like an onion. One has to peel it. And the more you peel it... the fresher layers are there, and when all the layers are peeled, nothing remains. That nothing is nirvana, that nothing that was there before the frog jumped in and that will be there after the frog has jumped in -- just a plop, a momentary sound -- and all silence, a little sound and all silence.

That little sound I call meditation -- and then there is all silence. So do a little 'hoo, hoo, hoo' -- that is plop! (laughter) And then all is calm, gone forever, and only then you are at home. When you are not, you --

for the first time.

-- How long will you be here?

-- I don't know. I leave it for the future.

-- (a broad grin) That's very good!

There are two ways to know: one is logic, another is love. Logic is of the head, love is of the heart.

1/08/07

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Query:-

Logic is capable of knowing the external reality, but about the internal it is absolutely incapable. It knows nothing of the inner, and because it knows nothing of the inner it denies that the inner exists at all. Rather than accepting its limitation, it denies the very existence of the inner, of consciousness, of soul, of the beyond.

Logic is materialistic, because it believes only in the measurable. The English word 'matter' is significant. It comes from 'measure'; that which can be measured is matter. It is the same word as 'meter' --

'measure', 'matter'. It comes from a Sanskrit root which means quantity, matra. Quantity means that which can be measured, but there is something more which is not quantity at all -- that can be known only through love, only through the heart.

One has to shift from the head to the heart. That shift is one of the most significant things in life, because once you shift your focus from the head to the heart, your whole vision changes -- and with it the whole world. You start knowing things in a new way: the same flowers, but they are no longer the same.

Through logic they were only matter -- chemical, mineral, a little bit of earth and water and things like that.

You could have taken the flower to the lab and dissected it, put it into different bottles, labeled how much potassium it contains and how much iron it contains, but you would not have found beauty.

The moment you look with the eyes of love, the flower is not just matter, it is far more. It is surrounded by an aura of beauty. Suddenly the material part becomes the most insignificant, and the immaterial part becomes the most significant. You encounter the soul of the flower, and the same becomes your approach about everything.

When you meet a friend you don't meet just his body, bones, blood, veins, skull -- or do you?! Nobody ever meets a friend in that way. When you meet a friend, you meet something which is not the body --

something more, something plus -- but ordinarily it remains in the background.

When your love is functioning it becomes very clear; it comes into the foreground, the body goes into the background. The body becomes just a vehicle. You see the inner reality reflected in the mirror of love.

And then one lives in a different world. That world can be called the world of godliness, of truth, of beauty, of bliss.

We can give any name to it, because it is so vast that all these names are just small aspects of it. It is all-comprehensive, all-inclusive. It is simply immense, beyond the comprehension of words, language, concepts, but love is capable of knowing it -- only love is capable of knowing it.

So drop logic and enjoy love. Even if the world thinks that you have become mad, let them think! You are not going to lose anything, they are going to lose everything.

These are the three planes of existence the material, the psychological, and the spiritual. To know all three is to know the divine. To become confined to one is to miss the whole. And the unfortunate thing is that people are confined to the first, the lowest, the material. Out of a hundred persons maybe only one per cent enter into the second, the psychological. And out of those few people who enter into the psychological, only one per cent of those enter the spiritual. And out of these few people who enter the spiritual only one per cent enters the divine.

But that is the ultimate goal: to know life in all its planes and to know that all those planes ore interconnected, interdependent. All those planes are not antagonistic to each other, they are in a deep synchronicity. The whole is an organic unity.

This experience can be called god-realisation or the realisation of truth. Once one has come to know the whole as it is without excluding anything, one has fulfilled his destiny, one has managed to do that which was the whole purpose of life and all its journeys. Millions of lives we have lived, but unless this is found our living is just moving in circles. We go on moving it is tedious and boring, it is a long, long journey. And the strangest thing is that we can end the journey any moment... just a little understanding of not going on repeating the old pattern, but of taking the right plunge towards the centre. By moving into the circle nothing is going to happen.

There is a small spider, a special spider found in African jungles, which functions almost like human beings -- at least in one way. If you put that spider into something circular -- a plate -- it will go on moving round and round and round till it dies. All that is needed for it is to move is somebody ahead. If you put only one spider it won't move, because a leader is needed, a guide is needed. If you put a few spiders around the edges of the plate so every spider knows there is somebody ahead, and that one also knows there is somebody ahead, then you can kill them. You need not do anything, they will go on moving, go on moving, go on moving and they won't think that they are moving in a circle -- till they are so tired that they start 1/08/07

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dying. They go on moving till they die. Just two things are needed, a circle and the feeling that somebody is ahead.

When I read about those spiders I could see that they are functioning almost like human beings. That's what human beings need: a leader -- Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, any leader will do -- and a circle, a circle of habits, just a routine and they will go on moving, go on moving. They will die, they will be born again and they will start moving, they will die and they will be born again and they will start moving...

Becoming a sannyasin means coming out of this vicious circle. That's why I am so critical of all your leaders, the so-called gurus, guides. In fact I am not against them. I am simply trying to put you out of that vicious circle -- and that is one of the most important parts -- following somebody.

Second, I am very much against, continously hammering against your conditionings, because those are your patterns. You have done those things thousands of times and you will be doing them again and again.

There is no end to it, it is ad infinitum.

So these two things have to be destroyed -- that's my work; you have to be stopped from following others and you have to be stopped from following a dead routine, a conditioned, habitual pattern. Once these two things are fulfilled there is nothing else to be done. You will be able to reach to the centre this very moment. ,,nd on the circle, on the circumference, there is birth and death, and death is followed by birth and birth is followed by death and it goes on. At the centre there is no death, no birth one enters into eternity.

And to know that eternity is to know god.

So my sannyasins are not my followers. One thing has to be very clear to every sannyasins they are not my followers. I am not their leader, they are not my followers. At the most, just friends, fellow travellers.

Secondly, I am not giving you any discipline because I don't want you to make a mechanical life; I want you to live moment to moment according to your awareness. I will give you methods to be aware but not a discipline, not ready-made answers. I will give you a mirror which reflects, wherever you are, whatsoever the situation is, so that you can act on your own. You need not wait for my guidance.

So my work is a little strange. It is not the routine, ordinary work of your so-called gurus all around the world. It is just the opposite.

I am not a guru, I am nobody' s leader. I hate the very word 'leader'. I am not giving you any guidance, where to go, what to do. I am not at all interested in giving you a certain character, a discipline. On the contrary I am destroying your desire to be a follower and your desire to have a fixed pattern so that unconsciously you can repeat it.

Once you are on your own, listening to your own heart, following your own silence, that's enough. Then you have risen above the so-called humanity -- which is not better than those spiders. Then really you become human. Independence, individuality, awareness -- and you are an individual. And every individual is bound to reach the goal.

Love is the greatest experience in life; but one has to be very aware that it should be true -- it should not be false, pseudo, pretentious. And we are brought up in such a wrong way that from the very beginning our love starts going along wrong lines.

The mother wants the love of the child just because she is the mother -- as if love is something which can be asked for and produced on order. The mother wants the child to love her; she gives the reason

"Because I am your mother," as if love is a logical syllogism; "I am your mother, you are my child, therefore, love me!" And the child is at a loss; but the child is helpless, so he has to pretend. He becomes diplomatic, he starts playing games. He smiles when he sees the mother and the father. Whether he feels like smiling or not, that is not the point at all. He has to smile, it is part of his survival; otherwise it will become difficult to survive -- these people are powerful people and he has to depend on them. They can do anything.

And he is very much afraid, scared.

So by and by he loves the brothers and the sisters and the uncles and the aunts, just because it is ordered.

You have to behave, you have to do it, and he goes on doing. By the time he becomes an adult he is already accustomed to a false kind of love; then he will love his wife in the same way he used to love his mother and his father, and he will love his children in the same way as he used to love his parents. And he will demand from the children the same kind of love as he was asked for. And this is how we go on from one generation to another, doing the same stupid thing, the same pretentious game of love. It is phony, it is not true, it is not authentic; it cannot be authentic. We have never allowed the real love to arise.

The moment you become a sannyasin make it very clear to yourself that you will put aside all 1/08/07

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diplomatic games. For a few days you will be in a very transitory period, you will not know what to do, because you have dropped those old games and the new will take a little time. It has been repressed so long, it has become so afraid of light, it won't come easily; but if all the pressure is removed then sooner or later the springs of your own love will start welling up.

And once you feel your own fountains of love rising, your life becomes, for the first time, something authentic, something true. And unless our love is true we cannot find the truth. That condition has to be fulfilled.

If even our love is not true then what else can ever be true? Love is the closest thing to our heart; it has to be true. Once it is true then everything else can be true. But if the closest thing is false, then everything else is bound to be false.

So my emphasis is to make the authentic love grow in you; and all that you need to do is remove the unauthentic. It is a negative kind of process. Put aside all that has been taught to you, put aside all the shoulds and should nots, all the musts, so that the spontaneous within you can start growing. And the first experience of the spontaneous arising is such an exhilaration, it is so exquisite, so ecstatic -- one cannot imagine it, one cannot dream about it. It is beyond all our dreams, it is far beyond the fantasy. The very capacity to imagine falls short. The truth is so far away, so qualitatively different that the mind is absolutely incapable -- but the heart is capable.

So one has to behead oneself and one has to become just the heart. The moment your heartbeat possesses you, overwhelms you, you have entered in the temple, the temple of gods. It is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan; it is simply the temple of god.

My sannyasins don't belong to any religion, to any cult, to any creed. They don't belong to any kind of theology, scripture, philosophy; they belong to the universe, they belong to the stars, to the sun, to the moon, to the trees.

They belong to the whole. And to belong to the whole is the only way to be holy.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #12

Chapter title: None

12 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101125

ShortTitle: POND12

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 miserable person can pretend to be a friend but in fact he cannot be. Friendliness is a luxury. It is overflowing energy -- so much energy that you cannot contain it, you have to share it. That sharing becomes friendliness. And when you share because of your abundance there is no idea of getting, anything in return.

In fact you feel obliged to the person who has helped you to be unburdened of a little of your overflowing energy.

The miserable person is a black hole. He is utterly empty. He has nothing to give. He is a beggar. He is 1/08/07

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hungry to get. He pretends to be a friend because that is the only way he can exploit, but he functions like a parasite.

The friendship that he shows is only a facade a strategy. Once you are caught in relationship with a miserable person then you come to know his reality; then he is exposed in his true colours. But then it is too late. He has entangled you. Now to leave him creates guilt in you -- that you deserted a friend, a lover. If you don't leave him you will become miserable, your life will become a curse. So to be with him is difficult, to leave him is difficult. And that's what is happening all over the world, in all kinds of loving relationships.

Miserable people are intrinsically incapable of love, of friendship. They don't have anything to give.

Before you can give you have to have; hence I say only a blissful person can be a friend, can be a lover, can be a blessing to others. The miserable person is a curse, a calamity.

So my whole approach is how to make people more blissful -- and then everything is taken care of.

Once your bliss starts growing, it is bound to spread, bound to radiate, bound to reach others. And that reaching is friendship. And when you give for the sheer joy of giving there is beauty, there is grace, there is something divine in that. It is no more an ordinary phenomenon. The beyond has penetrated into it. It is pregnant with something transcendental.

(Osho is addressing a sturdy, well-built German.)

There is a great difference between satisfaction and contentment, not only is there a difference, in fact they are opposite to each other.

Satisfaction is pseudo. It is just... (Paritosh, the initiate of several seconds, seems to pass out. At any rate, he keels over so that his head is lying in the lap of the commentator! Shiva, Osho's body-guard, checks Paritosh's pulse and whispers to Haridas, his second in command, to fetch a doctor from the group of watching sannyasins. Osho quietly murmurs 'Just wait'... and slowly the prostrate sannyasin comes to. 'Help him', Osho says to Haridas, 'Be there', and Haridas kneels by Paritosh's side to support him for the remainder of the address.

Paritosh listens to Osho with his eyes closed and his fingers only loosely clasping the paper bearing his sannyas name. Needless to say, all eyes, with varying degrees of curiosity, are fixed on him. Kirti has left behind a certain something in the air -- perhaps it's catching!) Satisfaction is pseudo. It is just an effort to cover up your wounds. The wounds are not healed, they are there, but only covered. And they go on growing, they go on becoming bigger, they go on collecting more pus; they can become cancerous.

Contentment is healed wounds. One has become whole. It is authentic. Satisfaction is only a consolation because we cannot create bliss we are miserable, so we create many methods console ourselves.

Contentment is not a consolation, it is bliss itself.

Once your bliss starts functioning contentment is follows it like a shadow. So I don't teach contentment, teach bliss. For centuries the other religions have been teaching contentment, but if you try to be contented it will be only satisfaction, a consolation, a false coin. That's why this pseudo humanity has come into being.

I start with bliss. The old religious approach was to start with contentment, and they used to say -- and it has been said in many scriptures of the world -- that the contented person is blissful. I say just the opposite is true, the blissful person is contented. And one who is not blissful, his contentment is bogus.

So start by being blissful. And it will not be very difficult for you. It will be very simple and very easy.

You are almost ready to take the jump!

How long will you be here?

-- One month.

-- Be here. Good. (As Paritosh rises to leave Osho says:) Haridas, help him so he does not take the jump too soon! (much laughter)

In India we make small earthen lamps. The poor people use those earthen lamps, they are the cheapest.

Man is an earthen lamp, his body is made of the earth. That is exactly the meaning of the word 'adam'; adam means earth -- more exactly, red earth. That is the colour of the earth of Jerusalem.

The body is made of the earth, but inside this earthen lamp of the body there is a flame which is not part of the earth -- that is our consciousness.

If one remains identified with the body one remains miserable; if one starts becoming aware that 'I am not the body,' then bliss descends. To know that 'I am not the body' is the beginning of bliss. To know that 'I 1/08/07

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am consciousness,' is to know that 'I am deathless.' To know that 'I am consciousness' is to know that 'There is no way to harm me, no way to wound me, no way to destroy me.' Knowing oneself as consciousness one becomes eternal, one becomes one with the divine. And that meeting with the divine, with the infinite, with the vast, with the oceanic, is what brings bliss in.

And once there is bliss, life has blossomed. Then one can live the ordinary life with extraordinary insight. One can live in the body beautifully. There is no need to torture the body; it is a gift of the whole, and one of the miracles of existence -- a temple, a sacred phenomenon in its own right. And it has been hosting us, giving us all kinds of comforts, coziness, giving us all kinds of sensibilities, eyes to see the beauty, ears to listen to the music and to the songs of the birds, hands to feel and touch the texture of the rocks, the faces of your beloveds. The body has given so much, one feels grateful to it, but unidentified. One remains in it but is no more part of it.

At that very moment life becomes synonymous with bliss. Before that life is only misery. Hence the whole process of meditation can be reduced to a simple formula: disidentification with the body. And it is done by a simple process of awareness. You just watch your body, your hunger, your thirst, and remember that you are the watcher -- you are not hungry, you are not thirsty. And when you have eaten and you feel satisfied, remember, it is the body that is satisfied, not you. You are just the watcher. The body is young, watch, the body is old, watch. The body is ill, watch, the body is healthy, watch. Just go on watching all nuances of the body and as your watchfulness becomes more and more clear, more and more unwavering, the natural outcome is disidentification with the body.

And the same has to be done with the mind. Then one gets free from both -- and that freedom makes you capable of becoming aware of the subtlest layer, of feelings and moods. They belong to the heart. These three are the dimensions of the body the physical, the mental and the emotional.

Going beyond the three one reaches the fourth. That fourth is awareness. And with that fourth comes bliss. Bliss is a flame, a light -- a light that never extinguishes. Once you have discovered it, it is forever yours. And it transforms all your actions, it transforms everything. It gives you a totally new birth, a resurrection.

That resurrection is sannyas. So sannyas is both a crucifixion -- dying to the past -- and a resurrection --

being, born anew.

Bliss is both awareness and also intoxication; or we can say it is intoxication with awareness. It is a paradox. On one side of the coin there is awareness, on the other side of the coin there is intoxication. And up to now religious people have lived only half of the coin, half of the experience.

For example, Buddha insists only on awareness -- he will not tolerate intoxication while Jalaluddin Rumi is utterly intoxicated, Omar Khayyam is utterly intoxicated. That's why Omar Khayyam has been so much misunderstood; people think that he is talking only about wine and women, and that he is a drunkard.

Not only a drunkard, but preaching to people to be drunkards.

Fitzgerald, who translated Omar Khayyam for the first time, has done a beautiful job; his translation has never been transcended, surpassed. Many other translations have been done, but Fitzgerald's, the first translation, remains the best. Poetically it is really beautiful, but philosophically he misunderstood Omar Khayyam totally -- he misrepresented him.

Because the world became aware through Fitzgerald's translations, Omar Khayyam is thought only to be a poet who sings of wine and women and intoxication. Omar Khayyam is a mystic of the same calibre as Buddha and Jesus. These are his symbols; but he does not talk about awareness. He lives the other side of the coin. He is not talking about ordinary wine, he is talking about the wine that happens when one is really blissful.

It is not that one has to drink it from the outside. One drinks it within oneself. It is one's own juice, one's innermost juice. The women he is talking about have nothing to do with women. The Sufis talk about god as the woman, the beloved. He is talking about god! And I can see the point and the beauty of it.

Christians talk about god as the father. That looks a little dry. Even uncle would have been nicer!

(laughter) Father is an institutional thing, it is not natural. As far as language is concerned, 'uncle' is an older word than father, because before marriage came into existence and private property came into existence, the child never knew who his father was. The woman herself was not aware who the father of the child was.

Marriage had not come into existence yet. She was having many lovers. So all those lovers were uncles, someone must be the father but nobody knows -- xyz. So all xyz's were uncles.

Uncle is an older word -- and nicer too. But the Judaic religion insists -- and Christianity was born out of 1/08/07

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the Judaic religion -- that god is the father. In fact the Talmud says, 'Remember god is not nice, he is not your uncle. 'exactly the word 'uncle' is being used. 'Remember; he is a father and a very terrible father -- be afraid of him!'

Sufis seem to be far closer to truth, god is a beloved. And to think of god as a woman, to describe god as a woman makes the whole thing more beautiful, more harmonious, softer -- rather than making god a father, a very terrible father, always ready to be angry and ready to throw you into hell.

Omar Khayyam is talking of the other side of the coin. Buddha is talking of one side. My sannyasins have to be the whole -- a meeting, a merging of Buddha and Omar Khayyam.

Gautam Buddha dancing with a woman! (laughter)... holding a bottle of wine! (more laughter)... Of course, empty, because he has drunk it That's my vision of a real sannyasin: total but fully aware! (laughter) That's why the wine is not falling!

Awareness and intoxication logically look like opposites, but existentially they are complementaries, not opposites at all. And once you start seeing opposites as complementaries the whole vision changes. Then in life there are no paradoxes. One is capable of understanding the opposites as helping each other, of deep down being joined together, supporting, nourishing each other. Then summer and winter are one, then man and woman are one, then black and white are one, then life and death are one. Then matter and god are one.

And when this oneness is experienced there is nothing more to experience -- one has come home!

How long will you be here?

-- Unfortunately, I'm here for only one week more.

Not unfortunately -- one week can do a miracle. It will bring you back, so come back again. Good!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #13

Chapter title: None

13 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101135

ShortTitle: POND13

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.]

Love has a very mysterious strength in its mysterious because it contains the fragileness of a flower and also the strength of a rock. It is paradoxical, but that's its beauty. Anything that is not paradoxical remains flat -- consistent, logical, but meaningless.

Meaning comes from the tension of the polar opposites. when the contradictories meet and merge and become one, then there is a great explosion; and love is one of the most explosive experiences.

It is strong, but not in the sense in which a sword is strong. It is not strong in destroying, it is strong just like the brush of a painter. It is strong in creating; and hence it can contain the fragileness of a flower in it. If it is just strong without being fragile then it will be dead. If it is just fragile without being strong then it cannot survive, then too it will be dead.

Many people are afraid of love because they are afraid of becoming fragile and vulnerable, but they 1/08/07

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don't know that behind that vulnerability there is a strength, infinite strength. You have to accept both and you have to live both.

The lover lives the life of a madman simply because he lives a life of paradox. Sannyas is a love affair.

With me you will have to be strong in the sense of being creative and fragile in the sense of being receptive, welcoming, open, available -- and at the same time strong, so strong that if the need arises one can even sacrifice life for love, one can gamble everything.

A sannyasin is basically a lover; a lover of existence, of all its beauty, of all its joy, of all its truth. But he lives in a very precarious balance, like a tightrope walker. He cannot move to one extreme, otherwise he will fall. Too strong and love dies, too vulnerable and love cannot survive. Both have to be together. In that togetherness the door opens to the ultimate mystery.

Love is the beginning, god is the end. Between love and god is the whole journey, the journey of sannyas.

Love is dangerous but life itself is dangerous. Death is very secure, safe. Once one is in the grave there is no danger; no disease can happen, no old age, no death even -- one is absolutely secure, safe. But life is just the polar opposite of the grave, it is insecurity. And love is the very core of life, the very centre of it; hence love is the most dangerous experience. But only those who know love know life. There is no other way, there is no shortcut. The danger is that you have to dissolve your ego; your ego is a kind of protection, a shelter. Your ego keeps you surrounded by a wall.

In a way it protects, in another way it kills. Prisoners are very safe, far more safe than the people walking on the road. Any accident can happen on the road. Some mad driver may run over you. Everything is possible on the road, but in a prison no accident happens. Those walls, on the one hand, destroy your freedom; on the other hand, they make you safe. That's exactly the purpose of the ego; it protects you, but in the bargain you have to lose your freedom. And really, losing your freedom is too much to pay for protection. It is not a good bargain at all you are a loser.

The very safety of the ego destroys the whole opportunity for growth. A seed is safe. Once it sprouts then insecurity begins. Then everything is possible the cold, the heat, the rain, the snow, the wind, the sun --

everything is possible. Nothing is possible for the seed. The seed is surrounded by a thick layer that keeps it closed, windowless.

Millions of people live like seeds, out of fear. Sannyas is learning to live dangerously, getting out of fear and all that fear has created. Ego is a creation of fear. It is basically fear-oriented, a by-product of fear.

The ego has to be dissolved; then love starts growing in you. And love brings many flowers, many colours, many experiences which are inestimable. And the ultimate experience of love is nirvana, when the ego has gone totally -- not only in parts -- utterly. Not only have a few windows opened and you can see outside the windows to the sky and the stars, but the whole prison has disappeared; you are standing naked under the sun, under the stars, in the wind, in the rain. When there is no shelter left, no protection left, living in that intensity moment to moment is nirvana. And that is the ultimate experience of love, for only then do you live at the optimum; because you are not certain about the next moment you cannot postpone living.

You cannot say 'Tomorrow.' Now or never -- tomorrow never comes. So if one has to live now then one has to live totally, intensely, passionately. That intensity of life is love. In the beginning we call it love; in the end the same experience blossoms into nirvana. The ego is completely gone and you are merged with the whole.

Love is not prose, it is poetry. And there is a great difference between prose and poetry. They are worlds apart.

Prose is logic, grammar, language, arithmetic. We are brought up to live a life which is basically prose; hence there is arithmetic, calculation, cleverness, cunningness, diplomacy, politics -- but there is no joy. The bird of the heart is ignored, it remains undernourished. It has not enough energy to sing, and even if sometimes it sings there is nobody to listen. We are preoccupied with the head. That is the prose style of life, preoccupation with the head.

What I call a poetry style of life is living in the heart. Initiation into sannyas means initiation into a poetic life; dropping from the prose style to a totally different gestalt, the gestalt of poetry, of song, of music, of art, of beauty, of love.

Certainly without these things there can be no celebration. Then life is just a mourning, a moaning, a 1/08/07

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grumbling, a complaint. You can see it on people's faces. It is very rare to find a face on which the complaint is not written in capital letters. It is writ large. Everybody is a walking poster with the whole list of complaints -- against life, against existence, against everything.

If you search within a man you will find him just a heap of noes; no, no no... You can go on digging and you will find more and more noes, bigger and bigger noes. It is very rare to find a yes somewhere; and even if you find it, it will be paralysed, crippled, because in the crowd of noes... noes are very nosey! (laughter) They are Jewish! A poor yes will be killed, will be in a stampede! Even if it survives in same nook and corner somewhere, it will be dying, not fully alive.

Life can become a total yes, but we have to change the whole pattern -- sannyas is the art of making your life a yes; transforming all your noes into yes. And all your noes can be melted and remoulded into yes. It is not so difficult as people think. Certainly it is not impossible. It has happened to many people -- to Buddha, to Zarathustra, to Jesus, to Pythagoras, to Dionysius, to Lao Tzu. Around the globe it has happened to many people; it can happen to you. It should happen to everyone. In fact we are here for it to happen.

And that's what I call the shift from a prose lifestyle to a poetry lifestyle, a shift from mathematics to music.

And then life is a song, a tremendous ecstasy.

I don't teach a religion of sadness. I am against all those sado-masochistic religions. I teach a new kind of religiousness which is rooted in love, not in fear, which is rooted in the present, not in the future which is rooted in love and not in logic.

Mysticism has experienced a totally different kind of emptiness, a very positive kind of emptiness -- a zero which is not zero, a zero which is overflowing with the eternal.

In a way it is zero; it is empty of the world and all that the world contains. It is empty of desire, empty of thought, empty of memories, empty of imagination; it is empty of ego, jealousy, anger, greed. It is empty of the whole world of stupidity that we go on carrying along with us but it is not just empty, On the one hand it is empty of the world but on the other hand it is full of godliness.

In fact the more empty of the world one becomes the more full of god one becomes. When the whole world is thrown out you are full of god, overflowing with god.

Love is the key. Love can do both these things. It can help you to be emptied of all that is stupid, of all nonsense, and it can help you to be full of all that is significant, meaningful.

It will help you to be emptied of all kinds of lies and it will help you to discover your own truth. Hence shunyam, emptiness, nothingness or zero are not to be taken in a negative sense. They are absolutely positive. In fact there is nothing more positive than a zero. It has space, infinite space, unbounded space, and with that comes freedom. With that comes the whole universe within you. You disappear as a self. You become a no-self.

And the beauty of no-self is indescribable. The beauty of disappearing, as an ego is the greatest experience that can happen to any man. And that is the goal of sannyas to become just zeros -- empty of the world and full of god.

Man is being taught many kinds of virtues, moralities, but they are not true, they cannot be true. They are a kind of imposition from the outside. Others are conditioning you. For example, if you are born in a vegetarian family they will impose vegetarianism on you and you will be conditioned; and you may remain a vegetarian your whole life, thinking that you are doing something virtuous. It is not, because you have never chosen it out of your own consciousness.

A virtue, to be really a virtue, has to be out of choice, a free choice -- that is its first requirement. If you have not chosen it but others have, it may be a good quality, it may give you respectability, but it cannot help you to discover your innermost being; in fact it will hinder.

People are being taught all kinds of good things, but those good things, to be true, have to be by-products of a growing love and a growing consciousness in you. You cannot simply acquire them -- and that's what is being done everywhere people acquire a certain character. If it is acquired, cultivated, it remains superficial, painted, it is not your true face. Hidden behind it you are just the opposite. It creates only hypocrites, not virtuous people.

My emphasis is not on morality at all -- my emphasis is on love. If you are growing in love then all that is right is bound to happen through you of its own accord, because love cannot do anything wrong.

For example, if you are growing in love you will become a vegetarian. It is impossible for a lover to kill animals just for the sake of taste. It is so ridiculous, so stupid. I don't call it a sin, it is simply stupidity; 1/08/07

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because when you taste something it is just a small part of your tongue that gets the taste of it, just a few buds on the tongue. A little surgery can be done on your tongue and you will not taste anything. That actually happens when you have fever or a cold; those buds become insensitive, so you cannot taste anything.

Just for a few tiny buds on your tongue you are killing live animals, with no sensitivity, with no awareness, with no love. It seems impossible; how can a man who has known love be capable of doing such things? A man who loves his wife, who loves his children goes on eating meat? Impossible.

Either he does not love his wife, does not love his children or he is just living in a mechanical way, unconscious, not knowing what he is doing. If he is so violent, how can he be loving? Life cannot be divided into compartments -- 'I will be loving to my children and I will kill other animals' children.' It cannot be divided, it cannot be compartmentalised.

My experience is, if you love one person, in that very love you have loved the whole existence. Your whole perspective changes. You cannot kill. And; then a totally different kind of virtue arises; then you don't brag about your vegetarianism, because there is nothing to brag about, it is a simple thing. You don't eat cow dung. (laughter) But you don't brag about it either, 'Look -- I don't eat cow dung!'

But there are stupid people... Mahatma Gandhi had a disciple, one of his chief disciples, a certain professor, Bhanshali. For months together he used to live only on cow dung... and that was thought to be a great virtue. Of course it is holy cow dung; it was no ordinary thing. He is living on holy food! (laughter) He was an utter fool! But he was thought to be a saint. Even Mahatma Gandhi used to respect him because even he himself was not able to do such a great work! (laughter) The disciple defeated the master!

And he was respected all over the country. That was his only quality! There was nothing else in that man --

just pure, holy cow dung!

But fools are fools and the world abounds with fools.

These things are possible only because we are not living intelligently. And we are not loving, and we are not sensitive and we are not conscious. So I don't want any discipline to be imposed on you from the outside by any agency. I want something to grow from your own heart, so that slowly slowly it comes from the centre and reaches to your very circumference. Then there is a unity, a harmony in you no dichotomy, no hypocrisy. Then you are on the outside exactly what you are on the inside. Then your inside and the outside are in deep accord.

Begin with love and all virtues will come following it as a shadow follows you.

Jesus says, 'First seek ye the kingdom of god, then all else shall be added unto you.' Now this is an old kind of expression -- understandably, because two thousand years have passed, the language is very old; just a little change and the language can become new. And I am always making, little changes, because I am not bound by any religion, by any church, by any dogma. I am absolutely free!

Even if I meet Jesus I am going to argue my case. And I am absolutely certain that he will have to agree with me.

I will say, 'First seek ye the kingdom of love, then all else shall be added unto you,' because 'god' has bow become an out-of-date word. And I am not a lover of junk (laughter). I am not a lover of antiques or vintage cars.

My Mukta (by Osho's side in darshan) is a lover of vintage cars. Just a few days before she has going to purchase a 1934 model Ford! (laughter) Now I said, Mukta, are you going mad?!' (more laughter) And I suggested that I know one Ford which the person is ready to give away free, without any money, but that is even better than yours -- a 1928 model. It has been standing in one place for many years. It is really antique.

In fact in the Old Testament it says 'god drove Adam and Eve out of heaven' -- he drove in this Ford!

(much much laughter) The word 'drove' certainly shows he must have used a Ford car! 'God' is also now very old and rotten. We should replace it with 'love'!

How long will you be here? (much laughter) Till I drive you out? (and much more laughter) Mm? If you want to be driven out, Mukta can bring that 1928 Ford! (more laughter) And exactly, I can drive you out!

(and more and more) I have not driven anybody till now but if you want me to... ( and more and more and more ) Otherwise, be here! Good!

Existence has many dimensions, it is multi-dimensional; but love is the highest dimension. There is a hierarchy of dimensions.

Sex is the lowest dimension, love is the highest dimension. It is transformation of biology into spirituality, it is moving from the body to the soul, it is surpassing matter and entering into the immaterial.

1/08/07

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My whole message is contained in the word 'love'. That single word is my whole scripture, the book of the books, the Bible.

The word is very small, but if you start living it you become every day vast and vast, till all boundaries disappear and you are synonymous with the whole existence. That synonymousness is what I call holiness.

To be one with the whole is to be holy. Less than that won't do, less than that is not enough. Less than that and you will always feel some discontent, something missing.

It is better to remember from the very beginning what is going to make you absolutely contented so all your efforts can move into that dimension. Our energies should not be scattered. They should not be in fragments. They should all pour into one direction, they should all become one-pointed and they should move like an arrow, straight towards the goal. Only then is there the possibility of fulfillment.

Life can become an immense ecstasy, but it becomes an ecstasy only when your arrow of being penetrates into the being of the whole and disappears into it, leaving no trace behind. That merger, that melting, I call love. The beginning is love and the end is love and the middle too! (laughter) The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #14

Chapter title: None

14 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101145

ShortTitle: POND14

Audio:

No

Video:

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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.]

Meditation is a full stop on the mind. Ordinarily the mind goes on and on, you don't know how to put it off. There is a way to put it off. That's what meditation is all about. Once you have learned, it is a very simple process, just like putting the light on and off. Then the same mind which is ordinarily a torture becomes immensely useful. Then you can use it but you are the master.

Right now the master is absolutely in the hands of the servant. The mind goes on manipulating you; you have no power over it. You cannot even say to it 'Shut up!' It does not listen at all. One feels absolutely impotent with the mind.

