Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

1 February 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8002015 ShortTitle: WITHME01 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.]

We have chosen the colour of the morning for sannyas to symbolize that each sannyasin is nothing but the birth of a new sun. This is only the beginning of a long long journey. If you allow, then much can happen, but it all depends on you, on how much you allow.

It is very difficult to allow because it needs trust, the same trust which is needed by a child to come out of the womb of the mother. The child has lived for nine months in the womb. It was absolutely comfortable, cosy and now suddenly he is being thrown out of his home. but he takes the risk. It appears to be death in the beginning. It is bound to appear as death because whatsoever the child has known as life is disappearing.

He is moving from the known into the unknown. He does not know anything about where he is going and what is going to happen to him. all is in the dark, but still he takes the courageous jump.

That's what is needed by a sannyasin, because it is a new birth and you are moving in an unknown territory. To leave the ego aside is to leave all your strategies of self-defence, security. It is to leave your mind, your knowledge, your experience. It is to leave the shore on which you have lived for so long and

to get into a small boat. The ocean is vast and there is every kind of danger and the other shore is invisible.

There is more possibility that you will be drowned than reach the other shore. 1/08/07

Osho's books on CD-ROM, published and unpublished

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But if one takes the risk then in that very moment the other shore is reached -- instantly, immediately.

There is no time gap, because in the very taking of that risk the ego is dropped. and with the ego the old disappears totally, leaving no trace behind.

So be ready for this unknown journey, this pilgrimage to the ultimate. and rise like a sun, unafraid, fearless, in absolute trust.

The moon represents two things which are very significant for a sannyasin. One is coolness. A sannyasin has to become more and more cool -- not cold, mind you, but cool. Coldness is death. To be hot is one extreme, to be cold is another extreme. Passion is hot, death is cold. Exactly between the two, in the middle, is a point which can be called cool if you compare it with the coldness of death. It can be compared with the heat of passion, then it can be called warmth -- but it is the same point. From one side it will look warm from the other side it will look cool. At that point, in the middle, the opposites meet. Coolness and warmth are both there -- warmth because one is alive and cool because one is not mad. That is one of the qualities of the moon.

And the second quality is that it has light but not its own. It simply reflects the sun, it is just a mirror.

A sannyasin has to reflect God. He has just to be a mirror. His light is not his own because he has no ego. He lives as a vehicle for God. He is totally surrendered to God. God's will is his only will, he has no other will.

So these two qualities have to be remembered: coolness and a mirrorlike quality. Surrender so that you can reflect that which is. If these two things are achieved life is fulfilled, one has come back home.

Life is divine. In fact life and God are synonymous. There is no God except life, and there is no life except God; they are two terms for the same mystery. But for centuries religious people have been against life. They were living with the idea that if you want to choose God you have to renounce life, you have to sacrifice life in order to be with God. That is utter nonsense, but because of that nonsense millions of people could not be religious because they could not renounce life. It is so unnatural to renounce it. It is your very being -- how can you renounce it? So only very few people, who were pathological, neurotic, became religious. The healthy person remained unreligious, he had to remain unreligious. The religious people created such barriers for the healthy that only the ill, the mentally perverted could get in. Health was something unspiritual.

My whole effort here is to destroy that whole nonsense and to help you to love life. Sannyas is not renunciation of life but a tremendous love affair with life. The deeper you live, the closer you come to God.

The more passionately you live, the more divine you are. The intensity of your life, your liveliness is the only way to reach God.

Nothing has to be renounced. Everything has to be lived with deep awareness, with totality, with understanding, because escape is not a way of growth; hence all the so-called saints who have escaped from life remain psychologically immature.

Maturity is in life, in all its bitterness and sweetness, in all its misery and joy, in its nights and days. One has to learn through these polarities to move alert, conscious, so that one can remain balanced between the two, exactly in the middle.

That's what sannyas is. It is not renunciation. It is rejoicing in life, of course with a different quality than ordinary people live it. Ordinary people live unconsciously -- a sannyasin tries to live consciously. That's the only difference, otherwise both live the same life.

Denis has two meanings from two different languages; both are beautiful.

The first is from Assyrian. In the assyrian language it means wise, a buddha, one who is awakened, one who knows. but even better than that is the Greek meaning; in Greek it means God of wine... one who is utterly drunk, drunk with the divine. Both meanings become two aspects of the same phenomenon: the moment you become wise and awakened you also become drunk, you also become a God of wine, so drunk that there is no way to come back. Once gone into it one is gone forever. One is so drunk with the divine that there is no possibility of becoming sober again. and then life is a dance, a song, a celebration.

It is a beautiful name because it joins two aspects of spirituality together.

That's my whole effort here: to make you wise and yet drunk, to make you drunk, yet wise. I don't want to separate these two things.

1/08/07

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

Query:-

Barbara literally means a stranger, an outsider. But symbolically it means coming with joy. On the surface the literal meaning and the symbolic meaning don't seem to be joined together, but deep down they are joined.

The world is in such misery that whenever somebody comes with joy he appears to be a stranger, an outsider. He does not belong to the world. He lives with people but the people are living in misery and he lives in joy. He looks exactly like the others but he is not like the others. A Jesus, a Buddha, a Zarathustra --

these are strangers, utter strangers. They speak a different language, they behave in a different way. They are a different kind of being: awakened, alert, blissful. Hence the symbolic meaning: coming with joy.

A sannyasin has to both a stranger in the world of misery and yet he has not to escape from it. Rather than escaping from the world of misery he brings joy to the world, he shares his joy.

Sannyas is initiation into that space where one starts belonging to God, where one no more thinks of oneself in egoistic terms, where one starts thinking in terms of the whole. When you start feeling yourself in harmony with the whole great joy arises in the heart. Harmony is joy and disharmony is misery. Whenever we are not in tune with the whole there is misery. Whenever we are attuned to the whole suddenly clouds disappear and it is all sunshine. Suddenly flowers start blooming in your heart, you are full of the fragrance of the unknown, of the beyond. But it happens only in those moments when you are in harmony.

And everybody knows those moments once in a while. Of course they happen accidentally. Just watching a sunset you may feel you are falling into a subtle harmony. Something inside you may become quiet, as the sun goes down your inner turmoil may settle for a moment. The tremendous beauty of the sunset may overwhelm you, may possess you so deeply and so totally that for a moment you forget that you are separate, the observer becomes the observed. And then you feel great joy and great beauty and great silence. This happens, but it happens only accidentally, once in a while.

To be a sannyasin means to learn the art of creating situations where it starts happening more and more and more, to learn the secret art of creating the right space for it so that one day it happens but never leaves you again. That is the day of enlightenment, one becomes a Buddha or a Christ. The day the harmony has become so engrained in you that now there is no more any possibility of separation, you cannot fall back.

You have gone beyond the point of no-return.

Sannyas is a birthday, and it is the birthday of Christ in you. But remember, Christ has nothing to do with Christianity. Christ is synonymous with Buddha. It simply means the ultimate state of consciousness.

The birth of Jesus is not the birth of Christ, they are two different phenomena. The birth of Jesus is one thing -- it is very ordinary, everybody is born like Jesus

-- but the birth of Christ is something extraordinary.

The birth of Christ means that Jesus disappears, evaporates and allows God to take possession of his soul totally. The moment Jesus says 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,' Christ is born. The birth of Christ means the death of the ego.

Here the ego dies and immediately, instantly, something is born in you which has been ready to be born for many many lives, but was hindered because of the ego.

Let sannyas be the death of the ego and the birth of Christ in you.

Real nobility arises through surrendering to God. Real nobility has nothing to do with birth, with heredity. It has nothing to do with blood. It has something to do with a deep surrender to the whole. That is true birth, you are reborn. As an ego you die. Ego is ignoble, egolessness is noble. The moment you die as an ego you are born as egolessness, and egolessness is tremendously beautiful. It has grace, it has something of the beyond in it. It reflects something divine, it becomes a mirror for God and in that very reflecting you attain to nobility.

Only a sannyasin can be noble, because only a sannyasin can be reborn. It is a spiritual birth. But before it can be a birth, it has to be a death. Birth is possible only through death. First crucifixion, then resurrection

-- that's the whole process of sannyas.

The law of inner victory is very strange. In the outer world if you want to be victorious you have to be violent, aggressive, you have to be ready to fight. In the inner world just the opposite is the case: if you want to be victorious you have to forget fighting, you have to drop the very idea of fight. You are not to be violent, you have to be loving, non-violent, compassionate. In a single word, if one is capable of surrendering then only does one become victorious in the inward journey. Victory comes through surrender, 1/08/07

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

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through a deep let-go.

That's what sannyas is all about: a deep let-go, dropping all struggle, fight, aggression, ambition. And when you drop all these things suddenly you become aware that the ego has evaporated, because the ego needs all these things as supports, as nourishment.

The outer victory is nothing but an ego trip. The inner victory is the victory of egolessness.

Man appears to be a mortal -- he is not. Death is the most false phenomenon in existence, because nobody has ever died. Nobody can die in the very nature of things. Nothing ever dies, death is not possible at all. Life is eternal, beginningless, endless. But this can be known only through the grace of God. You cannot know it through your own efforts, your efforts will be small. You cannot know it by your own mind, your mind's reach is small. But if God is gracious it can happen.

So what is needed on your part is to be worthy of receiving God's grace. And that's what my whole teaching is, to be receptive, to be grateful, to be open, to be vulnerable, so that when God knocks on your door the doors are not closed, so that when he comes your eyes are not closed, so that when he comes in your heart he finds you waiting, expectant.

Man's efforts are small. They are good as far as the world is concerned, man can do many things in the world. But as far as the beyond is concerned, man's efforts are absolutely irrelevant.

We can only allow God to take possession of us, we can allow him to do whatsoever he wants to do. We can be in a let-go. That surrender is sannyas, that trust is sannyas, that infinite love is sannyas. One can surrender only and love only if there is infinite love.

