11

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‌CHAPTER 11

22 October 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says he has always had trouble with relationships, including the present one with his girlfriend.]

Mm, mm. A relationship is always a problem because the other becomes the mirror and the presence of the other help you to see your own face in many ways. And the same happens to the other – you become the mirror. Nobody wants to know his real face. That’s why down the centuries people have been escaping to the monastery. These are the cowards! They are avoiding relationship, because in a relationship they are reflected as they are. Alone, they can think of themselves whatsoever they want to think; they can create any image about themselves. So the first problem with relationship is that relationship reflects you and you reflect the other person. And your totality comes up – you are not just the surface.

The deeper you get involved in your relationship, the deeper feelings it will bring up. If you are really into a relationship it will shatter you. All your images will be shattered. All your faces will be tom. All your masks will start dropping. And whenever this happens the person starts to take revenge on the other. That’s why [your girlfriend] goes on saying no. Behind her no there is yes. In fact, she wants to say yes – that’s why she says no – but she is afraid of her own totality.

People have cleared a little ground of their being and they try to live comfortably there. Mm? – the whole is like a vast canvas. They don’t even want to remember. And whenever you are in love your deepest feeling is stirred. With that feeling all other feelings are stirred. Love is almost like a backbone to the feeling body. If your backbone is taken out you will be spineless . . . just a heap, a blob. Your spine holds you together. Exactly in the same way the feeling body is held together by the spine of love. If you are not in love you can control your anger very easily. In fact, if you are not in love at all there will not be any opportunities to be angry. You can control your sadness very

easily if you are not in love. You can manage your life very conveniently; that’s what is being done in monasteries.

The so-called saints are nothing but people who have come to know one thing about themselves: that if they love, all chaos comes into being. If they don’t love the whole chaos disappears. It is a very cheap way to become peaceful. But this peace I don’t teach because this peace is the peace of death. I teach you living peace. I would like you to pass through the chaos and transcend it – rather than escaping from it. Escaping is not going to really change you. You have to pass through these situations.

[Your girlfriend] is almost crazy. She can drive you crazy! But that is the beauty of this relationship: if you go with her, either you will go insane or you will attain to real sanity. Both are worth it, because to be just lukewarm and sane is meaningless. If you fall in love, you also fall in anger, you also fall in hate, you also fall in jealousy, you also fall in possessiveness; you fall in a thousand and one things.

Love is simply a door. With love you open Pandora’s box. You know the story of what happened when Pandora’s box was opened? Everything started coming out of it. The box was closed; only one thing remained in and that was hopeA beautiful story. So when you love somebody everything

comes up. Only hope remains deep down. If you can hope, there is no need to be afraid. If hope also disappears there is no point in relationship. Then get out of it. But again you will have to get into some relationship.

Unless a person has come to know his total being he will again and again go into a relationship. Going into a relationship is just a way to find your soul. to find who you are. I think [your girlfriend] is perfect. Don’t drop out of it easily – struggle.

[The sannyasin asks: What about when I’m attracted to other women? It makes for such a fight.]

It will be, it will be a trouble . . . it will be a trouble. One woman is enough trouble! If you are attracted to too many women, you invite trouble. Then accept it, and enjoy it. You are inviting it.

My feeling is this, that if you can stay with one woman for a little longer period, it will be more helpful. Otherwise the chaos will be too much and you may not be able to manage it. I’m not saying to be with one woman for your whole life – I’m not saying that. If it happens, good. If it doesn’t happen, there is no need to feel any guilt. But to be moving with many women at one time is bound to create much trouble. And it is useless. It will make you very very anxious, full of anxieties, tensions, because each woman helps to bring out something in you which no other woman can do. Each single woman arouses in you a different quality, a different facet. She reflects a different face of you. That’s why there is so much attraction for other women also. One wants to know one’s many faces, the many varieties of one’s being. But then those faces will be too much and you will not be able to cope with it.

First get settled with one woman and let one woman reveal whatsoever she can reveal to you. You help her also so that much can be revealed to her in her being.

If you are moving with too many women you will never go deep with one woman. The relationship will remain superficial and you will start becoming split inside your being. One part will love one

woman and another part will love another woman. You never love two women with the same part – no. It is almost exactly like the mind. If you do mathematics, you do it from one centre. If you do poetry, you do it from another centre. If you become angry, you become angry from another centre. If you play on a guitar, you function from another centre.

The mind has many centres, specialised centres – and the same happens between.One woman

will play on a particular centre, another woman will play on another centre. And it is so with man. Each is so unique it has to be so. So it is as if you allow many women to be around you and they all go on playing on different parts of your being. These different parts will start falling apart because there will be no unity. I will not suggest that you do that.