And all misery consists only in this incapacity, in this impotence. Slowly slowly one becomes aware that 'it is beyond my capacity,' one becomes compromised to the situation. One surrenders to the mind. And surrendering to the mind is surrendering, to a machine. It is the most humiliating phenomenon. One is not really a man if he cannot put a stop on his mind. And it is not difficult either; one just has to learn the knack of it. The name of that knack is awareness.

One has to become more and more aware of all the processes of the mind -- the memory, the imagination, the fantasy, the thoughts. One has simply to be aware. The traffic goes by and you are silently watching it, without any judgement. In that state of non-judgmental awareness, one learns the knack, because one day suddenly, watching it, it stops. The more you become watchful, the less the mind is there.

When you are one hundred percent watchful the mind becomes absolutely empty. And to watch that 1/08/07

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emptiness is the beginning of ecstasy. You are freed, you have become a master for the first time.

This is the beginning of the kingdom of god.

When you become absolutely silent in mediation, a subtle humming sound is heard within one's own being. It does not come from the outside; it comes from one's own innermost core.

In the East we have called it 'omkar' the sound aum comes closest to it -- it is just approximate, remember, not exact. But if you go into an empty temple and you just chant 'Aum, aum, aum...' and you go on chanting, and then you stop suddenly, because the temple is empty it goes on resounding. That resounding comes very close to the innermost sound. And once this soundless sound, as it is called, this inner melody of your being is heard, bliss explodes, your whole life becomes harmonious. Then suddenly everything fits, then it is no more a problem. Life for the first time is not a problem, not a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

But the sound is so subtle that unless your mind is completely empty you cannot hear it. The mind makes so much noise you cannot hear the still, small voice within yourself -- hence meditation is the door to reach to the inner music. And the person who has heard the inner music becomes capable of hearing the celestial music of the spheres. He has learned the first lesson; now he can hear it all around, in the stars, in the trees, in the wind passing through the pine trees, in the sound of the running water.

Even when there is no sound it is there. The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping. It is their way of saying that it is not an ordinary sound which is created by clapping two hands. It is not a clash. It is unstruck. When you play on the sitar you have to strike, by your strokes you create the sound. There is a fight between you and the strings. You have to pull the strings to a certain tension and then relax them. This is called the struck sound. But the inner sound is unstruck, 'anahat'. Nobody is playing there and nobody is there. It is utter silence. Even you are not there, at least not as you know yourself. A very new awareness is there which has nothing to do with you. It is so new, it is not a continuity with you; it is discontinuous with you, it is beyond you. But that awareness is not dry, it is full of music.

That music has to be heard. Hearing it one's life becomes sheer beauty, bliss, benediction.

Meditation makes everything sacred. Its very touch is magical, It makes everything golden. Without meditation our songs are ordinary, superficial, they don't have any depth.

The moment a song arises out of your silence, when the poetry is born out of silence, when the dance comes spontaneously, for no reason at all, and comes so irresistibly that one has to dance -- one is possessed by it, one has to sing -- one is possessed by it -- then it is kirtan. When you are not the singer, but something above you, beyond you, starts flowing through you, when you are just a hollow bamboo and suddenly the bamboo is transformed into a flute, some unknown lips start singing a song -- then it is kirtan.

What is known ordinarily in the temples as kirtan is not kirtan, because there is no meditation in the first place. People are just singing the same way as they sing other songs. The words may be religious, but only the words are religious -- the state of the mind is the same. Whether you are singing a song from a film or you are singing a song from a sacred book makes no difference.

The real difference happens only when your state of consciousness is different. Then even the song from an ordinary film becomes sacred. Then whatsoever you say has a certain poetry in it. In fact the man of meditation is so transformed by his meditativeness, that his silence starts radiating through each of his acts.

His words, his acts -- all are full of his silence. Then whatsoever he is doing is sacred. He may be doing an ordinary thing cleaning the floor or cooking food or taking a bath -- but there is a subtle difference, a tremendous difference, a difference that really makes a difference, because his being is in a totally different space. It is coming out of such depth, of such innocence, of such virginity that it is bound to be sacred. But meditation comes first.

That's where I see these Hare Krishna people doing just idiotic things, sheer stupidity. You can go on repeating 'Hare Krishna, Hare Rama' for lives together. It will do only one thing; repeating one thing again and again destroys intelligence. It is a very useful method for making people idiotic -- hence in the Hare Krishna movement you will find all categories of idiots together.

In the first place, they are idiots to become interested in it; in the second place, if they are not already, they will become idiots, because the whole process is such. And what they think is kirtan is not kirtan at all, because there is no meditativeness in it. It is parrot-like.

You can teach a parrot and he will repeat. You can tell him to repeat sentences from the Bible and he will repeat. In the same way that the pope goes on repeating, the parrot will repeat, but the repetition of the 1/08/07

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parrot does not make him holy. You know perfectly well that it is just a parrot; there is nothing in it. He is repeating mechanically.

I also love kirtan, but it has to come out of your meditation, it has to come of its own accord. meditation has to function as a foundation. It is not vice versa, that by doing kirtan or sacred singing meditation can be created -- no. But by meditation everything becomes sacred -- even singing, even walking.

If meditativeness gives a new touch to everything that you are doing. It transforms you and through you the whole world around you. And once the foundation is there, the temple starts rising by itself. You don't need to put it together.

You have just to prepare yourself so that meditation is there, awareness is there, silence is there -- then everything else follows. Everything else is a consequence. Meditation is the key that unlocks all the doors.

Gautam Buddha has used the word 'mahasukh', the great bliss, to describe the ultimate experience. What we know in our life is the small bliss, momentary bliss, only fragments, glimpses from a very far away place, as if you have seen the Himalayas from thousands of miles away. Yes, on a cloudless day when the sun has risen, you can see the glistening, virgin peaks of the Himalayas from thousands of miles away.

Exactly like that, what we know in life are small glimpses of a far away land and they are bound to be momentary, because we are not in that space ourselves. Just accidentally a window opens, accidentally the clouds are not there, accidentally the sun is there, accidentally we are looking in that direction... It is all accidental; hence for a moment if all the combinations are there you feel just as if a dewdrop is slipping inside you.

But then there is despair. In the wake of it there is great despair because soon it is lost; that combination is not going to remain forever. We are surrounded by shifting sands. Everything is changing. The window will not remain in the same place; it is moving. The clouds are moving, the Himalayas are moving --

everything is in movement. So it is only a rare opportunity to find a little bit of bliss; hence Buddha calls it the small bliss, experienced by everybody once in a while.

In fact George Gurdjieff used to say -- and when a man like Gurdjieff says something it is meaningful.

He used to say 'My observation is that a person has such glimpses not more than seven times in a life -- that is the maximum. Not necessarily seven times -- that is the maximum. One may have such a glimpse only one time or two times, or not at all. It all depends on thousands of things.

Sometimes looking at a sunset, sometimes seeing a bird on the wing, sometimes a distant call of a cuckoo, sometimes is beautiful face, sometimes a child laughing -- and suddenly it is there; but as suddenly as it comes, it goes. And in the wake of it you fall into a deeper darkness than you were in before. This is not worth having.

But it also has a significance, because it gives you the taste, the desire, the longing, that if it is possible once then maybe there is some way to have it forever. That's what meditation is; not to depend on accidental combinations of thousands of things but to create a certain space within you which makes it absolutely inevitable that bliss is yours. Then it is no more a far away land; it is something within you.

And because it is part of you, even if you want to lose it you cannot lose it. That is called 'mahasukh', the great bliss. It comes only through meditation. There has never been any other way, there is none and there is never going to be another way.

In life what we know as peace is not real peace; at the most, it is absence of turmoil, absence of noise. It is the absence of something, not the presence of something. It is negative. When you go to the mountains you have a certain peace. It is the absence of the market-place, nothing else. Come back and you will be the same all peace will have gone. The people who live in the monasteries thing they are living in peace; they are just befooling themselves and nobody else. They should come back to the marketplace and see; all their peace will be gone.

Their peace is very arbitrary, dependent on certain conditions. And any peace that is dependent on certain conditions is not yours. It may be there, it may not be there -- and because it is dependent on certain conditions you have to live in those conditions. You become a slave of those conditions. Only slaves are living in the monasteries. Many have escaped to the Himalayas and to the caves but they are all slaves, slaves in the sense that now they think they are peaceful.

Let them come back into the world, let them live in the world, let them relate with people and they will know whether that peace was true or not. I don't trust that peace; I trust the peace that is attained here and now, not through escape, not by changing outer conditions but by changing your inner awareness. That's 1/08/07

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what I call meditation: changing your inner awareness, changing, your inner world; not changing the circumstances but changing your consciousness.

Once your consciousness is changed, once inner noise is dropped, then wherever you are there is peace.

Peace surrounds you, it becomes almost tangible. You become luminous with it. It can be felt by sensitive people. A sensitive person just passing by your side will suddenly feel the breeze, will suddenly become aware that something special is there, some grace, something, invisible -- but still it touches the heart.

Meditation brings true peace and true peace is always infinite. And true peace is always independent.

True peace is yours, authentically yours; hence nobody can take it away. You cannot be distracted from it, you cannot be diverted anywhere else. There is no way. Even If you are thrown in hell you will live in peace, because you carry your paradise within yourself.

That's the meaning of Jesus when he insists again and again that the kingdom of god is within you.

Two words have to be very clearly understood one is information and the other is transformation.

Information makes a man knowledgeable, but deep down he remains ignorant. In fact he becomes more ignorant than he was before, because at least before he was innocent; ignorant but innocent too. Now he has lost his innocence also. He is knowledgeable. It is not a gain, it is a very great loss.

Ignorance is beautiful if it contains innocence in it, far more beautiful than knowledge, because knowledge is ignorance devoid of innocence. But there is a third state also; wisdom. That never comes through information. It comes through transformation.

Information means collecting -- from books, from people, from all over the world, facts, fictions, hypotheses, superstitions, all kinds of rubbish. But you can arrange that rubbish in such a systematic way, in such a logical way that it seems very significant, very profound. Stupidity can also be very profound. If it is scholarly, it is profound.

Stupidity can also be very logical. There is no intrinsic impossibility in being an idiot and a philosopher; one can be both together. In fact, in the Middle Ages there used to be a word, 'foolosopher'... And many philosophers are really 'foolosophers' -- utterly foolish but very pretentious. Because of their knowledge they an exhibit that they know, and deep down they also know that they don't know, but they don' t want to accept it -- even to themselves. even in their privacy they don' t want to accept it.

Hence the man who has become very much informed becomes very very lost, very far away from the truth. From ignorance there are two ways: one is towards information, which will destroy innocence and protect ignorance; another is towards transformation, which will destroy ignorance and protect innocence.

And transformation comes through meditation.

One simply has to become utterly silent, watchful, choicelessly aware; then ignorance disappears, just as darkness disappears when you bring a candle into a room. But the innocence remains. In fact it not only remains, it is multiplied.

Information makes a foolosopher and transformation makes a wise man, a Buddha, a Socrates, a Jesus.

But the only way to attain to transformation, innocence, wisdom, is meditation.

My whole emphasis is on meditation. A single word, but it can open all the mysteries of existence.

Nothing else is needed. It is more than enough.

The only thing we can offer to existence is is singing heart, a dancing, being. What people are offering is nothing but misery. Existence gives us so much, existence is not miserly at all. It goes on giving in abundance -- to the worthy, to the unworthy. It makes no distinctions. It simply goes on giving to whosoever is ready to take it. It knocks on every door, just to give gifts to you. Light and love and life, all are gifts; not that we deserve them, not that we have earned them -- we may not be worthy at all -- but existence is overflowing. It has so much that it has to give. It cannot resist the temptation to give. It gives out of its abundance.

Something is needed from our side too, just as a thankfulness, as gratitude. And what can we give to existence? Just a few songs, a few dances, a little celebration, a festivity -- that's what sannyas is all about.

My whole effort here is to make you a little more to make you just a little more rejoicing, to make you aware of all the gifts that the whole has given to you so that gratitude can arise in you. And out of that gratitude is the offering of songs. Then one bows down to existence, just in simple gratefulness, and offers oneself, whatsoever one has got -- a few flowers of one's being. These flowers are what I mean by songs a little bit of creativity, whatsoever you can create.

A sannyas has to live in such a way that when he leaves the world, he leaves it a little more beautiful 1/08/07

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than he had found it -- that's enough! You have proved that you were religious! You have proved that you were not accidental. You have proved that you have contributed something to existence, that you have not been futile and in vain, that your being here has been of significance. That very feeling that 'I have contributed a little bit to the beauty of the world, to the grace of the existence,' that 'I have added a little more light into the dark night of the soul,' and one feels fulfilled, immensely contented. Nothing more is needed, no other religion.

Creativity is religion. Creativity is prayer. But creativity can come only out of meditativeness.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #15

Chapter title: None

15 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101155

ShortTitle: POND15

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.]

Your name, Marlene, has three meanings, and all three meanings are significant. They precisely define the whole process of sannyas.

The first meaning is bitterness, the second meaning is rebellion, the third meaning is fragrance.

Man is born as bitterness, and unless he goes through an inner transformation, a rebellion, his energy cannot be fragrant. It will remain bitter. It cannot be sweet.

Nothing is wrong with bitterness. It is just unpurified energy, raw, just like a raw diamond taken directly from the mind; it needs much work; only then will it shine forth in its absolute beauty.

The most precious diamond in the world is the Kohinoor. When it was found in a mine in the south of India, at Golconda, it was three times weightier than it is now. But it is millions of times more precious now than it was then. It has been continuously cut, given shape, polished. It remains only one-third of its original weight but it has gained a million times in value.

After it was found for the first time, it remained lying in a poor man's house for three years. He was not aware that it was such a precious thing. His children used to play with the stone. Anybody could have stolen it. It was just by chance that a wandering sannyasin stayed in his hut one night and looked et the stone that was lying just in front of the hut. He used to be a jeweller before he became a sannyasin. He said 'What are you doing with this stone? I have never in my life seen such a big diamond. It can make you the richest person in the world.' And it proved to be the greatest; up to now no other diamond has been able to surpass it.

The same is true about human energy; we come as raw diamonds from the womb; that is the meaning of bitterness. With anger, with hatred, with jealousy, with possessiveness, with all kinds of ugly monsters we are born. But all those monsters can be transformed. The devil within us can become the divine. The words

'devil' and 'divine' come from the same root. As far as the root is concerned, they belong to the same 1/08/07

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Sanskrit root, 'div'. Devil means 'divine' upside-down, doing a sirshasan, a headstand, that's all, that's the only difference. If we can put the devil on his feet again he becomes divine.

But that's what rebellion is: putting things in their right perspective, arranging one's inner world in deep accord. And love can do that miracle. The only magic in existence is that of love.

If one can love then things start changing of their own accord and the bitterness one day becomes fragrance; hence I say your name defines the whole process of sannyas.

Misery is always old, bliss is always young. Misery is old because it depends on the past. It is nd bliss is always young because it is part of the now. It is never caused by the past. It springs up here and now. It cannot be old, it is intrinsically impossible for bliss to be old. That's why even an old person, If he is blissful, radiates youthfulness. And the miserable person, even If he is young looks old, dull, dead.

To represent this fact in the East we have never made any statue of Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna in their old age. No statue represents their old age. Not that they never became old -- they became old, they died too -- but their statues represent only youthfulness.

It is very symbolic. It is not historical, but it is far more important than ordinary facts. It represents something of the inner.

It is saying that blissfulness is always young. The body may become old, the body may die, but bliss-fulness never dies. It never becomes old -- how can it die? It is impossible. Death never happens to blissfulness. In fact blissfulness is not part of time at all. Anything that is part of time is bound to become old sooner or later, because time always becomes past. It is always on the way towards the past. But bliss is part of eternity. So is now part of eternity.

What I call meditation is nothing but being utterly herenow, putting the past aside, dropping all dreams of the future, abiding in the moment... and suddenly, the spring bursts forth, suddenly there are flowers and flowers in your being. Suddenly life has taken a quantum leap, from time to eternity, from the physical to the metaphysical, from the outer to the inner. And the inner is always young, it never grows old. It is never born, it never dies. It always remains the same.

And that's the definition of truth; that which always remains the same. And, accordingly, the definition of dream is: that which goes on changing. That's why in the East we call the world just a dream, a maya, an illusion, because it goes on changing.

We have to find that which does not change. And it is there, within our innermost core. We just have to become silent enough, we just have to put a stop to our mind and its turmoil. And that's what past and future are, mind turmoil, noise of the mind -- either memories or imagination. Once these two things are not there you enter into the world of the eternal, into the world of truth.

Meditation is not of the mind, it is of the heart. Mind knows nothing of love. It knows only logic. And logic is the farthest thing from love; they never meet. Love cannot be logical, logic cannot be loving. They are like parallel line; which never meet.

Meditation belongs to the heart, to the world of love.

Many people start meditation but they start meditation as part of their mind -- soon they will drop it. It is not their love affair. And mind is very calculating; one day it will meditate and it will look for the profit, the result, the reward and if it is not coming then the mind will say 'What is the point of waiting your time?'

Two days, three days, one week, two weeks -- these are not things which can be grown so quickly; these are not seasonal flowers. These are cedars of Lebanon, they take hundreds of years to grow. One needs patience, infinite patience, and only love can afford that. Logic is very impatient. Logic wants everything quickly because time is running fast, life is slipping out of our hands, death is knocking on the door hence everything has to be like instant coffee.

Meditation also has to be instant meditation. But meditation cannot be instant. Coffee can be, but meditation cannot be. And it is good that it cannot be. If it can be instant then it will be sold in the marketplace. Then you can have it in all colours, sizes and shapes. It will be manufactured like Transcendental meditation. Now TM is a trademark. Even the word 'TM' is copyrighted, patented; nobody can use it. It is like some commodity.

Meditation is not a commodity.

So this has to be the beginning of a sannyasin: the shift from mind, calculation, cunningness, logic, impatience, towards a love affair. If sannyas is a love affair -- then only are things going to happen. Then you function in a totally different way. Then there is tremendous readiness to wait. And the miracle is, one 1/08/07

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who can wait forever, he may even get it now. And the person who wants to get it now may have to wait forever. Impatience is a disturbance. patience is a help, a nourishment.

And love can wait, only love can wait. Only love can hope, only love can trust. Love has all the great values which are needed to grow meditativeness, awareness, silence.

Initiation into sannyas is initiation into the ultimate love affair of life.

Meditation is a door to immortality. Without meditation we live in the world of death; with meditation we enter into the real world of life. Without meditation what we call life is nothing but sitting in a waiting room waiting for your train to come, or standing in a queue which every moment becomes smaller and smaller, as people go on disappearing into death.

A life in which death is the ultimate end is not much of a life. At the most it can be defined as slow death. For a few people it takes seventy years to die, for a few people who are lazy, ninety years, for a few people who are really lousy, one hundred years, one hundred and twenty years. Some people are quick too, but one thing is certain: from the cradle we are moving every moment towards the grave. This is not true life; it is just a belief that it is life. It is just slow death, slow poisoning.

Each moment we are dying; but once you enter into the world of meditation, once you know how to be silent, how to be alert and watchful, how to be unidentified with the mind, how to be not a mind -- that's what meditation is all about; a state of no-mind -- then suddenly there is no beginning, no end, no birth, no death. Then one tastes for the first time what life is. That life is called god.

And unless one knows that 'I am immortal,' that 'I have been here forever and I am going to be here forever,' one is bound to remain in anxiety and anguish and misery and fear and all kinds of nightmares. But the moment you know that you are not the body, not the mind, but an eternal soul. All dark clouds disappear. For the first time existence becomes full of sun, full of flowers, full of light.

Love is a bird on the wing, not a bird in the cage. Love is freedom, never a bondage. But we make love a bondage -- that's how we kill it. We put the beautiful bird into a golden cage, but it is not the same bird. It appears exactly the same, but it is no more the same, because the freedom is gone and with the freedom the spirit is gone. With freedom the whole sky was available; without freedom it has lost all its kingdom. It is encaged into a small space.

Maybe just out of old habit it will still sing but the song will be just a gramophone record -- out of habit, not out of spirit. There is nothing to sing about any more. The same bird used to sing in the trees; flying into the wind, going beyond the clouds, longing to reach to the stars. Then there was song! Then that song was spontaneous, because there was something to sing about, something to celebrate about.

One of the greatest misfortunes that has happened to humanity is that we have destroyed love by making it a relationship, by making it a marriage, by making it a possessiveness, a domination. We have killed the whole of human freedom just because we have killed love.

My sannyasins have to release the bird from the cage. They have to live lovingly, but without any relationship, without any promises for the future, without any future and without any past. Then again you will be able to sing, again you will be able to dance, again you will be alive. And the very intensity of that life, the very crescendo of that song, is the experience of god!

When love is dead, god is dead. When love is dancing, alive, throbbing, pulsating, then god is alive. It all depends what you do with your love.

God is not a question of going to the church or to the temple or reading the Bible or the Gita -- that's all nonsense. That is only for the stupid. The true god has something to do with your love; your love energy has to be released in absolute freedom so the whole sky is yours. Then god is born in you!

And to give birth to god is the real fulfilment of life. There is nothing higher than that. There cannot be anything higher than that.

Your name, Dinesh, means the sun, the source of all light, the source of all warmth, the source of all life One may not immediately see the connection but when you are enjoying a rose flower, you are enjoying a gift from the sun. Life is not possible without the sun. The trees will wither, the birds will die, the people will disappear. If the sun dies then within ten minutes all life will be gone.

It will take ten minutes because light takes ten minutes to reach to the earth so we will come to know of the death of the sun after ten minutes. But nothing can be done about it. By the time we know we are finished. The moment we know, all is finished.

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The sun is the source of all that exists. Just as there is an outer sun, there is also an inner sun, because the inner and the outer are always in balance. Whatsoever exists on the outside also exist inside. That's how life keeps its balance. To search for the inner sun is the whole purpose of religion.

Science can be defined as the search for the outer source of life, and religion as the search for the inner source of life. And if logic is the method for the outer science then love is the method for the inner science, religion.

Use love to search for your innermost shrine of being and there will find not only yourself; you will find the source of all! At the centre of our being we are one, we are not separate. We are separate only on the circumference. In ignorance we are separate, in wisdom we are one. And love is the way towards that wisdom. Just as there can be no science without logic, there can be no religion without love.

Sannyas is an effort to go beyond the night of the soul. We have not yet seen the dawn. We go on stumbling in the dark. And the reason is that our eyes are focussed on the outside. We keep our own being at the back; that keeps our being in a shadow, in darkness.

If we can take a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn, then suddenly there will be dawn, immediately our inner being will be full of light. And that experience is enlightenment, to know oneself as full of light is to know all that is worth knowing. One who has lived without knowing one's own light has lived in vain.

Initiation into sannyas is a deep commitment towards inner journey, a decision for that one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. And it is only a question of deciding. If one decides one can do it. One is capable of doing it.

People are not able to do it just because they are indecisive, hesitant, ambiguous. Once the decision is there, absolute and total, in a single moment one can turn towards the inner world. And that single moment is far more important than living a long life, because that single moment will make you eternal. The long life will take you only to death and nowhere else.

The experience of bliss has many things in common with the moonlight. First, it is light; second, it is very cool light. It is not feverish. it is not cold either, neither hot nor cold, but just exactly in the middle --

cool. And to experience the cool light gives you a bath. It rejuvenates you. It makes you beautiful, graceful.

It happens in the moonlight; the whole existence seems to be more beautiful than ever. It is the same existence, the same world with no difference at all. You have seen it -- the same rocks, the same trees, the same roads, the same houses -- but suddenly in the moonlight, as if a miracle happens, everything becomes more mysterious, becomes more poetic, becomes dreamlike, takes a flavour of sweetness, a fragrance.

The same happens in blissfulness you are showered with a cool light and it cleanses your very being, gives you a new freshness, a beauty, a grace. A miracle surrounds you. For the first time you feel you are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of, for the first time the prose style of life disappears and you attain to a poetic style; the mathematics evaporates and music enters in.

Moonlight gives you an ecstasy but the ecstasy has no excitement in it -- and that's its beauty, its indefinable quality, because whenever we thing of ecstasy we think of excitement. And the true ecstasy is without any excitement at all. It is a new dimension, so new that it is absolutely indefinable in the old words and in the old ways of expression. That's why the mystics have always felt that it cannot be said.

It can be shown, but it cannot be said. The master can share it in deep silence, heart-to-heart, but he cannot say it.

Man can live either in darkness or in light. Both alternatives are open.

Each moment we are at a cross road; we can choose to live ac enlightened beings but millions of people choose to live an unenlightened life.

It seems very strange -- why? Why do they choose the life of darkness when the life of light is available? It certainly is one of the most significant questions -- why people choose misery when they can be blissful?

There are very subtle reasons. One is that misery fulfills many things which bliss cannot. Misery gives you nourishment for the ego and bliss kills the ego completely. And we are brought up in such a way that ego seems to be very significant. Even the so-called psychologists go on saying that every person needs a very strong ego, otherwise he will not be able to survive in the struggle of life.

Life is not taken as a celebration. It is taken as a struggle, a war. And of course, if it is a war, then you have to be very egoistic to fight it. You cannot be relaxed.

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Without ego there is relaxation. Bliss brings relaxation, such total relaxation, that you are no more there.

The relaxation is so absolute that the ego is not possible. Ego needs tensions as support. Misery gives you enough tension; it supports the ego. The more miserable you are, the more the ego is nourished, fed, becomes stronger. And out of the ego all our projects arise. Only an egoistical person can seek power, prestige, respectability, money, and all that nonsense, only an egoistical person. And this whole society, for millions of years, has been teaching every child to have more power, more money, more than others. You have to defeat everybody, you have to be competitive. And all these are the subtle reasons why we choose misery. Only a miserable person can be a politician, only a miserable person can go after money.

The really blissful person does not bother about non-essential things. His life is so inwardly rich that he does not care to become a prime minister or to ba a president. Why should he take all this anxiety and worry and all kinds of nightmares? There is no reason!

Alexander the Great had asked Diogenes, a great mystic, 'I would like to be as blissful as you are.'

Diogenes used to live naked by the side of a river. He was taking his usual morning sunbath, lying down on the sand in the warm sun. When Alexander came Diogenes did not even congratulate him. He remained lying there. He didn't take any note of him. Alexander stood there and said 'You are the first man I feel jealous of. It seems you have more than I have got. You look so blissful. If I am to be born again I will ask god to make me a Diogenes.'

Diogenes laughed and said 'You are a fool! Why wait for another life? Who knows? If you really want to be a Diogenes you can be this very moment; this riverbank is so big -- throw off your clothes, lie down, relax, take a sunbath, just as I am doing -- who is preventing you? At least I am not preventing you and there is nobody else here If you want to be as blissful as I am, who is preventing you? Why should you postpone it for the next life? And if you cannot do it now, are you certain you will be able to do it in the next life? And if you can do it in the next life, then why not now? There is no problem in it.'

Alexander was very well-versed as for as philosophy and logic are concerned. He was a disciple of Aristotle, the father of western logic. Aristotle was his personal tutor. But for the first time he saw that his whole logic was useless before this man; 'What he is saying is right!'

He said 'I can understand -- what you are saying is right, I cannot argue -- but the time has not come for me. Right now I am going to conquer the whole world.'

Diogenes said 'Okay, then what you will do,' Alexander said 'Then I will relax.' Diogenes said 'This is just absurd; I am relaxing now without conquering the world. Is that a requirement for relaxation, that first you have to conquer the world? If I can relax without conquering the world, why is it you cannot?'

Alexander stood there almost dumb, then bowed down and said 'I am sorry. I can understand your point, but I cannot do it now.'

What was the problem? Why couldn't he do it that moment? That is the problem for everybody too, our projects, our ego projects. 'I have to conquer the world, I have to become this, I have to become that, I have to possess this, only then will I be happy.' We make so many conditions to be blissful, that's why we are miserable; otherwise there is no need to make any conditions. One can simply choose to be blissful, to be full of light, to be full of joy, to be full of songs. One can become a festival of lights.

And it is a sheer question of decision. I emphasise the point again and again to my sannyasins that each moment you are given two opportunities -- to be blissful or to be miserable. If you choose to be miserable, don't complain! (laughter) You have chosen it. The next moment, don't choose it! If you are really fed up with it, then the next moment choose to be blissful -- that is my message for you! (laughter) From this very moment (laughter)... start choosing to be blissful. Right? Good, Yama!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #16

Chapter title: None

16 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

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Archive code: 8101165

ShortTitle: POND16

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 moon represents the cool, the silent phase of light. The sun represents the hot, the turmoil, the conflict. The sun is excitement and the moon is silence. Born of moonlight means coming out of deep silence.

Bliss is a child of silence, of coolness, of unexcitement, of tranquillity. Bliss is not something that one has to seek anywhere. All that is needed to find it, is to become absolutely calm and quiet. When there is no turmoil within you, when the sun phase has ceased to function, the moon comes to light of its own accord.

The moon is always there, even in the day. Just because of the sunlight and the excitement, you cannot see it. Once the sun sets, the moon starts appearing. When the sun is completely gone below the horizon, the moon is there in all its beauty.

Exactly the same is the case with bliss, it is already there at the very center of our being; we just have to become silent, then out of that silent state of consciousness bliss arises, just like a moon arising. And the beauty of it is tremendous. There is ecstasy but no excitement.

There is great joy but it is not hot -- it is cool.

It is not a distraction.

It makes you even more centered, more grounded.

It brings, for the first time, immense contentment, fulfillment.

One feels one has arrived.

The state of blissfulness is as free as the eagle. It can rise beyond the clouds. It knows no limitation. The whole sky belongs to it.

Bliss is not only free; in fact, it is freedom itself. It is a bird on the wing all the dimensions are open to it. Love and beauty and sensitivity and creativity -- everything suddenly becomes possible for the blissful person. There is no wall any more that prevents. All walls become bridges.

Secondly, bliss is also wild because it is spontaneous. It is not part of the cultivated, civilised mind; it is part of our intrinsic nature, which is still beyond all cultivation. fortunately, it is good that it cannot be cultivated, otherwise we would have made it phony. It is beyond our reach. We cannot do anything with it.

It remains as it is, it remains true to its nature.

The eagle of the wood represents both; it represents the freedom of a bird -- it is not a bird in the cage but a bird in the wood -- and it also represents the wildness, the naturalness, the spontaneity of the woods.

Bliss is both: open, free -- to the whole existence -- and natural, spontaneous.

Misery is our effort. Misery is created by us. It is our invention and we are doing great work to create it.

Day in, day out, year in, year out -- we are doing so much work to keep ourselves miserable that the moment you understand the fact that misery is your own creation, it simply disappears because you stop creating it. It is just like bicycling: you go on peddling the moment you stop peddling the bicycle has to stop. Maybe it will go a few feet or if it is downhill, maybe a few furlongs, just because of the past momentum, but sooner or later it will stop.

That's actually the case with misery. Misery is a bicycle; you have to peddle it continuously, you cannot stop peddling it otherwise you will fall. Bicycle means two wheels only, so it is against gravitation. You have to go on peddling for gravitation to remain ineffective. By the time gravitation can make it fall you have moved. It is just escaping from gravitation; that's why you need peddling. If you stop in one place, just a little time is needed for gravitation to work and you will fall.

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Bliss is not unnatural. It needs no peddling. It simply is there. Once you stop creating misery you find it.

It is wild. It is of the woods, of the mountains. It is nature!

So all that one has to do is to understand 'What am I doing with myself?' The very understanding brings a transformation. You stop creating misery and instantly bliss starts showering on you. And then one laughs at how long one has been miserable, and for no reason at all. Nobody else was responsible for it. It is just our ignorance of what we are doing that creates hell. Ignorance is hell, unawareness is hell. Awareness is paradise.

Religions in the past have been very serious. That seriousness is a disease. It is like a cancer of the soul; hence in religious people's lives all songs disappeared, all joy disappeared, all fun disappeared. They became dull and dead. They became a heavy weight on humanity. They crushed humanity under their weight. They thought they were becoming holy; they were simply becoming phony. They thought they were becoming simple, humble; they were simply becoming very subtle egoists. Holier-than-thou was their whole philosophy. They condemned the whole of humanity. They created sadness for themselves and greed for others.

It has been an ugly past.

Getting initiated into my vision of sannyas, into my vision of religion, is a change of gestalt, a total change of perspective. Instead of seriousness I teach laughter, humour, cheerfulness, Instead of sadness I teach songs, dances, love.

Religion needs to become more earthly. It has to be a tree rooted in the earth and rising high into heaven. The flowers will come into the sky but the roots will o deep into the earth. And there has to be a balance between the two; the higher the tree goes the deeper the roots have to go.