I don't say to believe in God. I say experience. Any belief not rooted in your own experience is false. It is dangerous. It hinders your true experience; it prevents your search. It does not allow you to be open to the truth, because you are already carrying many conclusions.

So let this birth of sannyas in you be a discontinuation with the past. Unlearn all that you have learned up to now. Forget your past, disconnect yourself, don't look back. Look in the moment, in the present, and be in a totally relaxed state, available. That availability makes you worthy. God comes only to those who are available to him.

To be available is to be prayerful. To be open and receptive is to be really religious.

Praise is one of the most difficult things to do because it goes against the ego.

The ego wants to condemn, the ego is always negative, it always looks at the darker side of things. It counts the thorns in a rose bush, it ignores the roses -- and if you ignore them then they don't exist for you.

Praise is difficult because of this, the ego finds it almost impossible to praise. It can't look at the positive side of things.

Life has both, the negative and the positive. They can exist only in a togetherness, they are interdependent. Now, it is up to you what to choose. If you choose the negative you become irreligious.

Then your life is a condemnation, a condemnation of everything, and that creates misery. You are surrounded by a condemned existence. And nobody else is responsible for it, it is your own doing. You could have chosen the positive, you could have counted the roses, you could have ignored the thorns. Then naturally praise arises. If you can see the beauty, the joy of existence, the sheer poetry of existence, the music of it all, it is impossible not to praise. But the first barrier has to be dropped.

So my message for you is: if you choose to be with me you will have to risk finding yourself, you must risk finding yourself. And the only way to find oneself is to risk the ego. It is painful, it hurts. You have lived with the ego for so long, you have become almost one with it. But being a sannyasin means that you are choosing the path of egolessness. You will have to drop all that is implied in the ego: all kinds of jealousies, possessiveness, hatred, anger, all that is negative and dark, all that creates hell in you. The ego is the source of all hell. Once ego disappears you are in paradise again.

And by being a sannyasin you are choosing me. So remember it, if you choose to be with me you must risk finding yourself.

But only in the beginning does it look as if you are risking something, because the ego is a false entity.

The master asks only that the false should be surrendered so that the real can take possession of you. The moment you drop the false you become the real. The real is repressed by the false. The false is sitting on the chest of the real, almost killing it. The real is suffocated inside you, it needs to be released. The false has

become the prison, the prison has to be broken, demolished. Howsoever painful the process is it is tremendously paying, ultimately.

1/08/07

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

Query:-

A sannyasin should not look for the close, nearby result. He should have a longer vision, we should see things in the ultimate sense. Then life starts going through a radical transformation.

If you have a very short vision non-essential things seem to very essential. If you have longer vision, a deeper insight, then the case is just the opposite: the essential becomes important, the intrinsic becomes important. The non-essential and the accidental become almost so unimportant that they disappear, they wither away by themselves.

How long will you be here?

(The reply is audible only to Osho)

-- That's good, be here as long as possible... and risk as much as possible! Curtis has two meanings. One is, fit for the court life.

The Sufis call the assembly of fellow travellers, a court. It is really a court. The courts of the kings are nothing compared to it, this is a court. The Sufi word for court is "darbar." And one needs to learn to be very gracious to be in the presence of a master. Where people are praising God, communing with God, one has to be very soft, vulnerable, feminine.

And the second meaning is one who is gracious. Both are connected. In the courts of the kings a formal grace is needed, mannerism, etiquette. But they are superficial. In the court of a master inner grace is needed, an inner silence, a prayerful heart. One has to become a temple. So sacred is the inner silence that it makes you a temple. One has to make a cave in one's heart for the master to

dwell in.

Real grace is needed, authentic grace is needed. A sannyasin has to live the life of inner grace.

To be a disciple is something revolutionary, because it is getting out of the prison of your ego, it is surrender. It is a transformation because it is the ultimate in love.

You can surrender yourself only when there is total love. It is only through love that trust arises, and only when there is trust and the climate of trust, is surrender possible.

Sannyas is initiation into being a disciple. The word "disciple" means the capacity to learn. The egoist never learns; he cannot, he is closed. One learns only in egolessness. That's the whole secret of disciplehood.

Malcolm literally means a disciple of Saint Colomba, a sixteenth century saint. Malcolm was his closest disciple, but he never called himself Colomba's disciple, only a servant. He was happy just to serve the master, it was enough. He learned everything from the master just by being close to him, serving him, never asking a question, never needing any answer. He was absolutely blissful just to be allowed to be close, to serve.

Hence symbolically the name Malcolm has taken on a very significant meaning. Symbolically it means one who is capable of learning without being taught. That's exactly the definition of a real sannyasin, a real disciple: the capacity to learn without being taught.

If you are taught then you are a student. If you learn without being taught then you are a disciple. If somebody teaches you he is only a teacher, a professor. But if somebody's presence is a teaching then he is a master.

So become a Malcolm again. By entering into sannyas enter into that space where being close is enough.

Just to be in the presence is enough. If there is no argument inside you, no doubt, if there is love and trust, then just serving the master, just following the instructions, whatsoever he says, just being obedient is enough. One becomes awakened by this simple process.

One day the disciple disappears and at the very core of your being you find the master, the master of all masters.

Man appears very small -- he is not. That is only an appearance. He is as vast as the sky itself, he contains the sky in him. But we have become too attached to the illusion of being small. We have become identified with the body. The body is perfectly good as far as it goes, but we are not it. We are in it as much as we are out of it.

The sky is not confined to your courtyard; it is in your courtyard certainly, but it is outside the courtyard too. In reality the sky is not in the courtyard but the courtyard is in the sky. And so is the case with man.

The soul is not within you, you are within the soul The body is in God, not vice versa. It appears so because we are not very aware, alert. We have not looked minutely enough.

1/08/07

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

Query:-

Meditation simply means to watch your identification with the body and mind very closely. And as you watch you become aware. What I am saying is simply a fact, it is not a theory. I don't believe in theories. I have all respect for the facts but no respect for any hypothesis.

So watch, and come to realise on your own, not because I say that it is so. Experience that you are not in the body but that the body is in you, the mind is in you, and you are the whole sky. And not only is this body within you, but the stars and the sun and the moon are all within you. To experience this is liberation because one is liberated from all boundaries, all confinements, all prisons, all limits.

To be limited is to be miserable. Misery means limitation. Whenever we feel the limit misery arises.

Bliss means feeling unlimited. No limits, that's the definition of bliss. And that is our true nature, so it is not difficult to attain it. All that is needed is a little awakening. We are asleep.

Sannyas means initiation into a certain path where awakening is possible, where methods and devices are used to wake you up, where other awakened people are trying to wake the sleeping ones. And remember, only one who is awakened can help you to wake up.

No sleeping person can wake another sleep person, that is impossible: he himself is asleep. Hence, unless you can find an awakened person there is no possibility of your being awakened. But there are always awakened people available. Just a little search, a little authentic thirst and you are bound to find one.

Now you are entering into a world, a totally different world. You are not acquainted with it. You are moving from the sleeping world to the world of awakening. That is initiation: your desire to wake up and the presence of somebody awakened who can fulfil your desire.

The whole process of sannyas is that of awakening. We are asleep, not in the ordinary sense but in a metaphysical sense. We don't know who we are, how can we be called awake? We don't know from where we are coming, how can we be called awake? We don't know where we are going, how can we be called awake? We don't know anything that is essential. We know much that is rubbish -- we know everything about the moon and the sun and the earth and we know history and geography -- but we know nothing about ourselves. We know nothing about the knower -- and that should be the primary concern of any real education.

Sannyas is the beginning of a real education. The fundamental is that you have to become aware of yourself, of who you are. And only you can do that.

I indicate the way, I can call you forth. You must have heard the story... Lazarus died but his sisters, Mary and Martha, waited for Jesus to come. They had great trust that he would come and he would call Lazarus forth from death, back to life. The whole village was laughing at their stupidity: how can you revive a man who is dead? But they waited.

Jesus came... Lazarus' dead body was kept in a cave. Jesus went close to the cave and from outside he shouted loudly "Lazarus, come out!" The story is beautiful. The whole village had gathered to see; they saw Lazarus coming out from the

cave, almost dazed, as if he had been fast asleep for four days, as if he had been drunk. He was shaky, trembling, but he came out.

The most significant thing about the story is not that a dead man becomes alive. that is only a parable, not a fact. The significant thing is that Jesus calls forth "Lazarus, come out!" Lazarus has to come out, Jesus can only call forth. He can only shout, you have to listen.

My whole effort here is to call forth Lazaruses. Everybody is dead and asleep, and everybody is lying dead in a cave. The cave of your heart, that is where you are lying dead.

I can call you forth but you will have to come out, you will have to gather enough courage to come out of the darkness, out of centuries-old habits, out of a long long sleep.

And when you are awake, life is a dance, a song, a bliss, a benediction.

The ultimate goal of sannyas is to become a god of peace, to attain the kingdom of peace. Peace means transcending dualities.

Mind lives in dualities -- pain -pleasure, love-hate, success-failure, richness- poverty, birth-death, and so on, so forth. Mind lives in dualities. Mind exists only between two poles as a tension. Mind is a tension between two polarities.

When you see the point, that mind is a tension between two polarities, you stop choosing, because to choose one is to choose the other also; the other comes in the bargain, you cannot avoid it. Although everybody is trying to do that. Everybody wants to choose one out of the two polarities and avoid the other.

That is impossible. It is like my choosing you and avoiding your shadow. That cannot be done. If I invite 1/08/07

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

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you, your shadow is automatically invited, it is bound to come with you.

When you invite pleasure you invite pain, when you invite success you invite failure. Whatsoever you invite the opposite comes. In fact they cannot exist separately. It is impossible to separate them, no divorce is possible. They are really married, and married in a very old-fashioned way, when divorce was not in existence anywhere. They don't know how to divorce.

