Chapter title: Man\'s Nature

‌Chapter title: Man's Nature‌

8 February 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8002085 ShortTitle: WITHME08 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed.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 1/08/07

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purposes only.]

My work here is to make you aware of your great potential, of your infinite possibility, of the heights that you can reach, of the depths that you can penetrate. Your heights are higher than the Himalayas, and your depths are deeper than the Pacific. God has given you so much, he has made you so rich, so inexhaustibly rich -- and we are living like beggars.

My sannyas means a declaration that you are no more a beggar but an emperor, an empress.

We are never born and we never die. Birth and death are both episodes in an eternal life. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death. It is before death, it is after death; it continues. birth and death are ordinary episodes,

incidents, nothing of much importance. Millions of times you have been born and millions of times you have died, and still you are, nothing has happened to you. No birth, no death has left even a trace upon your being. It is as clean, as pure as ever, unpolluted, fresh, young, but we don't know how to find it, where to find it.

We are so identified with the body and the mind -- that's the only problem. That has to be resolved. If you think you are the body-mind, then you will never find your immortality. This is a fallacy which has to be dropped. You are a witness. You can see your body, you can see your mind, so you are the seer not the seen, you are the observer not the object of observation. Because mind can be observed it is an object; the body can be observed, it is an object. You are the observer, always the observer and never anything else.

Become more and more centred in your observation, in your witnessing, in your awareness. And that will give you the key, that will unlock the door of immortality in you. Unless one knows that one is immortal, fear never disappears. And it is fear that destroys all your energies. It is fear that does not allow us to love. How can you love when you are afraid. It is fear that never allows us to live totally, whole-heartedly. If you are afraid, how can you live totally and whole-heartedly? -- you are always holding back. You go only so far and then you stop.

When fear disappears life becomes love, when fear is no more, life becomes a beautiful adventure. Then it is from one peak to another peak, a constant rising upwards -- and there is no end to that eternal journey.

Mind is man. When you go beyond mind you go beyond humanity. The animal is below mind, the Buddhas are beyond mind, and between the animals and the Buddhas are all human beings. Human beings are in a kind of limbo-half animal, half god. the past is animal, and the future and the potential are divine; hence man is in more anguish than any animal on the earth. All animals are at ease, at peace with themselves. They are in a way complete, nothing is missing. A dog is a dog and a cat is a cat.

Man is not complete, he is incomplete. Something is missing. He is on the way. He has left the past and he has not reached the goal yet. He is on the way, he is a traveller. That creates anxiety as to whether or not he will be able to make it. And that creates many problems, many times. One problem is the desire to go

back, to be an animal again. So in many moments you become animal again. When you are angry, when you become sexual, when you are full of lust, when you are greedy, when you lose all awareness and you start functioning mechanically you fall below humanity.

It is because of this that drugs have so much appeal: drugs help people to fall below the mind. You forget all the problems and all the anxieties when you are under the impact of a drug, alcohol or anything else. But sooner or later you have to come back to your senses and all your problems are there. In fact they have grown meanwhile. Nothing is gained, you have simply wasted time.

But the desire to go back arises for the simple reason that the future seems to be unknown, uncertain; the past seems to be certain, you have known it, your body knows it, you every cell is created by the past, you mind is created by the past. So the past has a great pull over you, but nobody can go to the past again -- that is a problem. Once the child is born he cannot go back into the womb again. Once you have become a young person, howsoever beautiful the childhood was you cannot be a child again, there is no going back.

One can enjoy the idea of going back, one can imagine also that one is back again, but there is no possible way of going back. You cannot move backwards in time, time has no reverse gear in it. You have to go ahead, either dancingly or reluctantly -- that is up to you. If you go dancingly you go joyously. If you go reluctantly you go in misery, in suffering.

Man has to go beyond himself, man has to surpass himself, only then does man become complete. That is a paradox. Only by going beyond himself does he becomes complete, entire. Then he again knows the 1/08/07

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beauty of being. The becoming is over, the travelling is finished, one has arrived. That's the state of a buddha, the enlightened person.

Go beyond mind so that you can go beyond humanity, so that you can surpass humanity. That is the greatest challenge, and only the greatest can accept it. In

the acceptance of the challenge something great is born in you. Sannyas is a challenge, the challenge of surpassing yourself.

Mind is never silent. It is constantly chattering. It is constantly crowded with many thoughts, desires. It goes on dreaming and dreaming. It is never still even for a single moment. And we have become identified with the mind, we think that we are our mind. That is creating the whole misery.