The really religious person is very earthly; he has to be, otherwise he won't have any roots. Hence I teach rootedness in the earth. I teach the earth, because I know that only if our roots grow into the earth will we be able to rise beyond the clouds. The flowers will come but they will come only by getting deeper and deeper roots.

So to me the mundane and the sacred are not different they are two sides of the same coin. Hence singing and dancing and love and creativity and cheerfulness and laughter are not against the sacred. They are part, an intrinsic part of it, and not a small part -- exactly the half of it, and the first half. And if the first half is there the second half follows automatically -- They cannot be separated -- but in the past the second half became more important; not only more important, it became empty of the first half. That's how religion died. That's how god died on the earth; god became a tree without roots.

God can live again but the only way for god to live again is to have roots into the earth -- and that's what I mean by cheerfulness, song, celebration.

Bliss is a light -- light of the inner world. Without bliss the inner world remains dark. As you start becoming blissful the night starts disappearing, the dawn has arrived. The only way to become enlightened is to be blissful, totally blissful. No prayer is needed, no religious ritual is needed. One has just to be blissful in one's ordinary life and the beyond suddenly opens one day. There is no need to be aggressive about it.

One has just to be receptive.

And one has to learn only one thing: whatsoever you are doing, do it blissfully. Make it a point so that bliss remains an undercurrent in all your activities. If that much is remembered then your life will be transformed. No power can prevent it, no hindrance then is big enough to prevent your transformation.

Just walking, remember to be blissful. Sitting, eating, cooking, taking a bath, just remain blissful -- a subtle cheerfulness inside, a giggling in the heart. And sometimes you can giggle loudly too (laughter)...

there is no problem! At the most people will think you a little crazy. But there is no problem my people are cuckoos! (laughter)

And then if it just becomes a twenty-four-hour undercurrent... and it does become that; if you can remember while you are awake, one day you will find that even in your sleep it continues. In the morning you can find it still there and you can remember that it has been there the whole night. When the circle is complete, that very moment great night is born within oneself. And that light becomes the door to the divine, to the eternal.

The ordinary understanding about bliss is that it is great excitement. That is totally wrong. Pleasure has excitement in it, bliss has no excitement at all. It is utterly peaceful. That's the difference between pleasure 1/08/07

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and bliss. Pleasure is an excitement because it is momentary bliss cannot be an excitement because it is eternal. How can you remain excited forever?

Even the momentary pleasure tires, exhausts. It tastes sweet, one wants it, but at the same time one feels

-- and the more alert you are, the sooner you feel -- that it is exhausting, tiring, it is a kind of exertion.

Because excitement means tension. Your heart is beating faster, your blood is circulating faster, your mind is rushing faster, everything is speedy -- how long can you be in that speed? Soon you will feel utterly tired, deadly tired.

That's why all so-called love affairs fail; after the honeymoon is over both are so tired of each other that really everything is over with the honeymoon. But now they cannot say it. They have promised so many things to each other -- it looks so inhuman and insulting and humiliating to swallow again whatsoever you have thrown out. so one has to go on pretending, but now it is tiring.

You can see husbands and wives moving together both look utterly tired, as if they are just coming out of hell. If you see a man with a woman being joyful and cheerful, one thing is certain that the woman is not his wife! (laughter) It is really impossible, even for actors it is impossible to be cheerful with their own lives or husbands. And if you are so cheerful with your own wife, even your wife will become suspicious 'Why?

What is the matter with you? There must be some other woman -- your cheerfulness is enough proof!'

You have to be sad, serious, sombre. The deader you are, the more your marriage goes smoothly. The more alive you are, the more it is on the rocks. Even these momentary pleasures which are excitement are tiring. Hence bliss cannot be an excitement; it is a state of total peacefulness. It has all that one longs for, except excitement.

It is cool and silent, and a tremendous harmony prevails inside, no tension at all. In fact it is so peaceful that slowly slowly one tends to forget it. Only when a person becomes for the first time enlightened does he know, because now he can see the difference, that he has come from darkness into light. The change is so vast, so immense, so tremendous, the contrast is so big -- he knows it. But as he settles into his new dimension, by and by he starts forgetting all about enlightenment, all about bliss, because even to know it is a tension.

It becomes so natural, like breathing. You remember breathing only when something is wrong, otherwise you don't remember it. And with bliss there is never anything wrong. It is getting in tune with the ultimate; never does anything go wrong. Hence it is so silent that one cannot even remember it.

One of the greatest masters of the world was Bodhidharma, who founded the school of zen. He went to China, travelled from India to China. The emperor of China, Wu, came to the boundary of his country to receive this great master. He had been waiting for him for years, because it took years 'Bodhidharma is coming, Bodhidharma is coming,' and he had to cross the whole Himalayan range.

It took years and that old emperor was waiting and waiting. And when Bodhidharma came he was really in a great rejoicing. The whole country rejoiced. He had come with his whole court; there was much festivity and much celebration.

But Bodhidharma shocked him very much. Wu asked him 'I have done so much for religion, I have made so many temples, so many monasteries. I feed thousands of sannyasins. What will be my merit in the other world?' Bodhidharma said 'Nothing, no merit at all. In fact you will fall into the seventh hell.'

It was such a shock. The Emperor said 'But everybody up to now has been saying that all that I am doing is of such great virtue that I will reach to the seventh heaven and you are saying to me 'You will fall into the seventh hell?" Is there not anything like virtue?'

Bodhidharma said 'There is no virtue, no sin.' The emperor became a little angry, but he was a polite man, cultured, polished, he didn't show his anger, but it was there. He asked Bodhidharma 'Can I ask you, sir, one thing -- who are you?' Bodhidharma said 'I don't know.'

Now this answer, 'I don't know,' is one of the greatest answers even given to the question 'Who are you?'

And only a man like Bodhidharma can say 'I don't know.' It is not ignorance. It is the ultimate wisdom. But he has known himself for so many years that he has forgotten who he is. All that has become so natural. He does not remember. He said 'I am telling you the truth I have no idea. It has been so long, so much water has gone down the Ganges since I became aware of who I am. Now everything has settled. There is only nothingness, silence, peace, and I don't know anything about myself or about you or about anything.'

Yes, ultimate innocence will look like ignorance. When bliss is absolute you tend to forget all about it.

If somebody asks me 'Are you blissful?' I can only say 'I don't know. It has been so long that I have forgotten what misery actually means. The contrast is missing, the background is no more there. It is as if you have written on a blackboard with white chalk and the blackboard has disappeared; now how can you 1/08/07

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read? Only those words written in white chalk are somewhere there; but the blackboard has disappeared, there is no contrast.'

That's the ultimate state when you don't even know that you are blissful. What to say about misery? -- in a way even bliss is no more there. But that's what we are searching and seeking and longing for. That's our deepest longing of the heart to come to such a state where no tension exists, no anxiety, no anguish, where nothing exists, or only nothing exists.

The state of blissfulness is also the state of meditativeness; they are synonymous. To be blissful is to be meditative, and vice versa. One can start from either end. either one can be meditative -- then bliss comes in

-- or one can be blissful and meditation comes in. To start from meditation is a little arduous, but to start from blissfulness is very simple. And when the simple is available, why go through the arduous?

So let bliss be the beginning. Just relax and be cheerful, for no reason at all. Don't ask why. If you ask why, you will always remain miserable, because misery has a why to it and bliss has no why to it. If you ask me why you are miserable, it can be answered; but if you ask why you are happy, blissful, it cannot be answered, because blissfulness is a natural phenomenon. It simply is the case, just like health.

If you go to the physician and ask 'Why am I healthy?' he will shrug his shoulders. But if you ask 'Why am I unhealthy?' he can find out the cause. Healthy has no cause. disease has cause. Life has no cause.

Death has cause.

Remember that. The negative always has a cause to it, but the really existential has no cause to it; it simply is there. So start being blissful without asking. Your mind will ask 'Why are you feeling so cheerful?'

Tell the mind 'Shut up! (laughter) I am just cheerful and why should I bother about these whys?'

One can be cheerful only if one can drop searching for the reasons, for the motives. Be cheerful for cheerfulness' sake, for no other reason, as if it is an end unto itself. Everything else is a means to something else, but blissfulness is not a means; it is an end. So use every opportunity as an excuse to be blissful.

In the beginning you need a few excuses. By and by you learn the art, then no excuse is needed. You can just sit in your room and enjoy! (laughter) And there is nothing to enjoy! People always think that enjoying means something has to be there to be enjoyed -- the television, the radio, a man, a woman, at least a bottle of beer -- something has to be there. When somebody is just sitting and enjoying they will think 'This is strange.' (laughter) And if somebody invites you, 'Come to my home and we will enjoy,' (laughter) and both sit and enjoy -- that's really my idea of enjoyment! invite people, friends to enjoy... They will come only once! (much laughter) Once they come and they see what enjoyment is, once they have understood, they will not come again. But then you can enjoy alone! (more laughter) There is no need for anybody. Or you can always invite new people; but enjoy for no reason at all. Try it, give it a try!

Pleasure is like a bud -- closed. Happiness is like a flower -- open. And bliss is like fragrance --

freedom.

There is not much difference between a bud and a flower. Yes, there is a difference -- the bud is closed and the flower is open -- but no qualitative difference, just a quantitative difference, a different arrangement of the petals, that's all. But with the fragrance there is a quantum leap. It is totally different from the flower.

The flower is visible, the Fragrance is not visible. You can hold the flower in your hand, you cannot catch hold of the fragrance. That's exactly the case with bliss you cannot possess it. You can experience it, you can dance with it, sing with it, but you cannot possess it.

Pleasure can be possessed, purchased. That's why ugly institutions like prostitution exist; pleasure can be purchased, it is very physical, gross.

Happiness is just in between. It is more difficult to purchase happiness but one can manage. If one is intelligent enough one can manage even happiness -- through art, through music, through poetry. But bliss is absolutely beyond our reach. It is bigger than us. Our reason, our intelligence, our powers all fall short.

We can only be on the receiving end. We are just a host -- if it comes, like a breeze it comes, then we can accept it as a guest, but we cannot force it to come, either directly or indirectly. But one thing has to be remembered: the moment you are really ready to be a host, the guest comes, the fragrance comes, the bliss comes.

It comes and then never goes. It comes forever! But it is not a property. It is not material. It is absolutely immaterial, invisible, like a fragrance.

First one has to become open like a flower and then one has to wait. Whenever the moment is ripe, the fragrance, the hidden splendour, will be released. That's what we are here for; the very meaning of life is to 1/08/07

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release the imprisoned splendour.

We are living a life divided, separated, from the whole. We have created a small wall around ourselves out of fear, to protect, but that very wall has become our imprisonment. The name of the wall is the ego and unless we demolish the wall, destroy the ego, we will remain separate from the whole -- and that is the basic cause of misery. Because to remain separate from the whole means to remain undernourished. It means to remain continuously afraid of death, of all kinds of accidents. Once you are one with the whole all fear disappears because then there is no death. The whole is eternal.

And the part cannot have any meaning. Meaning always means in reference to the whole. For example, you can take a part from a machine. That part in itself is meaningless. Put it back into the machine and it has tremendous meaning. Its meaning is only in a certain context, in a certain unity, in a certain organic harmony. The egoistical person feels life as meaningless and he himself is the cause of it. Withdraw the ego and see; from all directions meaning rushes into your being. For the first time you feel life and its significance. And the significance is enormous, infinite, and then only one can dance, rejoice. Then only one knows that we are not orphans; we belong to the universe and the universe belongs to us.

That feeling is 'yoga' -- that feeling of belonging, that feeling that we are an intrinsic part of the whole, that we are needed by the whole, that we are not useless and accidental.

Once that feeling overwhelms you your whole life is transformed.

It becomes a rejoicing.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #17

Chapter title: None

17 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101175

ShortTitle: POND17

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 basically is nothing but a state of total awareness. Our mind is only partially aware; only one tenth of our totality is conscious, nine-tenths is in a deep dark night. All our problems arise out of that darkness, that blindness. And it is nine times more than our awareness. The so-called religions, moralities, go on trying to cultivate that fragment of consciousness.

You can teach, you can programme that small fragment of consciousness but it will remain superficial.

In times of stress it won't help. One will remain very polite and humble, but only when everything is going good. When things start going wrong then suddenly all the repressed anger, violence, overwhelms one.

Then the cultivated morality, the facade of character is of no use at all. That's why people do things which you never thought they could do. A very good man, a nice man, in every w!ay respected, can commit murder. He himself will not be able to believe how he could do it; hence the phrase 'in spite of myself.' It is a retrospective thinking later on when he comes back to his superficial consciousness he can see that he has 1/08/07

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done it in spite of himself, because he is identified only with the conscious part. He has rejected the unconscious and that is nine times more.

That is our true reality, it cannot be rejected; and by cultivating the conscious part it remains unaffected, it remains the same. Hence my approach is not through character but through meditation.

The most fundamental thing is to make our consciousness bigger, to change the unconscious into consciousness -- that is true religion. That's what the whole purpose of alchemy was: the transformation of darkness into light, of the baser metal into gold. The gold represents light. And it is possible if you start becoming aware of what you are doing, of what you are thinking, of what you are feeling -- just an undercurrent of awareness of all these three dimensions -- then slowly slowly awareness deepens. More and more parts of the unconscious are claimed by consciousness.

And once you have learned the knack of changing the unconscious into consciousness, then it is only a question of time, effort, patience. Then the day is not far away when the whole of unconsciousness disappears and your inner world is full of light. Then whatsoever you do is moral, whatsoever happens through you is virtue -- and that virtue is not cultivated at all. It is spontaneous. And when it is spontaneous it has a beauty of its own. When it is cultivated it is pseudo, phony. It creates only hypocrites, and that's why the whole world is full of hypocrites.

It is not their fault; it is ten thousand years of stupidity perpetuated in the name of religion. Religion should be simply an alchemical process of transforming unconsciousness into consciousness.

A man without meditation is windowless, utterly closed to existence. No sun, no wind, no rain, reaches him. He lives almost in a grave. He is not alive.

You are alive only in the proportion to which you are vulnerable, open. The more alive you are, the more windows you have, the more doors you have; and you are totally alive when you are just under the sun, under the sky, utterly naked, with nothing to keep you isolated, to keep you encapsulated. And that's the function of meditation to create windows in you. In the beginning, windows, then doors; then by and by all the walls disappear. One day you find yourself for the first time merging, melting, into the whole.

That's the ultimate experience of bliss. But the beginning is in creating a small window; then go on making it bigger and bigger and bigger, so one day there is only window left. All the doors, all the walls, everything has disappeared. When there is nothing to disconnect you from existence, nothing to debar you, you experience godliness.

Meditation gives you unbounded space. It makes you as vast as the ocean. Without it one is only a dewdrop, confined into a very small space, imprisoned. And that's our misery, that wherever we try to move there is a limitation. The body limits us, the mind limits us, even the heart limits us.

One has to go beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond the heart. Only then, these three concentric circles transcended, you become as vast as existence itself. You are no more in that vastness. You cannot be the way you have always been; there is no ego.

The ego can exist only in the dewdrop. The ocean means egolessness. The moment you are infinite, you taste the truth for the first time; otherwise whatsoever we go on thinking about truth is not truth. Thinking about truth can never be truth. Truth is a taste on the tongue. The person who has never tasted sweetness may go on thinking about it for millions of years; still, he will not know what it is.

The blind man can think know light but all his thinking is futile. He may write a thesis, a great thesis, on light, he may be awarded a Ph.D. or a D. Lit., but still because he is blind he knows nothing of light. All his knowledge is mere knowledge, not knowing.

Truth has to be known. No information can be of any help. it is an existential experience and the only way to know it is to become it -- to digest it and to be digested by it. Only in that union where I and thou disappear, where all dualities melt and become one, one knows. That state I call oceanic. That is the goal of sannyas.

One has to come out of the confinement of a dewdrop and become the ocean. One has to allow one's dewdrop to slip into the ocean and disappear into the ocean. To be one with the whole is the only way to be holy.

Meditation is the essence of all true religion. Everything other than meditation is nothing but ritual. It is good for deceiving people, it is good for exploiting the fools, it is very good for the priests; the popes, the imams, but it is not religion. And a very strange thing is that all the vested interests are against meditation.

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They are all for going to the church, to the temple, to the mosque. They are all in support of reading the Bible every day, or the GITA, reciting it again and again and again but they are not in favour of meditation, because they have become aware again and again down the ages that the meditative person becomes a rebel.

The meditative person becomes so intelligent that he cannot be exploited and oppressed. The meditative person becomes so full of life that he cannot be repressed, crippled, paralysed. He becomes so full of bliss and joy that you cannot make him afraid and you cannot make him greedy either; so your hell and heaven both become superstitions for the meditative person, because hell is nothing but exploitation of fear and heaven is exploitation of greed -- two sides of the same coin. Because people are living in fear and in greed, the priest has invented hell and heaven; otherwise there is no hell, no heaven.

There is life eternal. And if you are silent, meditative, this very moment you are in paradise. And if you have song astray from your own centre, if you are no more centred in your being, you are in hell. Hell simply means living a life unconsciously and heaven means living a life consciously.

All the religions are afraid of meditation because it gives you the taste of paradise herenow and they all depend on a paradise after death; so you and your life can be postponed. Heaven will be after death and right now you have to live a meaningless life. So they go on giving you hope and hope is nothing but opium.

Meditation means becoming so aware, so intensely aware, now, this very moment, that all these stupidities are seen as stupidities, and the moment you see something as false you are free of it. Not only that, there is even more danger for the vested interests, for the establishment; the person who has come to know the false as the false and the true as the true does not remain hidden. He cannot remain hidden. He has to share his experience. He has to spread his fire.

And that fire can burn all the temples and all the churches and all the mosques. The meditative person will not be Christian, will not be Hindu, will not be Buddhist, will not be Mohammedan. He will simply be human. Hence the Christians will be against him, the Hindus will be against him, all the organised religions will be against him. He will not be a Christian of course; he will be a Christ. He will not be a Buddhist but he will be a Buddha -- and that is dangerous.

The Buddhists don't want another Buddha to be here, because the latest Buddha is bound to change the twenty -- five-centuries-old scriptures of the Buddhists, because he will speak the idiom of the day, he will speak in the context of the contemporary humanity.

Christians will not like Christ to be here again. He will destroy all their business; hence nobody is in favour of meditation -- and meditation is the essential core of religion. In other words all religions are against religion, against the true religion, against the essential religiousness. And my effort here is to make you aware that rituals are not religion, that scriptures are not religion, that belonging to a certain sect is not religion. Religiousness is a totally different phenomenon: it is the experience of your own being.

Knowing it, all is known.

Mind separates, meditation unites. Mind functions as a wall, meditation functions as a bridge.

Meditation simply means a state of no-mind; slipping out of the mind and the games of the mind is the whole art of meditation. And it is not a difficult thing -- we have just never tried it, that's why it appears difficult. We have always lived in the mind so we don't know that there is a way to live beyond the mind too.

Once you have taken even a single step out of the mind you will be surprised; you were living unnecessarily in a prison. There was nobody guarding the door, you were not chained, you were just not aware that there is a beyond too. And the way out of the mind is to become aware of the mind and its mechanism, memory, imagination, thoughts, desires, fantasies -- the traffic is there, continuously going on.

You have just to stand by the side and watch whatsoever is passing, with no judgement, with no evaluation; just a silent mirror reflecting whatsoever is passing by. Not even making any comments that this is good, this is bad, that this is not so good, that this should not be or should be -- without any commentary, just watching.

In the beginning it seems difficult because our habit is of continuously commenting, but just a little patience, sitting silently, doing nothing, just watching; it comes. And when it comes it opens a totally new dimension. You can see the whole mind passing by and than you know that you are not the mind, because the one who is seeing the mind passing by cannot be the mind. The observer cannot be the observed -- and that is the moment you are out of the mind. That is the moment a tremendous freedom comes. One is no more confined to anything. The imprisoned splendour is released; and life begins only then. Before that we 1/08/07

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are just living a so-called life, lukewarm, with no intensity, with no passion, with no totality.

Man lives mechanically, just like a sleep-walker, a somnambulist; he goes on doing things but almost like a robot. If you start watching your acts you will be surprised that you go on making the same mistakes every day. And you have decided many times not to do them again, but those decisions are meaningless.

When the situation arises aGain, you react immediately in the old pattern. You don't know how to respond.

These two words are significant. 'Reaction' means mechanical, unconscious and 'response' means non-mechanical, conscious. 'Response' means acting according to the situation and 'reaction' means acting according to the old pattern. reaction means following ready-made answers, following a built-in programme, being dictated and dominated by the past -- that is reaction. And living in the moment, in the moment, with no interference from the past, is response.

A sannyasin has to be responsible in this sense, not in a moralistic sense, not in the sense of being dutiful, but in the sense of being conscious. To be conscious means acting out of the light of awareness; otherwise people are acting out of darkness -- stumbling, groping. Yes, once in a while just accidentally they can do something right, but that is accidental. It has no value at all.

Ninety-nine per cent they will do wrong. One percent, accidentally, they will do right; but accidental right has no value. It is not virtue.

One has to be full of light. And when there is light you know where the door is, you need not stumble.

You know where the furniture is, you need not stumble. You know exactly what is what and you act according to that understanding.

Meditation creates light within you. Without meditation one is living in a dark night of the soul. And the strange thing is that we have all the things necessary to create light.

In a Sufi story, a man is hungry. He has flour, he has water, he has butter, he has fuel, he has fire, he has everything -- he can make bread. But he is just sitting there hungry, because he cannot eat the fuel, he cannot eat the flour, he cannot eat all these things which only need to be put in a certain combination.

Once they are put in a certain combination they will become eatable.

We are born with everything; that is needed to create light, but you have to use a little intelligence to put everything in its right place. And that's what meditation is: putting things in their right place. And once they are in the right place a great harmony arises. Once life becomes such a deep accord, so full of music, so full of joy, so full of light, out of that joy, that music, that light, whatsoever you do is right.

So I don't teach you to do right. I only teach you to create the light... then right follows! (laughter) It is inevitable.

There is a vast difference between satisfaction and contentment.

Satisfaction is something invented. In the old fable of Aesop, the fox says that the grapes are sour, because he can't reach those grapes -- that is finding some consolation.

When people cannot reach they have to create a certain consolation around themselves. That consolation is satisfaction, that consolation functions like buffers.

Between two compartments in a train there are buffers so that if some accident happens the compartments don't crash into each other. Those buffers are shock absorbers.

Or just like in a car, there are springs so that you don't feel the bumps -- particularly on an Indian road --

those springs help; they absorb the shocks. A little bit of it reaches to you end if you are also using an Indian car, then much of it reaches to you! Indian cars are made especially for Indian roads; they fit together.

But with good buffers, imported buffers, you can avoid many bumps on the road. Exactly the same is the case with our inner world: there are so many shocks in life.

You want money and you cannot get it, and you want power and you cannot get it -- because there is always a power shortage, (laughter)... gas shortage... everything is in shortage. There are many more consumers and everything is in shortage. And how many people can be prime ministers and presidents?

Now this country has seven hundred million people and only one person can be the president. So seven hundred million people minus one are going to be shocked! (laughter) They have to find some consolation, they have to create some satisfaction. They can say, 'Who cares? I am not interested in power politics. I don't want to become a politician. All these dirty politicians... I am a simple man, a humble man, and I am perfectly satisfied with my life. These are creating buffers.

This helps you to carry on the routine life but this is not contentment; there is no joy in it, because deep down you know that it is only a deception. You can deceive others but how can you deceive yourself? You 1/08/07

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can go on hypnotizing yourself just as Christian Scientists do: they are ill, they know they are ill, but they go on saying I am not ill, illness is all false, that illness is only of the mind. They can go on repeating morning evening, day in day out, but in fact the very fact that they are repeating again and again 'I am not sick,' is enough proof that they know they are sick.

In one story a young man met a Christian Scientist and the Christian Scientist asked, 'I have not seen your father for many days. Where is he?' And the young man said, 'He is very sick.' And the Christian Scientist said, 'He is not sick. He only thinks he is sick.'

After one month he again met the young man and said, 'What about your father? And the young man said, 'Nothing much, now he thinks he is dead!' (much laughter) This type of tomfoolery, this kind of idiotic ideology has dominated humanity for centuries. People go on trying to befool themselves. Now he is befooling himself that he is dead...!

People don't want to accept facts. They create fictions around themselves. Even if a person dies, people don't say directly that he is dead; they say 'he has gone to the heavenly abode', or that 'he has become god's beloved'... So what was he before that? People want to avoid facts, and they create smoke around themselves. That is not contentment.

Contentment is a totally different phenomenon. It happens only to the meditator, only the meditator becomes so blissful, so peaceful, because he has arrived! There is nowhere to go. He has found his home!

He has experienced the ultimate significance of there is nothing, more than that. He has touched the optimum, and out of that bliss is contentment.

So contentment is not something one can cultivate; it is a by-product of meditation. And one should not cultivate satisfaction, because that will keep you away from contentment. It is better to destroy all satisfaction and all consolations; it is better to realise facts as they ares illness is illness and death is death.

And if you cannot reach the grapes, better to say 'I cannot reach,' because then some way can be found to reach. Don't go on deceiving others and yourself that they are sour.

So I am all for reality. My approach is pragmatic.

I am a realist, not an idealist. I don't believe in all that hocus-pocus. And to be my sannyasin means to be utterly realistic, pragmatic, grounded in the Earth. And because one is grounded one starts growing like a tree into the sky towards the stars, and then there is immense contentment.

Meditation is a process of rebirth. The first birth is only physiological, biological material. Don't think that that's all there is to life. Coming out of the womb of the mother is only an opportunity for a second birth, for the real birth. The day you come out of the womb of your psychology, you are really born.

In India we have called the people who have known the truth, twice born, dwija. And unless one becomes twice born, one lives in vain.

Life has to be used as a jumping board for the beyond. It is an immense opportunity, but very few people have used it up to now. Once in a while a Jesus, a Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra, a Bahauddin --

only once in a while a few people have used this life for reaching to a higher plane, to another life.

All that is needed is that you have to die to your past; only then you can be born anew. The child has to leave the womb, and he is going on an unknown journey, uncharted. He knows nothing about what is going to happen. He has no idea, no map, no guide. And for nine months he has lived very comfortably, in a cosy world, almost asleep, and his every need was fulfilled -- no worry, no responsibility, no struggle, no anxiety, no anguish, no questions, no problems. He had lived the most comfortable and luxurious life that he will ever live. And it is going to be finished. But the child comes out of the mother's womb because the womb, howsoever comfortable it is, is dark, meaningless. It is not life. There is no adventure.

And without adventure. There is no possibility of life.

The child enters into the world of adventures, but that is nothing compared to the second birth.

If you die to your mind... mind means the past, all that you have accumulated in the past. Mind is nothing but a memory system. If you die to the past then you enter really into the greatest adventure there is: you are reborn. That's true resurrection, and it happens through meditation. Both things happens: dying to the past happens and birth to the present. And the present continues into the future. It contains the whole future.

The past is a barrier. Unless one is courageous enough to die to the past one cannot be rewarded by true life. And this death has to happen each moment, because each moment we are creating the past. It is not that once you have died to the past the whole thing is finished. After twenty-four hours again twenty-four 1/08/07

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hours of the past will be with you. You have to die each moment -- why accumulate it? Each moment, be finished with it, so you are always fresh and new and in tune with existence. You are never lagging behind.

And when one is not lagging behind there is great celebration. You are in a dance with existence, utterly attuned, a kind of at-onement. And that makes life a festival, a love, a laughter, a song, a celebration!

My sannyas is not for the sad and the dead. It is for those who love life, who love laughter, who love. It is for those who want to be fresh, young, alive to the maximum.

It is for those who are ready to risk and to go on a pilgrimage to the unknown and to the unknowable.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #18

Chapter title: None

18 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101185

ShortTitle: POND18

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.]

Love can have three possibilities: the first is animal, the second is human, and the third is divine.

Ordinarily people know only the first. It is biological attraction. It is something hormonal, chemical, unconscious. You are not the master of it. You are simply driven by instinctive energies. Those instincts are part of the body, not part of you.

Nature has its own ways to propagate the species. It forces every individual to reproduce. That's the only way, otherwise everybody will disappear; hence it has made it almost compulsory. It is so compulsive that even if one decides not to go into it, one is driven, in spite of oneself. And religions have been fighting against this energy for thousands of years. Their fight has not helped. In fact it has distorted the natural energies, it has created a very perverted humanity.

The way to get beyond them is not through fighting, but through understanding, through awareness, through meditation. Fighting means repression and whatsoever is repressed will come up again and again. It is not going to leave you. In fact the more you repress it, the more it strives to take possession of you. And the effort to fight and repress creates a dichotomy in you. You become dual, divided, schizophrenic. It is because of the so-called religions that the whole of humanity is living a split life.

Fighting with oneself is an insane way of living. Your energies are simply dissipated. They are not used creatively. It is like making both of your hands fight with each other; what can be the outcome? Do you think either of your hands is going to win? Both belong to you. You can pretend that the right has won, but any moment you can also pretend that the left has won. It is up to you. It is just your decision. It is not going to give you any victory. It is bound to result in ultimate failure and frustration.

Love has to be taken out of the bondage of biology, but fighting itself, is biological, struggle is biological, and you cannot transcend biology through biology. It is like wiping mud with more mud. It is sheer stupidity.

You have to bring some new element into the world of biology, and that I call meditation, a ray of 1/08/07

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meditation, a ray of watchfulness. That does not belong to biology at all, because animals are not aware, trees are not aware. They live in one-hundred-per cent unconsciousness.

The moment you start becoming conscious of all your biological forces, something new has already happened, something non-biological has penetrated, and that is going to become the source of transformation.

Make your lust an object of observation; then it changes into human love. You have gone beyond the animal. The human is born. Out of one hundred so-called human beings there is only rarely one human being ninety-nine per cent are only apparently human, but not really. They look like human beings, they behave like animals. Their love is animal, their hate is animal, their violence is animal their anger is animal, their jealousy is animal, their possessiveness is animal -- all is animal.

It is one of the great transformations to become human. One is not born human; one is born an animal, but with the potential of being human. And that potential starts functioning only when you bring awareness in. Immediately awareness functions like a catalytic agent. Suddenly you are beyond your biology.

If you can watch, you are no more it -- the watcher is never the watched -- already you have surpassed, transcended, you are something above, you are an onlooker, a seer.

Human love is non-possessive, non-jealous, non -- biological. It has nothing to do with reproduction. It is a play, a sharing, a fun, a way of communicating. But still there is one thing in it which has to be dropped the boundaries. Even in human love the lovers are not one -- they are separate. Everything of the biological has disappeared except one thing which is not biological and therefore cannot disappear with the biology --

that is the ego.

Animals are not egoistic, neither are trees egoistic. They don't have the feeling of I. It is a human phenomenon. The more you become aware of your humanity, the more the ego is strengthened; hence the people of great sensitivity will always be more egoistic. The poets, the painters, the dancers -- they will be more egoistic than other people, for the simple reason that ego is a human phenomenon. Now their whole energy is released from biology and it is exploited by the ego.

It is better than biology, but it cannot be the ultimate goal, because if you are surrounded by a boundary you are limited and every limitation brings misery. One needs to be unlimited, unbounded only then the imprisoned splendour is released. Then you are as vast as the universe. And this can happen through love very easily.

Now the second step is to bring your awareness to the ego; the same way you brought your awareness to your unconscious instincts and became free of them, bring your awareness to the ego. Now it has to be more subtle, because the ego is more invisible, more cunning, more clever. If you watch it at one point, it will appear at another point. If you are sitting at the front door it will come from the back door. If you are watching both doors it will come from the window or it may just remove a tile from the roof and jump from there! (laughter) Just like Santa Claus (laughter) coming from the chimney. It will find ways and means how to come back again and again.

One has to be totally aware, not concentrated, not excluding anything. Awareness has to be inclusive.

The first awareness was a kind of concentration: you had to be focussed on your biology because it is a determinate phenomenon, it is there like an object and it cannot trick you, because it is just part of chemistry. If you watch it in a focussed way it will remain there. Not so with the ego: the ego is very elusive. If you watch it here it will disappear from there and you will feel very good and in that feeling itself it has come back. You start patting your own back, you say 'Now it is no more. I have become egoless,' and it has come. It has already grabbed your neck.

So one has to be inclusive of all dimensions. One has to be just aware, open, watchful, simply watchful, not in a concentrated way but in a relaxed way, so nothing remains hidden. Everything is in a way within the range of your awareness. Then the ego is transcended. And that very moment divine love is born. And divine love is the ultimate experience.

You can call it god, you can call it nirvana, you can call it enlightenment -- these are just words to indicate something which is wordless; but 'love' seems to be the most beautiful word. It has some poetry in it, some dance in it, some ecstasy in it.