Seeing this one stops inviting. One becomes choicelessly aware, one stops choosing. Still things will come, but one simply watches them. One is neither clinging to them nor pushing them away. One says nothing, neither yes nor no. One is neither a friend nor a foe. You simply look unconcerned, as if it has nothing to do with you. That cool awareness brings peace. Slowly slowly it deepens, it becomes so deep that even the Pacific is not so deep.

In those depths, unfathomable depths, God is found. God is not available on the surface. God is such a treasure, it can't be available on the surface. It is hidden in the deepest core of your being -- and only peace can lead you there. And the miracle is: when the seeker comes to know God, he becomes God. The knower becomes the known, the observer becomes the observed, the seer becomes the seen. The separation disappears. Then you and God are one. It is in such moments that the seers of Upanishads declared "Aham Brahmasmi" -- I am God. Al Hillaj Mansoor declared "Ana'l Haq" -- I am truth. Jesus says "I and my father in heaven are one."

All the mystics of all the countries and of all the ages have been saying the same thing, that in your profoundest depth you are a god. On the surface you are just a beggar, on the circumference you are a beggar; at the centre you are a god. but to go to the centre means you will have to learn the art of being aware, choicelessly aware. That's what meditation is all about, that's the essential core of sannyas.

Living in freedom -- that's exactly the definition of sannyas.

Now remember to break all the chains, destroy all the walls that surround you. Come out of the prison of your mind, come under the open sky of the heart.

Mind knows only slavery. It can't taste freedom. It is a prisoner, it loves dark holes, the darker the better, the smaller the better. It feels more protected, more safe. To the mind the dark black hole seems to be cosy.

It is the heart that is capable of knowing freedom. To be really free one has to move from the mind to the heart, from thought to feeling. There is one still

higher plane, higher than feeling -- and that is the plane of being.

Mind knows slavery -- one lives in slavery. The heart knows freedom -- one lives in freedom. But going beyond the heart, the ultimate is not being free but being freedom That is totally different dimension. But one cannot take the jump from the mind to the being directly. One has to go through the heart. The heart functions as a bridge.

Living in the heart you start learning the ABC of freedom, you start enjoying freedom, you open your wings. You go a little beyond the boundaries and you will come back again and you go a little further.

Slowly slowly you become accustomed to the beauty of freedom. Then the ultimate quantum leap can be taken. Then you simply become one with freedom. Then you are not free -- even that separation is no more there, then you are simply freedom. Buddha calls it nirvana, total freedom.

That is the goal of sannyas.

Sannyas is the beginning of freedom: freedom from politics, freedom from religion, freedom from all kind of bondages. It is entering into universality, it is dropping the local boundaries. A sannyasin is neither an Indian nor an American nor a Greek, he is simply human. He is neither white nor black because he is not the body, and he is not a christian or a Hindu because these ideologies exist only in the mind and sannyas means disidentification from the mind.

The moment you know "I am neither the body nor the mind," you have become free. And freedom brings peace, bliss and ultimately God.

Only the rebellious spirit comes to release its fragrance. The non-rebellious remains in bondage, and in bondage there is no fragrance. Bondage stinks, freedom has fragrance. Bondage is ugly, freedom has beauty. And only the rebellious spirit can be free.

All the social forces are against individual freedom. Society exists by destroying individuals So one who knows this strategy, this situation, has to find ways and means to escape from the prison that the society and the church and the state conspire to build for everyone.

1/08/07

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

Query:-

There are loopholes and the function of the master is to show you the loopholes from which you can escape. There are a few doors which you have not seen, which are unguarded. There are a few guards who can be bribed, there are a few guards who are absolutely drunk, and if you escape they will not even be able to see you. There are means and methods to cross over the wall. There are people outside the prison -- those people are the masters, the Buddhas -- and one can contact them.

Being initiated into sannyas means that you are trying to communicate with someone who is outside the prison, because only somebody who is outside the prison can help you to come out. He may supply a rope and a ladder, he may show you the way he has escaped. But one has to learn the language of rebellion.

Revolution is social, rebellion is individual. Revolution is political, rebellion is spiritual. Revolution intends to change the social structures on the outside; it is extrovert. Rebellion changes your consciousness, it changes your subjectivity, your way of looking at things. It changes you in your very fundamentals, at your very roots. And when you are free, you start blooming -- the spring has come! And the fragrance that has always been there within you is released.

That is the contribution of an enlightened person to existence: the fragrance that he releases into the world.

Andreas means courageous.

This is the first disciple of Jesus, Andreas. He called Andreas his first disciple. And this is significant, because only a courageous person can follow a man like Jesus. Great courage is needed to follow an enlightened man. It is moving into danger, insecurity. It is moving beyond the boundaries created by the society, the church, the state. It is a transcendence of all limits.

Within limits one can function easily, without any danger, because one is familiar with it, one has been educated for it, conditioned for it, trained for it. When you move into the new you are again a child and you have to learn from

ABC. Only very courageous people, who are ready to learn and who are always ready to learn, can be initiates.

Sannyas is initiation into the beyond... which is not visible, which is not tangible, which cannot be proved, which can only be felt by a loving heart. It cannot be argued about, no proofs can be proposed for it because it is not a question of mind at all. It is a question of going beyond mind. Mind creates limits -- and it is going beyond all the limits created by the mind.

Mind is part of the society. Mind is an agent of the society within you. It functions for the society. It is like an electrode which has been implanted in you.

One scientist, Delgado, has done many experiments with electrodes, very dangerous experiments.

Sooner or later they are going to be used on human beings. In fact society has been using these ideas for thousands of years in a different way -- not so crude, very subtle, but they have been used. Delgado brought it to a very clear-cut focus and now some decision has to be taken. It is far more dangerous than what Albert Einstein and Rutherford and others did in creating the atom bomb. What Delgado has done is far more dangerous, but we recognise dangers only when they have done their wrong.

Albert Einstein was very unhappy and repentant when he died. He had not thought that he would become the cause of such murder as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But once a certain truth is known it is bound to be exploited by the politicians: they immediately jump upon it. It becomes their possession.

Delgado has done an experiment... the mind has different centres for different things. You put an electrode in a particular centre and the mind immediately functions from that centre. For example if he touched your brain centre at a certain point you may start remembering your childhood immediately. The moment the electrode is taken out the memory stops. Put the electrodes on the same point again and the same memory starts up again from the beginning, as if it were just a gramophone record -- with only one difference, that it has an automatic mechanism to go back to the beginning. You take the electrode out, the memory immediately goes back to the beginning. Put the electrode on again; the memory doesn't start from where you stopped it, it starts again from ABC, from the very beginning.

Now these electrodes can be put in the mind without your knowing it. Each child in the hospital can be operated on -- a small operation -- and an electrode can be put there. That electrode can be manipulated from far away, through radio waves. Now the whole army could be ordered to do anything It would follow immediately; everybody would think that he was choosing to do it but it would be just the order given to the electrode through radio waves.

Delgado showed his experiment in a public exhibition. In Spain he fixed the electrode inside the head of a bull and then he showed a red flag to the bull. The bull rushed towards him, mad. Thousands of people 1/08/07

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had gathered to see the experiment, and he was standing there without any arms or anything, just a small mechanism in his hand, nobody could even see it, there were just two or three buttons on it. Just as the bull was reaching him, he was just one foot away, Delgado pushed the button and the bull stopped there, almost frozen. Now this is something tremendously significant for the future of humanity. In Soviet Russia, in China, in communist countries they may have already started fixing electrodes inside small children's heads.

You will grow with those electrodes, you will never know that you are carrying them, and from the Kremlin they can be manipulated by remote control.

But this has been done for centuries. society calls it conscience. It is a long process that the society has been involved in, because it was not aware that short-cuts could be found through the brain centres.

Children have to be conditioned for years, then they become Jews and Hindus and Mohammedans and Communists.

The mind is nothing but an agent of the society inside you. One has to go beyond the mind, then only does one become oneself and is no more part of the crowd, one goes beyond the mob psychology. The only possibility is of getting out of the mind, moving deeper into s state of no-mind, into meditation.

Yes, great courage is needed. And is significant that Jesus called Andreas to be his first disciple. That means that courage is being called. So prove yourself true to the name!

Allen is a beautiful name. It has three meanings. The most fundamental meaning is the harmonious one.

That's the whole definition of god, existence, love, meditation. All that is valuable has harmony in it as its very core. Without harmony there is no god. The harmony in existence proves that something keeps it together, something invisible. Without harmony there is no love. But it is an invisible thread, nobody can see it.

Everybody can feel it. Love makes one aware of the fact that all that is seen may not be all, there may be more than you can see. Reality is not finished with seeing. There is a different plane of feeling too which is far deeper, far more basic.

Without harmony there is no joy; hence the other two meanings. One is cheerful; that is a by-product of the harmonious being. when you are in harmony cheerfulness radiates from you naturally, spontaneously. It becomes your vibe.

And the second meaning is handsome, beautiful. A harmonious person is bond to be cheerful and bound to be beautiful. That is inevitable, because there is nothing more beautiful than cheerfulness, there is nothing more graceful than harmony.

Sannyas is nothing but an effort to bring harmony to your being. The society has divided it into many parts, it has cut you into fragments. But cutting you into fragments it destroys your integrity, it makes you impotent so that it can rule over you. That is the basic political strategy. It has been followed by society for centuries: cut every individual into segments. When he is not whole he cannot stand on his own, he cannot be rebellious, he cannot have any individuality. He is reduced to a slave. He becomes dependent, always fearful. He forgets all about freedom, he forgets all about truth, he forgets all about himself. His whole life becomes just a part of the blind crowd. the politicians and the priests can easily exploit you when you are in fragments.