Get out of the mind and you will come back to your senses. Get out of the mind because the mind is a kind of madness. But one can get out of the mind in two ways. One is falling below it -- then you will have to be put in a mental asylum. The other is going beyond it -- then you become a Buddha or a Jesus. So please choose this way, the second.

There is a fear of going out of the mind. The fear is because mad people are also out of the mind. But they have fallen below, and one has to rise above. When you rise above the mind great silence descends.

You see the mind deep down in the valley chattering still, but the distance becomes bigger and bigger every day and one day you cannot hear all that chattering at all. That day one becomes enlightened.

Mind lives either in the past or in the future. If you are young then the mind lives in the past. The old man has no future. He knows that there is death so he is afraid to look at the future. He goes on reminiscing about the past, all that has been and is no more. He enjoys those golden days. Much of it is just imagination, it has never been there; much of it is just invention to remain occupied.

The moment a person starts living in the past is the moment when he starts becoming old.

Psychologically, that is the point from where one becomes old. Physiologically, it may not coincide, that that is the psychological old age, when you start thinking about the past and the beauties of the past and those golden experiences and those nice days, and how everything was just great. The future is so dark that you are afraid to look at it and you want to remain occupied with the past.

But that is not so with the young person. The young person looks at the future.

Death is far away, in fact the young person never thinks of death. It is so far away, it is beyond his scope to think about it; he does not have that much insight. So he lives in the future, he makes castles in the air:"I will do this and I will get that and I will be this and tomorrow it is going to happen; if not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow."

The old man wastes his present in the past, the young man wastes his present engaged in the future.

Both exercises are absolutely futile. Not only futile but very harmful, because the present which is, is being wasted for that which is not.

Don't think of the future. Live in the present. That's my message to you. Be in the present moment. And if you can be present to the moment you escape from all kinds of stupidities of the old people. If you can be in the present you transcend time. Time consists of past and future, eternity consists only of the present.

Eternity is now, always now and never then, always here and never there. And to enter into the now and the here is to enter into God.

This has to become your meditation, to come more and more close to the present moment. I am not saying not tp prepare for a journey. If you are going somewhere you will have to purchase the ticket ahead of time, you will have to plan it. I'm not saying not to do that. That has nothing to do with the future. What I mean is a psychological hope, desire, because the present seems to be unfulfilling you escape into the future and you start hoping that there will be fulfilment.

Stop going into the psychological future. The factual future is okay, it is not a disturbance at all. The factual past is also okay, it is not a disturbance at all. You have to remember your name and your address and when you meet your father you have to recognise him. You can't say to him "The past is the past and I don't know who your are!"(laughter) These are factual things, they are perfectly okay. But deep inside, the past should not possess you and the future should not be your occupation. Relax into the moment. And then one is entitled to all kinds of miracles.

Man can live his life in two ways. One is out of the past; then life is not a response but a reaction. You live through ready-made conclusions, you don't

respond to the moment. To the situation that is confronting you. You already have an answer, even before the question is raised. Your answer will never fit the 1/08/07

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question, because life goes on changing. Every moment it is different, every moment it is new. It is always novel, it is always a surprise. It never loses that quality of surprise. but if you are carrying too many ready-made answers in your mind you will miss the newness of life.

The other way to live is not to live through the past but to live directly, immediately, to live without the mind, to respond like a mirror, to reflect that which is. and the life of response has tremendous beauty, grace, truth and sincerity, because whatsoever you do is adequate. You never repent for it. It always fits the situation. It comes out of your consciousness, it does not come out of the cultivated character.

Let it be a key for you. Live naturally, spontaneously, responsively, meditatively, in the present, here and now, and then you will know the significance of your life. Millions of mysteries will open their doors for you.

The whole of humanity can be divided into two categories: the fools and the wise. The fools are those who live in a false world, a world of their own imagination. They live in dreams, they believe in their dreams, and obviously they are doomed because dreams are dreams and they can never become real.

The wise ones are those who have dropped all dreams, all sleep, who have become aware, who don't project anything onto existence, who are just mirrors that don't project anything; they simply reflect. And when one becomes a mirror life is a sheer joy. Each moment is so precious, so ecstatic, that one could not have imagined it. Each people on the seashore suddenly turns into a diamond and each flower has the face of God. The whole existence starts overflowing with godliness. One is born anew.

Everybody is born as a fool because everybody is born asleep, dreaming.