Man living as an ego lives like an island, separate from the whole; and that is his anxiety, anguish, because he feels always lonely, feels always afraid, always worried about death and what is going to happen tomorrow, worried about safety, security, worried about a thousand and one things. But the basic problem is created by ourselves. The moment we think ourselves separate we create all these problems. The separation 1/08/07

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is a falsity. Living as an ego is living in a dream-world, it is not true.

We cannot be separate from the whole. Our life is part of the whole. Each moment we breathe the whole in and breathe the whole out. The whole circulates in our blood. We are as rooted in the whole as trees are rooted in the earth. Of course our roots are invisible, but just don't breathe for a few minutes and you are gone. That means that breathing was something like a root which was connecting you with the whole continuously.

We are one with the whole. To know it is to be blissful. To experience it is to go beyond all anguish. But it has to be experienced, not believed. Belief won't help.

If you are thirsty you can believe that you are drinking water, but if you are not really drinking water the thirst is going to grow more and more. It will spread all over your body. It will kill you. Belief is not going to help and all the religions have been teaching people to believe.

The real thing is to experience; hence my emphasis is on experience, not on belief. Don't believe what I say. Try to experience it. And unless you have experienced, resist the temptation to believe; the temptation is always there because belief is cheap. The mind says 'What is the point of investigating, enquiring, exploring? Why bother? Just believe! Buddha knows, Jesus knows, Lao Tzu knows, Zarathustra knows, so what is the point? If they are all saying that it is so, it must be so.' But if Zarathustra drinks, his thirst is quenched, not yours. If Zarathustra knows, he knows, not you.

My sannyasins are not to be believers but experimenters. A tremendous scientific enquiry into the ultimate reality -- that's what initiation into sannyas is. It is an adventure. Belief is death, it is a full point; you simply take it for granted. Somebody says, Somebody authoritative -- the Bible, the Koran, the Gita --

and you simply believe the authority. To believe in any authority is to destroy your own intelligence. All authorities are destructive of intelligence.

I am not an authority in that sense. Whatsoever I am saying I am saying according to my experience --

that way I am authoritative, but that authority does not mean that anybody has to believe in it. That simply means: take it as a hypothesis and then enquire whether it is true or not.

Being here with me simply means exploring. And if you start exploring you will find. There is no need to believe, because it is so. 'Es dhammo sanantano' says the Buddha -- this is the truth, the ultimate truth. so if it is the ultimate truth there is no need to believe; you can experience it.

Belief is insisted upon only by people who themselves don't believe, who themselves don't know. They are afraid of enquiry, they are afraid of doubt, they are afraid of questions. They repress all questioning.

They condemn all doubt. I respect.

So I have to be just a hypothesis for you. I will give you hypotheses; then you have to go into enquiry.

And I know that you will find the truth, because I have found the truth through the same enquiry; so there is no reason why you are not going to find it. I trust everybody's intelligence and everybody's intrinsic potential.

And the day you discover that you are one with the whole, you have come home. For the first time you feel blessed, so much so that you can bless the whole universe.

Ritam means the law, the ultimate law.

One can live in two ways: either according to the universal law of life or against it. That much freedom is a prerogative of human beings. Going astray is available only to human beings. No dog can go astray.

Have you ever seen a dog who is a sinner or a dog who is a saint; (laughter) Dogs are just dogs, neither sinners nor saints. Have you see a dog who is less of a dog or a dog who is more of a dog? They are just doggie, all the same way! (much laughter) But as far as man is concerned, you can say that this man is not man enough -- a little less than he should be or a little more than one had expected. You see lesser men, you see greater men, you see sinners, you see saints. What is the distinction? What is the criterion? What makes a sinner and what makes a real saint?

And when I use the word 'saint' I am not using it in the Christian way, because the Christian way is the most stupid way of defining sainthood. The church declares that somebody is a saint, it certifies. The Christian word 'saint' comes from sanctum, sanctified by the church, certified by the church. The sanction has been given by the pope that this man is a saint. So sometimes they withdraw their sanctions. Even after hundreds of years -- a man may have been; for three hundred years and for three hundred years he has been a saint, worshipped, and then they withdraw sainthood. They find something. They reopen the case and they withdraw it. And sometimes a man was burned three hun-dred years before as a sinner and aFter three hundred years or four hundred years, they decide that it was wrong. The burning was done by one pope, and 1/08/07

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then -- the same church and the same authority -- another pope declares him to be a saint, and he becomes a saint. This is the most stupid way.

The true meaning of the word 'saint' comes from the Sanskrit word 'sant', not from the English word

'sanctum'. The Sanskrit word 'sant' means one who has known the truth. 'Sat' means truth, and 'sant' means one who has realised it. From 'sant' comes the English word 'saint'. It is exactly the same word, with just a little change in pronunciation: one who has known the truth, one who has lived according to the truth, one who has followed the law of existence, one who has not gone astray.

But man is free to choose. One can choose to go astray ... and the ego always wants to do that, because the ego feels good only when you go astray. Then you are on your own. When you are following the universal law you are no more there; the law is there. When the dewdrop drops into the ocean, where is it?

In a way it is no more, in a way it has become the ocean. But in every way the old ego is no more in existence, the old boundary is no more in existence.

Initiation into sannyas means consciously, deliberately deciding to follow the law of existence. And how should one know what the law of existence is? -- it is not written in the books. But there is a natural criterion given to everybody; whatsoever makes you blissful is an indication that you are close to the law of existence, whatsoever makes you miserable is an indication that you are going away from the law of existence. When you are totally blissful you are one with the law and when you are totally miserable you are against the law.

Bliss is the criterion. And this small criterion is enough. One should go on judging; whatsoever makes you blissful is the right thing to do, to be, and whatsoever makes you miserable is the wrong thing -- it has not to be done.

I don't give you any commandments -- do this or don't do this. I simply tell you about the criterion so you can judge for yourself.

If jealousy makes you blissful (laughter) then follow it totally! Then that is the divine law! But I have never heard of anybody becoming blissful through jealousy, or through anger, or through violence, or through possessiveness, or through greed. These things have been making people live in hell -- but they cling to them. And by their clinging they make the hell bigger.

The moment you feel misery entering in you, be alert! you have taken the wrong step, you have fallen out of life's law, you are no more in tune with it.

Ritam also means rhythm. You have fallen out of rhythm, you have fallen out of harmony. This is how I define heaven and hell; hell is totally out of harmony with existence and heaven is totally in harmony with existence. And everybody has enough intelligence to know whether he is miserable or blissful.

Go on choosing the blissful, go on dropping the miserable, and you will be on the right track towards the ultimate. Then one can be absolutely certain that he has found true religion.

Ego is the only undivine thing. Ego is the only evil in the world. And it is not really an entity; it is just our fantasy, it is just imagination. It does not exist, it is only a nightmare; but we go on nourishing it and watering it and then it goes on growing more and more thorns. No flower ever comes through it. Ego has never brought a single flower into the world. It only brings thorns. The more you nourish it, the bigger the thorns. They hurt you, they hurt others. Their whole function is to hurt. It is not only that they hurt others.

Before they can hurt others they hurt you because they grow within you.

First they penetrate your being, they create wounds in you, and then you start creating wounds in others out of revenge.

The miserable person creates misery all around. He wants everybody to be miserable. That's the only thing that gives him a little bit of happiness. If he can see everybody miserable, more miserable than he is then certainly, according to the law of relativity, according to Albert Einstein, he feels good and happy and blissful.

The ego never wants anybody to be blissful because that hurts very much. The miserable person creates misery, the blissful person create; bliss. we create only ourselves, because we can share only ourselves. for a sannyasin, the only thing to be dropped, the only thing to be renounced, is the eJo. And it is nothing; just a soap bubble, a little hot air. A pinprick is enough, and it is finished. One just has to decide to get rid of it.

And if you can see what it has done to you and to others, you are bound to decide to get rid of it, because it has never given anybody any bliss, it is pure poison. And when there is no ego inside you a tremendous emptiness, a great emptiness comes in, spaciousness, nothingness. There is nobody inside, just a pure awareness, which is not somebody, which has no I as a centre to it. It is meeting and merging with the 1/08/07

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whole. That's the ultimate goal of sannyas; to merge with the whole, to become one with the whole.

There are two kings of purity, two kinds of virtue, two kinds of morality. One is the cultivated kind, from the outside -- you have to practise it. It is a conditioning. Deep down you remain the same but you cover yourself with a beautiful facade. It is a superficial thing that can be scratched very easily and your reality will come rushing towards the surface.

You were smiling and you were all grace and somebody insults you; suddenly all grace is gone and all smiling is gone and the animal inside you takes possession. And you start doing things which you would not have ever thought you were capable of. And later on you will repent and you will say 'How did it happen? --

I don't know.'

This cultivated kind of virtue, purity, morality has created a division in man, between the circumference and the centre; and this division is one of the most dangerous situations, because no man can be at ease.

It creates tensions. You cannot be yourself because you are two -- how can you be yourself? If you decide to follow the circumference, the centre becomes neglected, ignored, rejected; and it takes revenge. If you follow the centre, the circumference is angry, as if you have been programmed by two diametrically opposite programmes.

One you have brought from nature and one has been put on you by the society, so you are always in a state of conflict and inner turmoil. This is hell.

The second kind of purity, virtue and morality is not the cultivated one. I emphasise the second kind. It comes through meditation, not through cultivation. You simply have to become aware of your innermost core, you have to relax towards your centre. You have to settle at the centre and bring awareness there. You have to be fully alert at the centre, and that very alertness at the centre transforms the centre. Awareness is the greatest transforming agent in the world; nothing has ever surpassed it.

It is just like light; you bring the light in the room and all the darkness is gone. When you become aware at the centre your whole being is full of light, and out of that light your circumference acts. Then there is a unity, no conflict; and that unity is true sanity, true health, true wholeness. And that wholeness brings great ecstasy, great benediction.

So never follow the circumference because the centre is very powerful. You cannot drag the centre behind the circumference, but if your centre is transformed the circumference follows it naturally, like a shadow. Then there is no problem at all.

All the religions have been teaching the first kind of morality -- that's where I differ. I teach a totally different kind of virtue which arises as a natural consequence of centering, grounding, awareness.

How long will you be here?

-- Ten days more.

-- Then come back again. Ten days are good for ten commandments, but not for my kind of... (The rest of the sentence is lost in laughter.) Good!

Devagyan means divine knowing.

Animals don't know. Man knows but his knowing is only information, accumulation of facts, accumulation of theories, ideologies, philosophies -- it is all borrowed. And the borrowed always becomes a burden. It never brings freedom.

By 'divine knowing' I mean you have to know your own. You are not to become knowledgeable.

Knowledgeability is a hindrance for known; because it gives you a false sense of knowing. It is a false coin.

And one can believe in it; then one never enquires about the real coin.

Scholars are farther away from truth than anybody else. Even sinners are not so far away. I have seen both great sinners and great scholars. The sinners are almost always more innocent than the scholars. They are simple people. They are not very far away from the world of truth. But the scholar is very far away. He is too much in his head. He thinks he knows and he knows nothing.

Sannyas begins in dropping the idea of knowledge. Sannyas begins in remembering what Socrates says:

'I know only one thing, that I know nothing' -- that is the beginning of sannyas. Because when you know nothing then immediately a tremendous desire and longing arise in you to know. And if you have dropped all borrowed knowledge, then the only dimension left open is to enter into your own inner world, into your own interiority, into your own consciousness.

And as you go deeper in it, your knowing becomes more and more clear. When you have reached to the very core of your being, suddenly light explodes. Hence the word 'enlightenment'; enlightenment is true 1/08/07

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knowing, is divine knowing. It liberates!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #19

Chapter title: None

19 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101195

ShortTitle: POND19

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.]

A life without love is life in name only, in form only; the content is missing. The container is there but utterly empty; and that emptiness creates darkness in life. It is absence of love that makes life a dark night.

Then one can make a thousand and one efforts to have some meaning, but one is trying to do the impossible.

Whatsoever one does is going to fail. It is doomed from the very beginning. And one cannot fight with darkness either, because darkness has no existence of its own. If you fight you will be defeated. If you don't fight you are in darkness.

The way out of darkness is not through fighting, but through bringing light. The moment you bring light in, darkness is sound no more. Exactly the same happens with loves love is the light of the inner world -- it makes your life luminous, resplendent, shining. And suddenly the emptiness is there no more. There is a kind of fullness, overfullness. One is so full of energy, of delight, of dance, that one can share it. There is no need to hoard it. It is overflowing. Even if one wants to be miserly about it, one cannot be. It has to be shared because it grows as you share. If you try to hoard it you cripple it, you destroy it.

Love is going to be god for the future humanity. The word 'god' is going to disappear. It has already disappeared from the really intelligent people's lives. It is only the ignorant, retarded, non-contemporaries, who are lagging far behind the times, who go on talking, about god; otherwise now it is absolutely irrelevant.

Jesus says god is love. Now that has to be changed, I say love is god. The emphasis has to be on love. In Jesus' time the emphasis was on god, and it is a great difference -- a difference that makes a difference --

because once love becomes the central focus of life, there cannot be Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism. All these stupidities will disappear. They can exist only as shadows of the idea of god.

Love is an experience. You cannot make a statue out of it. Love has to be lived. You cannot worship it.

Love is the act of loving. You cannot philosophise about it. Only fools will philosophise about it. It is a reality to be tasted, to be drunk.

My sannyasins have to understand that by becoming sannyasins they are dropping the past and entering into the real contemporariness. And the contemporariness contains the whole future.

Just the opposite has been the way in the past: the present has always contained the past. And when I talk about the present, my present contains not the past but the future. It is a radical change, it is a revolution. And the present moment can contain the future only if it is empty of the past.

God belongs to the past. Love belongs to the future. And we are passing through a transitory phase -- it 1/08/07

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is very significant. We are fortunate to live in this moment, at this phase of history. We are on the crossroads. Just the understanding that we are on the crossroads, that every act of ours is going to be decisive for the whole coming future, makes one feel significant. A great joy arises out of that understanding.

So my religion is not of the past but of the future. And the future has not to be contemplated. It has to be found through the present, through living now anc here. And there is no better way to be herenow than love.

Only for those few moments when you are in love are you in the present. That's the beauty of love, that's its meditativeness, its ecstasy.

Life can either be a drag or a dance (laughter) ... and it all depends on you! People have chosen a non-dancing style of life. They have chosen a non-sensitive way of life. Their approach is anti-poetic, anti-aesthetic; and the reason is that they are brought up to learn cleverness, which is simply a beautiful name for cunningness. it is not intelligence. It is just pseudo intelligence.

We are brought up to be calculating arithmetic is our whole life, business our very approach.

In a small school the teacher asked the children 'Who is the greatest man of human history?' An American child said 'Abraham Lincoln,' an Indian said 'Mahatma Gandhi,' a Mohammedan said 'Hazrat Mohammed.' But the teacher was not satisfied. Then a little Jewish boy said 'Jesus Christ.' And she said

'You are right, but you are a Jew, so why do you say Jesus Christ?'

He said 'In the deepest core of my being I know it is Moses, but business is business!' (laughter) But this is how we are all brought up. And when life becomes business it cannot be a dance, it cannot be a flowering. You can go on counting currency notes but that is not going to give you any experience of the beauty that surrounds us, of the truth of which we are an intrinsic part. Currency notes cannot give you any idea of the ultimate joy, and the ultimate joy is the very stuff existence is made of. To live life with intensity, with passion, with poetry, we have to learn a totally different approach. We have to become a little less mathematical and a little more musical, a little less calculating and a little more risking, a little more concerned about adventure, and a little less concerned about safety, security -- then life becomes a dance.

And then only is there a possibility of love. Love and dance are two sides of the same coin. If you love, your life is a dance. If your life is a dance, there is the fragrance of love. They are inseparable.

Love is beautiful only when there is no attachment in it, but unfortunately we have been told for thousands of years that love means attachment. That is one of the greatest calamities that has happened to humanity.

Love does not mean attachment. It means just the opposite of attachment, because attachment creates very unloving space. Attachment means you will be possessive and from the other side you will be possessed. And to possess somebody is ugly. To possess means tc reduce the other person into a thing, into a commodity. You can possess a car, you can possess a house, you can possess a painting but you cannot possess a woman or a man. You cannot possess a child. That is utterly destructive, inhuman. A child is not furniture, a woman is not a thing, a man is not a commodity. These are not economic objects. They are not objects at all. They are subjects, subjectivities.

The moment you possess somebody you are exploiting and love cannot exploit. You are oppressing --

and love cannot be oppressive. The moment you possess somebody you are dominating -- and love cannot dominate. You are playing an ego number and love is not an ego trip. It is egolessness.

And the moment you possess you are continuously afraid, anxious, worried, shaky, trembling deep down. There is always fear. It is bound to be there, because to possess somebody means you are creating a bondage for the other person, and nobody likes bondage; everybody resists it. Everybody wants to get out of the prison; hence the fear. The more you possess, the more you become afraid that the other will try to escape. And this is a vicious circle: when you feel that the other is trying to escape, you create more possessiveness, you make more arrangements so the other cannot escape. The more arrangements you make, the more you create the possibility for the other to escape. Hence the so-called lovers are continuously fighting -- the man in his own way, the woman in her own way -- but they are fighting. The woman has subtle ways of fighting, the man has gross ways of fighting. The man may beat the woman and the woman will continuously nag the man, but both are doing the same to each other: they are behaving like enemies, they are not friendly.

It is very rare to come across lovers who are friendly, because possessiveness does not allow friendship to grow.

1/08/07

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Nobody wants basically to be dependent, unfree; hence anything that destroys freedom will be resisted.

And remember, love and freedom are synonymous, so a love that is not capable of giving freedom is not love at all. It may be anything else -- lust, ego, greed, animality -- anything, but not love. This is the very criterion: that love gives freedom. The more you love, the more freedom you give.

And when love and freedom go together, hand in hand, they create the most beautiful space possible.

And it is only in that space that one comes to know the ultimate. That space is the temple of the ultimate.

That space is the most precious phenomenon in existence.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #20

Chapter title: None

20 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101205

ShortTitle: POND20

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 is born with the absolute potential to be blissful but the society in which he is born is miserable.

The parents, the family, the teachers, the priests, the politicians, the whole structure around the child is living in misery, and it needs tremendous courage not to follow the crowd, otherwise you will also be miserable. It needs not only courage but a tremendous trust in one's own being.

The person who follows others has no trust in himself; that's why he follows others. The man who has trust in himself learns from others but does not follow. He follows his own insight. Whatsoever the risk he never compromises.

Courage is needed to be oneself and immense loyalty is needed towards one's being. Initiation into sannyas is not initiation into a certain kind of following: I am against all following. Initiation into sannyas is just to prepare you to be yourself, to prepare you to be courageous, to revolt against all misery and all the programmes which make people miserable.

Sannyas means individuality. You have to imbibe my spirit, partake of my being but not to be a follower, not to be an imitator. That's what all the religions have done up to nows they create imitators, pseudo, phony, hypocrites. My whole effort here is to help you to be courageous, trusting in your own being, trusting your own voice. I don't teach you loyalty to me; I teach you loyalty towards your own potential.

The real master always throws the disciple towards his own inner depths. He does not allow the disciple to cling to him. The disciple would like to cling the disciple would like to be dependent, the disciple would like to be directed, guided, given a programme, but the true master has to fight the disciple. He has to do something which the disciple is not inclined to do. And that's the distinction between a true master and a false master: the false master fulfils your expectations, he never disappoints you; the true master disappoints you at each and every step, he never fulfils your expectations. He really frustrates you, because that is the only way to undo what the society has done to you, that is the only way to bring you to total freedom.

1/08/07

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Query:-

Sannyas is a way towards absolute freedom.

Atta is a dangerous name -- at least in German! It means the father.

The father is an invented institution, it is not natural. There was a time when there was no institution like the father and there will come a time -- and it is coming very fast (laughter) -- when the father is going to disappear. The father came into existence with private property, it symbolises private property. Once private property disappears, once property becomes communal, the father is no more needed. Once the family is replaced by the commune, the father becomes irrelevant.

Uncles will be there but not fathers. And the word 'uncle' is sweet and beautiful. With the disappearance of the father, the idea of god the father will also disappear. Just think of god the uncle, and it changes the whole colour (laughter), the whole flavour. If god is the uncle there cannot be any hell, and if god is the father there cannot be any heaven. The father represents the authoritative.

Veet means transcendence. Go beyond the idea of the father, of private property, of invented institutions, of authorities. In Pali, the language that Buddha used, the same word has a far more significant meaning. There is just a little different pronunciation; not 'ah-ta', but 'uh-tah'. The spelling is the same.

Atta means the ego, and in a way, the father represents the ego. Go beyond the ego and the egoistic approach of the father. The father dominates the family -- he is the head, the chief, he dictates, he possesses the woman, the children, he is the ruler. In fact the father represents, in a very gross way, the whole phenomenon of the ego.

One has to go beyond the ego too. The father is a gross manifestation, but deep down is the ego. It is perfectly beautiful to be a lover but ugly to be a husband, beautiful to be a beloved, a friend, but ugly to be a wife. These beautiful experiences should not be made into legal relationships. Law is very destructive. Love can never be reduced to law, and the moment it is reduced to law it is no more love. It is perfectly beautiful to be a vehicle for children to come into existence; and the father and the mother are nothing but vehicles.

The children are not their possessions; they are not produced by them, they are not manufactured by them --

they are just vehicles.

The children come through them -- that is true but they are not created by them. They come from some unknown source, from the same unknown source, from the same unknown source from where we come, from where everything comes -- the flowers and the stars and the birds.

The idea of the father creates possessiveness. Once the idea of father disappears, you will be friendly to your children. You will be immensely respectful to them because they are closer to the source than you are, they come freshly from it. They are as fresh as dewdrops in the early morning;, they are still carrying some fragrance of the unknown source: they should be respected, loved, but not possessed.

And this is my approach; hence I am against the family and for the commune and communal living. The family is an ugly unit and it is the basic brick upon which all other ugly institutions have arisen -- the church, the state, the nation. I want to hit hard at the very root. I am not interested in pruning leaves and branches. I want to hit at the very root, and the family is the root. If the family can be destroyed then the state, the church, the nation, will automatically disappear from the earth. And that will be the greatest day in the history of humanity; for the first time the whole earth will be one.

Transcendence precisely defines meditation. One has to transcend three things and then the fourth is achieved. The fourth is our true nature. Gurdjieff used to call his way the fourth way and in the East we have called the ultimate state of being, turiya, the fourth.

We have to transcend the body -- that is our outermost circumference. We have to become aware that we are in the body, but we are not it. The body is beautiful, one has to take care of it, one has to be very loving to the body. It is serving you beautifully. One has not to be antagonistic to it.

The religions have been teaching people to be antagonistic to their body, to torture it -- they call it asceticism. That is sheer stupidity! And they think that by torturing the body they will be able to transcend it. They are utterly wrong.

The only way to transcend is awareness, not torture. There is no question of torturing. You don't torture your house; you know that you are not it, it is your house. Just awareness is needed. There is no need to go on a fast, there is no need to stand on your head, there is no need to contort your body in a thousand and one postures. Just watching; becoming aware, is enough. And the same is the key for the other two transcendences.

The second is, you have to transcend the mind -- that is a second concentric circle, closer to your being 1/08/07

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than the body. The body is the gross, the mind is the subtle, and then there is a third, the subtlest: your heart

-- the world of your feelings, emotions, moods. But the key is the same.

Start with the body because the body is the most easily observable thing. It is an object. Thoughts ere also objects but they are more invisible. Once you have become aware of the body you will be able to watch your thoughts too. Once you have become aware of your thoughts you will be able to watch your moods too but they are the subtlest; so only at the third state that awareness has to be tried. Once one becomes aware of all these three concentric circles around your centre the fourth happening of its own accord. Suddenly you know who you are -- not verbally; you don't get an answer, you cannot tell anybody -- but you know. You know in the same way you know when you have a headache. You know in the same way as you know when you are hungry or thirsty. You know in the same way you know that you have fallen in love.

You cannot prove it, there is no way to prove it, but you know. And that knowing is self-evident; you cannot suspect it, it is indubitable. When one has come to the fourth, one has transcended the world.

I don't teach renunciation of the world. I teach transcendence of the world -- and this is the way.

Pleasure is very limited. Bliss is unlimited, and between the two is what we call happiness. It is exactly in the middle; a part of it seems to be infinite and a part of it seems to be very finite. Hence in happiness there is a dichotomy, a conflict, a tension.

Pleasure has no tension. In fact pleasure helps you to become relaxed. For example; sex is pleasure.

Now the medical sciences agree that sex helps people to relieve tension in many ways. It helps people to protect their hearts from heart failure. At least, not a single man has ever died from heart failure while making love. In every kind of activity people have suffered from heart failure, but not while making love. It should be otherwise, because the heart is beating faster and your blood is pulsating faster and you are getting crazy! (laughter) But the heart does not fail. In fact it is a good exercise for the heart.

Now heart experts suggest to people that it is a good exercise for the heart. Pleasure relieves you of tension; that's why tense people tend to eat more -- it relaxes tension. When their bellies are full their heads become empty (laughter), because the whole energy goes into digestion. So there is no more energy left to think or worry. That's why after eating people start feeling sleepy.

Pleasure is animal, but happiness is human. And with happiness there comes a dichotomy, a tension.

The happy person is always worried about how long it is going to last. He is also worried that if it is repeated too often it will become boring. He is also worried that if he does not repeat it he way lose track of it (laughter). His problems are millions! (laughter) That's why you will find poor people more satisfied; they are living at the lowest, very close to the animals. The richer one gets, the more problems arise. The affluent society has a thousand and one psychological problems, for the simple reason that happiness brings a duality. A part of it is momentary and a part of it is very eternal, and they don 't get together. They are moving; in different directions.

The animal lives with pleasure, human beings live in a divided insane world of happiness, and only Buddhas have lived in the world of bliss. Bliss is eternal. It is again, in a way, the same as pleasure, but only in one way is it the same: there is no dichotomy, no fear, no anxiety. But in another way it is absolutely different. Pleasure is unconscious and bliss is absolutely conscious. Pleasure is momentary -- you can enjoy food today but tomorrow again you will be hungry. So it is repetitive, circular; you go on in circles, a mechanical routine.

Bliss is every moment new, every moment fresh, every moment young. It never grows old, never grows stale, never becomes stagnant. And it is infinite.

Once you have entered into the world of bliss you have entered into the unbounded, uncharted.

Suddenly there are no walls anywhere. For the first time you are no more in a prison. And the taste of freedom is what ecstasy is all about -- just like the bird on the wing.

A sannyasins is a bird on the wing; in the sky of bliss which knows no boundaries. You can go on and on and you will never come to the end of it.

Buddha has said 'Misery has no beginning but an end and bliss has a beginning but no end.' And he is absolutely right. You don't know how you became miserable or when you became miserable. You have always been miserable. You can go on remembering and you will find you have always been miserable. It has no beginning, but it has an end. You can put a full point to it.

Bliss begins where misery ends, but then there is no end to it. You cannot put a full point to it. It is a river that is always moving towards the ocean but never reaches the ocean; and that's its beauty -- the ecstasy, the excitement, the joy, the adventure, of always reaching. And the ocean is just ahead of you. By 1/08/07

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the very effort to reach to the ocean you start becoming an ocean, but you never reach it.

You go on growing, you go on evolving, but there comes no full point. This eternal pilgrimage is the essential core of religion.

Character can be cultivated from the outside -- then it is pseudo and phony. That's what our so-called morality does. That's the way of the puritan: it creates hypocrisy in people, it only paints their faces, it does not change their being. Behind the beautiful facade they remain the same people. They nay be able to deceive others but they cannot deceive existence. Before existence one has to stand naked. Not only do the clothes fall away but your whole cultivated character also falls.

Hence it is a sheer wastage of energy, time, opportunity. The other way, the true way to create an authentic character is through meditation. You don't cultivate any quality, any virtue. You simply become silent, aware. You start divine deeper and deeper into your being.

The moment you come to your very centre an explosion happens, and in that explosion the old character is finished. A totally new style of life arises, and that is real virtue. Then whatsoever you do is right. Then there is no question of following any commandment; your very being is aware of its responsibility. Then it is no more Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, it is not derived from the Old Testament or the Vedas or the Koran. You live according to your own light.

And when a person starts living according to his own light there is great joy. And each act becomes such a fulfilment, and each act brings so much contentment, because never does anything go wrong, never does one feel guilty or repentant, never does one feel 'I should have done otherwise.' Even a so-called great saint like Saint Augustine says in his CONFESSIONS, 'I always do what should not be done, and I never do what should be done -- god forgive me!' (laughter) But that's the whole story of all your saints.

A man like Buddha cannot say that. It is not a question at all of shoulds and should nots; you simply do out of your total awareness whatsoever is the need of the moment. You respond accordingly, and your action is total. It is not a choice of 'Whether I should do this or that.' You have clarity, light, eyes; hence whatsoever you do is total.

And every total act brings freedom, joy, benediction. Then character is not something, that you have cultivated; it is a consequence.

True character is a by-product of meditation and false character is manufactured by cultivation. Beware of the false, because it is cheap, and the mind tends to buy the cheap. Beware of the false because it seems to be a shortcut, and the mind is always ready to follows the shortcut. It is very lazy.

Mind lives in time, mind is time. It consists of past and future. Remember, I divide time into only two tenses, past and future. Present is not part of time, present is part of eternity. Present is that moment where eternity crosses time. Time is horizontal, eternity is vertical; where the vertical line crosses the horizontal line, that point -- it is just a point -- is the present. And the whole art of meditation is to live in the present, to be herenow, dropping the past, dropping the future.

Once you are capable of dropping all the past and all the future, all that is left is the present moment, the now. And that is the time, the moment, the space in which the revolution happens. Suddenly your horizontal line becomes vertical, you enter into eternity, into timelessness. That is the world of truth, the world of the real. Time is the world of dreams, fantasies, and nobody can be blissful in the world of time. It is nightmarish.

Once you enter into eternity, all turmoil ceases, immense peace descends on you; and then you can go on living in the world of time but you carry that peace within you, untouched by time and its noise. Time is mind, meditation is no-mind. And this is a whole change of world: from mind to no-mind, from time to eternity.

It is possible; everybody is born with the capacity, one just has to know the knack of it. And the knack is simple: try to be herenow, don't go on enjoying the past and its memories. All those so-called nostalgias --

don't waste yourself in them; and don't go into the future trips of becoming this, of having that.

The past is no more and the future is not yet, and between the two is that which always is. To enter that

'isness' is to enter into godliness, into bliss, into truth, into immortality. Then there is no death. In Sanskrit we have only one word for time and death -- the same word, kal -- because death happens in time, it never happens in eternity. Eternity is deathless.

Mind is one-dimensional; it moves from the past to the future. It is linear, one line. Meditation is 1/08/07

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multi-dimensional. It opens as many doors as you can imagine. It opens the door of love, it opens the door of truth, it opens the door of freedom, it opens the door of awareness, it opens the door of bliss, and so on and so forth. It simply goes on opening doors upon doors. Reality is multi-dimensional and meditation makes you one with reality.

Time is only a small part, a fragment of reality. But we are all living in that small fragment; hence we all feel suffocated, cramped, overcrowded. It is not just the crowd around you that makes you feel like that, it is far deeper. Mind is overcrowded because it is a single line and on that single line so many trains are running. And naturally, so many accidents are happening. Thoughts are running, millions of thoughts, desires are running, imagination, memories, dreams, fantasies, what not. Just a single track and so many trains are running.

Every moment there is an accident, something clashes with something else. You are continuously being thrown from one accident to another accident.

No wonder people look so miserable, so drained, so utterly exhausted. But once you have learned how to be silent, how to slip out of the mind, then thousands of doors open and suddenly your world becomes so vast that you don't feel crowded at all. There is so much space to create, to enjoy, to dance, so much space that you can expand to infinity. That expansion of consciousness is the ultimate goal of sannyas.

Meditation has not to be taken seriously. That's how people take it; and to take it seriously is to miss it totally. It is a song, a dance, a celebration -- enjoy it, love it, but don't take it seriously, don't be sombre about it. Be sincere, but not serious.

For thousands of years the saint has looked so serious, so deadly serious, that he has created a certain idea that religion means seriousness, that religion means dropping all playfulness, dropping all cheerfulness, that one has to become really gravelike. Exactly that is the word we use for the serious person: very grave.

He has become a grave, he is no more alive. He is living only in a very minimal way, just existing, or vegetating, not living.