Integrate a person and he becomes a free individual, nobody can exploit him. Neither nation nor race, nor church -- nobody can dominate him. He starts living

from his own inner centre, his life starts functioning in freedom. That's what sannyas is, it is synonymous with freedom.

Sannyas needs courage. Courage is the most fundamental quality for religious enquiry. It is easy to be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You need not be courageous, in fact you only need to be a coward.

But to be religious you will need courage, great courage -- courage to destroy all the prisons that we have become accustomed to living in, courage to drop all the beliefs, because every belief is a bondage.

If you don't know yet you believe, you are deceiving yourself. Belief is irrelevant from both sides: if you don't know, belief is irrelevant; if you know it is irrelevant. If you don't know, how can you believe? And if you know, there is no need to believe, you know it already. Belief is a very cunning device, but because the whole of humanity suffers from great cowardice, priests have been successful in exploiting.

My effort here is to make you aware that your intrinsic nature is courage. Express it, live it, risk everything for it, and you will not be a loser. Even if life has to be lost, be ready to lose it -- you will gain God. That's the only way to gain God. One has to lose everything. God demands total commitment.

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Courage means only one thing basically. It means trusting the unknown against the known, trusting no-mind against the mind. The mind is known. Ald that is known becomes your mind and all that remains unknown is your heart. The heart never becomes a known phenomenon. It remains mysterious, it remains vague. You cannot define it, it remains definable.

The mind is definable. The mind consists of the past and the memories of the

past. It is like dust gathering on a mirror. If you want to use the mirror you have to remove the dust. But the dust seems to be very valuable, it seems golden, because it is your experience, your knowledge, all that you have learned.

Courage means going beyond that which you know. Courage means to be a child again and again, to be innocent again and again, to cross the boundary of knowledge -- which is a safe place to be because you know it, you are familiar with it. Always dying to the past, every moment dying to the past and being born into the new, into the present -- that is courage.

Buddha says; When a man becomes a sannyasin, that is a lion's roar. He means exactly what I am saying, It is a quantum leap, a jump from the familiar into the unfamiliar. Get ready for it!

Sannyas is only a device to push you beyond the boundaries, beyond that which you have always believed to be safe: It is pushing you into the insecure, because life is insecurity. Death is secure, safe; life by its very nature, is intrinsically insecure.

So only those who are courageous enough can know life. Others only vegetate, they don't live.

Courage can be of two types. The first type is the most prevalent one. The first type is cultivated. You repress your fear and you go on repressing your fear, so much so that it disappears from your consciousness and becomes part of your unconscious. You are no more aware of it and you start thinking that there is no fear in you.

In ordinary situations it will work, but in any extraordinary situation in which real courage is needed you will have a breakdown. The fear will surface again. It was only on the surface that you were courageous. It had not become your soul.

The second type, the second category of courage is spontaneous, natural, uncultivated. It does not come by repressing fear. It comes by understanding fear, by seeing deeply into your fear. And the moment you start looking into fear, the fear starts evaporating because suddenly you become aware that you are not it. It is just an idea in the mind and you are the witness of it. One thing becomes absolutely certain, that you are beyond it, that it does not constitute you or your being. In that very moment courage springs up, wells up.

And that is a totally different thing. In no situation will it leave you. Even death cannot destroy it.

I teach the second type of courage. The first type is needed by all kinds of soldiers all around the world.

The second type is needed by the sannyasin. The sannyasin has to live an uncultivated life, natural, spontaneous, alert, aware, but absolutely non- repressive. Neither fear has to be repressed nor greed, nor sex

-- nothing has to be repressed. Everything has to be understood. And the miracle is that through understanding comes transcendence, through understanding comes transformation.

Sannyas is a death and a birth: the death of the old, of the past, of all that you have been up to now, and the beginning of something absolutely new. Sannyas means that you are becoming discontinuous from your own past, you are dropping the old identity, you are entering into an uncharted territory with no map.

The master can only give you hints. Maps are not possible because the territory is constantly changing.

By the time a map is made it is already out of date; hence all the scriptures are out of date. No map can ever be in tune with reality, because to make a map of the unknown takes time. In the first place it is very difficult to bring the unknown into the language of the known.

It is as if you reach an island where people have never seen any flowers and you want to convey to them the beauty of roses, marigolds, lotuses. How are you going to convey it? Whatsoever you do will not be enough, they will not understand. You will have to find a few metaphors. For example, on the sea beach of the island there may be coloured stones. You can show those coloured stones and you can say "The flowers have such colours," but you will be misunderstood because those people will think that flowers are like stones.

It is next to impossible to convey accurately. That is the first difficulty, how to make a map of the unknown.

The second difficulty is that if you try and you succeed somehow in making

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the time it is ready the territory has changed, it will not fit it, and the people who follow that map will never reach. But they will worship the map. That's what people are doing, worshipping the Bible, the Vedas, the Gita, the Koran. These are all old maps. They are beautiful efforts, the people who made those maps did it out of great compassion and love, but humanity only worships them.

And remember, the map is not the territory. You can hang the map of India on your wall -- it is not India. On the map everything is shown, the Himalayas, the Ganges... but seeing the Himalayas on the map is one thing, you are not seeing the Himalayas at all. To go to the Himalayas and to see the Himalayas is totally different.

The master can only give you hints, not even guidelines, just hints, subtle indications, fingers pointing to the moon. But the moon is rushing, changing every moment, so only a master who is still alive in the body can be of any help, because he can go on changing his finger as the moon changes. Once the master is dead you make a statue of him; now the finger is still pointing somewhere but it is a stone finger. One thing is certain, it is not pointing towards the moon at all.

Once Jesus is gone Christianity is of no use. While he is alive it its of tremendous value. Once Buddha is gone Buddhism is futile. But people are so stupid. For centuries they go on talking about Buddhism and Christianity arguing for and against.

Sannyas means to be with a living master. It needs guts because it is going to change you. It is not child's play. It is risky, it is not a game. But I can trust you -

- I always trust Germans. (laughter) I love Germans! they have guts. They can do some things which others hesitate to do.

Sannyas is the process of always remaining new, never gathering the old, never accumulating, never accumulating the past. We go on accumulating memories. The more memories we have, the older we are.

Consciousness becomes burdened with memories. Then we go on dragging. We lose the lightness of childhood, the innocence of childhood, the beauty of childhood.

The child is beautiful for the simple reason that he has no past, no burden; hence he is so light, he is not heavy. And because he has no past he has no knowledge -

- past becomes knowledge -- hence he is always full of wonder. Knowledge prevents wondering. It makes you feel that you already know -- what is there to wonder about? The child never feels that he knows; hence he is always questioning, enquiring.

To be a sannyasin means to be child again but on a higher plane, in a different way, not physically, but psychologically. and the way to be a child again psychologically is to get out of the past, to disconnect from the past. Each moment die to the past so that you can be born anew.

Be new. Don't gather any dust on the mirror of your consciousness and you will be able to see that which is. God is another name for that which is. God is available to those who are mirrorlike, clean, without any dust. And we have so much that the mirrors have been completely lost. We don't remember where we have put them. There is dust and dust, layer upon layer.

Meditation is discovering your lost mirror. It is digging deep into the mud that you have accumulated around yourself in the hope that it is gold. It is nothing, it is simply mud. All memories are worthless. And when I say that I don't mean to forget your phone number (laughter)... or to forget who your husband is and who your child is and who is who. I don't mean that. I don't mean the ordinary, factual memories, I mean the psychological garbage.

Somebody insulted you twenty years before and the memory is still there; when you see the person it is revived again. I mean that kind of memory. You cannot see the person: that memory comes up and covers your mirror, you become enraged. He may have changed, everything is changing; he may no longer be an enemy to you. But because twenty years back he insulted..and nobody knows whether he insulted you or not, that may have been just your idea. You may have felt hurt, he may not have meant it at all. He may not even remember, he not even be aware that he has done any wrong to you. But you go on carrying the wound. Whenever you see the person the wound starts hurting and again there is a cloud around you and you cannot see the person as he is. You see him as he

was twenty years before. He may not have been like that but a least in your memory you carry that picture.

Psychological memory has to be dropped. Factual memory is okay, it is not a problem, it does not create any dust. If one can drop the psychological memory and can be new every moment, every day, then life becomes a joy. It becomes an incredible experience. Each moment brings new surprises. Each moment flowers go on showering on you from the beyond.

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rises. It is the colour of the dawn, the night is over and the new day beings. A new chapter opens.

Sannyasin is not a continuity with your past, it is discontinuous. Put a full stop on your past and start from ABC, fresh. Be a child again. Unlearn all the tricks that you have learned before. They are nothing but tricks, tricks to avoid the truth, tricks to escape from reality, tricks to deceive others and to deceive oneself.

Unlearn all that.

From this moment die to the past and be reborn. A new life begins, and it has to begin from the very beginning. Don't carry the past as a load hanging around your neck like a rock; drop it. And don't try to drop it piece by piece; that is unnecessary postponement. Drop the whole lot in a single blow. That is courage.

There are people who drop it but chunk by chunk. They take so long a time that the whole thing becomes tedious, wearisome, boring. They miss the joy of becoming free in a single moment.

Initiation simply means that you are ready to cut off from the past in one blow. don't look back. And the moment you are not more concerned with the past, the

future disappears of its own accord because the future is nothing but a projection of the past. It is nothing but the desire to live the past again and again... of course in a little modified way, a little richer, a little better. it is dropping all that was miserable in the past and choosing all that was pleasurable. That's what future is. When the past is dropped the future disappears, and only present is left.

To be present in the present creates meditative energy. To be present to the present is the very essence of meditation and the very foundation of sannyas.

The past is the only problem. We are confined by our past. it hangs around us, around our neck like a rock. It keeps us tethered to that which is no more. It keeps us confined to the dead, it does not allow us to move into life.