You move with one woman – with whomsoever you choose. Before choosing, think, meditate, feel. Once you have chosen, at least for a longer period remain with one woman and forget about other women so that the relationship can go deeper. Otherwise it will be spread too thin and you will never become intimate, deeply intimate. And the most beautiful experiences happen only when the relationship becomes tremendously intimatewhen two persons are so close that there is no

privacywhen two persons are so close that trust is infinite. If your woman can still doubt you,

she will not allow you to penetrate her deepest core of being. If you still doubt your woman, how can you allow her your whole mystery? – that’s not possible. And if you go on moving with so many women, nobody will trust you.

So at the most you can have some sexual variety – which is really meaningless; it does not make much sense. In the darkness of the night all women are alike and all men are alike. As far as sex is concerned there is not much difference; all bodies are alike. The difference arises as you go deeper; on the surface there is not much difference. Then you start feeling different nuances of personalities. Love is really different. One person loves in his own way. And prayer is absolutely different for each person; it is absolutely unique. Nobody can pray the way I pray. Nobody has ever prayed, and nobody will ever pray that way.

So my suggestion is, choose one – [your girlfriend] or anybody. And problems are going to be there, so face the problems. Love is not cheap, and it is good that it is not cheap. The modern man is trying to make it very cheap; the modern man wants to make it at no cost. But then it will not give you much; maybe physical release but nothing compared to that which was possible. The possible is always the hard way. [Your girlfriend] can be a good challenge. Take it as a challenge that she says no. Sometimes she says yes, sometimes she says no – take it as a challenge. Love her so deeply that she has to say yes. And for a few months forget that any other woman exists. Let [her] be the only woman in the world, and then you will see that you are getting into it, deeper, more in tune, and one day suddenly it happens when two hearts meet in absolute trust, with no shadow of doubt, you have tasted for the first time what love is.

Otherwise as I see it, millions of people die without knowing anything about love. They may have lived with many women, many men; they may have children, families; they may have a so-called good family life – but they have not known love. Once you know love, your whole being becomes aflame with new light, a new elegance, a new grace. You walk on earth like a God – so at ease, so at home. But the way is that the intimacy should begin with one woman. So never two women at one time. Try it! Good!

[A sannyasin says: I always forget what I want to say every time I’m here!]

Mm. It happens . . . it is natural. When you are with me you are in my light. Then you are not walking in the dark. When you have gone away from me, you are in your darkness – my light is no more.

It is as if two travellers are moving in a dark night – one has a lamp, the other simply walks. The light is on the road, and there comes a point where they depart. The man who has a lamp says, ‘Now I have to go south,’ and the one who has no lamp says, ‘I have to go north.’ Then suddenly he is in darkness. He may have completely forgotten that there is darkness because light was always available.

So you have to learn how to kindle your own light When you are with me, of course things seem simple, because they are simple! When you are with me problems simply dissolve, because I have no problems. Just sitting, listening to me, you start rising higher and higher in your consciousness. From that point, all the problems that you may have brought here seem to be absurd, pointless. They are left far be-hind. They belong to the valley, and you are moving towards the peak, and the sunrise is there. But when you are gone, again, by and by, you relapse into your being – again the valley, again the darkness. Again the problems are there all jumping around you, crowding you, closing in on you from everywhere.

So when you are here with me you have to learn one thing: that problems are never solved; one has only to rise higher in consciousness.

If a child has a certain problem at the age of seven, it cannot be solved really. When he becomes eight years old, one year has passed – the problem disappears. When he becomes twenty years old, all the problems of the childhood simply disappear – not that they have been solved; he has gone beyond them. When he is young, he has different problems. When he becomes old those problems disappear, become irrelevant. He cannot even remember that they were there.

No problem is ever solved. The only way to solve it is to go to a higher state of consciousness. So rather than getting obsessed with a problem and enquiring about how to solve it, put your whole energy into raising your consciousness. Become more alert and more aware. Here with me you start vibrating with my awareness. You simply forget your old habit. You start laughing with me. But back in your old pattern again the problems are there, and all that has happened while you were here with me looks like a dream; it is no more real.

So don’t listen to what I say. Rather try to understand from where I am saying it, where I am standing and where you are being pulled by my presence, what peace starts happening to you when you are here. Listen to that! What I am saying is not to be bothered about much.

One sufi mystic, Byazid, used to say to his disciples, ‘If you don’t do what I tell you to do, don’t be worried about it. But always do what I do.’ You follow? He used to say, ‘There is no need to pay too much attention to my words. You will not be betraying your master if you don’t follow what he says. But you will be betraying him if you don’t follow what he is.’