My approach to religion is absolutely non-serious, playful. So let your meditation be a song, let your sannyas be a song. Let it be a love, a laughter. As I see it, a sense of humour is one of the most essential qualities for a religious person. If it is not there then the person may be ANything else but he is not religious. Something of humour must be there, a capacity to laugh at so many of the ridiculous things life abounds with. Everybody is slipping on a banana peel (much laughter). People arc carrying their own banana peels (laughter), spreading them on the roads, slipping on them -- how can one be serious?

(laughter)

People are doing all kinds of absurdities. If you just watch people it is such a comedy! (more laughter) That has to be the message for you! (more laughter) Love, laugh, and live!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #21

Chapter title: None

21 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101215

ShortTitle: POND21

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.]

We are living in the world of death but we don't belong to it. We are strangers to the world of death, time, change. At the very core of our being we are connected to a totally different dimension. We are a penetration of the beyond. We exist in this world but our roots are in some other world.

The Indian mystic scriptures, the Upanishads, have a beautiful simile for it. They say man is like a tree upside-down: the roots are in the sky and the branches and the flowers have reached to the earth -- just the reverse of an ordinary tree. It is a beautiful symbol, very significant. It says that we are rooted in the beyond, only our branches have reached into this world. We are nourished by the beyond, we are constantly fed by the beyond.

To experience it is to be free from all misery, anxiety, anguish, because when there is no death, how can there be anxiety? And when there is death, how can we avoid anxiety? If we are going to die then whatsoever we are doing is really meaningless. It has no significance at all. Whether we are sinners or saints, it does not matter. Whether we serve or kill, whether we love or hate -- if everything is going to end in death, if everything is to be erased by death, then our writings on the sands of time are absolutely childish, playthings.

It is impossible to live in this meaningless, accidental dimension without anxiety. Something inside will go on being worried, will go on being concerned with what it is all about. But once we know that our beings are immortal beings, that nothing disappears in death -- only dreams disappear, the reality remains as it has always been -- then certainly a great rootedness, centering, happens naturally, spontaneously. One starts feeling meaning, relevance. In the context of the eternal, for the first tire we feel blissful; otherwise life is only a nightmare and it is better if it ends sooner, because it is pointless prolonging it.

Meditation is the way, the means, the door, the bridge, which makes us aware of our eternity. Then we can look at our illness, sickness, death as just peripheral. We can watch them ill a detached way, we can be just a witness, utterly indifferent -- and that's what sannyas is all about: meditation, the experience of eternity, and the detached witnessing of all that goes on happening around us.

One moves through it unconcerned, untouched by it all. One remains virgin, pure, innocent.

The ultimate truth has been called by many names, but the most significant is the beloved, because love's our deepest longing. It cannot be fulfilled by god the father.

God the father seems to be to institutional, so dull -- who wants to live with god the father? (laughter) Everybody feels embarrassed with fathers and mothers and parents. At the most one can tolerate them a few days; even that is a great burden. And to live with god the father for eternity (laughter) -- it is better to live in hell. One can be more friendly with the devil! And also there is much entertainment in hell! (laughter) In heaven there are just phony saints, dull and dead, sitting, counting on their rosaries -- and for eternity, remember! There is no end to it. The boredom must be immense.

'God the father' is not the right name for the ultimate; neither is 'god the mother'. There are many ancient religions, far more ancient than those which believe in god the father; they believe in god the mother. It s a little bit better than god the father but not much, because the mother's love for her children is natural; but the children's love for the mother is cultivated. It is more or less a duty: one has to do it, one is expected to do it, and one tries to do it the best one can. But love always flows like a river: from the mountains towards the valleys, from the valleys towards the plains, from the plains towards the ocean; exactly like that, from the mother to the child and from the child it will go again to her child. It goes on downwards.

The upward phenomenon is artificial. The word that comes very close to describing the ultimate is 'the beloved', because it is our deepest longing in the heart. It can be fulfilled only by the ultimate love affair, with existence. In fact it is better not to use the word 'god'. 'Existence' is enough, and one has to know the art of how to be loving towards all that existence is, from the stars to a small blade of grass. It is the same one organic unity.

Meditation makes this impossible possible. Meditation as far as I know is the only magical phenomenon in the world, the only miracle. Once you become silent, once your mind stops its much ado about nothing, once it cools down a little bit, once there is a gap and a window opens, suddenly you can see the beloved all throughout space: in the trees, in the mountains, in the birds, in the stars; all are manifestations of the same 1/08/07

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energy. And the lover and the beloved are not two either. When you know that all is one suddenly you realise 'I am also part of it!' Then comes the meeting of oneself with the whole, the union, or maybe better to call it reunion, because once we must have been one with it. Somehow we must have fallen asleep and forgotten, somehow we must have got lost into dreams.

It is a reunion, a recognition, a realisation. It is nothing new. It is our ancientmost heritage.

Meditation helps you to learn a forgotten language. My name for that language is love. Meditation makes you more and more loving. Finally it transforms your whole energy into love energy. That very moment, instantly, the beloved is found. When you are really a lover, totally a lover, the beloved is found.

And remember, the beloved is not a person, it is this whole vast universe; and love has to be multi-dimension, it has to be as big as the universe itself -- and it can be. It is the only quality in our being which can be so expansive. Everything else is small. Our mind is small, our cunningness, calculation, cleverness -- all arc very small, good for the marketplace. Our head is very small, but our heart can be as vast as the whole.

P.D. Ouspensky, in one of his most important treatises, TERTIUM ORGANUM, says 'There are two kinds of mathematics -- the lower mathematics in which the part can never be equal to the whole...' We are aware of that kind of mathematics, we have all been taught. And it is logical how can the part be equal to the whole? Ouspensky says 'But there is a higher kind of mathematics' -- and he was a mathematician and a mystic both, which is a rare combination, very rare.

'In the higher mathematics,' he says 'the part is equal to the whole and sometimes even bigger than the whole.' Now that is absolutely illogical but it is true! Truth need not be according to our logic; logic is our invention. Truth is not our invention and truth has no obligation to fulfil our expectations.

We have to adjust to truth, truth has not to adjust to us. This is my own experience too, that there are possibilities where the part is equal to the whole, and sometimes even bigger than the whole. And that possibility opens in the heart, and the name of that possibility is love. It is only love which can take you to the higher mathematics. Logic keeps you in the world of the lower mathematics and love takes you to the beyond.

Love can be as big as the whole universe and it can even be bigger than it. Love is our only treasure, the real kingdom of our being. So my emphasis is that the universe should be thought of in terms of the beloved, so that you can become a lover. The whole emphasis really is so that you can become a lover. If the universe is hypothetically accepted as the beloved, then the possibility opens, the enquiry is possible: you can become a lover.

If the universe is thought of as god the father then you can only be a retarded child, a dependent child, fixated on the father figure. If god is thought to be a mother, then you can cling to the skirt and call yourself Catholic, Hindu, Mohammedan, but all that you have got is just a skirt.

A naked woman in a supermarket asked the manager, 'Have you seen five kids holding onto a skirt?'

(laughter) But that is the situation: Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans -- they are all snatching as much of the skirt as possible. Nobody is worried whether god is naked... who cares about god? Everybody wants to have as much of a hold on the skirt as possible.

Think of the universe as the beloved -- that's what the Sufis have done. And the Sufis have given the most beautiful vision of reality. Love creates a miracle world; but love can grow in you only if you start thinking in terms of the beloved.

The idea of the beloved surrounding you function like a right climate, a right season, for flowering. It is like the spring and your heart opens up: suddenly there are flowers, suddenly there is fragrance.

We are aware of a reality which is constantly changing. Hidden behind this reality there is also another reality which is absolutely unchanging. This changing world is possible only because of that unchanging centre, otherwise it would fall apart. It is the unchanging centre that holds it together.

It is just like a wheel of a bullock cart -- that's how the Upanishads describe it: when the wheel moves it moves only because at the very centre of the wheel there is the axle that does not move; on that unmoving axle the wheel goes on moving. That's the centre of the cyclone.

We are acquainted only with the cyclone. Meditation makes us aware of the centre. It changes our whole gestalt: it takes us from time to eternity, from death to real life, from the fluxlike dream world to that which is eternal, forever. And this can happen very easily through meditation, because each man is a miniature universe. His body is changing -- it is part of the wheel; his mind is changing -- it is a wheel within a wheel; his heart, moods, emotions, are changing -- that is a wheel within a wheel within a wheel. These are the 1/08/07

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three concentric wheels and hidden behind these three wheels is our centre, our awareness, consciousness, our witnessing, which is absolutely unchanging.

Meditation gives you the perspective in which you can see 'I am not the body; I am not the mind, I am not the heart either;' then only one thing remains: 'I am consciousness' -- and that cannot be denied, that is impossible to deny.

One cannot say 'I am not consciousness,' because if you are not consciousness, how can you ay even this, that 'I am not consciousness'? Even to deny it, consciousness will be needed, so even the denial will be just one more proof. It is indubitable.

Descartes says 'Only one thing is indubitable and that is "I am"; everything else can be doubted, but "I am", this cannot be doubted.' And this, because it is indubitable, can become the foundation of our whole new life.

This foundation has to be found. It is there, waiting for us. It has always been there, we have just been roaming around and around in circles. A few people are attached to the body. They are the farthest, they are living only like animals. A few people are attached to the mind. They are a little closer, but still far away; they are living like human beings -- thinkers, philosophers, poets -- but their world consists only of thoughts and thoughts are just soap-bubbles, the same stuff as dreams are made of. And a very few have reached to the heart, very few. It is a rare phenomenon to find a person who lives in the heart, because it is so mad to live in the heart -- it looks so crazy, it is so illogical that it becomes almost impossible to deal with the people who are living either in the body or in the mind. The man who lives in the heart becomes immediately disconnected.

There are many people who are thought to be mad simply because they are heart people and they cannot communicate with the world which has been created by the head. Their only problem is that they are in a far better space than the rest of the world. It is like a man who has eyes living with people who don't have eyes: he will be in constant difficulty. Nobody will listen to him, nobody will ever understand him; he is inevitably going to be misunderstood, on each point, on each account.

Hence very few people dare to live in the heart: they are the mystics, they have come very close -- but still, to be close means a little far away. One more quantum leap is needed, one more jump, and then you reach to the indescribable. In the East we have called it the fourth, turiya -- simply the fourth. We have not given it any name because no name can be given to it. It is neither the body nor the mind nor the heart, and our whole language consists of words which belong either to the body or to the mind or to the heart. No Word exists for the fourth; hence a number has been used the fourth.

And it is the fourth which is the unmoving centre of the moving world. Once you are settled there, a great contentment showers on you, you have found the home.

That's the search of sannyas.

We are living separated from existence -- not really separated, because if we are really separated we will be dead, but as far as our mind is concerned we are living with this notion, this idea that we are separate.

This is only an idea, but even the idea can create great problems.

For example, if you see a rope in the dark and you think that it is a snake. There is no snake at all, just a rope, but if you think it is a snake and you start running away, you may stumble on a rock, you may fall, you may break a few bones, you may have a heart attack, you say go crazy -- anything is possible. And there was no snake at all; it was just an idea, but the idea started functioning on you.

Buddha defines reality as that which works. His definition has a significance, very pragmatic. So it is not a question of whether the sake exists or not; the question is whether it works or not. If it works it is AS if it exists. It is almost there for the person who is deluded.

It is the same situation: we are living as egos, separated from existence. Those egos are just an idea, like the snake which is not there at all, but because of those ego, we create a thousand and one problems, conflicts, so many miseries, so many anxieties -- they all arise out of a false notion. And the greatest problem that it creates is that it gives you an illusory separation from existence, and living in separation from the whole is misery. It is like a fish trying to live outside the ocean: it will be miserable, because the ocean is its life. The ego is the root cause of all our miseries. Once we drop the ego the union happens. And in fact when the union happens are come to know that what we have dropped, we never had in the first place. One laughs at the whole ridiculousness of it!

Meditation makes you aware enough to drop the ego. Meditation brings a light so that you can see that the snake does not exist and there is only an old rope lying on the road. And all the problems that were 1/08/07

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created by the illusory snake disappear -- with the snake they are gone.

In the same way meditation creates a light, a vision, a clarity, an insight -- and that helps you to get rid of the ego. That is one side of the story, getting rid of the ego. The other side is union with the whole. If ego is misery then union is bliss!

I don't believe in a God, because I have searched everywhere, in and out. I have not found God, but I have found something far more important: I have found godliness!

When I say I have not found God, I mean there is no God as a person. The whole idea of a person is our invention. It is anthropocentric. Man has created the idea of God in his own image. The Bible says God created man in his own image -- that is not true. Man has created God in his own image -- that is far more true.

If donkeys become theologians, and I think they are! They look very serious, always brooding, contemplating. Watch a donkey and you are watching a saint! So deadly serious, I don't think you have ever seen a donkey laughing. They don't laugh, they don't even smile. If donkeys are theologians then their God must be a donkey -- of course, a very big donkey! They cannot conceive that God is a man. That will be the last thing a donkey will conceive, that God is a man. What has man done to the donkeys? He tortured them in every way.

If trees could think, they would think of God as a tree. This is how mind functions: we go on creating our own image and that fulfills a certain ego. When we think of God as a human being -- as father, as mother -- our ego is satisfied that God is just like us.

God does not exist as a person at all. There is certainly something more than matter, but that is not a personality; it is a presence. That is the meaning of Bhagvato. Bhagvato means a godly presence, just like a fragrance surrounding a flower or a light surrounding a flame, exactly like that.

You cannot catch hold of the fragrance. You can enjoy it, you can take a deep breath, it can fill your very heart, but you cannot catch hold of it, you cannot have it in your fist, you cannot possess it. Exactly the same way there is godliness. And those who experience godliness become it!

My experience of God is more like love or freedom or awareness. These are all qualities.

Freedom is not a person, love is not a person, compassion is not a person, awareness is not a person, and God is the sum total of all these qualities.

Meditation makes you aware that the whole of existence is full of godliness, that from the smallest pebble to the biggest star it is all one. But it is a presence: you can feel it, you can drink it; it can give you a new pulsation, a new life, a new light, a new heartbeat. It can become a song in you, a dance in you, but it is not a person.

The idea of God as a person is the invention of the cunning priests. And to go on emphasizing God as a person, they emphasize prayer and all kinds of rituals. All those rituals are just methods to go on emphasizing the idea of God as a person. When you pray, certainly, you cannot pray to freedom -- or can you? You cannot pray to love -- or can you? It will look absurd. Prayer is addressed to a person, not to a quality. But meditation is not addressed to anybody at all, it is just becoming silent for no reason at all. To be silent is enough, a reason unto itself. It is so beautiful, it is so ecstatic, it is so wonderful, that it is enough to be silent. There is no need to be rewarded for it.

It is such a great reward that no other reward is needed, nothing else is needed. And in that silence, suddenly, the feeling of God as a presence arises. Then you need not go to a temple because those temples, those churches are all created around the idea of God as a person.

So whenever you want to go to God -- in my word, to godliness -- you have to go inward. You have to just become silent, peaceful, aware, loving, and you are there. It is not that you encounter God, it is that you experience a peak of joy in your being. And that very peak is godliness.

I teach godliness, not God; hence I teach a kind of mysticism, not religion. I teach a certain divine poetry and dance and celebration, but not theology.

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The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #22

Chapter title: None

22 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101225

ShortTitle: POND22

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 state of unconsciousness. We are miserable because we are not aware of what we are doing, of what we are thinking, of what we are feeling. So we are continuously contradicting ourselves each moment. Action goes in one direction, thinking goes in another, feeling is somewhere else. We go on falling apart, we become more and more fragmented; that's what misery is -- we lose integration, we lose unity. We become absolutely centreless, just a periphery. And naturally a life which is not harmonious is going to be miserable, tragic, a burden to be carried somehow, a suffering. At the most one can make this suffering less painful. And there are a thousand and one kinds of pain killers available.

It is not only drugs and alcohol: the so-called religion has also functioned as an opium. It drugs people.

And naturally all the religions are against drugs, because they themselves deal in the same market; they are against the competitors. If people take opium they may not be religious, there may be no need for them to be religious. They have found their opium, why should they bother about religion? And opium is cheaper, there is less involvement. If people are taking marijuana, LSD and more refined drugs, naturally, they are not going to be religious, because religion is a very primitive drug. Hence all the religions are against drugs.

The reason is not that they are really against the drug. The reason is, the drugs are competitors, and of course, if people can be debarred from using drugs, they are bound to fall into the traps of the priests, because then that is the only way left. That is a way of monopolising, so only their opium remains in the market and everything else becomes illegal.

People are living in suffering. There are only two ways out of it: either they can become meditators --

alert, aware, conscious... that's an arduous thing. It needs guts. The cheaper way is to find something can make you even more unconscious than you are so you cannot feel the misery. Find something that makes you utterly insensitive, some intoxicant, some pain-killer that makes you so unconscious that you can escape into that unconsciousness and forget all about your anxiety, anguish, meaninglessness.

The second way is not the true way. The second way only makes your suffering a little more comfortable, a little more tolerable, a little more convenient, but it does not help, it does not transform you.

The only transformation happens through meditation, because meditation is the only method that makes you aware. To me meditation is the only true religion. All else is hocus-pocus. And there are different brands of opium -- Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism -- but they are just different brands.

The container is different but the content is the same: they all help you in some way to adjust to your suffering.

My effort here is to take you beyond suffering; there is no need to adjust to suffering. There is a possibility to be totally free of suffering; but then the path is a little arduous, then the path is a challenge.

You have to become aware of your body and what you are doing with it.

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Query:-

One day Buddha was giving his morning discourse and the king had come to listen to him. He was sitting just in front of Buddha and he was continuously moving his big toe. Buddha stopped talking and looked at the king's toe. When Buddha looked at his toe, obviously, the king stopped moving it. Buddha started talking and again and again (laughter) he started moving his toe. Then Buddha asked him 'Why are you doing that?' The king said 'Only when you stopped speaking and looked at my toe did I become aware of what I was doing, otherwise I was not at all conscious.' Buddha said 'This is your toe and you are not conscious... Then you can even murder a person! And you may not be conscious.' And exactly int hat way people have been murdered and the murderer has not been conscious.

Many times in the courts murderers have absolutely denied that they have murdered. First it used to be thought that they were just deceiving, but the latest findings are that they are not deceiving; they did it in a very unconscious state. They were so enraged, they were so angry at that moment that they were possessed by their rage. And when you are enraged, your body secretes certain intoxicating poisons, your blood becomes intoxicated.

To be in a rage is to be in a temporary madness. And the person will completely forget about it, because he was not aware at all. And that's how people are falling in love, killing each other, committing suicide, doing all kinds of things.

The first step in awareness is to be very watchful of your body. Slowly slowly one becomes alert about each gesture, each movement. And as you become aware, a miracle starts happening: many things that you used to do before simply disappear, your body becomes more relaxed, your body becomes more attuned, a deep peace starts prevailing even in your body, a subtle music pulsates in your body.

Then start becoming aware of your thoughts; the same has to be done with the thoughts. They are more subtle than the body and of course, more dangerous too.

And when you become aware of your thoughts, you will be surprised at what goes on inside you. If you write down whatsoever is going on at any moment, you are in for a great surprise. You will not believe 'This is what is going on inside me.' Just for ten minutes go on writing. Close the doors, lock the doors and the windows so nobody can come in, so you can be totally honest, and keep a fire so you can throw it in the fire! (laughter), so nobody will know except you. And then be truly honest, so on writing whatsoever is going on inside the mind. Don't interpret it, don't change it, don't edit it. Just put it on the paper as naked as it is, exactly as it is.

And after ten minutes you read it -- you will see a mad mind inside! We are not aware that this whole madness goes on running like an undercurrent. It affects everything that is significant in your life. It affects whatsoever you are doing; it affects whatsoever you are not doing, it affects everything. And the sum total of it is going to be your life! So this madman has to be changed. And the miracle of awareness is that you need not do anything except to become aware.

The very phenomenon of watching it, changes it. Slowly slowly the madman disappears, slowly slowly the thoughts start falling into a certain pattern: their chaos is no more, they become more of a cosmos; and then again, a deeper peace prevails. And when your body and your mind are at peace you will see that they are attuned to each other too, there is a bridge. Now they are not running in different directions, they are not riding on different horses. For the first time there is accord and that accord helps immensely to work on the third step -- that is, becoming aware of your feelings, emotions, moods. That is the subtlest layer and the most difficult, but if you can be aware of the thoughts then it is just one step more. A little more intense awareness is reeded as you start reflecting your moods, your emotions, your feelings.

Once you are aware of all these three, they all become joined into one phenomenon. And when all these three are one, functioning together, perfectly, humming; together, you can feel the music of all three -- they have become an orchestra. Then the fourth happens, which you cannot do -- it happens of its own accord. It is a gift from the whole. It is a reward, for those who have done these three.

And the fourth is the ultimate awareness that makes one awakened. One becomes aware of one's awareness -- that is the fourth. That makes one a Buddha, the awakened. And only in that awakening one comes to know what bliss is. The body knows pleasure, the mind knows happiness, the heart knows joy, the fourth knows bliss. Bliss is the goal of sannyas and awareness is the path towards it.

Man lives as if he is separate from existence; but it is only an 'as if'. One cannot really be separate -- that is impossible; but one can believe that one is separate. That is possible. One can have this notion of separation. That freedom is given to man, that is man's prerogative, his privilege. No animal has that privilege; hence animals have a certain beauty and a certain blissfulness, a certain innocence which man has 1/08/07

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lost. In fact that is the meaning of the biblical story that man has been turned out of the Garden of Eden.

Animals are still there, trees are still there; only man has been turned out. Man has chosen to get out.

Freedom is a very risky phenomenon. Freedom does not mean that you are free only to do right -- that will not be freedom. Freedom certainly means you are also free to do wrong only then there is freedom.

Henry Ford had made his first cars -- they were all black and when he showed them to people, the prospective customers, in his show room, he used to say 'You are free to choose any colour provided it is black.' But what kind of freedom is this 'provided it is black'? and there were only black cars!

Animals are doing right not because they have chosen to do it; it is programmed, it is built-in. They are doing simply whatsoever is the programme inside. They are following it, they don't have any choice.

Man has a speciality, a privilege. It is his glory that he is free to choose. He can decide about his own destiny. All other animals have a fixed destiny. They have a fate. Only man is fateless. Only man is born as a blank sheet of paper, a tabula rasa; he has to write on it, it is unprogrammed. That's a beautiful gift from existence! But it is dangerous also...

And there is every possibility that man will choose the wrong thing, because it is always the wrong thing that gives you the feeling of freedom. The right thing does not give you the feeling of freedom. It is always the no that gives you feeling of freedom. It is never the yes. For that you need a greater maturity. When yes can give you the feeling of freedom, when doing right can give you the sense of freedom -- for that a greater maturity, a greater understanding, a greater awareness is needed.

Psychologists say that the child has to say not to his parents just to feel free, otherwise he will not feel free. The mother says 'Don't go out'; then he has to go. If he simply follows his mother's orders then he feels like a slave.

A little boy comes back from the river. He has been fishing. The mother aks -- she was angry -- 'Johnny, if you wanted to go fishing, why didn't you ask me?' And the little boy says 'Because I wanted to go!' Ask and it is always no.

The mother also enjoys saying no because that gives her power, that 'no' makes her feel powerful. The child also wants to say no because that also gives him power, freedom. Adam and Eve had to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, it was absolutely inevitable, because they had been prevented. Now there was only one possibility to feel free: to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, otherwise there was no sense of freedom.

So remember, each child has to go wrong. It is almost natural. So I am not against it, one just has to be alert that there is a time to go wrong and there is a time to go right. It is good for small children, immature children, to say no, to disobey, to go against everything that is told to them; but there comes a moment when you are mature enough that you should learn a higher quality of freedom that comes by saying yes, by surrendering.

The fundamental no that man says to existence is: 'I am separate.' That is the foundation of the ego, it creates the ego -- 'I am separate.' This is good as far as it goes. Each person needs a certain ego; only then is surrender possible -- otherwise what will you surrender? First you have to have it to surrender it.

So each child has to learn the way of the ego, he has to be separate; but if one lives his whole life in this separation, then one is miserable. Sannyas means that you are now moving away from saying no, towards yes, because it is only through yes that the union will happen. No separates, yes unites.

Saying yes to existence becomes the bridge. That's what trust is. And trust brings relaxation, a subtle calmness. You are no more fighting against the river, you are no more pushing the river. You start floating with it, flowing with it. You are not even swimming, you are not going upcurrent; you are just going with the current wherever it is going -- joyously, dancingly, singing, going towards the ocean. That brings unions.

Sooner or later the river reaches and disappears into the ocean.

Sannyas is the beginning of surrender, of saying yes; and then one day, the river of sannyas takes you to the ocean, to the ultimate, to the whole. and only when the part has again become one with the whole, consciously, there arises great bliss. A thousand and one blessings start showering on you.

Religion has lived without laughter -- that has been one of the greatest calamities -- and I am trying to introduce laughter into religion! Religious people tend to be serious, sad, sombre, long faced. That has been thought for centuries to be something holy: the saint has to be sad, serious, the saint is not supposed to laugh. Laughter seems to be mundane, something ordinary. It is not so.

Laughter is the most extraordinary phenomenon. Laughter is the most religious experience. And only man is capable of laughter. Donkeys and buffalos and crocodiles (laughter), they are all saints -- they don't 1/08/07

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laugh at all! And our so-called saints have fallen; they have not risen towards higher peaks. They have become donkeys, buffalos, crocodiles...

Religion is dead without laughter. It becomes alive only when one can have a total laugh, a passionate, intense laughter, so that it dances in all your cells, it vibrates in your whole being, it becomes something bigger than you, so that you are just a small thing in it, it surrounds you like an aura and you disappear into it. And that's exactly what happens in laughter: your ego disappears. It may not disappear in your prayer --

your prayer may even strengthen it. The prayerful becomes holier-than-thou. It will not go away because of your austerities and asceticism -- it becomes even more solid and concrete. But when you have a really good laugh the ego is no more there. For a moment a window opens, for a moment the ego is not there. And when the ego is not there, you are. When the ego is there, you are not.

Ego is a phony phenomenon. It is a poor substitute for your real, authentic being. Because we don't know our real being we have substituted for it with the ego.

Laughter is symbolic. I use it as a symbol, a symbol that represents egolessness. And laughter is also playful. It brings you back to your lost childhood. Children laugh truly. Their laughter has no politics in it; but soon we start learning political ways in everything. Even in laughter we become political.

I have heard about a very rich man who used to tell the same jokes, almost the same jokes, every day to his manager and secretaries and typists, and they all used to laugh as if they had never heard those jokes.

But one day one typist didn't laugh. The boss was offended; he said 'What is the matter with you? You have always been laughing so loudly -- why are you not laughing today?' She said 'Tomorrow I am leaving (laughter) so I need not laugh. These people still have to be here.'

Even laughter becomes political, economical, a subtle strategy; then it loses its beauty, its spirituality.

Laughter becomes ugly when you laugh only at others. When you start laughing at yourself too, then it starts having a new dimension. Then the whole of life is taken non-seriously -- sincerely but non-seriously.

One respects life but one knows that it is full of cheer, full of joy, full of playfulness.

We have called it in the East, leela; leela means playfulness. It is one of the greatest contributions to the world. Ordinarily all the religions have said that god created the world, and when they say it they say it very seriously, 'God is doing something very great'; but only the eastern mystics had the courage to say that god was just playful -- it is not a serious creation -- just his playfulness, the way you sometimes, sitting in the sand by the bank of a river, start playing, making houses of the sand. You know that it is just play. Or making boats of paper and letting them go with the river... you know that it is play.

According to the eastern mystics, god created the world just as playfulness. That is why the eastern attitude and approach towards god is totally different. In the western idea of god, particularly the Judaic, Christian and Mohammedan idea -- these are the three religions which are born out of India -- god is very serious, so serious that after six days of work he became tired (laughter); hence Sunday, the holiday.

Just the other day I was, reading: a man asked a friend 'When were you born? On what day? ' And the man said 'On Sunday.' The man was a little puzzled and said 'On Sunday? But that is a holiday. On a holiday nothing; should happen. Even god rested on that day!'

It must have been a serious affair for six days; and what happened to god since then? -- nothing has been heard. As far as we know, after Sunday comes Monday, but for god Monday never came. He became so deadly tired that after he created the woman, he stopped creating everything! He had done his last!

But the eastern god is more a creativity than a creator. It is still going on, the creativity; he is still painting the flowers and the peacock's feathers and the people. He is still at risk, and there is no holiday, because every day is a holiday if it is playful. If it is not work then every day is a holiday.

But the western idea of god is that of a workaholic: six days of strenuous world and then on the seventh day rest. We have taken life as a beautiful play. And the moment you start taking life as a play, you start becoming; cheerful for no reason at all. Then everything brings cheer to you: the stars and the trees and the mountains and the people and the animals... It is such a beautiful existence, so mysterious, so paradoxical that one can do only one thing: one can have a hearty laugh at the whole thing. It is so ridiculous too, so absurd.

Mystery can always be thought of only as absurdity, because you cannot make any sense out of it. In a way it is nonsense. What sense is there in flowers, in creating so many trees and so many animals? What sense is there in creating the existence itself?' In fact there is no sense or logic, there is mystery, tremendous mystery.

It is creation for creation's sake; and once you start approaching life in this way, all seriousness 1/08/07

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disappears. And my sannyasins have to be laughing ones. They have to be known in the world as the laughing ones!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #23

Chapter title: None

23 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101235

ShortTitle: POND23

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.]

Your name, Daeniela literally means god is my judge. It is a declaration of trust in the ultimate, it is a declaration that 'I am not going to compromise for anything less than the ultimate -- not with the society, not with the church, not with the state, not with the mob psychology; even though it means death, then too, only the ultimate is going to be my context, my source, my guide. It is a declaration of individuality.

The society tries to destroy individuality. Instead it jives you a phony thing, personality. Personality is political. It is a strategy created by the establishment to manipulate the individual, to keep him within bounds, to keep him as a slave. Ordinary slavery has disappeared from the world but in its place a very subtle slavery has come into existence, psychological slavery. To be a Christian means to be psychologically a slave. It means the pope is the judge, the pope is the mediator between you and the ultimate. You don't have a direct connection with the ultimate; the pope has to interpret, it is in his hands what he makes things out to be. You have to follow him; and he is as blind as you are, and the blind is leading the blind.

To be a Mohammedan means to accept the Koran as the sacred scripture, to follow it without any thinking, without any contemplation. You will be simply obedient to it -- that's the kind of subtle slavery.

And who is going to interpret the Koran? You are not allowed to interpret it. The scholars will do it, the priests will do it, and the priests are prepared and ordained by other priests, hence it is the past that dictates the present. This is slavery.

To be a Hindu is to be a slave, and the same is true about other religious ideologies and also about political ideologies. To be a communist is the same, just a little bit of a change; instead of the Koran, the Bible, the Gita -- Das Kapital; instead of Mohammed, Moses, Mahavira, Marx; and then a long line of interpreters and you are just to be obedient...

This is the ugly situation in which humanity is living. Man has to come out of this slavery too. He has to declare that 'Any relationship with the ultimate is direct, immediate. I don't need any mediator, I don't need any go-between, I don't need any pope, any ayatollah, any imam, any shankaracharya. I belong to the universe as much as anybody else, so why should I not approach the universe myself? Why should I be dominated, manipulated? Why should I allow this? This is humiliating, this is disrespectful towards one's own being.

That's the meaning of Daeniela, god is my judge -- nobody else, nothing less than that, and god simply 1/08/07

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means the ultimate, the absolute, the whole. And the moment this commitment is made, there is great rejoicing in the heart because freedom is achieved, and freedom is the deepest desire of the human heart.

Slavery is ugly, freedom is beautiful. Slavery is misery, freedom is bliss.

My sannyasins are not my followers. I am not a mediator between you, and the ultimate. My function is to help you to be directly connected to the universe -- just to give you a deep understanding of your own being and how to relax with the whole.

Sannyas is relaxation into the whole, disappearing into the whole, surrendering towards the whole. The true master never stands between anybody and the ultimate. It is only the pseudo teacher who tries to pretend to be the vehicle of god, to be the messenger of god, to be the prophet of god, to be the son of goo, this and that, and tries to dominate people psychologically, spiritually. It is exploitation.

My sannyasins are not part of any religion. I impart to you a kind of religiousness, but not any ideology.

I don't give you any knowledge, any doctrine, any philosophy. I simply help you to become silent, so silent that you can hear the still, small voice within -- and that is the voice of god. And once you have started hearing your own inner voice, you are on the right track. Then my function is fulfilled. Then I can say goodbye to you.

The greatest pleasure of the real master is to make the disciple a master of his own being.