Life is always present. It is never past, it is never future either, it is always herenow. And we are living in the past, which is no more, or sometimes in the future, which is not yet. Both are non-existential. That's why we don't taste the joy of being alive. We go on chewing stones. We cannot get any juice out of them.

The past is like a stone, something utterly dead, it cannot nourish you. And so is the future. It is not yet born, it is just in your imagination and you cannot live on imaginary food. Only the present gives nourishment to the soul, it makes you more and more alive.

So the whole process of sannyas is dropping the past, dropping the future, and getting more and more attuned to the present moment.

Sannyas is a marriage: marriage to the divine, marriage to the whole, the part deciding to disappear in the whole. It is a love affair. And it asks for much, because it asks for your totality. Less than that won't do.

You cannot be partially related to god, remember. Either you are totally unrelated or you are totally related; there is no in-between. God does not believe in half- hearted measures.

Sannyas has to become a total commitment, a total involvement -- only then can life go through a radical change. Small efforts can at the most renovate the old house, patch up things here and there. But the old, the rotten remains the same, it can't become new.

Sannyas means demolishing the whole structure, clearing the ground completely so that a new temple can be built. Sannyas is very destructive in the beginning and very creative in the end. The destructive part is very essential. It has to destroy your ego, it has to destroy your mind, it has to destroy your ideologies, belief systems -- Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, communism. It has to destroy all that you have been up to now. It has to shatter the whole identity, it has to create an identity crisis. Only then can you move into the new -- when you are completely free from the old.

To be free from the old is the beginning of the new. And then one can create. One can really be creative and a multi-dimensional creativity can explode. Then life is a joy, then life is a splendor. Then life is a celebration.

Wisdom is not information, it is a light. It is not knowledge, it is knowing. It is the capacity to see clearly, it is clarity. It is like a mirror, absolutely clean, without any dust, so that it can reflect that which is.

Knowledge accumulates theories, philosophies, ideologies -- and all those things are nothing but layers of dust on the mirror. To be wise one needs to clean the mirror completely.

Everyone is born with a small flame of wisdom inside, but that flame is surrounded by so much smoke of knowledge, information, memory, experience, that we don't feel it, we don't see it. All this smoke has to be dispersed.

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That's exactly the process of sannyas: making you utterly nude, making your heart absolutely exposed to the wind, to the rain, to the sun. And then you start reflecting that which is.

God is another name for that which is -- or truth, or enlightenment, they all mean the same thing.

Life is a god-given opportunity. We have not earned it. He gives it not because we are worthy but because he has too much and he has to give it. It is like a cloud full of rainwater, so full that it has to rain, it has to shower somewhere; it may even be on the rocks, but it has to shower. It is like a flower that has to release its fragrance. god means abundance. He is so much that he has to share his being in infinite ways.

Always remember that you are a gift of god. Respect it use the opportunity. don't waste it.

Millions of people go on wasting such precious time -- each moment can become tremendous joy. They go on wasting it in unnecessary worries, anxieties, miseries.

Becoming a sannyasin means that now you will remain alert that no time, no energy is wasted in the non-essential, that you are going to make something out of this god-given opportunity, that you are going to grow, that you are going to mature, that you are going to realise who you are.

Sannyas is a process of self-actualisation.

The seeker of truth is religious. The seeker of good is moral. And the seeker of beauty is the poet, the musician, the artist. But my sannyasin has to be a synthesis; he has to be all three together. If you are one then something is missing. Then you are one-dimensional; then you will not have depth, you will be flat.

That's why religious people are so flat. They don't have depth, they are one- dimensional people. And moral people are also very flat. To have depth one needs three dimensions.

My effort here is to create a new kind of man, a three-dimensional man. And when you are three-dimensional a miracle happens: the fourth arises out of the synthesis of the three. And the fourth is the centre of all the three. all three are three expressions of the fourth. The fourth is really god, nirvana, absolute truth. In the East we have simply called it the fourth -- turiya. We have not given it any name. To three we give names because it is possible to express them through words. The fourth we simply call the fourth.

Gurdjieff used to call his way the fourth way.… He could not develop it and

could not systematise it.

The situation was not ripe and he was working against hazards. The West was absolutely unacquainted with the idea of the fourth. The West can understand three dimensions -- at least intellectually -- bu the fourth is absolutely beyond the Western mind.

Gurdjieff tried hard but could not manage it. First he was working in the West: no right space, no right soil, no right people available. Hence he was working in the right direction but could not complete the work.

He died without completing something tremendous that he had started.

I have particularly chosen not to go to the West but to call the West to the East. Now something strange has to be managed. I am avoiding Indians as much as possible. I am debarring them as much as possible because they think they already know -- that is their trouble. They know nothing, they have lost all track, but they know words -- and I don't want to waste my time with verbal people.

The West can understand because it has not egoism of knowing. But it has not background, so I have chosen to be in the East so that the East can function as a backdrop. I am working in the West, remaining in the East, calling forth the West here so that this combination becomes possible: the eastern background with the western openness. And my feeling is that I am not going to fail where Gurfjieff failed. Things have started happening. We will be able to create the fourth way, and that will become the source of a new humanity. Something immensely valuable is transpiring. All of you becoming sannyasins is not just an ordinary phenomenon. But only later on will people become aware, people always become aware only later on. Even you who are participating in this great work are not clearly alert and aware of what is happening.

But something is pulling you and you are becoming participants, not knowing that you are participating in something tremendously vast and tremendously significant for the whole future of humanity.

God is our victory, in god is our victory. Without god we are failures. We may have all the possessions and the wealth of the world, we may be great kings and queens and emperors, but still we are failures.

Without god nobody is ever a success. It can't happen in the nature of things. It is

only with god that victory is possible.

When you become one with god, when you exist in harmony with god, your life has the taste of victory.

You may not have anything, you may not have much money -- that does not matter: you will sit like a king and you will walk like a king and you will live like a king. You will be a god, a goddess.

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The moment that one becomes harmonious with god one has become a god. Jesus says: I and my father in heaven are one. He is crucified because of this great statement. The small minds cannot tolerate it; it looks sacrilegious to claim "I am god." But what can Jesus do? What can poor Jesus do? The moment that you are in harmony with god you are god. If Jesus says anything else it will be lying.

Mansoor Al Hillaj declares "Ana'l Haq" -- I am the truth -- and he is killed for that. Truth has suffered so much for the simple reason that people are so mediocre, so mean that they can only understand lies. They cannot rise a little higher to see the truth.

Before one can understand truth one needs to go through a radical change, one needs a new vision. But this much is an absolute certainty, that with god we are victorious because we become gods. Without god we are failures, because without god we are very tiny, very small, struggling against such a huge universe.

Our failure is absolutely certain, it is inevitable.

Sannyas means deciding: "Now I will not try to remain separate, aloof, I will not try to be an island. I will dissolve, melt and merge into the ocean and become one with it."

If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself Chapter #2 Chapter title: The Individual and the Whole

2 February 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8002025 ShortTitle: WITHME02 Audio:

No Video:

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.]

The universe is always leading you, guiding you towards the ultimate expression of your being, the ultimate flowering of your being.

If you can surrender to existence, if you can allow yourself to be overwhelmed by it, then the transformation happens so easily, without any bloodshed and without any damage. One changes so silently, so noiselessly, as if nothing has happened.

On the outside everything remains the same, and on the inside nothing is the same.

Sufis have one hundred names for God. Ninety-nine are utterable, one, the hundredth, is silent; it cannot be spoken. In India we have one thousand names for God. We have a whole scripture, VISHNU

SHASTRANAM, one thousand names of God, devoted only to the names. In that scripture nothing else is written, just the names. But each name has its beauty and each name denotes something about God, some aspect.

Hari is one of the most beautiful of all those one thousand names. My choice, if I

have to choose one out of that one thousand, will be Hari because Hari means the thief. God steals the heart, hence he is called the thief, the greatest thief, the master thief. He does not steal small things from you, he steals your very heart, he steals your very being. He leaves nothing behind, he absorbs you totally. That's what actually happens, it is not only a name.

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When one moves closer to God, slowly slowly one disappears, not even a trace is left behind... because God means the whole, the vast existence. We are just dewdrops and the whole is like an infinite ocean.

When the dewdrop comes closer to the ocean it is bound to disappear. But that disappearance is not a loss, it is a gain, because certainly the dewdrop disappears as a dewdrop, but it becomes the ocean. It is a death and a resurrection.

One dies as an individual and then one is born as the universal. One dies as Jesus and is born as Christ.

We are suffering from separation, separation from God. And unless we become one with God again the suffering cannot disappear. Bliss is not possible in a state of separation. Bliss happens only when you merge and meet and disappear into the whole. It is good to long, to be thirsty for the reunion.

That's what sannyas is: a thirst for reunion with God, a tremendous longing to be one with the whole again.

God is always ready to come in, but we are not ready to welcome him. In fact it is not we who are searching for him, but he who is searching for us. But we are so non-receptive, so deaf, so unfeeling, so insensitive, that we can't see, we can't hear -- and he is surrounding us in every possible way. He comes to you in the sunrays, he comes in the songs of the birds, he comes in the colours of a rainbow, he comes in the air that you breathe. He comes in a thousand and one ways, but we cannot recognise him because we have not yet learned how to

welcome the ultimate guest.

Sannyas teaches you only one thing: how to be a host, how to open your doors and pray for God to come in, how to empty your heart so that there is enough space for the guest to be inside you, how to become a womb so that God can be part of your being. And the moment you allow God in, you disappear. Then only God is. Then you speak, but in fact he speaks; then you create, but in fact he creates. You become only a vehicle. And the great ecstasy of being a vehicle of God is inexpressible. One knows it only by experiencing it.