So while sitting here with me you can do two things. One – you can just listen to my words and try to follow them. Then you have left the essential and chosen the non-essential. Try to feel the vibe that comes to you while you are in my presence, the peace that descends in you, the presence of

being that is suddenly illuminated in you, the breeze that passes through your being. Feel it – that is me! That is my real message.

And carry it more and more within your being. When I am not there try to fall into that tune again. Sitting alone in your room remember me and try to fall in tune with me. And sooner or later you will become capable – because it is not a question of distance. If it can happen here while you are sitting three feet away, it can happen when you are three miles away; it can happen when you are three thousand miles. It is only a question of getting the knack of it And that is the real point to be understood; everything else is just an excuse.

So when you go from here today just try to carry that grace that has happened to you. Hold it . . . remember it. You will feel it is very elusive. If you forget for a moment, it is gone. Remember – still on the road, remember it. Hold it again. Catch hold of it then move. Move slowly so you don’t forget it. Tonight you will be able to take it home. Walk as a pregnant woman walks. A child is there and she has to be very careful; she cannot slip and fall. And it is not only a question of her own body – another being is there, and very fragile.

When you are here with me you become pregnant with my presence. Take it very slowly, carefully. Handle it with care. And tonight you will be able to carry at least a little part of it Then go home and sit and again revive it; again relive it – again it will be there. And once you have learned how to relive it, then try to be more and more in it. And problems will simply disappear. They are never solved – one out-grows them. It is a question of growing. Good!

[A flute player in the ashram’s music group says: I have no inclination at all to be in the music group. I don’t want to play. It hasn’t happened at all recently. I’ve just not been going . . . I’ve not been pulled to go.]

Mm, mm. No, you will feel the pull. There is a certain block in you. You are a solo player – you like to play your flute alone. There is a beauty in solo playing. And when there is a group it is a totally different experience. The solo players feel difficulties because they have to adjust to other people. They don’t have as much freedom as they have when they are alone playing on their instrument

There are cases on record where solo players even have thrown their instruments because that too was a disturbance. You have to adjust to the flute – then too your freedom is curtailed. You cannot be absolutely free; the flute is a limitation. Then by and by one goes on receding into oneself. But I would like you to play alone and to play with the group also. That will give you more richness.

And one should be capable of adjusting with people. It is not only a question of music; it is deeper than that Mm? – otherwise you will become a monk. By and by that sets the trend in a certain direction. Then you will not want to mix with people, because whenever you mix with people you have to compromise. Alone you are absolutely free. Then by and by you will start receding from relationships, because that too is a compromise. One feels responsible for the other, one has to consider the other, and it is not always according to you. It is not always the way you would like it to be. Sometimes you have to go against your will: because the other is going, you have to go.

So it is not only a question of music – it is a question of your whole life. And I never help anybody to become a nun or a monk. My whole effort here is that you should be capable of going to the

interior-most core of your being, and also capable in that same way to reach to others, to their very core of being. One should be capable of swinging from one polarity to the other; then one is richer, more complete, more whole.

You are not alone – you cannot be here in the world alone; you could not have been born. Two persons were ready to play on each other’s body – the music of their love, sharing their energy, and you entered into the world out of that meeting. And one is absolutely part of the whole. Sometimes you play on the flute absolutely alone – one needs freedom – but one needs love also.

Freedom alone without love is desert-like, barren, futile. Of course the desert also has a beauty of its own but just a desert is too monotonous. Love gives you more greenery, more colour. Relationship brings more colour to life. So sometimes move into a desert, be a desert dweller. Sing your solo song – not for anybody, because there is nobody to even listen to it. When you are playing for somebody to listen, again there is a limitation. You have to listen to the listener; you have to compromise with the audience. So sometimes be a desert dweller – just alone, absolutely alone, singing for yourself, playing for yourself, dancing for yourself, so you can be totally free. But what will you do with freedom? One day when you have attained it, come back, mix with people and share it.

So this should be the way: the garden of relationship and the desert of meditation; both should go together. I would like you to continue when you come back (from Goa). There you play alone and then you can continue. And start enjoying it. It will break a certain block in you. You will be freed from your subtle ego. And that subtle ego is like a very silent but nagging noise inside. It will never allow you to be really in your music totally. Nothing is wrong – so many people are playing; mix with them. That too is a training, a discipline. You have to be continuously alert to watch your step. You should not lag behind; you should not jump ahead. An orchestra is a training, a great training in dropping the ego.

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