Friedrich Nietzsche has said something immensely beautiful. He was a madman, but sometimes mad people have insights into reality far deeper than the so-called sane. The so-called sane live very superficially. They live a life of respectability. They become Rotarians, Lions, mayors, presidents, prime ministers, they do all kinds of stupid things; just to remain respectable, they are ready to compromise for anything if it gives respect. They follow the dictates of stupid priests, because that is the only way to pretend to be moral, holy: they go to church every Sunday and really religiously, without any fall. However, their church-going has nothing to do with religion. Again that too is a kind of club -- a religious club --

another kind of Rotary club, no difference in it, a formality, but it gives respectability.

The so-called sane are after money, power, prestige.

People like Nietzsche are mad, but because they are mad, because they have not compromised, they can have a few glimpses of the ultimate -- only glimpses, because they are not Buddhas.

Buddha is also mad, but with a method. Nietzsche is simply mad without any method -- that's the difference. If he had known about meditation then he would have been a Buddha, an awakened one.

Madness plus meditation is equal to buddhahood. But if meditation is missing, even then one has the capacity to see a little bit, from here and there, about truth.

Nietzsche says 'The darkest day in humanity's life will be the day when people will stop surpassing themselves.' -- and this he wrote when he was mad, imprisoned in a madhouse, just one year before he died.

Let me repeat -- his statement is significant The gloomiest, the darkest day in humanity's life will be when man will stop surpassing himself.

Man is the only animal who can surpass himself. No other animal can do it, no tree can do it. Nobody except man is capable of it. A rose is going to remain a rose -- it cannot surpass itself. A lion is going to remain a lion -- there is no way to surpass. But man has the capacity to go beyond himself. That's his special privilege, that's his dignity, his grandeur. And by surpassing himself man becomes divine.

Man is a transitory stage. Below man is the world of animals, above man is the world of gods. And by gods I don't mean any metaphysical gods; I mean people who have become awakened, the Buddhas. They are the only gods, those who have attained to that ultimate transcendence beyond which there is nothing else, who have come to the very end of the journey. Below man are animals, absolutely unconscious above man are Buddhas, absolutely conscious; and man is just in between, a ladder, a bridge.

Again, Friedrich Nietzsche says that 'Man is a bridge between two eternities.' Unconsciousness is eternal, vast, immense, consciousness is also eternal -- and man is a bridge. And one should not make A house on the bridge. It is not a place to make a house; it is only a place to be surpassed. One has to go beyond it. Hence only those few people who are constantly making efforts to transcend themselves are truly alive. The others are dead.

A sannyasins has to learn the art of surpassing, transcending, going beyond. I call that art, meditation. It helps you to go beyond your body, beyond your mind, beyond your heart, and beyond these three is the world of the gods, the world of the awakened ones, the enlightened ones, where dewdrops disappear into the vast ocean of reality, when all small egos disappear and one is part of the whole.

And to be part of the whole is the only way to be holy.

1/08/07

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The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #24

Chapter title: None

24 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101245

ShortTitle: POND24

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 cannot be found through analysis. Facts can be found -- that's the way to find facts, but not the truth. Truth is indivisible, hence there is no way to dissect it. For example, you can dissect a flower and you can find through analysis all the material constituents of it -- how much earth it contains and how much water and how many other chemicals -- but you cannot find the beauty. The beauty will disappear in analysis. The moment you dissect the flower you have killed its beauty. The beauty belongs to the whole, the beauty is organic. The beauty is spiritual -- it is the spirit of the flower. It is not its body, it is its soul.

By dissection, by analysis, you are simply working on the corpse. It is a post-mortem, the soul has left it; hence science only comes to know about facts. It is limited because of its very methodology. Its method is analysis. And because it cannot find through analysis anything like soul, consciousness, beauty, truth, godliness, freedom, it tends to deny them. Directly or indirectly its emphasis is, that which cannot be found through scientific methods is not existential, is only in the imagination of man. That is absolutely wrong.

The real existence consists of beauty, of love, of freedom, of truth, of godliness, of eternity. It is not part of time or space, It is not material, it is immaterial. It is not visible, it is invisible. And it is not divisible either; hence a totally new approach is needed. That approach is sannyas.

Sannyas is the very essence of religiousness. One has to go beyond analysis and then see. One has to learn a totally new way of seeing, of being, of relating. You can relate to the flower as a scientist, you can relate to the flower as a poet, you can relate to the flower as a mystic. The scientist will find only the material part of it. The poet is exactly in between the scientist and the mystic: something of the material and something of the spiritual will be there; hence poetry is a midway station between science and religion.

And obviously, because it consists of two diametrically opposite polarities, there is a certain paradox is it. The poet cannot be consistent -- that is impossible. If he wants to be consistent then he either has to all back to the plane of science, the lowest plane, or he has to rise above to the highest plane, the plane of the Buddhas. Then he can be consistent.

As a poet it is his destiny to be inconsistent.

Walt Whitman says 'Yes, I am inconsistent. I am vast enough to contain inconsistencies.' The poet has to be vast enough, because he is like a ladder between two different planes, two different languages, two different visions. The poet is a little bit crazy. It is bound to be so.

It is said about a great poet, Coleridge, that one professor of literature came to him and asked the meaning of one of his poems; a certain particular section of the poem was very elusive. And the professor said 'I always find difficulty with this part when I am teaching it to the students. And this part is such that 1/08/07

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somebody is bound to ask questions, and I cannot answer them. So I thought it wise to come to you; you are the only person who can explain it to me.'

Coleridge looked at the poem and said 'There were two persons who knew the meaning: one is god, I am the other. You'd better consult god, because I have completely forgotten the meaning. I don't know myself.

When I am in a poetic flight I know what it means, but when I come back down to the earth I lose the meaning myself. So if you find the meaning some time, please be kind enough to tell it to me too, because I also feel puzzled. I cannot change it because it is so beautiful, but I cannot make any sense out of it either.'

This is always true about great poets: in their poetic flight they touch the other extreme. When they start expressing themselves they have to use language, logic, and what they have touched is silence. And the silence has to be expressed in words... it is bound to be very difficult, troublesome, in fact, almost impossible.

Sannyas is the third plane, the plane of awakened consciousness. It is beyond analysis, it is beyond poetry too. It is utter silence. Nothing can be said about it, nothing has ever been said about it. Nothing will ever be said about it.

Yes, you can feel it when you are attuned with someone who has reached the point of no return, one who has gone beyond, entered into the very truth of existence itself. He cannot say anything; about it but he can show. His fingers can point towards the moon, his presence can be a triggering point, a catalytic agent --

and that's what the master and the disciple relationship is all about.

The disciple is simply saying 'I am ready to come close to you -- let me come in!' And the master is available, always available to anybody who knocks on his door. And once the disciple starts coming closer and closer and closer, a moment comes when the presence of the master triggers something in the disciple that takes him beyond all logic, all mind, all philosophy. He becomes part of a profound silence -- very alive is that silence. It brings thousands of songs to your being, it comes like a spring and you are all flowers, but that happens like magic.

The relationship between a master and a disciple is a magical relationship. It is a miracle -- a miracle which happens through two things: the utter egolessness of the master and the absolute surrender of the disciple.

The master is egoless; if the disciple also surrenders, he becomes egoless. And only two egoless beings can merge into each other, can lose their boundaries. Then one knows the taste of the wine; and the wine is such that it brings two things into your being: awareness and drunkenness together. One becomes drunk with the divine and at the same time, simultaneously, one becomes absolutely aware.

But one has to pass first beyond the scientific attitude, approach -- because we are trained for that -- and second, beyond the poetic imagination.

Science is thinking, poetry is imagination and truth is beyond both. It is neither thinking nor imagination. It is realisation.

Veet Shastro means beyond scriptures -- that's what sannyas is all about.

Words are inadequate. It is a direct communion, not communication. There are three ways to relate. One is head-to-head which is what people use ordinarily. The other is rarely used -- heart-to-heart -- only once in a while at the peak of their love people use it but very hesitantly, very cautiously, because it looks a little bit insane. They have lived their lives according to the head; the head is mathematical, calculating, rational, and the heart is irrational. So it looks as if you are going a little astray. One feels a little embarrassed.

All lovers feel embarrassed, for the simple reason that they themselves feel "What are they doing? What is happening to them?" Hence the phrase 'falling in love' exists in all the languages of the world. It is significant -- why is it called 'falling', why not 'rising' in love? Because the head is the top and when you fall in love you are getting down towards the heart, and the head is very egoistic. The head lives with the idea that whatsoever fits with it is right. Whatsoever falls below it is wrong; hence lovers are thought to be crazy, mad, because they start a different kind of relating. It is more poetic, more aesthetic, less prose-like, less logical; of course, more beautiful, but beauty has no value in the marketplace.

In the day-to-day world of business, beauty is not a commodity. Maybe in the off-hours, when you have nothing to do, you can take an interest in poetry, in painting, in beauty, as a hobby, but it cannot be made your life, it cannot be your life-style. That's what the head is continuously telling everybody. From the school to the university we are preparing everybody to live only in the head; twenty-five years preparation

-- that is one-third of one's life and the most important one third. Naturally, the heart remains ungrown, undernourished, neglected, ignored -- and that is only the second layer. There is still a deeper part of your 1/08/07

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existence, the deepest: the being.

Something has to take a quantum leap from the head, and from the heart too, towards the being. It has to be a quantum leap, just a jump into the unknown. Only when you are in the world of being does real relating happen. If in the words of the head, in that terminology, communication happens, then at the heart level communion happens, and at the being level union happens -- not unity but union, a merger, a dissolution.

A disciple has to be ready for that; a deep union with the master.

The master is only a preparation ground. Once you have learned the secret of union, of merging, of melting, then you can melt with the whole universe. The master is only a window. Then you can jump out of the window, then you can fly into the sky towards the stars.

The scriptures contain words. No scripture contains the truth. By its very nature truth cannot be contained in words. So it may be the Bible or the Koran or the Gita -- it does not matter; no scripture contains truth.

Truth has to be discovered by everyone on his own. One cannot borrow it. One can become learned through the scriptures, very learned, scholarly, but all that learning and scholarship is just pure rubbish, unadulterated rubbish. It simply helps you to become unaware of your ignorance. It becomes a cover-up. All knowledgeability is a cover-up. But it does not make you wise, it does not give you eyes. It is like a blind man learning about light -- and he can know everything that is written about light, he can learn the Braille script and he can go on reading and reading and reading, and he can accumulate much information -- but that will not give him any experience of light. The only thing that matters is experience.

Hence one has to drop clinging to the scriptures.

I am against all scriptures; against, because they are the cause of keeping humanity in ignorance. My effort here is to help you to become as unknowledgeable as possible, so that a few windows and doors can open up.

Ignorance is far more beautiful than knowledgeability because ignorance is innocent, and knowledge is very cunning. And from ignorance one can move towards wisdom, but from knowledge there is no way. The person who is lost in knowledge is lost in an endless jungle -- of words, theories, ideologies, theologies, philosophies -- it is endless. Hence the first thing required in sannyas is : put aside all your knowledge, burn all your scriptures; be totally free from the past and from whatsoever has been told to you; from all your conditionings of being a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, communist, atheist.

Just today I was reading a letter of a great atheist. In the Indian constitution there is no provision for the atheists, so when the election comes and the voter lists are prepared, every voter has to fill in a certain form in which he has to show to what religion he belongs. Now if he is an atheist he is in a difficulty. If he does not fill in the form, even if one item is left out, the form is invalid. He has to show whether he is a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jaina or a Buddhist; he has to show his religion. If he does not belong to any religion, if he is an atheist, then there is trouble, then he cannot be a voter. So this rationalist thinker has written a letter to the government saying, "There should be a provision in the coming elections, there should be a place for atheists also."

When I was reading his letter I could see that he has no idea that there are people who may not be even atheists -- for example, a man like me who is neither a Mohammedan nor a Hindu nor a Christian, neither theist nor atheist. What about me? There should also be a provision for somebody like me who can simply say all this nonsense is nonsense, that it is all irrelevant, that "I don't belong to any ism, not even atheism"; that too is a religion; the religion of godlessness.

There are religions which believe in god and there are religions which don't believe in god, so it is nothing special. It belongs to the same category -- whether you believe or you don't believe -- but I consider the whole matter pointless; there is no question of belief or non-belief. I neither believe nor don't believe; I just don't think it worth any consideration.

And that should be the approach of a real sannyasin. The question is of experiencing, and when you experience then you cannot say what it is. You can sing, you can dance, you can laugh, but you cannot say what it is. You can show it in many ways but you cannot say it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the great logical thinkers of the West, one of the most significant philosophers of this age, says, "If nothing can be said about something, then nothing should be said." I agree, if nothing should be said -- but this is only a half-statement.

I would like to add something to it, if nothing can be said about something, nothing should be said, but you can show something about it; there is no need to say.

The real master shows it by his very gestures, the way he looks in your eyes, the way he sits, the way he 1/08/07

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walks, the way he is; his very presence is the message.

Marshall McLuhan has just died, a few days ago. He used to say "The medium is the message." I can change it a little bit; the messenger is the message.

When Hazrat Mohammed died, his wife Ayasha was asked, "Can you say something about his character, how he was?" And what Ayasha said was really of great significance; she said, "His character was just like the Koran." Only this much she said: "His character was just like the Koran. The Koran is his message and that was his character too; the way he walked, the way he sat, the way he ate, the way he slept, was just like the Koran -- the same song, the same flavor, the same fragrance, the same music, the same dance, the same beauty."

The master shows it, he cannot say it. That's why only a few people are capable of partaking of the master's being. Those who come as observers are going to miss the point, those who come as critics are certainly going to miss the point. Those who come in deep trust and surrender -- only they will be the blessed ones, because only they will be able to understand.

Sannyas makes you a blessed one. It gives you the opportunity to live side-by-side with a Buddha, with a Christ, with a Lao Tzu, with a Zarathustra! It is the greatest opportunity, the greatest blessing that can ever happen to any man. There is nothing greater than that. This is the greatest gift of existence.

Respect it and rejoice in it!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #25

Chapter title: None

25 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101255

ShortTitle: POND25

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.]

Pleasure is dependent on others, bliss is independent. Pleasure comes through relationship, bliss arises in your absolute aloneness; hence pleasure always brings misery in its wake, because when something is dependent on somebody else there is bound to be many problems.

First, the fear: what is available today, will it be available tomorrow too or not? And fear destroys all joy; it is poison to joy, it creates anxiety, anguish, worry. Out of this fear one tends to possess the other, so that the future becomes secure, insured. But the moment you possess the other you have reduced the other into a commodity. And joy is possible only if the other remains as individual, not a thing.

So one is in a dilemma. If you allow the other freedom, then there is fear. If you don't allow the freedom, then you cut the very roots of your joy. And when you try to possess the other, the other is going to resist, because freedom is the greatest longing in every heart. Nobody wants to be enslaved.

The resistance can be either feminine or it can be very male. Feminine resistance is subtle, indirect; male resistance is aggressive. So the other can be resistant in a subtle, feminine way; hence all the women go on nagging their lovers in every possible way -- that is their way of resistance. Or, it can be aggression -- both 1/08/07

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are ugly. The male is aggressive; hence he has reduced women to a kind of property.

All these problems are bound to arise, and when you try to possess the other, the other is bound to react in the same way, tit for tat; the other will try to possess you. And then there will be a struggle over who is going to dominate, who is superior, who is more powerful, who is on top.

Pleasure brings many miseries. They follow it like shadows. Bliss is a totally different dimension. It is your natural flowering. It is just being con-tented with yourself. It does not mean that you have to stop loving, but your quality of love will be totally different.

When you are seeking pleasure love is only a means; the real desire is to find pleasure. Hence when you have found the pleasure your love disappears, because love was only a means to a certain end. When you are hungry you eat; of course, when you are not hungry you are no more interested in the food. Hence all lovers go through these phases: when they are in need they are very loving, when the need is no more there they are very unloving, they take revenge, they become almost enemies.

The blissful person also loves but his love is not a means to any end. It is an end unto itself, it is a sharing. He does not want to get anything out of it. He has so such bliss, so much fragrance in his being, he wants to share it. He is almost like a raincloud, so full of rainwater that it wants to shower.

Monika is one of the most beautiful names possible. It defines exactly the state of the awakened person: he lives alone; out of his aloneness he shares, but he is alone. He may love thousands of people, he may love the whole universe, but it arises out of his deep aloneness. And remember, because his aloneness brings flowering, bliss, freedom, truth, it is not loneliness at all. His aloneness is just the opposite of loneliness.

Loneliness is a state of despair; aloneness is a state of total bliss.

One can cultivate character, but then there is no dignity in it; it is arbitrary, artificial, imposed. It in fact creates a schizophrenic state in the person. It makes one split. One is something inside and just the opposite on the outside. It gives you only a beautiful facade, a mask, and a mask cannot have any dignity -- it is dead.

It can give you respectability, it can give you much honour, because as far as your behaviour is concerned the society is in control. And the society always respects the people who allow themselves to be controlled and enslaved. The society never respects the rebellious person; it respects the popes and it kills Jesus.

It is a very strange world. Christ is crucified and popes are enthroned -- and popes are nothing! They are just parrots. It kills the real and honours the phony.

Society wants slaves, the state wants slaves, the church wants slaves; hence they all try to cultivate a certain conscience in you. Conscience is a trick.

Now scientists have been working on putting electrodes in the human brain and these electrodes can be manipulated by remote control. And the person who has the electrode fixed in his brain will not be aware of it at all, because the inside of the skull is absolutely insensitive. Even if you put a small rock there you will not feel it. So just a small computerised mechanism, not bigger than a button, can be put into the head very easily, and the remote-controller can make you do things which you will think you are doing out of your own choice and you will be simply behaving according to some far-away source.

Delgado has invented many things on these lines, and it is possible that in the future humanity will have to face this danger. This is far more dangerous than atomic bombs or hydrogen bombs; they can kill your body, but these electrodes can kill your very spirit. In a dictatorial country every child, when he is born in the hospital, can be fixed immediately with an electrode -- the first thing to be done -- and then for his whole life he can be controlled, and he will never know. When he says yes he will think he is saying yes, but it is the electrode that is making him say yes.

Now this is a more developed form of the old conscience. Conscience is a bullock cart method; it takes a long time. The family, the society, the school, the college, the university -- almost twenty-five years it takes, one-third of a life-time, to create a certain conscience: do this, don't do that. The old method is simply nothing but hypnosis. Go on repeating to the small child 'This is right and that is wrong.' This creates a subtle conditioning in his mind and then that conditioning will control his whole life. This conditioning cannot have any dignity. It will give you a certain character, but it will not give you dignity; you will not be a Christ or a Buddha or a Lao Tzu or a Zarathustra.

For dignity of character, consciousness is needed, not conscience and that's the function of meditation.

Meditation does not give you any character directly. It does not say what to do and what not to do. It never gives you any commandments. It simply gives you a technique for becoming more aware, for being more alert, watchful, witnessing.

Meditation is the art of awareness. And once you are aware, out of your awareness your actions will 1/08/07

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arise -- not out of conscience. Conscience is cultivated by others, by the vested interests, by the establishment. Consciousness is yours. It is individual, it is not collective. Conscience is part of the mob psychology. Consciousness gives you dignity because it gives you individuality. It gives you rebellion, it makes you capable of saying yes or no of your own accord. There is no foreign agency manipulating you in the name of religion, morality, etcetera.

My effort here is just to help you to be more aware so whatsoever you do comes out of that awareness.

That awareness has no ready-made answers; it is just like a mirror: it reflects the situation, the challenge of the situation, and you act immediately, spontaneously. You don't look for an answer in the memory, in the scriptures, in your parent's ideas, in all that has been taught to you. You simply encounter the situation immediately; in your own light. Your action then has dignity, beauty, grace, because it is coming out of freedom. Freedom makes everything graceful. Freedom is the greatest value in life.

And then certainly, whatsoever you do -- your character, your behaviour -- is yours, authentically yours.

It has your signature on it. Then you are not a carbon copy, you are original. The Zen people call it finding the original face.

For that, one has to drop all the masks, one has to risk many things, particularly respectability. That is a bribe by the society. It will give you a Nobel prize and it will give you many honours; it will do everything to make you feel great, if you can fulfil one condition: if you are obedient, obedient like a robot, then all respect is for you. Then the society will make you a great hero, but there will be no grace, no beauty, no freedom, no truth, no being; you have committed a real suicide.

Meditation opens the doors of your inner treasures, what Jesus calls the kingdom of god. Meditation is only a key, and keys are always small things, but they can unlock immense treasures. Everybody is born as a prince or a princess, but gets lost in the blind crowd of beggars.

A person who is always asking for more I call a beggar. He may be a rich beggar or a poor beggar -- that does not matter -- but the quality that determines his beggarhood is that he is always asking for more.

Whatsoever he has is never enough. And it is never going to be enough. He is always desiring, and because of that desiring he is always in deep discontentment. And desires have a certain nature; they are like the horizon: it looks as if it's just there, a few miles ahead, just a few minutes' drive, but by the time you reach there it has gone ahead of you. The distance between you and the horizon will always remain the same, because the horizon does not exist in fact; it is all illusion, an optical illusion. Because the earth is round, the illusion is possible. It seems somewhere the sky is meeting the earth. It does not exist; hence you can go on and on and on, but the distance between you, wherever you are, and the horizon, will be the same.

The same is true about our desires: the beggar is in discontent as much as the so-called rich person, because the distance is the safe. It is the distance that hurts. The beggar also knows that if only he can reach there all will be fulfilled; and the rich person, even a man like Alexander the Great, has the same horizon, the same distance. He dies in immense poverty, just like everybody else.

Meditation is a turning in; not running after the horizon which goes on receding. Understanding the futility of desire is the beginning of meditation; seeing its absolute absurdity, ridiculousness, its impossibility, one turns in. When one searches inwards because the outer search seems to be pointless. And the moment you search inwards a miracle happens -- it is exactly a miracle -- because whatsoever you have been searching for always and always, maybe for many many lives, is suddenly there. It was always within the seeker himself; the sought is in the seeker. And we have been running everywhere, except withinwards.

Meditation makes you aware of the immense blissfulness that is just your very nature. And to know it is to become an emperor, an empress; to know it is to become rich for the first time, and it is a richness that cannot be taken away from you. Even death cannot take it away from you, because in death only the outer shell dies your innermost being remains as it is, it is eternal.

To know the eternal, to be the eternal, is the whole enquiry of sannyas. My sannyasins have to find that they are princes, emperors, not beggars. I am not for beggars. In the past, monks and nuns have lived like beggars. They have been taught to live a life of renunciation; I teach living a life of rejoicing.

And one who knows his inner world, how can he avoid rejoicing? His whole life will be just a celebration.

The only thing needed to find bliss is a little bit of courage -- just a little bit. Society makes us cowards.

It makes us afraid. In a thousand and one ways it makes us fear-oriented: fear of others, fear of death, fear of disease, fear of failure, fear of poverty, fear of old age. And even death does not satisfy the society, so they 1/08/07

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create the fear of hell after your death.

This fear-orientation is bound to create a life of misery. My sannyasins have to learn to drop this whole orientation. It is not a question of dropping one fear: if you drop one, nothing will happen because there are a thousand other fears. It is not at all meaningful to go on pruning the leaves; it is better to cut the very root.

Hence my insistence is on love, because love is the polar opposite of fear. Life should be love-oriented, not fear-oriented. All the religions in the past have made it a point to use fear-orientation, because that is an easy way to manipulate, dominate, subjugate people -- but that has made the whole of humanity miserable.

This is the work of your saints and so-called mahatmas.

In my vision they are the greatest criminals in the world, because they have crippled the very possibility of man becoming blissful, they have poisoned the very being. But if one has a little bit of courage one can pull oneself out of this orientation. It is just imposed on us, it never becomes part of us. It is just like clothes: you can throw them off. Just a little courage to be naked is needed, that's all. One can throw off the clothes -- they are dirty and they are suffocating and they are borrowed and so many people have used them before.

A love-orientation makes all the difference. If one moves from fear to love one move, from misery to bliss. Bliss arises when you start looking at life in a deep loving way. The stars, the trees, the animals, the people, the very earth -- all this is so beautiful, in fact there cannot be any more beautiful world than it is.

There cannot be any more perfect world than it is.

One needs only to grow a little more sensitivity, a little more of an aesthetic approach, a little more poetic vision. It all depends on how you look at life.

When a painter comes into the garden he sees many shades of green. When an ordinary person comes into the garden he simply sees green trees. He has not that subtle demarcation, that sensibility, that awareness that can see that there is not only one kind of green tree; each tree has a different green. The painter knows there are many more colours than ordinary people are aware of, but they are not aware at all, they are really colour-blind. George Bernard Shaw was colour-blind and up to the age of sixty he was not aware -- and such an intelligent man... If this can happen to a man like George Bernard Shaw what to say about ordinary people?

On his sixtieth birthday somebody sent him a beautiful suit as a present. The person just forgot to send a tie with the suit. Bernard Shaw loved the suit and he went to the market to find a tie of the same colour. His secretary followed him; she was surprised because the suit was green, and Bernard Shaw was choosing a yellow tie -- 'That will be just monstrous!' (laughter) She could not control herself. She said 'I should not interfere, that is not my business, but I have to tell you that this won't look good at all. This is yellow and the suit is green. ' He said 'Is there any difference between this tie and the suit?' That was the first time he became aware that he could not see yellow.

For him there was no difference between yellow and green. He could only see green, he was blind to yellow. But he lived sixty years without knowing it; and millions of people are living in the world who don't know the beauty of colours, who don't know the beauty of the birds and their songs, who don't know the beauty of the stars. They never look above in the sky. They go on crawling in the mud. They don't have any time to see a beautiful sunset. Even if they see it they only pretend to see; they are not really there, not in that moment -- their mind is far away, somewhere else, always somewhere else. They may even see and say

'This is beautiful,' but they are simply repeating a cliche. They are not aware of what they are saying. They are saying something, that is expected of them. They are simply fulfilling, the expectation, but they are not really aware of the beauty. They don't mean it when they say it is beautiful: they are repeating parrotlike.

Otherwise, this existence is so beautiful that if you cannot love it, it is really unfortunate. My whole effort here is to help you to love existence, without any fear, without any greed, because greed is nothing but fear in disguise, another phase of fear. If you can love the existence, to me that is religiousness. And out of that love arises bliss!. Then life has a totally different flavour to it. You can call that flavour godliness, a new fragrance, you can call it Buddhahood, Christ-consciousness, but just to call it a totally new fragrance is enough, more than enough. Then your life is surrounded by a new poetry, a new dance, a new song.

I am not concerned with hell and heaven and all that nonsense. I am not concerned with mythologies and theologies; my whole concern is how to help you to understand beauty, love, bliss. And I repeat: just a little bit of courage is needed -- nothing much!

The only way to find bliss is to surrender to existence -- not to Buddha, not to Christ, not to Krishna, not to me, but to the whole! The master has to be used only as a window, so that you can see the sky beyond, so 1/08/07

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that you can see the further shore -- that's all. Once you have seen it you need not cling to the frame of the window.

Surrendering tc a master is really surrendering to the whole. That is just the beginning, because at first the whole will be too much. You may become afraid.

There is a beautiful story in Srimad Bhagavad Gita: Krishna is explaining to Arjuna to surrender to the whole -- don't bring your will in.' But Arjuna is a sophisticated prince, well-educated, as educated as Krishna himself, far richer than Krishna, belongs to a far more renowned family than Krishna. Krishna is just functioning as a charioteer to Arjuna in the war. They are old friends, and relatives also: Krishna's sister is married to Arjuna.

So Arjuna goes on arguing. Finally when he cannot argue any more he says one thing. He says 'If you talk so much about the whole can you show me a vision of the whole?"

And the story is beautiful -- I don't think it is factual, it cannot be, but it is significant: Krishna becomes a window and Arjuna can see the vast universe, stars appearing and disappearing, the whole eternity. It is so vast that he becomes frightened. Its very vastness is frightening, is scary. He trembles, perspires and starts shouting, 'Close this window! I am absolutely convinced of what you are saying but don't show me this vastness -- this is too much. I cannot look at it any more.'

And Krishna closes the window, he becomes again the same friend; he had disappeared and Arjuna had had a glimpse of the eternal process of existence.

The parable is beautiful because that's exactly what happens between a disciple and a master -- but not literally; it is a beautiful metaphor, metaphorically it really happens.

It is difficult to surrender to the whole. The master is only an excuse, but once you surrender to the master you have surrendered to the whole, and slowly slowly you will learn how to move closer and closer to eternity and infinity without any fear. In fact when one is surrendered, ego disappears, and with the ego all fear disappears.

Sannyas means surrender -- in the beginning to the master and then through the master to the whole. But one has to remember: one has to reach the whole. The river has to reach the ocean. Only when the river disappears into the ocean, loses its identity, has it come home.

The goal of every human being, in fact of all the beings, is to attain to the state of bliss. Even trees are trying in their own unconscious way to reach the state of bliss; animals, birds, in a haphazard way, zig-zag, because there is no consciousness.

Man is privileged: he can become conscious of his longing. To become conscious of your longing for bliss is sannyas. Millions of human beings also go on searching for bliss, but in unconscious way. You cannot find it in unconscious ways; consciousness is an absolute necessity, a prerequisite. Only when you are conscious will you be able to attain to bliss; hence consciousness is the law, the ultimate law. To me consciousness is godliness.

The moment you become absolutely conscious, all your unconsciousness disappears, as if suddenly you have brought light into the house of your being and that very moment you know that the world does not consist only of matter -- matter is only a form of sleeping awareness -- that matter itself is immaterial, that the world consists of consciousness. And when you have known it, realised it -- not intellectually but existentially -- you can call it the realisation of god or truth or nirvana... they are only different expressions for the same thing, but the taste is one and that is of bliss, absolute bliss, unwavering bliss. Once attained it is attained forever.

Intellect is a pseudo coin, easily attainable, but not really of any worth. Our schools, colleges, universities all impart intellect. And the more a person becomes intellectual, scholarly, learned, informed, the more his intelligence becomes covered with rubbish; otherwise every child is born with tremendous intelligence. We destroy his intelligence; we are afraid of his intelligence, so we start crippling, paralysing his intelligence. And we start burdening his intelligence, putting on such a load of unnecessary knowledgeability -- geography, history, and all kinds of nonsense -- that he becomes so full of rubbish and loses contact with his own intelligence, he loses the way to his own being.

My effort here is to help you to find the diamond that you have lost in the rubbish of intellect. One has to learn how to throw all intellectual jargon out of one's being, how to empty oneself of all knowledge. The moment you are ready to empty yourself of all knowledge you attain your natural intelligence -- and that becomes a second birth. One becomes a 'dwija', twice born -- and that is the real beginning of life. Sannyas 1/08/07

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has to be a second birth.

Jesus says 'Unless you are born again you shall not enter into my kingdom of god.' He is absolutely right: one has to move from intellect to intelligence, from knowledge to wisdom, from information to transformation. And this can be easily done by meditation, very easily. One just has to become more and more silent. So whenever you have time, just sit silently, doing nothing. Just watch your mind, all its gimmicks, games; enjoy all its trips and numbers, but remain aloof, cool, detached, just a watcher. It is just a screen, like a TV screen, on which things are moving; you are just an observer, unidentified with it. This is the whole secret of meditation: becoming unidentified. Dropping the idea that 'I am the mind' is meditation.

When you know 'I am the witness and the mind is there, just an object, and I am subjectivity, mind is a content and I am consciousness,' that 'I am the seer and the mind is the seen' -- this is the whole process of meditation. And this brings the transformation, this brings you to the world of the immortals.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #26

Chapter title: None

26 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101265

ShortTitle: POND26

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 courage that is worth calling courage is to get out of the fold of the mob psychology. We are born in a crowd; it cannot be avoided, it is natural. We grow up in a crowd, with the whole past of the crowd, and the crowd goes on loading every child with all its superstitions, stupidities. The crowd consists of blind people, because the buddhas are very few and far between. The crowd functions according to the tradition, because it has no insight of its own -- it cannot have.

To grow one's own insight, one needs to be deeply meditative, very alert and aware. The crowd lives a kind of sleepy, unconscious life; it makes no effort at awareness, it lives in a routine way -- mechanical, robotlike. But unfortunately every child has to be in the hands of a certain crowd, and the crowd contaminates the mind of the child, it poisons his consciousness. By the time the child is old enough, strong enough, to stand on his own feet, it is too late. The poison has gone too deep. The crowd has become part of his inner world; it has penetrated as far as possible into his psyche. Hence I say the greatest courage in life is to throw the crowd out of your being.

If one lives according to the crowd one is bound to remain miserable, because the crowd is miserable. Its whole ideology is the root cause of its misery. Its past-orientation keeps it miserable. It has no passion, intensity, to live in the present. It lives in the nostalgia of the past which is no more. That is sheer foolishness, a waste of time. And the crowd thinks of a future according to its past, a future which is never going to be. Both are non-existential, the past is no more, the future not yet, and between these two non-existences the crowd is crushed. It remains empty, unfulfilled, hence the misery.