Man has to be absolutely empty, only then is the space created for God to descend in him. And we are so full of rubbish, so full of junk; even if God wants to enter he will not find any place inside. There is no place inside. Our cups are full. Not even a single drop can be contained any more. We have to empty the cup completely.

This is the whole process of sannyas: emptying yourself of yourself, emptying yourself of all thoughts, desires, memories, hopes, expectations -- just a process of emptying.

The moment you are absolutely empty and you don't see anything inside you, suddenly all becomes light. Suddenly thousands of flowers open in your being. You become full of fragrance and music, a music that has not been heard before, a fragrance that is not of the earth. And you are liberated in that experience, liberated from life, liberated from death, liberated from time itself. You become part of the eternal flow of existence.

That is the ultimate goal of sannyas: to become part of the eternal flower, to become part of tao, of dhamma, of the universe, of God or whatsoever name one wants to choose. But one has to disappear totally for God to be.

God is our victory, in God is our victory. Without God we are failures. We may have all the possessions and the wealth of the world, we may be great kings and queens and emperors, but still we are failures.

Without God nobody is ever a success. It can't happen in the nature of things. It is only with God that victory is possible.

When you become one with God, when you exist in harmony with God, your life has the taste of victory. You may not have anything, you may not have much

money -- that does not matter: you will sit like a king and you will walk like a king and you will live like a king. You will be a god, a goddess.

The moment that one becomes harmonious with God one has become a god. Jesus says: I and my father in heaven are one. He is crucified because of this great statement. The small minds cannot tolerate it; it looks sacrilegious to claim "I am God." But what can Jesus do? What can poor Jesus do? The moment that you are in harmony with God are you God. If Jesus says anything else he will be lying.

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Before one can understand truth one needs to go through a radical change, one needs a new vision. But this much is absolute certainty, that with God we are victorious because we become gods. Without God we are failures, because without God we are very tiny, very small, struggling against such a huge universe. Our failure is absolutely certain, it is inevitable.

Sannyas means deciding: "Now I will get more and more in tune with the whole. I will not try to remain separate, aloof, I will not try to be an island. I will dissolve, melt and merge into the ocean and become one with it"

Existence is like an ocean and we are waves dancing in the sun, disappearing again and again and appearing again and again. There is no birth, no death -- we are eternal.

Only superficially does it appear that a wave is born and then dies, but it is only superficial, because it always remains the same. Sometimes it is manifest, sometimes unmanifest, sometimes it is rising towards the sun with a deep

longing to touch the sky, to reach the stars, and the next moment, it is relaxing deep into the ocean, resting. Death is rest. And when rest is over the wave rises again. It is eternal recurrence, we go on coming again and again and again. There is no need to be afraid of death, because death is false. The most false thing in existence is death. And if death is false, naturally, birth is false too. We existed before birth and we will exist after death.

Once you start feeling this, not believing but experiencing this, all fear disappears. And the energy that is involved in fear is released and becomes love. It is the same energy that becomes fear. Once fear is no more there tremendous energy is released, and that energy becomes love. It starts radiating through you, reaching to other people. You start overflowing with love.

Sannyas is an effort to know oneself as a wave of the ocean that God is.

Tanmaya means one who is utterly dissolved, utterly lost. It is a space without ego. One is, but one has no idea of the I. It happens sometimes in listening to music: you are, but there is no sense of I, you are just an open space. That is tanmaya. That space is needed for a sannyasin, because only in that space can God be contacted. If you are then God is not, if you are not then God is.

So learn how to disappear, how to evaporate. Learn how not to be. That is the greatest art in life because the ego is so cunning. It always finds some way to come in from the back door. It can become humble, it can become pious, it can become saintly, it can become holy. It can play all kinds of games.

A sannyasin has to be constantly alert not to allow the ego to play any more games.

Be watchful. And the more you know the ways of the ego, the more you are free of it, because it cannot play. whatsoever strategy you have come to know upon you any longer. Slowly slowly all doors are closed.

One day, when the last strategy has collapsed, you are freed from yourself.

That is liberation. And that is the ultimate goal of all religious effort. Only in that liberated state can one know what truth is. They are not really two separate things but two aspects of the same coin. Jesus says: Truth liberates. We can also say: Liberation is truth.

God is always willing. He waits for us to be willing. He is ready to give but we are not ready to receive.

He is just standing at the door but we don't open the door. Even if he knocks on the door we don't listen. The blame is totally ours.

His grace knows no limits, but we are so miserly that not only in giving are we miserly, in receiving too we have become miserly. And God asks nothing in return; still we go on missing. It seems that to receive hurts our ego.

So the problem is not on God's side -- God is love, God is compassion, God is help. But the problem is on our side: how to open up, how to receive his gifts, how to be more grateful, thankful -- because in gratefulness one becomes more open, in thankfulness one becomes more receptive.

The whole process of sannyas is of becoming feminine so that you can be pregnant with God. He is ready to enter your spiritual womb. But we don't allow him, we go on reflecting him. And the irony is that on the one hand we go to the churches and to the mosques and the temples to pray, and on the other hand we reject every effort of God to help us. We are split. Our heart wants the help, our head rejects the help.

Unless we start rejecting our head we will never be able to receive the help, we will go on missing it.

My whole teaching here is: Reject the head, it is not worth anything. Sooner or later it is going to fall into dust and disappears, so why bother so much about it?

Listen to the heart, because the heart is eternal. Listen to love not to logic, because love is deathless and 1/08/07

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love is the door to God.

Man's power is ugly. It is violent. Only God's power is beautiful because it is

love-power. Man's power means egolessness. Be egoless so that God can flow through you. Let God pass through you as the wind passes through the pine trees. Don't hinder God's ways. Give him your total acceptance. Just become a hollow bamboo so that he can change you into a flute, a bamboo flute, so that he can sing through you. And when God sings through you there is great power; but it is not yours, it is God's.

It is glorious, it has great splendour. It is tremendously beautiful. It will make you ecstatic. It will also make others ecstatic; whomsoever comes in contact with you will have a little taste of it, will feel it, will be overwhelmed by it. But you have to disappear for it.

Sannyas means committing a metaphysical suicide, allowing the ego to evaporate. Then all glory is God's and all power is God's.

One can fight for oneself or one can fight for God. To fight for oneself is foolish, to fight for God is wise, because to fight for oneself is bound to be a failure. One cannot win against the whole. One cannot win as a separate entity. Victory is with God -- it is not possible without him. Without him there is only defeat, failure, frustration. Life is with God because God is life. Without him there is only death. He is our breath, he breathes in our heart.

Once this is understood one becomes a vehicle for God. Then one can say with one's totality "Thy will be done." That's what I mean by becoming a divine warrior: fighting for God's victory.

First many things within you have to be conquered because they go against God: your anger, your greed, your jealousy. Once you have become full of light inside you have to help others to fight with their darkness. It is an eternal struggle between the forces of light and darkness.

By becoming a sannyasin your are being recruited for God.

Man can live in two ways: either as an ego or as an egolessness. To live as an ego is to live the ordinary, mundane life. To live as an egolessness is to live the sacred life, the holy life. On the outside everything remains the same, but at the deepest core of your being something radically changes.

If you think of yourself as separate from existence you are bound to live as an ego. Then the ego creates its problems. You are constantly afraid because the

vast whole, the vast universe, is against you -- you are against it. You are in a kind of struggle, and there is no hope that you can win. How can a small particle win against the whole universe? The very idea is idiotic. But that is the idea that we are carrying; hence the fear that we may be defeated; hence the constant trembling, anxiety, anguish.

And we will be defeated again and again; nobody can win against the whole. So one's life becomes a long series of failures and ultimately there is death. Death is a by-product of the ego. If you think you are separate from existence, then only is there death. If you think you are one with existence, how can there be death? The egoless person knows nothing of death, he knows only eternal life.

Samarpito means: surrender the ego. If anything has to be surrendered it is the ego. If anything has to be renounced, it is not the world, it is the ego. Live in the world but live egolessly, and then you are a sannyasin. And you will be surprised that as the ego is dropped all anxieties, all fears disappear as if they never existed, just as dreams disappear in the morning when you wake up.

This is real awakening. Moving from ego to egolessness is the most radical change possible. There is no other revolution greater than that because it brings you to the ultimate peak of awareness, awakening. It makes you a Buddha, an awakened one.

Ramana Maharshi was dying, and somebody asked "Where will you go after death?" He opened his eyes and he said: "Where can I go? I have always been here and I will still be here." He laughed at the very question.

We can't go anywhere, we are part of the whole. There is nowhere to go. There is no death, no birth, and if there is no death, no birth, where can fear exist, where can anxiety arise? We have cut the very root of all misery.

Religion begins the moment you drop the ego. So this is going to be your work here: drop the ego, forget that you are. Then God is and only God is.

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the capacity to invite God into it. It can become a host, it can become a home for God -- it all depends on us.

If we prepare our mind and body, God is immediately ready to come in. And the moment God enters the body, the dust is transformed into gold. Then the body is no longer material, it itself becomes spiritual. Even matter is transformed.

Every man is an empty country without God. Only with God do we become populated.

Only with God entering us do we start feeling contented, fulfilled for the first time.

All that is great always descends from above. It falls over you, it rains and showers over you. It is a waterfall. It does not grow from below, upwards; it showers from upwards, downwards.

In India we have the symbol of God as a tree upside-down: roots in the sky, and branches and flowers towards the earth. And that's beautiful, that's how it is. The roots of truth are in the ultimate -- that is above, symbolically -- but the fragrance can fall on us, the flowers can shower on us, we just have to be receptive.

All that is needed on our part is a deep receptivity, a total receptivity.

That's what sannyas is all about: learning to be surrendered, learning to be receptive, learning how to let the ego disappear so that you are just a pure space, empty, ready, welcoming, open, so that God can fall into your being like a fragrance, a waterfall of fragrance, a waterfall of joy, a waterfall of truth.

We are not strangers, outsiders. We are part of existence. This is our home. We are not here accidentally, we are here because we are needed. We are here because God wanted us to be here in the first place. It is his will. Hence nobody need feel alienated. That is one of the most fundamental problems that humanity is facing today. All over the world intelligent people are very worried, disturbed, anxious -- why are we here?

According to science it seems accidental. And if we are accidental then we are useless; then whether we are nor are not makes no difference. And if it makes no difference then our life loses all meaning; hence all over the world there is a climate of meaninglessness. It all started a hundred years ago with the declaration by Nietzsche that God is dead. He became the mouthpiece of the whole contemporary mind.

If God is dead then life is meaningless because God is the only possibility of there being any meaning, any significance. God simply means nothing but meaning. Life is meaningful -- that's the whole meaning of God.

A man was talking to an old rabbi and the man said: "Do you know what Friedrich Nietzsche says? He says 'God is dead'." The old rabbi looked at the man and said " Do you know what God says? God says

"Friedrich Nietzsche is dead!'"(laughter)

And the old rabbi is far truer. God is not dead, God is as alive as ever. But the idea that God is dead has made us feel very meaningless.

Sannyas means creating meaning in your life again, bringing God into your life again. The moment that God enters your life, life is a blessing, otherwise it is a curse and a heavy burden.

And unnecessarily too. If there is no God then suicide seems to be the most intelligent way to get out of this whole mess. If there is God then life has to be lived more deeply, more joyously, more prayerfully so that we can know the ultimate mystery of existence. Then death is not going to destroy us. We were before birth and we will be after death. But this is possible only if the whole of existence is full of meaning, otherwise it would not be possible.

To me God is not a person. It is the meaningfulness of existence. It is a presence rather than a person.

So there is no need to conceive of God, of how he looks, how tall he is, how old... There is no need for all these childish stories.

Godliness is eternal. All that is needed is that you create emptiness in yourself -- not that you seek God.

The moment you are empty something from the beyond penetrates you, fills your emptiness. You start overflowing with something absolutely new which you have never tasted, never known before. It is such a blessing, such a benediction. It is such an ecstasy that from that very moment you know that there is no birth, no death; you are also eternal. From that very moment you are part of a tremendous energy called godliness. Godliness is like an oceanic energy; we are just waves in it.

We are making every effort here to help you, through different devices, so that you can feel the presence of something which escapes ordinary intellect, which needs extraordinary intelligence to be grasped, which really needs less logic and more love, less head and more heart.

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superficial, that you are not accidental, that you are fulfilling a certain purpose in existence, that you are working for God in your own small way.

The moment we realise this great rejoicing arises in the heart. Then life is no more meaningless, it starts having great significance. We are messengers, messages, and we are doing something greater than ourselves.

And God's love is showering on us, otherwise we could not live a single moment. His love is our very breath. Without him there is no life.

Remember it more and more, remind yourself of it more and more, so that it becomes a constant undercurrent in your consciousness. You will start blooming, flowering, and the darkness will start disappearing. Just to know that God loves you kindles a light in you which cannot be extinguished by any external force.

God never becomes old. Although all the religions depict him as a very old man, that's utterly wrong.

People conceive of God as a very very ancient, old man with a long white beard touching the floor. That is not true. God is young, as young as one can be. He is the very essence of youth. He is as new as fresh dewdrops early in the morning, as new as a bud just opening; not even completely open, just opening, becoming a flower.

Man's mind becomes old, and because his mind has been creating God, God is depicted as old. Man's mind is accumulative. It is nothing but the whole past. It knows nothing of newness; hence mind knows nothing of God If one wants to know about God one has to drop the mind.

Sannyas means dropping the mind, entering into the world of no-mind, changing your gestalt from thought to no-thought, from words to wordless silence, from the past to the present. When you are utterly in the present you are in tune with God. Then you know, then you feel, then you understand, because then you are it. There is no separation, you are bridged with the whole.

Jan means God's gracious gift.

It is the most fundamental thing to understand, because without it there is no possibility of religion.

Deep down in the heart it has to be understood that life is a gift of tremendous value, that each moment is precious, that it has not to be wasted. It is a great opportunity to grow. One should not go on collecting coloured stones and seashells on the sea-beach. Something more important has to be done, something more significant.

One has to look inwards. One should not remain concerned just about outside things because that's how people waste their lives. One should start searching within -- "Who am I?" One should go deeper and deeper into one's consciousness to feel one's centre. The moment that you fell your centre all questions are answered, all puzzles disappear. There is no confusion any more. Everything is a clarity, a tremendous clarity. You can see through and through. And that is the moment when one understands how much the universe has given to us, and how ungrateful we have been to the universe.

Gratitude is the basic requirement for a religious life. It is out of gratitude that prayer arises, it is out of gratitude that love arises, it is out of gratitude that grace arises. But one can feel gratitude only if one feels the value, the immense value

of life, the inestimable value of existence.

Go beyond knowledge if you want really to know, go beyond all information if you really want to see.

Information functions as dust in your eyes. It does not allow you to see that which is.

One has to unburden oneself of knowledge, information, scripture, systems of thought, ideologies: political, social and religious. No word is sacred, only silence is sacred. No thought is original, only silence is original. And when you move into silence, into a wordless world, you are moving into God, into bliss, into freedom, into the ultimate.

Stefano means voice -- divine voice.

It is always there, at the innermost core of our being, we just have to be a little more silent to hear it. It is a still, small voice. God is constantly trying to communicate with you. It is not only that man is seeking God, far more true is that God is seeking man.

In the Bible the story is that when Adam and Eve became aware that they had disobeyed, they became frightened: sooner or later they will be found. When God called them they were hiding behind some bushes.

God was calling the, "Adam, Eve, where are you?" And they went on hiding from one place to another place until they were found and thrown out of paradise.

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But my feeling is that the story still continues, it has not come to a full stop. God is still asking: Where are you...? And we are still hiding.

The best way would have been for Adam and Eve to have come the God, to have asked for his forgiveness. But rather than asking to be forgiven they were trying to hide. The moment you start hiding something you become false, you become inauthentic. The moment you open yourself up totally without hiding anything, the moment you are utterly naked before God you are forgiven, immediately forgiven, all is forgiven.

God is still calling us from every heart, but we have to prepare first -- how to listen? We have forgotten the art of listening. Our heads are so noisy -- so much turmoil, so much traffic, thoughts, desires, memories, imagination. It is always rush hour, day in, day out.

Sannyas means that now you will make every possible effort to make this noisy mind a little more quiet, a little more silent, so that you can hear your own heart and its message.

(To Spider): Who has given you such a spiritual name? (laughter)

-- My parents.

-- That's really something! (more laughter)

It is a beautiful name; particularly in Indian mythology it is very significant because the spider is the only being which creates its world out of itself. It creates its web out of itself and when it wants to move it swallows the web again and it will move, and again it can produce it.

In Indian mythology it is said God functions exactly like the spider. He creates the whole world out of himself, and when he feels tired, exhausted, he swallows it up, everything disappears. But then he start feeling lonely again and he creates it again.

In every mythology of the world there are stories about the creation of the world, but only in Indian mythology ares those stories balanced by the dissolution -- stories of how the world disappears. Otherwise they are half stories: God created the world, so it is finished once and forever. But in Indian mythology millions of times he has created the world and millions of times he has withdrawn it into himself.

The problem is -- it is the same problem as every human being comes across --

one cannot live alone, one cannot live with somebody either. If you live with somebody it is tiring; it creates clashes, conflicts, one wants to be finished with it. But when you are alone you start feeling lonely, bored. This whole human dilemma has been projected onto God.

Other mythologies project only half part. In that way Indian mythologies are more logical, they project the whole thing. The Indian god is very human, just a magnified form, a bigger human being, an infinite human being, but he is human. He creates the world, then he starts feeling lonely. And then he becomes tired of the relationship with the world and of all the people praying and asking him "Do this, do that," and of everybody complaining and nobody being satisfied. Then, enough is enough; he says "Withdraw. It will never commit the same crime again." But after few days he forgets (laughter)... then he is lonely, he creates again. The spider is the symbol of this very process.

So tell your parents that they must have been Hindus in some past life! (laughter) This is your name: Swami Deva Spider -- divine spider. Good!

God happens only to those who are of humble heart. But it is a humility which is not practised.

One can practise humility. The society teaches us to practise being humble: Be humble because you will be respected if you are humble. Now what kind of nonsense is this? Telling people "You will be respected if you are humble" is simply giving new nourishment to the ego. Now in the name of humbleness there will be a subtle ego hiding, because humbleness brings respect, respectability. And the more you see that people respect you, the more humble you will become. But deep down the ego is becoming stronger and stronger.

The so-called humble people have the strongest egos in the world. The saints, the mahatmas and the so-called religious people are the most egoistic, they are pious egoists. That is not real humility.

Real humbleness, real humility comes by understanding the ego, the ways of the ego, how it functions, how it goes on creating itself, how it goes on coming back in subtle ways. You close one door, it opens another; you don't allow it from the front door, it comes from the back door. One has to be very watchful, alert about the ways of the ego, that's all.

Slowly slowly you know all its diplomatic strategies: how it survives, how it

perpetuates itself. It is a false entity, it is a parasite. It lives on your blood, It kills your soul. When you see it and the whole nuisance that it goes on doing to you and your life, when you see the calamity that comes through it, in its utter 1/08/07

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nudity, in that very moment you are freed from it. Now it cannot deceive you.

The first words of the Buddha when he became enlightened were... He looked at the sky and said: Listen, now there will be no need of you to make another house for me, another shelter, another security. I am utterly free of you. I will not be coming back again because I am no more trapped within your net.

To whom was he talking? He was saying goodbye to his ego, he was saying: I am finished. I have seen you -- you are false, I have seen that you are just a shadow. I have believed enough in you and through that belief I have suffered long.