A sannyasin has to come out of the mob psychology and its grip. It makes you not a man. It deprives 1/08/07

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you of your humanity, it reduces you into a number -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist -- which are all replaceable. No individual is ever replaceable, but a Hindu can be replaced by another Hindu, a Christian can be replaced by another Christian. That's why all these religions are interested that people should go on procreating as many children as possible. No religion is in favor of preventing the growing population of the world. The reason is simple, the people who are Christians today will soon be dead; if they stop reproducing children or they limit themselves, then who is going to replace them? Replacements are needed.

Now there are six hundred and fifty million Catholics in the world; if they all used contraceptives, birth control methods, abortion, then soon the Catholics would start disappearing -- and numbers have power. It is a political game, they are interested in numbers.

Just the other day Mother Teresa said that every year one hundred and fifty million are killed through abortion, and she is ready to provide a home for one hundred and fifty million people -- there is no need for abortion. Naturally, such a good opportunity, such a good business, one hundred and fifty million people every year becoming Catholics -- immense joy! Even if the whole earth has to die for it, even if the whole humanity has to die for it, that's okay.

And who is responsible for all these abortions? These same people. They don't allow contraceptives --

otherwise there would be no abortions. Then they condemn abortions. First they don't allow contraceptives; then they condemn abortions as murder, violence; and then they create orphans and orphanages. Just see the whole trick, the whole business, the whole conspiracy -- and then those orphans have to be served.

Just contraceptives alone could do all the work. There is no need to do all this nonsense. But then the number of Catholics will be reduced. Hindus are against contraception, Mohammedans are also against it.

The Mohammedans are far more advanced than the Catholics because they allow four wives to every man.

Now this is very simple arithmetic.

One man can make four or forty women pregnant. The vice versa is not true: if one woman is married to four men you will not get four children, you will get only one child; if four women are married to one man you will get four children -- simple business!

Mohammed himself had nine wives, and of course, when the prophet has nine wives the disciples have to be allowed at least four -- that becomes their birthright. And Mohammedans are not willing to stop this ugly institution of marrying four wives. Those wives are used like slaves, like factories to create children.

But Mohammedans go on increasing their number.

The crowd is interested in numbers, it is not interested in individuals at all. It destroys the individual, reduces him into a commodity. A sannyasin has to assert his individuality, he has to pull himself out from all kinds of crowds. He has to assert that he is independent of all mob psychology, ideology, religion, church, state, nation.

Sannyas is a rebellion, and it needs courage; but the outcome is immense. Once you assert your individuality, once you are on your own, there is an explosion of bliss. Bliss is earned only by those who are courageous; cowards are bound to live in misery.

Man has to regain his childhood; only then can he be blissful. He has to deprogramme himself. Every society programmes you according to its own attitude towards life, according to its own structure. It does not care a bit about you. It has already made a certain dress: you have to fit with the dress. If the dress is too short, then your hands, your head, your feet have to be chopped. If the dress is too long then you have to be stretched by Rolfers! (laughter) But the dress cannot be changed. And one never knows for whom the dress was made; it was certainly made for you. Maybe it was perfectly okay for Jesus Christ...

It was not meant for you, but the Christians will try to cut you, to stretch you -- somehow they will manage to make you fit according to the ready-made dress. The dress is sacred, you cannot cut it, you cannot touch it.

This is what has been done up to now. The pattern is already there before you come into the world and you come not like anybody else; you come as a unique individuals so how can you really fit? With all their effort, still, the dress never fits perfectly. Sometimes it is too loose, sometimes it is too tight. If it is tight it makes you miserable, it makes you uptight, it makes you an Englishman (laughter). If it is too loose, it makes you lousy, it makes you an Indian! (laughter) And you always look silly! It is always somebody else's dress that you are wearing, you always become a laughing stock.

People are parading as buffoons, for the simple reason that they are trying to fit with a certain pattern which was not basically planned for then, for their uniqueness. And if they don't fit, naturally it creates 1/08/07

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guilt: 'Something is wrong with me.' Everybody is saying that you have to it -- 'These are the shoulds and these are the should nots' -- and when you don't fit you feel guilty you are simple you feel guilty and then you have to go and confess all your sins to the Catholic priest.

Just the other day I was reading about a nun in Africa, a mother superior. For forty years she has been Catholic nun; now she is sixty-five. For a few days a Man was coming continuously to confess his sins; she must have enjoyed those sins so much that they both eloped, got married! The man is seventy and the mother superior is sixty-five! (laughter)

If you are simple you will feel guilty; if you are cunning you will become mother superiors and fathers and ministers and priests. If you are cunning, if you can pretend, if you can be a great hypocrite, then you will be very successful, but at a great cost. You will have to repress your nature, your spontaneity.

Now what must this woman have been doing for forty years? Falling in love at the age of sixty-five looks a little bit odd! (laughter) For forty years she must have been repressing and repressing, and all those confessions that she was listening to, she must have been enjoying.

This is going on all over the world: either your conditionings make you feel guilty or they make you hypocrites. The cunning ones become hypocrites. They reach to the very heights of respectability; they become popes and ayatollas and imams and shankaracharyas. Or if you are a little less cunning, then you feel great guilt, always burdened that you are not doing that which should be done and you are doing that which should not be done. You are always torn apart, your life become miserable.

Both alternatives are wrong.

My sannyasins have to drop the whole nonsense of wearing somebody else's dresses, somebody else's programmes. You have to find your own life and you have to live according to your own light. For that you have to clean your slate. That's what I mean by innocence, childhood you have to become a child again so that you can erase all the writing that has been done on you by others; so you can undo whatsoever they have done to you.

If a man can undo whatsoever the society has done to him, he is capable of becoming awakened, he is capable of attaining to great ecstasies. His life will be a sheer joy! Otherwise you will either be guilty and burdened and afraid, knowing perfectly well that you will fall into hell, or you will be a hypocrite, continuously doing something that you don't want to do. You will have a double personality, one at the front door, another at the back door; and you will be continuously trying to hide things, you will become very secretive. All that is ugly, all that is inhuman.

How can one live joyously if one is divided, split? The phony person cannot live joyously. He is not cheating anybody else, he is simply cheating himself. And the guilty person, of course, cannot live joyously; there is no possibility. If he is making love to a woman he feels guilty, continuously thinking that on Sunday he has to go and confess. The mother superior is there. He is half-heartedly making love; hence he cannot go deeply into it, and unless you go deeply into it you cannot go beyond it. So he remains always discontented.

And when he is confessing his guilt he knows perfectly well that all this is nonsense -- he will be doing the same again. He knows this perfectly well. He has confessed every Sunday and he goes on making the same mistakes again and again; so it is going to happen.

This type of life is not life; it is rather, a caricature, a cartoon. It has no beauty.

Become a child again, be innocent, and start from ABC, start from scratch. I am not going to give you any programme. My work is negative: I only deprogramme people, then I leave them. Then whatsoever they want to do they can do. It is their life -- my work is finished. Once I have deprogrammed you my work is finished. Once I have cleaned your slate I hand it over to you. Now you can do whatsoever you want: you can write a poem or a love letter or blah, blah, blah, whatsoever you want (laughter) -- it is up to you. You can do some doodling (laughter) or whatsoever you want -- this is your life -- but whatsoever you do there will be joy in it!

A person will be joyous even if he has chosen to go to hell; and a person cannot be joyous if he is forced to live in heaven, because freedom is the very soul of bliss, the very centre of bliss. So once you are deprogrammed you are free to act according to your own spontaneity. I don't give you any ready-made answers. I simply hammer so that all your answers are destroyed, demolished, so that you have again a plain ground: the old building has disappeared and you can start making whatsoever you want to make. You can make a palace or a hut -- or if you want to live under the sky, perfectly beautiful!

A nan has a birthright to be himself. Sannyas means getting courage enough to live out of freedom, and then bliss follows like a shadow. It is the shadow of freedom.

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Query:-

The lotus is a very significant symbol in eastern mysticism. The lotus lives in water, it grows in water, but its petals are so velvety that the water cannot touch them. If you go in the early morning to a lotus pond you will see on the lotus leaves, on the lotus petals, dewdrops shining like pearls in the early morning sun --

it is a beauty to see dewdrops on lotus leaves or lotus petals. But the most miraculous thing is that they are on the leaves, on the petals, but they are not touching them. They don't make them wet. Just a slight breeze and the dewdrops slip into the lake; and they don't leave even a trace behind because the leaf or the petals remain totally untouched, absolutely untouched, as if there have been no dew-drops on them. And this is the symbol of a sannyasin.

The lotus has become the very metaphor for sannyas, live in the world but remain untouched by it. I don't teach escape, I don't teach renunciation. I am all for life, I am totally for life, because to me life is god and there is no other god than life. All the ideas of god other than life are simply fabrications Or the cunning minds, ways to exploit simple-minded human beings.

Life is the only god, so I cannot teach escape from life. One has to live in it and one has to live intensely, passionately, not half-heartedly, not in a lukewarm way. One has to burn one's life torch from both ends together; then even a single moment is more valuable than the whole of eternity. A single moment of intense, ecstatic living, is far deeper, far higher, than living for one hundred years, but living just so-so, half-heartedly, fragmentarily, unconsciously, somehow dragging from the cradle to the grave, sad, sombre, serious, with no dance, with no celebration, with no light in the eyes, with no song in the heart. That is not life; that is simply vegetating.

Millions of people are simply living like cabbages (laughter). A few live like cauliflowers (laughter): my definition of a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education -- with a Ph.D or a D.Lit. The same cabbage having a certificate from a university becomes a cauliflower.

But whether one lives like a cabbage or a cauliflower makes no difference. Rarely, a very few people have lived really, authentically, totally -- and that's what I teach: live moment-to-moment, but live without holding anything back. And live like a lotus flower, untouched. Take life as a beautiful game and learn the art of sportsmanship -- that's what sannyas is: do whatsoever you want to do but be a sportsman. Whether you win or not does not matter, whether you succeed or fail is irrelevant. All that matters is that you played well, that you did your best, that you enjoyed while you did it. To me that is the real thing. Failure or success makes no difference.

In my childhood I used to go to see many wrestling competitions. My village was famous for wrestling; there were many good wrestlers and people used to come from far away to fight with the wrestlers there.

[***some lines are missing here***]

Its whole ideology is the root cause of its misery. Its past-orientation keeps it miserable. It has no passion, intensity, to live in the present. It lives in the nostalgia of the past which is no more. That is sheer foolishness, a waste of time. And the crowd thinks of a future according to its past, a future which is never going to be. Both are non-existential: the past is no more, the future not yet, and between these two non-existences the crowd is crushed. It remains empty, unfulfilled; hence the misery.

A sannyasin has to come out of the mob psychology and its grip. It makes you a sheep not a man. It deprives you of your humanity, it reduces you into a number -- Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist --

which are all replaceable. No individual is ever replaceable, but a Hindu can be replaced by another Hindu, a Christian can be replaced by another Christian. That's why all these religions are interested that people should go on procreating as many children as possible. No religion is in favour of preventing the growing population of the world. The reason is simple: the people who are Christians today will soon be dead; if they stop reproducing children or they limit themselves, then who is going to replace them? Replacements are needed.

Now there are six hundred and fifty million Catholics in the world; if they all used contraceptives, birth control methods, abortion, then soon the Catholics would start disappearing -- and numbers have power. It is a political game: they are interested in numbers.

Just the other day Mother Teresa said that every

[***some lines are missing here***]

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Query:-

Now she remembers that preventing him from only one darshan... and he felt such a shock, a trembling, that recapitulating the whole scene she understands the meaning of it; that for him, it was as if that was the last -- who knows whether tomorrow one will be here or not?

This is the way one has to live: each moment has to be the last moment, so why life-half-heartedly? You may not be able to live another moment, so put all that you have got, risk all that you have got in that moment because who knows about the other moment?

This is the way to live! And when you don't care about the result you become a lotus.

I have chosen the colour for my sannyasins: this is the colour of the lotus, and the lotus has to be remembered a again and again so that you can go on getting deeper and deeper into the now and here -- but, unattached, unclinging, untouched. No future, so that you can be totally, and no past so that you remain untouched.

Once that happens life is bliss! Unbounded bliss, infinite bliss, eternal bliss.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #27

Chapter title: None

27 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101275

ShortTitle: POND27

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.]

White Cloud is a beautiful name. It symbolizes my whole philosophy.

The white cloud represents many things. Basically, the color white is not a color. In one sense, it is a transcendence of all colors; and in another sense, very paradoxically, it is the synthesis of all the colors. All of the seven colors are part of whiteness. When they meet and merge in a certain proportion white is born.

White has the whole rainbow in it. The rainbow is created when raindrops are hanging in the air in the rainy season and the sun suddenly comes out from behind the clouds. The rays are white, and when they pass through the hanging, small drops of water -- so small that they cannot fall and remain hanging in the air --

those drops function like a prism and they analyze the white into all its seven constituents; hence the rainbow.

The rainbow needs two things to exist: the white sunrays and the hanging drops of water. And you can see it only at a certain angle. If you go close to the rainbow it will disappear. If you want to catch hold of it you will never be able to; your hands will just become a little wet, that's all. There will not be any color left.

White is a combination of all the colors, but the combination creates something unique and new, a higher synthesis That's also why I call white a transcendence; it is not any of the colors, it is not just a combination either. If it was only a combination then all the seven colors would continue to exist -- it would be a mixture, eclectic. But it is a true synthesis; all the seven colors disappear and suddenly a totally new phenomenon arises, colorlessness.

There are two colorlessnesses in existence: one is white, another is black. In black there are no colors at 1/08/07

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all, in white there are all the colors. That's the difference between black and white: black is empty and white is full. Black is negative, white is positive. Black represents death and white represents life. Hence, scientists call certain spots in space, black holes.

There are certain spaces which suck things in; if something moves into those spaces, it disappears. It simply disappears from existence, it is annihilated, it is no more. When the black holes were discovered it was really a frightening phenomenon, because even the earth can pass through a black hole at any moment.

It is continuously revolving around the sun, and the sun is revolving around some other sun which is not yet known. And who knows at what point the earth or the sun may pass through a black hole? If it passes through a black hole, it disappears, it goes into non-existence -- immediately, instantly.

But later on they discovered that the white hole also exists; in fact the black hole and the white hole are two aspects of one hole. So you enter into the black hole and you disappear, and you come out from the white hole and you appear again, renewed, reborn, resurrected. If the white hole can be called resurrection, then the black hole can be called crucifixion.

The world has come into existence many times and gone out of existence many times. This is one of the ancientmost discoveries of the eastern mystics. The western religions only think of creation; they have never thought of dissolution. But the eastern mystics have always thought of both together, because one cannot exist without the other. If there is a certain process of creation, then there must be a certain process of de-creation. Only then can life go on renewing itself.

Many cosmoses have come into being and gone out of being. Black represents death, annihilation, rejection, emptiness. White represents just the opposite, fullness, perfection, totality, creation, life; it is a tremendously significant color.

It is not a coincidence that all over the world, all the races, in all times and ages, have colored the devil as black, and death also as black -- even the blackest people on the earth have done so.

It is strange, because the white man has done so much harm to black people that it would have been quite logical for them to depict the devil as a white man. But even the negroes depict the devil as black -- of course blacker than themselves, but still black! It is because blackness simply means all colors are absent; light is absent, hence colors must be absent. Light contains colors, both are in a way similar.

Black is below the colors, white is above the colors. In one way they are the same, and in another way they are totally different -- diametrically opposite.

White represents transcendence, organic unity -- more than just a mathematical addition, one color added to another and another, then seven colors added to each other; that will still be seven colors a kind of unity, but not union.

Union means all the seven lose their individuality; and because of that surrender, a totally new organic being is born which is not just the result of addition but something plus, something more than the sum total of the parts. That is what I mean by transcendence.

So it is a beautiful word.

And cloud is also very symbolic; it represents freedom. A cloud has no roots. It is absolutely free. It is not tethered anywhere, it has no home; hence in the East we have always thought of the sannyasin as a cloud, because he makes the whole universe his home. He does not belong to any particular race, religion, dogma, doctrine, country, church, state. He drops all these limitations. He becomes, in a sense, just like a cloud -- floating, without being hindered by any boundaries.

A Chinese cloud can come into India without any passport, no visa is needed. Clouds don't believe in such stupid things. They don't bother about governments, geography, and the map: "We should not enter this territory -- this is India, this is Pakistan, this is Germany, this is Italy -- and you have to keep to your own country." They go on floating all over the universe. That freedom, that unboundedness has to be one of the basic experiences of a sannyasin -- he has to become a cloud.

The cloud is also free in another sense, in a far deeper sense -- it has no destiny, hence it does not care anything about the future. There is no tomorrow, this moment is enough. It does not live for any results, it is not end-oriented. It enjoys the moment -- the sun, the wind -- it dances in the wind, in the sun, without any idea of what is going to happen next. There is nothing like 'next'; this moment is all.

So it never moves towards a particular destination; hence it cannot be frustrated. If the wind is taking it towards the south it goes to the south, if the wind suddenly changes its mind -- and winds are crazy, irrational; if suddenly the mood changes and the wind starts moving towards the east, the cloud will not resist. It will not say, "What is the matter with you? We were going south and now suddenly you turned towards the east -- what has happened? And I have been desiring so much to go to the south and I had 1/08/07

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planned so many things, and I wanted to visit so many places... Now this sudden change is like a shock, and I don't want to go to the east."

No, there is no resistance from the cloud. As the wind changes, the cloud simply starts moving towards the east or the west or the north -- wherever the wind is going. Or if it is not going anywhere, the cloud simply remains wherever it is, with no desires of its own. That is its total surrender to existence.

Jesus says, "Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done." That's exactly the innermost core of the symbol of a cloud. And when the cloud is white, both these symbols, with all their multi-dimensional meanings, come together.

A sannyasin has to be a white cloud -- creative but free, loving but untethered, containing all but not confined by anything, always remaining a little above, a little beyond.

Life is noble only when it functions according to the law of love. It is noble when it functions lovelessly.

And millions of people -- the vast majority, almost ninety-nine point nine per cent -- live in deep ignobility.

They think they know what love is, and that is their first barrier to attaining to love.

Love is such a great mystery that even those who have loved tremendously don't know exactly what it is. It has never been defined and it will never be defined. By its very nature it remains indefinable. You cannot put it into words. words are too small and love is so vast. Words cannot even contain a far away distant echo of love; but millions of people live with this stupid idea that they know what love is, and this idea that 'I already know what love is' prevents them from enquiring into the phenomenon of love.

This is a strange kind of disease, it is infectious. It is given by the parents, by the teachers, by the society, to every child. People start telling him 'Love your mother, love your father, love your brother, love your sister,' and nobody ever helps him to understand what love is, nobody ever makes it clear to him in what direction he has to search for love. They just go on preaching to him: 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.'

And he does not know what love is in the first place, so he starts looking around and starts imitating. He sees that the mother says she loves the father, the father says he loved the mother, so he learn that this is what love is all about. And what he sees is ugly. He sees that they are continuously quarrelling. And children ere very alert, very intelligent. Their way of understanding things is not like adults, because they have no prejudices at all. They can see immediately, directly. Their penetration is really keen. They have no clouds in their eyes, no cobwebs, nothing hinders them from seeing clearly what 'love' is. Whatsoever they find in their home, in their family, they think is love, and they will repeat the programme in their own life.

They will do the same to their wife as their father was doing; they will do the same to their husband as their mother was doing.

Every child is going to repeat a certain conditioning which he caught when he was very small. And he will also think that he is loving that he knows what love is -- and this is not love at all. It is something else parading as love, something not only different but antagonistic to love.

The first thing my sannyasins have to understand is that they don't know what love is. From there the enquiry begins. Then you can put aside all your ideas and prejudices that you have gathered from others.

They had gathered them from others in their own time and so on, and so forth.

I don't know whether or not even god loved Adam and Eve. The way he behaved with them does not show love. Just for given in to an innocent temptation -- which is very human -- he threw them out of heaven. The punishment is too much. The crime was nothing; and if it was a crime, the person who was responsible was god himself.

One can expect a little bit of psychological understanding from god. If you prevent children from something you can expect that they will do it. The very prevention is a temptation; so it is not the serpent who tempted them, it is god himself... saying to Adam and Eve 'Don't eat from these two trees -- one is the Tree of Knowledge, another is the Tree of life.' Now both trees are so significant.

Each child is born with an intrinsic capacity, a longing to know. Now to prevent, to say 'You are not to eat from the tree of knowledge,' is really nasty! (laughter) The longing to know is so human, it is so basic to human nature, that only idiots don't have it, imbeciles don't have it. And Adam and Eve proved that they were not idiots, they were not imbeciles. They took the challenge, they risked even paradise.

And humanity should feel grateful for that; otherwise we would still be in paradise, like cows and buffaloes (laughter), grazing around, avoiding the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of life. And once they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, he threw them out for the simple reason that now they would try to eat from the second tree. Now that seems to be a really jealous god, because the second tree was the Tree of life

-- if you eat the fruit of it, you will become immortal. That is the second deepest longing in man.

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These are the two fundamental desires: to know what it is all about and to attain a state which is beyond death. And I cannot see that there is any sin in it. Why is man not entitled to know why he exists, what for?

It is his birthright! He has to know the meaning of his existence. And he has to know whether life exists beyond death or not, because that will be very determinative, it will give a whole different texture to his life.

If life ends with death then all his values will be of one kind. If life continues even beyond death then he will have a different world of values then he has to think of immortality, of eternity, and he has to live accordingly.

If life ends in death, then what is the point of bothering about religion, philosophy, virtue, meditation, good and bad? What is the point of it all? If it is just going to end in death totally, then the whole of life loses meaning. Then it is a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing. From the cradle to the grave it is just an accidental process -- one sequence is being followed by another -- but there is no intrinsic meaning, no significance. Hence man is entitled to know whether he exists beyond death or not.

These are the two basic queries, these are the two fundamental religious quests, these are the two wings of the enquirer: to know the meaning and to know whether that meaning has some eternity to it or is just temporary, whether it is only in time or also beyond time? Everything else depends on these questions --

and god prohibited Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of those two trees.

And the serpent seems to be one of the benefactors of humanity. What he said to Eve... And certainly he persuaded Eve first, because it is difficult to persuade a male chauvinist! He is egoistic, aggressive, he will argue, and this and that. The woman is more receptive, hence all advertisements are addressed to the woman.

Now they say that if you want to sell something, don't write the letter directly to the woman, write the letter to the husband, address it to the husband, but write on top of it with red ink 'Personal'! Then the woman is bound to read it. And once the woman reads the advertisement the work is done. And the serpent was the first advertising expert! (laughter) He did perfectly well, he persuaded the woman. She was more receptive, she could understand. And the reason that he gave was that god is jealous; he knows he is immortal and he does not want you to know or to become immortal, because if you know and become immortal you will become gods, and he is afraid of you becoming gods. He wants to keep you in submission, and only if you are ignorant will you remain servants. Only if you don't know that you are just like gods will you function as subordinates. Once you know you are gods, then you will hove a totally different religion. Then that religion will not be like Christianity or mohammedanism or Buddhism or Hinduism. It will be more like an assertion of Al Hillaj Mansoor: 'Ana'l Haq -- I am god.' Or like Gautam Buddha asserting that there is no god except you. Then there is nothing to worship. All that you have to know is your own being, and by knowing it you will know all.

The Upanishadic Rishis say 'Aham Brahmasmi -- I am god.' This looks almost sacrilegious to the Christians, to the Mohammedans, even to the Hindus! The declaration 'I am god' looks very egoistic, but it is the truth; but one can know it only when the ego is dropped. one cannot know it before.

Since those days every parent has been trying to control the child, condition the child, make him obedient, give him prejudices, ideas -- what is right, what is wrong -- in every possible way programme him. This programming has to be put aside by a sannyasin so that he can again become as pure as Adam and Eve.

That's my idea of creating a new commune consisting only of sannyasins. It will be the first experiment of creating the Garden of Eden again, where everybody lives innocently and everybody is allowed to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of life, to one's fill, as much as one wants, as much as one desires, where no prohibition, no commandment, no restriction, no slavery exists. A commune where freedom is the only law. And only in that freedom can one know what love is. When you are totally free, love arises in your being, of its own accord. It is not something to be learned from the outside. In freedom you open up like a flower -- a rose, a lotus -- and then there is fragrance. That fragrance is love.

It is indefinable, nobody can say exactly what it is. To believe in it is not right. The only way to believe in it is to know it -- and that's my whole effort here; the moment you know your own love energy, flowing, surrounding you like an aura of light, a certain flavour, then there is nobleness.

Nobleness has nothing to do with birth. It certainly has something to do with a new birth, and sannyas is that new birth -- being born anew into the world of freedom, love, bliss, awareness. And then whatsoever you do is noble, whatsoever you are is noble. Your very existence becomes nobleness.

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The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #28

Chapter title: None

28 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101285

ShortTitle: POND28

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 function in two ways -- either ss a head or as a heart. And both are polar opposites to each other; their languages are different, their rhythm is different, their dimension is different, their whole world is different.

Head consists of logic, calculation, cleverness, cunningness; it is a prose style of life, mundane and superficial, but efficient, very useful to the society, because man functions through the head almost like a machine -- and that's what the society needs. The society is not in need of men, it needs machines. That's why it goes on replacing man by more and more machines. Sooner or later man will become absolutely irrelevant. He is already on the way out, because machines can do the same work more efficiently, more correctly. They are more reliable -- they don't go on strike, they don't create any labour trouble, they are never rebellious, disobedient, they don't know how to say no. Hence the society teaches every person to become a head -- that is a subtle politics.

All the schools, colleges and universities exist only to perpetuate that subtle politics. In the name of education what is really done is to reduce human being to mechanical devices. And of course those who are successful in that are rewarded, are respected, become rich, become famous.

The heart is neglected, ignored, because it seems of no use to the society. The heart consists of love instead of logic. The heart is intelligence and intelligence is never cunning. It need not be.

Cunningness is a poor substitute for intelligence. Call it cleverness, but it is the same thing, only with a better label.

The heart consists of such a great intelligence that it is impossible for it to be cunning; hence it becomes innocent. Intelligence is always innocent. It is only the stupid person who is cunning and clever. Intelligence is childlike, with the same purity, with the same wonder, with the same awe.

The heart consists of a poetic lifestyle. It has depth, infinite depth. It is not superficial. Because it has depth, because it has a certain interiority to it, it becomes unapproachable for the society. Only the person is capable of reaching his heart, nobody else can do it; hence it gives you an individuality.

The head gives you only a personality, and persona means a mask. The heart gives you your original face, and the whole status quo is afraid of the original face because the person who has the original face is bound to be rebellious. He cannot bow down to stupidities, superstitions, exploitation, oppression. He cannot humiliate himselF. He would rather die than live with compromise.

Hence society has made a certain strategy to lead the child's energy towards the head, bypassing the heart. And a man without heart cannot be noble. If you don't have something for which you can die you cannot be noble. You don't have any spine -- how can you be noble? You don't have any commitment to existence -- how can you be noble? You don't have any involvement with life -- how can you be noble?

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Query:-

Nobility needs that a person should be so totally independent, uncompromisingly independent, that whatsoever the consequence, come hail or hell, he is determined to remain himself. Very few people have shown that much courage -- a Jesus, a Buddha, a Socrates -- very few people, but they are the salt of the earth. If there is some nobility in existence it is because of these few people. They have contributed colour, beauty, benediction.

The heart is basically poetic, hence it is unpredictable, and society depends on predictability. society does not trust the poets, the musicians, the dancers, and never the mystics, because they are really far gone!

(laughter) The poet is still hanging around the boundary; sometimes he is prose, sometimes he is poetry, sometimes calculation, sometimes intelligence. He is just living in a boundary world. He goes to both worlds, he is a visitor in both worlds; he moves between the heart and the head. But the mystic has completely dropped the head, he has chopped it off. He lives only through the heart. He is pure poetry, pure song, pure dance, for no other reason than the sheer joy of it!

And to me, that is the very essence of religiousness. Only that state is capable of knowing the truth. And the moment you know the truth you become the truth -- that's what nobility is: Mind is encapsulated, closed. It is not vulnerable, it is not open. The brain is enclosed in a hard shell not only physiologically, but also metaphysically.

Mind has no windows, It is windowless, hence the mind is bound to be a fanatic. It may be a Hindu mind or a Mohammedan mind or a Christian mind -- it makes no difference mind is going to be fanatic. It is not available to see, to experience. It lives according to its prejudices, it is already contaminated, conditioned.

Mind is nothing but all your conditionings together it is whatsoever the society has given to you -- the parents, the teachers, the priests, the politicians, all the do-gooders, all the so-called well-wishers. And I am not suspecting their intentions -- their intentions may be good, perhaps they are good -- but the result is ugly, because those intentions are unconscious. Those people don't know what they are doing.

The last prayer of Jesus to god was: 'Forgive these people because they don't know what they are doing.'

And this is true not only when you are crucified; this is true when you are brought up tool when you are educated, then too. When everybody is trying to help you to have a certain shape, a certain character, a certain morality, in fact they are crucifying you. The cross is invisible; they are cutting your nature, chopping your spontaneity, making you fit to some ancient prejudice which may be absolutely irrelevant today. It may not have been relevant ever, it may have been just an invention of the cunning and the clever, it may be a conspiracy between the priest and the politician to dominate the world, to subjugate people, to enslave humanity; but mind lives in this enclosed world, unavailable to the sun, to the rain, to the wind, unavailable to anything new.

Mind is old and reality is new every moment hence there is no communion between reality and mind.

To be in the mind is to be ignorant, to cling to the mind is to cling to one's ignorance. Meditation means coming out of the mind, getting out of the mind, making a few windows and doors into the mind, becoming less fanatic, more available to reality, more open to the new, less attached to the old and the dead. That's what meditation is. It is a revolution, from mind to no-mind, a radical transformation, a quantum leap.

The moment you become open, available, unprejudiced, the moment you are ready to so with the truth wherever it leads, the moment you are ready to sacrifice all your knowledge, superstitions, theologies, religions, political ideologies, just to go with the truth, you start growing a new quality in you. That quality is meditativeness, and that quality is so blissful that once you have tasted it you will not like to go back to the mind, because mind is an imprisonment and meditation is freedom. And only in freedom do you open up like a lotus flower.

With the mind you remain in darkness, just like a seed, carrying great potential but never giving it a chance to become actual. Meditation creates the situation, the climate, the soil, for all your seeds to row, to sprout, for all your buds to open and become flowers. Meditation is a spring and suddenly thousands of lotuses start blooming in your being.

To me that experience is godliness or nirvana. I don't believe in a personal god, I cannot believe in a personal god, because I have searched and I have found only godliness but no god. I have found love but no lover. I have found only qualities. Metaphorically it is okay to call it god, but I have found freedom, love, godliness, silence, awareness, beauty, truth. All these are qualities of one organic unity, different aspects of the same phenomenon, but the phenomenon is more like a verb than like a noun. It is more like energy 1/08/07

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exploding than like a person confined and limited; hence I don't teach prayer because prayer believes in a personal god. It is addressed to a personal god, it is ar I-Thou relationship. The Thou is absolutely needed.

I teach meditation because meditation is not a relationship at all, it has nothing to do with I or Thou, if the Thou is needed, then you will never be able to drop your I either, because prayer needs both! There must be one who is addressed, otherwise it looks insane. And if you have to address a god, you have to be there to address. So I and Thou are two aspects of the same coin, they are joined together intrinsically. You cannot drop one without dropping the other; either you have to keep both or you have to drop both.

Meditation drops both. It has nothing to do with Thou, it has nothing to do with I; it is moving into the very depth of your being, where only silence prevails. And that silence is so absolute that there cannot be any disturbance of the ego. Ego is noisy, ego is part of the mind. It cannot be part of meditation. hence I say emphatically that all the prayers of all the religions are head-oriented. They may talk about the heart but that is mere talk. Prayer basically is a head phenomenon, it is an address from the I to some unknown, invented Thou.

Martin Buber has written a book on prayer and he calls it I AND THOU, and he thinks that that is the ultimate in religion. I feel sorry for the old man -- he was a good man but he remained in the old Judaic, childish idea of I-Thou. He thinks that is prayer, he thinks that is the ultimate in religion.

It has nothing to do with religion. It is not even the beginning -- what to say about the ultimate? The ultimate of religion is total silence -- no prayer, no verbal communication, nothing has to be said; there is nothing to say and there is nobody to say it either -- and in that silence something opens of its own accord.