In that moment of understanding one becomes humble. That humbleness opens the door for God to come in. The moment ego goes out, God comes in. The moment you are not, God is.

Courage is like bliss, like truth, like love: it is not something that you can manage; otherwise there would be nobody who is a coward. Every coward wants to be courageous; he tries in every possible way, he pretends, he creates a facade of courage. It hurts to feel that one is cowardly. One wants to hide it, not only from others but from oneself too. One does not want to recognise the fact that one is cowardly. One pretends to be brave. One goes to extremes to prove that one is brave, sometimes to foolish extremes, sometimes on tries to overcompensate. But these are not the right ways; the coward remains the coward. On the surface he may look brave, but scratch him just a little and all his cowardliness starts rising up. In a real situation he will escape, In an unreal situation he will remain very courageous.

Aman and his wife were passing through a forest and suddenly they encountered

a dangerous tiger. The husband completely forgot all his manliness, all his bravery, and all his pretensions. He went behind the woman, behind his wife.

The wife cried, "What are you doing? You are supposed to face the danger, you have to protect me. You have always been saying that you could even face death for me -- now it is time to prove it!"

He said "Yes, I can face death, but this tiger is alive, he is not dead!" (laughter) Just scratch a little; pretensions never go deeper than the skin, they remain something painted just on the skin.

Real courage is a gift of God. One can pray for it, one cannot do anything else. One can surrender to God totally, and say to him "Make of me whatsoever you want to make. Let thy will be done. If you want me to be a coward it's perfectly okay, I will be a coward. If that's what your will is I will follow it joyously.

If you want me to be miserable. I will not complain. Even if you send death I will welcome it. So whatsoever your will is, is going to be my will." That is surrender and that is sannyas.

Sannyas is essentially surrender to the whole. Then a great courage arises. Then one cannot be cowardly, there is nothing to be afraid of. When one has surrendered the ego why should one be full of fear?

All fear exists as a shadow of the ego. The ego is the root cause of cowardliness. The ego gone, all cowardliness disappears. And then there is a courage which is not yours but which is God's.

Remember it, all that is great is always God's.

Rudi literally means a wolf; it is s short form of Rudolf. Symbolically it means two things; loyalty and courage.

Mythologically the wolf has been thought to be very courageous and very loyal. In fact to be loyal one needs to be courageous. To trust in somebody needs guts, it is not for the cowardly person. The cowardly always doubts, he is always suspicious because he is always afraid. Out of his fear he suspects, doubts; he is always defending himself, protecting himself, guarding. He remains closed. He cannot be loyal, he cannot be trusting, he cannot be surrendered.

Sannyas is a surrender, surrender to existence. Ordinarily we are fighting with existence, that's how we have been brought up. We have been brought up with the idea of fighting, of being aggressive, because that is the way to succeed.

Sannyas means that we are no more concerned with success at all. We are concerned with peace, silence, bliss, truth, freedom, god. We are not concerned with success at all. Even if you succeed death is going to destroy everything, so it has been a sheer wastage of your life. You may have money, power, prestige, but all will be taken away. But if you have known love it will go with you. If you have known freedom it will go with you. If you have known truth even death cannot take it away.

These are real treasures. But they can be attained only if one surrenders to the whole. You cannot snatch them away from reality. You have to love so deeply that you can surrender. You have to love so totally that you can trust the whole. You have to disappear as a separate entity, you have to become part of the infinity, 1/08/07

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just a wave in the infinite ocean of god.

Martin means a loyal spirit. It means one who is capable of trusting, one who is capable of love -- so much so that he disappears in his love.

The ego only knows how to say no, but when the ego disappears there arises a total yes: yes to life, yes to all that is. That is the meaning of being loyal, loyal to existence: being in a deep love affair with existence, not feeling oneself separate, feeling one with the whole, with no fear, holding nothing back, going totally and whole-heartedly.

The moment one can do it, one is transformed. The moment one can do it, the ego dies and one is born.

The real birth, the birth of the soul comes through a total yes.

The traditional sense of being holy is egoistic. It is a new form of egoism. Somebody is bragging about his money, somebody is bragging out his birth, blood, nobility, aristocracy, somebody is bragging about his political power. And somebody is bragging about his virtues, his prayers, his fasts, his austerities. But it is the same bragging -- no difference at all. The ego is the ego. By what it is nourished is of no consequence, it makes no difference. It can be supported by anything.

You can support it with a rock, you can support it with gold, you can support it with diamonds, but it is the same ego. Only the support changes, the ego remains the same.

When I use the word "holy" I use it in the sense of wholeness, in the sense of being total. To be whole is to be holy. And whenever you are whole the ego disappears. It can exist only when you are fragmentary, when you are divided, split. The more you are divided, the better for the ego. It rules you by dividing you.

Once you are one, integrated, crystallised, the ego evaporates just like dewdrops in the early morning sun.

Living a holy life means living each moment totally, without holding anything back. If you are dancing then become the dance, and that is the moment of holiness. If you are singing, become the song. If you are loving, become love. Whatsoever you are doing, do it with such joy, with such totality, with such involvement, commitment that you are no more separate from it. And soon you will see that this continuous experience of being totally involved integrates all your fragments into oneness. It moulds you into an individual, into something indivisible. That is being holy.

It has nothing to do with being Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan, but it absolutely has something to do with the ultimate, because when you are total you become available to the ultimate. When you are total you are silent; all those fighting fragments are no more there, no noise is there. There is great stillness, and in that stillness God can descend.

God is whole, and unless we are also whole in our own small way we cannot know anything of God And one thing is beautiful about being whole: even if you are whole in your small way... The bigger whole and the smaller whole are not

really different. It is like a small circle and a bigger circle; both are circles. As far as their being circles is concerned, both are perfect circles. Quantitatively they may be different but qualitatively they are not.

And that's the beauty of being whole. You will be a small circle and God is the infinite circle, but that makes no difference. The moment you are a circle, entire, one, you know the quality of being a god, you become divine.

By purity I don't mean anything moral. By purity I mean innocence, a childlike innocence -- that's what purity is.

A moralist is not pure, he cannot be. His every step is calculated. Even his virtue is a bargaining. He is doing all kings of things, destroying all kind of desires in order to attain paradise and heavenly pleasures. It is all bargaining. Any calculated move is bound to be impure.

Only small children move spontaneously, without any calculation. Their action is without motive. It is simply a response to the present situation. So is the case with the real sage. He lives spontaneously, moment to moment, he is not worried about the future. He does not care about paradise, he is not afraid of hell or greedy for heaven. He simply joyously lives the moment that is available. In a way his life is just like a small child's life.

The child is innocent because he is ignorant of the world and worldly ways and all kinds of cunningnesses and deceptions. He has not yet entered into the mud; hence he is clean. But sooner or later he will have to enter into the mud, into the muddy waters and then he will lose his innocence. Every child is bound to lose his innocence. That innocence is temporary and is inevitably lost.

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To grow, it is necessary to lose it. But then one can attain to a new kind of innocence. Living in the world, seeing its futility, seeing its utter ridiculousness, one becomes detached, cool. One is no more involved in it. One passes through

it but just as a witness, just like a mirror: reflecting everything and yet not affected by anything.

That is the second kind of innocence, the innocence of the sage. It cannot be destroyed; you cannot lose it. Once it is gained it is yours forever. Hence the sage is like the child in one sense only, they are both innocent. But the child is bound to lose his gift because he has not earned it, it is a natural gift. And the sage has earned it, it is not a gift; it is the reward of his maturity. The child is innocent because he is ignorant, and the sage is innocent because he is wise. The second innocence is called divine innocence.

Keep on reminding yourself: that is the goal.

Beauty is the most divine phenomenon in life. It is through the beautiful that man has become aware of god, through a beautiful sunset, a beautiful night full of stars, beautiful showers, mountains, clouds, people.

It is impossible to think that there is no god. If life is so beautiful there must be somebody behind all this beauty, some great artist.

The beauty of the world is enough proof of a great painter, of a poet, of a lover. God is nothing but a presence that one feels when one becomes overwhelmed by beauty. Hence I don't suggest you go to the temple or the mosque or the church. But I certainly suggest you go to the mountains, to the forest, to the rivers, to the ocean, because it is there that you will have your first glimpse of God's presence.

There is beauty which is only of the body. It does not go very deep, it is not even skin deep. It is superficial, it is only an appearance. But there is a totally different kind of beauty which belongs to the center and not to the circumference, which arises from your innermost core and spreads towards the circumference. The circumference also becomes luminous because of it, but it is not on the circumference, it comes from the center. That is divine beauty, and divine beauty is eternal.

Physical beauty is there today and tomorrow it is gone. Anything bodily is momentary. And I am not against the body -- remember it. It is a beautiful mechanism, it is a beautiful house. Take every care of it but don't become obsessed with it. Human beings have become too obsessed with the body. Their whole effort is how to keep it beautiful and they have completely forgotten that something more needs to be beautiful, not just the body and its proportions.

Some inner grace is needed. That grace arises out of meditation and prayer. That grace arises only when you are bridged with God and God starts filtering through you.

When you are in deep communion with existence then something radical happens to your being. Then you know beauty for the first time, a beauty that transcends time, space, a beauty that cannot be taken away from you by illness by old age, a beauty that is really yours forever. Seek and search for that because that is your true being.

In the East we have defined God as satyam, shivam, sundram. Satyam means truth, shivam means good, sundram means beauty, beautiful. These are the three qualities of God -- he is true, he is good, he is beautiful. And these are the three doors also to enter into hi. Either one can enter into him as a seeker of truth or as a seeker of good or as a seeker of beauty.

Let the third door be for you: enter into God searching for inner beauty, for divine beauty.

[There follows and interview with Swami Bhakta, which is not included here.]

If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself Chapter #3

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