We in the East have called it the lotus, because that is the most beautiful flower in the East. We have actually called it the one-thousand-petalled-lotus, sahasrar.

There is no lotus with one thousand petals, it is just a metaphor. One thousand simply represents infinity, a lotus with infinite petals, which go on opening, on and on and on, and there is no end to it.

There is a world outside, a big, vast, enormous world, but there is also a world inside, bigger than the outside world. If the outside world is infinite then the inside world is far more infinite (laughter). Mahavira has the right word for it; he calls it 'infinitely infinite', not only one-dimensionally infinite but multi-dimensionally infinite. 'Anantanant' -- that is his word.

A line can be infinite if it goes on and on and on, never ending; but from the same point you can drag many lines and all those lines can go on and on infinitely. That's how the inner world is: infinitely infinite.

The kingdom of the outside world is temporal. One can even become Alexander the great, but compared to the inner kingdom even Alexander the Great is just a beggar and nothing else. And it happened many times in Alexander's life -- the first time when he met Diogenes in Greece, he felt suddenly that he was a beggar. The comparison was so clear, unmistakably clear. Diogenes was a naked mystic, he had nothing. He had fewer possessions than even Gautam the Buddha. Gautam the buddha had at least three robes and one begging bowl. Diogenes lived naked, without a begging bowl, absolutely possessionless, but Alexander felt poor. The radiance, the richness, the blissfulness, the ecstasy surrounding Diogenes was so much, so tangible -- you could have almost touched it. The fragrance of the man was such that Alexander remembers later on 'That was the first time I felt belittled -- and that too before a poor man, the poorest that I have seen, but before that poorest man I was poor, he was not. I felt jealous.'

He even said to Diogenes 'If god gives me another chance to be born again I will ask him 'Make me Diogenes rather than Alexander the Great."'

The presence of Diogenes must have penetrated very deep, for Alexander was a very egoistic man. How can you account for his whole life if he was not egoistic? His only desire was to conquer the whole world.

Diogenes asked him 'What is the purpose? I wonder sometimes, why do you want to conquer the whole world? And even if you have conquered it, accepted that you have conquered it, then what?' Alexander said

'Then I will rest.' And he laughed, Diogenes laughed. He said 'This is sheer stupidity. You can see that I am resting without conquering the world, so why can't you do it right now?' And he was resting, he was taking a sunbath when Alexander went to see him, just lying naked under the sun, in the sand by the side of a river, listening to the music of the river. He said 'I am resting, relaxing, and who is preventing you? And I don't see the point -- how it is related with conquering the world. I have not conquered, and if I can rest -- and you are a man of logic, I know that you are a disciple of Aristotle, the father of logic -- then you can understand that there is no cause and effect relationship between conquering the world and relaxing.' And of course, Alexander could see the point.

He felt ashamed, looked down, could not answer -- he could see, it was absolutely logical, if a man can 1/08/07

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relax without conquering then why is it you cannot relax? It is not connected at all. He said 'I can understand. Can I help you in some way, I feel so obliged. Your presence has given me so much I would like to do something for you, and I can do anything, you just ask; nothing is impossible for me.'

Diogenes said 'But I don't have any desires so what can I ask for? But if you are really feeling to do something then just stand a little aside because you are blocking the sun (laughter), and I will be immensely thankful to you!' That's all he asked. It haunted Alexander his whole life: 'That man, what did he have?' And then when he came to India he met again two persons of the same calibre, of the same depth.

One man he met was a Brahmin, a great mystic, and he wanted the Brahmin mystic to give him the ancientmost scriptures of the world, the Vedas. The Brahmin said 'You come in the morning, and in the morning, early in the morning as the sun rises I will give them to you.' And the story is that the whole night he went on reciting the Vedas before his two young sons. There was a fire, he would recite a page and throw the page into the fire. By the morning when Alexander returned, the last page was being read and thrown.

He saw the last page being thrown and consumed by the fire, and the old Brahmin said 'You can take these two sons of mine, they remember everything! Those books I could not give to you. That was not possible because the person who had given them to me has made me promise that they be given only to the initiates.

These two boys are initiates and they remember everything, so you are not missing anything. Whatsoever you want they will reply. The whole night I have been working for you -- you can keep these boys.'

Alexander could not believe, such memory! He asked other Brahmins 'Is it true?' And the other Brahmins came and examined those two boys -- and Vedas are big scriptures, thousands of sutras -- and they had to agree that those two boys remembered every single word. 'How is it possible?' he asked the old man. He said 'There is no difficulty because these two boys know what meditation is. It is not a memory of the mind -- that has limitations. It is a totally different kind of memory that comes not through intellect but through intelligence, that comes not through cramming, repeating something, but that comes only through understanding. These are great meditators. I have prepared them for meditation. They listened in silence, in absolute silence -- there was no disturbance. They listened to it from their very interiority. There was not a single thought when they were listening to me, hence there is no distraction. They can repeat, whatsoever you want they will answer.'

That was his second experience that there is a way of understanding which is not of the mind, which is not to be taught. There is a way of life which can only be caught and not taught. They were so silent that they simply drank whatsoever was told -- that is the way of a disciple, that is the way of a sannyasin, he simply drinks. It is not a question of argumentation, deciding whether it is right or wrong, it is not a question of pros and cons.

He was amazed, could not believe.

And the third person he came across he remembers was Dandamis, another naked man who reminded him again of Diogenes. He wanted this Dandanis to go with him. Dandamis laughed. He said 'You cannot order a sannyasin. I am like the wind, wherever it blows, it blows. You cannot order me to go here or to go there. I follow my own insight. Nobody can force me to do a single act.'

Alexander was angry. He took out his sword and he said 'If you say no I will cut off your head.'

Dandamis laughed, the same laughter. Again he remembered Diogenes -- the same laughter coming from the same depth. And Dandamis said 'You can cut off my head -- that's perfectly okay, I have no objection about it -- but let me tell you, when the head is cut and falls down, you will see it falling down and I will also see it falling down. You will be seeing it from the outside, I will be seeing it from the inside, and I tell you, to see it happen from the inside is a real miracle. What you will be seeing is nothing.'

Now it is difficult to kill such a man. Again Alexander remembers in his memoirs 'I came across a man who was ready to die laughing! He must have gained something which is far more valuable than life itself.

He must have known something which is immortal, he must have entered into eternity, otherwise how can he say 'I will see it falling, my own head, and I will enjoy it!'

So there is a world outside -- the extrovert lives in it; it is the world of time and death, change, flux. But there is another world too -- the mystic lives in it -- the world of your own interiority, of your own subjectivity. That is meditation.

Mind lives outside meditation is of the inner, and it opens the door or the kingdom, within. And for the first time one really becomes rich; a richness that cannot be taken away, a richness that cannot be stolen, a richness that cannot be burned, a richness for which you don't need any insurance -- it is insured by existence itself -- a richness which belongs to the eternal, the immovable and the deathless. That is the goal of sannyas.

1/08/07

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Query:-

Sannyas is a deep search to really become emperors of the inner world. And everyone is capable of it. If we miss, then it is our own stupidity, our own irresponsibility, our own negligence. Nobody else is responsible for it. It is our choice!

By becoming a sannyasin you are choosing a new adventure, the real adventure of life.

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #30

Chapter title: None

30 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101305

ShortTitle: POND30

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 on two planes: either in time or in eternity. Time is constantly changing it is movement, it is flux. Heraclitus is right about time when he says you cannot step in the same river twice. No moment in time cones back -- it is gone and gone forever. Everything that lives in time is temporary, everything that is born in time is bound to die. Our body belongs to time; one day it was not there, one day again it will not be there. Our mind also belongs to time.

Mind is created by experiences, knowledge and all that is given by the society, the older generation --

the parents, the teachers, the priests. Mind is also going to die. We come into the world without mind, we come only as a clean slate, a tabula rasa, with no writing on it, then time does the writing. As the child grows the writing goes on becoming bigger and bigger.

The grown-up person loses all inner space, he is full af junk from the past. The older a man is, the less innocent he is, because innocence needs clarity, spaciousness. And the old man is so burdened with memories that there is no space inside his being, it is full of furnitures thoughts, desires, dreams fulfilled, unfulfilled, frustrations, expectations -- the whole life that he has lived and the whole life that he has missed living -- all that is there. He is crowded.

And the moment he dies he will have to leave his bodymind here; he will not be able to take it with him.

Our whole education goes down the drain.

If we remain identified with the bodymind complex then we live in the dimension of time. If we become disidentified from the body and the mind we enter into a totally different world, the world of eternity. That is our real nature. We are in time but we don't belong to it. We are like a ray of light penetrating a dark tunnel. It comes from the outside, it comes from somewhere else, from o source of light. It passes through the dark tunnel but it is not part of it. It is alien, it is an outsider.

The body belongs to the world, the mind belongs to the world, but we don't belong to the world.

Experiencing this is meditation. Getting disidentified from all that is part of time is meditation.

George Gurdjieff, one of the greatest masters of this age, used to define meditation simply in this way: identification is a state of no meditation, non-identification is a state of meditation. And the moment you are not identified with the body and the mind and you can watch them as entities separate from you, suddenly, 1/08/07

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instantly, you are transported, time disappears death disappears with it, change disappears with it. Then you are in the world of that which always is, that which knows no past, no future, that which only knows the present, now. The taste of now is the taste of nectar.

Time consists of past and future. Now is penetration of a ray from the beyond, hence the whole art of sannyas is to live more and more in the here, in the now, in the present, in the immediate. This moment is all, end if one can be absolutely absorbed in this moment, caring nothing about that which is gone, thinking not at all about that which is going to come, one realises the beauty of transcendence. I call it the experience of immortality, deathlessness. This has been the search for centuries of all the alchemy schools of the world.

Science functions in time. It thinks in time and space, its whole world is confined in spacio-time. It knows nothing of the beyond, and the beyond is our true being. The very beyondness is our freedom --

freedom, from all bondage, from all limitations, from all misery. And the freedom is not only negative -- it is not only freedom from bondage, it is not only freedom from misery. It is freedom for bliss, it is freedom for the whole sky and the stars. It is not only removal of something: at the same time it is a realisation of our true potential hence it is ecstasy.

To live without knowing it is to live in vain. And once you know it then whatsoever you do has a grace.

Then each action that comes out of your being has a beauty, a creativity about it. Then your whole life has a quality of dance, song, music, celebration -- the very colour of spring. Hence I have chosen orange and all the shades of red for my sannyasins; in the East that is the colour of spring, because then all the flowers open up. They belong more or less to the spectrum of different shades of red.

Life without flowering is a kind of slow death. It is not worth anything. It is meaningless, it is absurd, sannyas gives you significance, an understanding into the deepest mystery of existence. The name of the door that leads to this experience is meditation.

So your name consists of two words. The first is the door, meditation, dhyan, and the second is when you have entered the door, when you have entered the innermost shrine -- that is smrit, that is nectar, that is deathlessness, eternity.

Meditation bring many flowers to your life. It is multi-dimensional.

Mind is one-dimensional. It is linear, like a straight line, horizontal. It moves from A to B, from B to C, from C to D; it runs like a railway train, on tracks. Its approach is mechanical, conditioned. It has no freedom. It is confined to a single line. And millions of people are living like that. In fact all the societies up to now have lived like that.

You must have seen ants moving in a line -- that's how human beings have behaved. And ants and human beings have many things in common. Ants are one of the most primitive societies, perhaps far more ancient than human societies, and they are very highly developed. There is a certain hierarchy, there is a definite demarcation of classes. There are labourers -- hands and heads -- and they all follow the line very obediently, very religiously. You will not find even a single ant moving astray, rebels don't exist. That's how human beings have also done in the past; they have lived in the crowd, according to the crowd, losing their individuality. And the society wants you never to be rebellious; that is against its investments, it is against the establishment, it is against all the vested interests, it is against the status quo.

Hence society emphasises the mind because mind is a crowd phenomenon, it is part of mob psychology.

Society manufactures the mind. From the kindergarten to the university it is nothing but a process of manufacturing the minds. What is called education is not education at all; it is a very destructive process. It is an effort to make you part of a crowd, to cut you to size, to fix you into a certain pattern and structure so that you can become efficient, a cog in the wheel. It does not want you to have any individuality. And that is the miracle of meditation; it takes you out of the mind and imparts individuality to you for the first time.

Meditation means putting the mind aside. By putting the mind aside you have undone all that the society has done to you, you are free from the society. Free from the mind means free from the society. The society may be Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Indian, German, Chinese -- it makes no difference. It may be capitalist, communist, socialist, fascist -- it is all the same game in different names. Maybe there are little differences here and there but they don't make a difference that really makes a difference. Those are just superficial differences. Otherwise every society insists that you be in the mind, that you be the mind and never slip out of it, because slipping out of it makes you a rebel. You start seeing on your own, you start becoming independent, you start enjoying the freshness of freedom. You are no more part of the prison.

And once you have tasted freedom, you can never be a part of the prison. You would rather die than compromise.

1/08/07

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Meditation is real rebellion, but it is individual rebellion. It is not political, it is not social, it is spiritual.

And rebellion can only be spiritual. All political revolutions have failed, without exception, because the people who possess power after the revolution have the same kind of mind. They start creating again the same mob psychology, they start manipulating people, fixing them in a line, forcing them to follow the line.

The flags change, the slogans change, but the basic poisoning remains the same hence I say that only spiritual revolution is real. All other revolutions are pseudo. And spiritual revolution begins with meditation. Meditation is like a snake slipping not of the old skin.

Our mind is an old skin, rotten. Because it is given by others it is ugly, because it has been forced upon us it is against us, it is against our nature. It is the enemy of our well-being. Living in it is cowardly. Getting out of it is being again full of adventure and thrill. Then life goes on opening new visions, new pastures, new peaks to be attained, new targets to be fulfilled, again life becomes a tremendous aspiration. And I call it aspiration knowingly, not inspiration, because inspiration comes from others -- leaders inspire you, priests inspire you. Aspiration comes from your own being, and only that which comes from your own being can have any authentic value.

Getting out of the mind is getting into life, into the very stream of life. It is becoming alive. And the person who is alive becomes a beloved of existence. The whole Existence loves that person. Human beings may hate him, but they don't constitute the whole of existence; they are such a small speck of dust -- there is no need to worry about that. Stars will love you, trees love you, animals will love you, mountains and rivers

-- the whole existence!

Compared to the whole existence and its love, the stupid respectability given by human beings is of no worth at all. Hence it is better to be crucified like a Jesus. The human beings are crucifying him, but the whole existence is showering love! And that is the meaning of your name: become a meditator so that you can become a beloved of existence itself. I cannot say that you will become a beloved of human beings too.

Of course a few human beings, those who are as rebellious as you are... But ninety-nine per cent, the people who have lived like sheep are bound to hate you. They hate you because it is a deep-felt insult to them, it is humiliating. When they see a rebel like Socrates, Buddha, Lao TZu, they feel humiliated, because they can see for the first time, in comparison to these people, what they could have been but are not, and they don't have guts enough to risk and to grow. So the best way is to kill Socrates, to remove Jesus, to murder Mansoor, so that no comparison is left and they can again feel at ease -- at ease in their prison, at ease with their chains, at ease with all their superstitions and stupidities.

My sannyasin have to be aware, that whenever there is a choice between the whole existence and a few human beings... and there are really fewer than we think. Our perspective is not clear, that's why they seem to be so many. Because we only think of this earth there seem to be so many human beings; but scientists say that there are at least fifty thousand planets -- that is the least, the minimum, according to scientific calculations -- fifty thousand planets which must have grown people at least to the level of human beings.

There may be more because we have not been able to explore the whole -- and I don't think that we are ever going to be able to explore the whole. The more we will explore, the more there will be to be explored.

If you think of the whole existence, then human beings simply disappear; they don't count! Then things seem to be very small.

One scientific association publishes a magazine, once in a while, to inform the whole world about atomic danger. Once its first issue it has kept the same cover; from 1960 up to now -- twenty-one years --

the cover has not changed. Only one thing changes on it, just one thing: the cover carries a picture of a clock. They divide the whole history of humanity into one hour. Compared to eternity it is not more than that, perhaps less but not more. Tentatively they divide it into one hour.

In 1960 when they published their first issue they declared that the atomic war, the Third World War was only seven minutes away. So the clock was showing just seven minutes more before twenty-four hours would be complete and humanity would be finished. Then when Kennedy and Khrushchev were almost ready to crash on the question of Cuba they published the magazine and showed that now only four minutes were left, and this year with Ronald Reagan coming into power they have published showing that only two minutes are left.

Two minutes seem to be so small, but in fact they are not that small. If the whole of human history is only twenty-four hours then two minutes are big. But compared to eternity, even twenty-four hours are nothing. There have been millions of years when man was not on the earth -- he has just appeared and can disappear any moment. So there is no need to be worried about human beings -- about their insults and about their disrespect and about their condemnation -- there is no need to worry at all. My sannyasins have 1/08/07

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to be very aware from the very beginning that it is a choice between existence and a tiny, stupid part, which is dominated by past absurdities.

Once you decide 'I am ready to risk everything, to gain a harmony with existence, to be in a deep love affair with existence,' you are a sannyasin. To me sannyas means a love affair with the whole -- and of course, love demands much! It demands commitment, intensity, passionate fervour.

Love is so valuable that one can always sacrifice oneself for it.

How long will you be here?

-- I will be here four weeks.

-- Then come back again, because that is not even seconds! (laughter) Good!

The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #31

Chapter title: None

31 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101315

ShortTitle: POND31

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.]

(To Monika) This is your name: Ma Anand Yogo. Anand means bliss. Yogo means ultimate union.

The misery of man is in his separation from his own source. Man has become like a tree which is uprooted from the earth. Naturally, the tree cannot be blissful; the tree cannot remain alive for long either.

The tree has lost its connection with the whole, it is existing in separation, alienation. And man is also a tree; his roots are invisible but they are there. One is continuously breathing in and out -- our breath is our root. And we are not only breathing through the nose; we are breathing through every pore of the skin.

Through millions of pores in the skin we are continuously breathing in and out.

One experiment has shown that if the nose is left open and the whole body is deeply painted so that all the pores become closed, a person cannot exist for more than three hours, even though he is breathing through the nose. Breathing through the nose may be our main root, but there are millions of roots surrounding us, invisible.

We are in existence as a part of the whole. The moment that is realised, the moment one becomes aware of this unity, great bliss arises, for no reason at all. Suddenly one has found one's home. One is no more a homeless wanderer, one has arrived!

Ordinarily everybody is searching, seeking, desiring; people are seeking money, power, prestige, love, and a thousand and one things, but deep down if you analyse all their desires you will find one single desire: they want to be reunited with existence. Howsoever camouflaged the desire is, a penetrating awareness can find it. Through power man thinks that he will be able to reconnect, he will be capable; powerless what can he do? With money he thinks maybe he can purchase bliss. In love also the deepest desire is to find a certain union with the other. Perhaps the other can become a window to the whole. That's why every love affair fails sooner or later. If one is intelligent enough, sooner. If one is stupid then it depends on how stupid one 1/08/07

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is. Then it takes a longer time. The really idiotic people can love permanently!

But love fails for the simple reason that what we are expecting out of it is not possible through it. It is not love's fault! It is our expectation that gets frustrated. Love is perfectly beautiful. If we stop expecting something which is beyond love then there is no failure; then love is a beautiful phenomenon, a great sharing, a friendship. But unconsciously we are searching.

The man is searching through the woman, the woman is searching through the man, for a door, a window into the whole. And because it is not found... Where can you find a woman who can become a window to the ultimate? Yes, once in a while such women have existed -- a Meera, a Sahajo -- rare women, but they will not fall in love with any man! (laughter) They have no need to.

There have been men who are windows to the infinite -- a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra -- but they will not fall in love with any woman. They can shower all their bliss and joy but you cannot reduce them into ordinary lovers; that is impossible.

So the person, man or woman, who can be found will not be a window, and the person who is a window is not available. The person who is available is going to be a wall! (laughter) And sooner or later you will find that you are hitting your head against it, (laughter) One can make it a little comfortable, one can pad the wall, one can put pillows (laughter) against the wall. That's what all lovers all over the world are doing: padding; putting pillows making it somehow a little bit convenient, comfortable so it does not hurt so much.

The reason for this is that our deep desire is to find some way to get out of our imprisoned state, to get out of this situation in which we are caught, to get rooted again so that we can blossom, flower, grow.

Because it is frustrated, because it is not fulfilled by the so-called love, millions of people have gone against love. They have renounced love, renounced life, escaped to the monasteries, escaped to the mountains, to the deserts; but that does not help either. Only understanding helps. And the most important thing for a sannyasin to understand is that we have to drop all our barriers against the whole. And the basic barrier is the ego; when we think in terms of I, naturally he became divided, separate. Then existence is there as an object and we are the subject, we are separate. If we lose our ego, if we allow it to melt and merge into the whole just like a dewdrop slipping into the ocean, losing its boundaries, suddenly life starts moving in a new dimension -- it is total, it is whole, it is holy.

And then there is bliss. Bliss is a by-product of becoming united with the whole. Misery is separation, bliss is union.

How long will you be here?

-- Two days.

-- Then come back again...

-- I will

-- ... for a longer period -- really long! (laughter)

(To Dod) This is your name: Swami Anand Omkar. Anand means bliss. Omkar is untranslatable (laughter) ... but, a few indications can be given so that you can feel the meaning of it. It is not a word, it is a symbol -- that's why it is untranslatable. It simply symbolises the ultimate harmony of existence.

Existence is an unbelievable, incredible orchestra. Everything is moving in tremendous rhythm. Except for man, everything is part of the cosmos, part of a great festival that goes on and on. It is an eternal festival with no beginning, no end.

Man goes astray. That too is natural, because man is the only being which has the freedom to choose, and the freedom to choose implies that you can choose going against the whole. You can choose to be with the whole, you can choose not to be with the whole. You can choose to go against the current, you can push the river, you can fight the river, or you can choose to relax and let go and be with the river, with no fight, in deep surrender, moving with it wherever it goes.

It is man's prerogative that he has the choice, but out of one hundred people, ninety-nine misuse the freedom. They use it in a negative way. There is a reason why this happens: only when you use your freedom in a negative way do you feel that you have it. When you say no you feel you are free; when you say yes you don't feel that you are free; hence it is part of life's growth that everybody has to say no, has to fight, has to go astray. But this should not become one's whole lifestyle -- then it is stupid!

Once you have learned that you are free -- and saying no is a good way to learn that you are free -- you have to use that freedom to say yes. That yes is sannyas; and the moment you say yes to the whole you become part of the orchestra. You are no longer existing separately, on your own. You are in accord; and then a certain music is felt, a humming sound -- that music is omkar.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

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

Query:-

Omkar represents the ultimate experience of universal music, of celestial music. The symbol is really significant. In fact no symbol has come so close to the truth. Even tao, which is one of the most significant symbols, has not the beauty of om. Omkar comes out of the sound om.

If you go into an empty temple or if you go into the mountains where a few echo points exist, where valleys and mountains echo your sound, then just start humming the sound om, loudly -- om, om, om -- for a few minutes, and then suddenly stop and listen. The valleys, the mountains, are echoing, your own sound is coming back and showering on you like flowers. That echoing sound of om is omkar; something very approximate to it happens in deep surrender.

Your whole being starts dancing in a rhythm, your whole being, each cell and fibre, is humming. There is an indescribable joy, a bliss which is like a fragrance surrounding you, like an aura surrounding you. And at the deepest core of your being there is pure music. The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping.

So there are two ways of life: a life rooted in saying no and a life rooted in saying yes. But I don't think they are opposites. One has to learn to say no in order to say yes one day. If you don't learn to say no your yes will be impotent. If you say yes directly without ever going astray your yes will not have anything in it; it will be contentless. Or if you go on saying no your whole life then too you will have missed the point.

No and yes have to be used as stepping stones. No has to be the first stone and yes the second; and with those two steps the whole journey is complete.

This is your name: Swami Anand Purnesh. Anand means bliss. Purnesh means perfect.

Pleasure is always imperfect. Something is always missing in it; that is inevitable for many reasons. One reason is that pleasure is very momentary, fleeting; you have not even tasted it and it is gone - how can it be perfect? It always leaves you in a deeper misery than you were in before. The darkness now feels deeper, darker, because for a moment there was a flash of light. Before it was there you were accustomed to your darkness. There was no comparison - all that you knew was darkness. But now you know something totally different is possible; hence the misery. Each pleasure is followed by deep misery, despair.

And then a great hankering arises to find the same pleasure again and again. Then a second problem arises: Whenever you experience something for the first time it has a totally different flavor; when you repeat it the second time it is no longer the same thing - the novelty is gone, the newness is missing. It looks a little stale. The surprise is no more there, the wonder is no more there, and when you repeat something again and again it becomes mechanical, flat. That's why husbands and wives look so flat, just like flat tires!

Both resting by the side of a muddy Indian road, nowhere to go, telling each other "I love you," and knowing perfectly well that whatever they are saying is nonsense. But what else to do? - one has to say something. And this happens with every pleasure: every pleasure turns into pain because of repetition.

You may like a certain food very much today, but tomorrow it will not be the same, and the day after tomorrow you will start getting fed up with it.

The word 'fed up' is really good: on the first day you were nourished and by the third day you are fed up.

Within only three days such a revolution!

Every pleasure leaves behind its darkness; and then you hanker for it, but when you find it again it is never the same. But there is nothing else so you go on repeating it, the same vicious circle; every time you find it with great hope, and every time you are standing there looking silly. Hence you feel empty, all hopes gone, and slowly slowly the pleasure turns into pain. This is the nature of pleasure. I am not blaming it, I am simply describing it. I am not a condemnor at all. If somebody enjoys it, perfectly good, but nobody really can enjoy it.

Bliss is always perfect, for the simple reason that it comes but never goes. There is a beginning to it but there is no end to it.

Secondly, it is always fresh, because it is part of eternity, not part of time. It is non-temporal. Thirdly, it does not depend on others; it arises in your own being, it is your own flowering, and because it goes on growing, it goes on and on flowing, you are never tired of it. There is always a surprise waiting for you.

Each moment you are in for a great surprise. The wonder goes on deepening, the mystery becomes more mysterious.

Pleasure can be explained and can be explained away too. For example, sexual pleasure can be explained by chemistry, hormones, biology, physiology; and now brain experts say that it is a very simple phenomenon: a certain center in the brain just has to be triggered and you will get what you call sexual pleasure, orgasmic pleasure. And there is no need for any sexual activity for it; just a small electrode can be inserted into the head and you can keep a small remote control device in your pocket with an electronic 1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

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

Query:-

battery and that will do. You just push the button and the electrode starts playing with your sex center in the brain and you go berserk! You will have great orgasmic spasm, far greater then you can ever have through sex, because sex is a very primitive method, far more ancient than the bullock cart! It is nothing new, even animals know it. And it is a very long route. It has to pass through many hurdles by the time it reaches to the brain. Sometimes it never reaches to the brain - then it is just local, a futile effort.

For thousands of years women have never thought of orgasmic pleasure because they were not having it.

In fact the woman who used to have it was afraid to tell because that was a certain sign that something was wrong with her. Ninety-six per cent of all women throughout human history have not had any orgasm. Even today, in countries like India, it is very rare to find a woman who has ever experienced orgasm. The chemistry and physiology of men and women are different; the woman takes a little longer to achieve orgasm and the man is in a hurry. The woman is eastern and the man is western. He goes at such a speed, he has so many other things to do... he is just on the run! It is a hit-and-run affair! And the woman takes a little longer, because her sexuality is spread all over the body, it is not local.

Unless her whole body becomes involved, excited, she will not be able to trigger her brain center. Man's sex is local. These things can be explained very easily and better methods can be found.

Now thousands of women in the West are using electric devices for stimulation. It is ugly in a way it shows how humanity is falling into fragments. Man is losing integrity. And once a woman has used some electronic device or some electronic vibrator to have sexual orgasm, then no man can ever satisfy her, because no man is an electric vibrator! And men are not far behind....

I was thinking that reports are always coming about women, again and again - but what about men? And just the other day, a report came from England that many cases have turned up in the hospitals, of men who have been trying to sexually stimulate themselves with vacuum cleaners. It looks stupid, but then they end up in the hospital because their skin was caught in that vacuum cleaner and they could not get out of it! But once a man knows how to use a vacuum cleaner then the days of Sophia Loren are over... then who cares about her?

Pleasure can be easily obtained. It has its sources in the body, but bliss has no source in the body, not even in the mind. It is a spiritual phenomenon. It happens in your deep meditation when you are no more the body, no more the mind, when you are just a pure awareness, just a deep silence, a pool of silence. In that cool silence some lotuses bloom, and they are eternal lotuses. They cannot be explained away by anything and they cannot be replaced by anything.

But only very few people have known bliss. My effort here is to help you to know it on such a wide scale that millions of people around the earth will taste something of it, because that will be the only possibility for humanity to survive - as humanity - otherwise mans whole life is going to be dominated by machines. People will be marrying machines, people will be carrying machines, people will be living with machines - and machines are efficient, replaceable, with no problem of divorce, no problems of relationship

- but what kind of humanity will that be? It will really be an insane world; but we are exactly on the verge of it.

Unless some deeper sources of bliss are released, man is bound to go insane because all pleasures fail sooner or later, and all pleasures become frustrating and all pleasures turn into their very opposite, pain. If pleasure is the only thing in life then suicide is going to be the dominating philosophy, because when all pleasures have failed and you have seen all pleasures turning into pain, what else is there to live for? Hence humanity is living under a dark cloud of a global suicide. Man can decide to commit suicide. It has always been individuals who have committed suicide, but man as a species can decide to commit suicide.

The only way to save humanity is to release some new dimensions of bliss - and they are available, they have always been available although they have never been made available to the larger part of humanity.

They were never able to understand, never ready to listen - even today they are not ready. But I think that this is the time to take the risk,.whether people listen or not, whether they understand or not. Even if a small portion of humanity can be transformed into a state of bliss that will be enough to create a small possibility for a future human being, a new human being.

This is your name: Ma Anand Shivano. Anand means bliss. Shivano means goddess of good.

The experience of bliss is the source of all that is good in life, not vice versa as has been taught for centuries to all human beings. The priests have said again and again to the people, "If you are good, if you are moral, virtuous, you will be rewarded with bliss." That is simply not right. It is putting things upside-down.

1/08/07

Copyright Osho International Foundation 1994

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

Query:-

The real thing is totally different: if you are blissful then whatsoever you do will be right, good, moral, virtuous, because a blissful person cannot harm anybody - it is impossible. A blissful person can only give to people what he has got. One can always give only that which one has got. The miserable person cannot give bliss to others. In the first place, he himself has not got it. He may intend to do good, but whatsoever he will do will be wrong.

Even Adolf Hitler's intentions were not bad. They thought they were trying to do good for the people.

Adolf Hitler killed millions of Jews, with good intentions, because his idea was that the Jews are the real problem; if they are removed from the earth there will be no misery on the earth. His logic was wrong but his intention was not wrong.

And he used to think that the German Aryans, the Nordics, were the purest people on the earth, were made by god to rule over the world; so everybody else has to be subjugated, enslaved. The logic seems to be perfect: of course, the higher should rule the lower. And he was trying hard to bring the higher into power.

His intention was not bad. He may be mad, he was mad, and he was miserable; deeply miserable, but whatsoever he was doing was of great service to humanity - according to himself.

He was wrong - that is another thing. And all the people who have done thousands of wrongs in the past have done them with good intentions. Christians have killed Mohammedans, Mohammedans have killed Christians, Mohammedans have killed Hindus, Hindus have killed Mohammedans, Hindus have killed Buddhists, and this has gone on and on. The whole earth has been a continuous war, murdering each other -

and using beautiful names: Holy War, Crusade, Jehad - in order to bring god onto the earth - "Of course the evil people have to be destroyed, removed."

That whole nonsense happened because of one thing: we told people to do right without first being blissful. According to me blissfulness should be the first thing; then no wrong can ever happen.

A blissful person becomes absolutely incapable of doing wrong. He cannot harm, he cannot hurt; he is always a soothing influence, his very presence is a nourishment. Whatsoever he does comes out of his bliss, it carries something of his fragrance.

My sannyasins have to behave according to this new order of things: bliss has to be their first goal, and then virtue follows like a shadow. Hence I don't teach morality, I only teach meditation, because meditation helps you to discover your blissfulness.

Jesus says, "First ye seek the kingdom of god and all else shall be added unto you." The word 'god' is a little old fashioned, but it is natural; Jesus was speaking two thousand years before me. I will say, "First ye seek the kingdom of bliss then all else shall be added unto you." Just a slight change; replace the word 'god'

with 'bliss', and then it becomes the latest sermon on the mount! Then it becomes the latest message from god himself. Even god himself won't like to use the word god' any more because the priests have exploited it so much.

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