Everybody has the capacity to wake up but very few people use their capacity to wake up. By becoming a sannyasin you are taking a vow to wake up. That's what sannyas is all about: a decision to wake up. And if you are really intent, it is bound to happen. It is inevitable.

Man is a seed of divine glory, but only a seed -- remember it. It is not yet a flower, it has not even started growing. It is a potentiality.

At birth we are only potential beings. Life is an opportunity to actualise the potential. But very few people work upon themselves. They pay much attention to money, power, prestige, and they don't pay any attention to their own growth, which is the most essential thing because everything else will be taken away.

Death will destroy all your sandcastles, but it cannot destroy your growth, it cannot destroy whatsoever you have made actual in your inner being. That is beyond the grasp of death. And that which is beyond the grasp of death is the real treasure.

In the world people think that they are gaining, earning, being successful; they are simply living in illusion. The only people who are gaining something are the people who are moving inwards, who are becoming more and more alert to their immense potential, who are trying to transform it into a reality.

When one realises one's potential in its totality one is a god. God is not some person somewhere, it is the ultimate state of consciousness. Everybody is capable of becoming a god -- and if we miss we miss because of ourselves, nobody else can be held responsible.

By becoming a sannyasin you are taking the whole responsibility upon yourself. It is a commitment to growth, a commitment towards self-actualisation, with a deep understanding that this is our responsibility towards ourselves, all other responsibilities are secondary.

And if the primary is not fulfilled you will not be able to fulfil the secondary responsibilities. If the primary is fulfilled the secondary responsibilities are easily fulfilled.

Become what you can become.

Man is a seed. If you cut the seed there is no fragrance, but if you sow the seed,

if you give it the right soil, the right climate, the right amount of fertiliser and water and sun and air, the seed disappears and a sprout arises. Soon there are many many leaves and great foliage, and then flowers appear. And then the miracle -- the miracle of fragrance. It was hidden in the seed but it needed a certain process to become manifest.

God is hidden in us like fragrance in a seed. It needs a certain progress to become manifest. Right now it is hidden but it can become manifest.

Sannyas means initiation into a certain mystery, in a certain mystic path which can help you go through the great transformation from the seed to the fragrance.

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We are seeds but it would be unfortunate to die as a seed. We have to become flowers and we have to release our fragrance, only then is there contentment. A tree is fulfilled when it blooms, when the spring comes and the tree has released, poured its heart into colours, into fragrance, into joy. When the tree is dancing in the wind, in the sun, it is fulfilled.

Exactly is the case with man too. A Buddha is a tree which has bloomed, a Jesus is a tree which has come to release its fragrance. We are all carrying the same kind of seeds in us. Everyone is a Buddha unmanifest, a Christ ready to be born at any moment.

My work here is to make you aware of your great potential, of your infinite possibility, of the heights that you can reach, of the depth that you can penetrate. Your heights are higher than the Himalayas, and your depths are deeper than the Pacific. And once you know your heights and your depths, life becomes nothing but gratitude. God has given you so much. He has poured all his creativity into your being, he has made you so rich, so inexhaustibly rich -- and we are living like beggars.

My sannyas means a declaration that you are no more a beggar, but an emperor,

an empress.

One can exist in two ways: either by fighting on the outside for money, for power, for prestige... To conquer the world -- that is one way of life. It is a futile way. It is for the stupid and the mediocre, but it is very attractive, for the simple reason that everybody is running for it. And man is a great imitator: seeing everybody rushing for something he also starts rushing. He starts thinking that there must be something there, otherwise why are so many people going? And there is every possibility that others are going for the same reason -- because others are going. Everybody may be going for the same reason.

Nobody knows why people are running towards money, power and prestige, but they are running. It is a kind of madness, but it gives something, it feeds your ego.

The fight is futile, the ego is false and when you die you have to leave everything that you have conquered. That's why everybody dies crying and weeping, in deep pain and suffering. The pain and suffering is not because of death, remember. The pain is basically that "I lived my life in a futile way; the time is gone and I am finished and my hands are empty." That is the pain not the pain of death.

Death is not painful, death is very soothing, like deep sleep. The pain is that "The whole of life has passed and I was just making castles in the air and I am going empty-handed. I came empty-handed and I am going empty-handed. My whole life has been a sheer wastage."

But there is another way to live too. One can be an inner warrior. One can conquer one's unconsciousness, one can conquer one's greed, anger, sexuality. One can transform all these energies into something tremendously beautiful. and when one has known the secret of transforming one's inner being, there is great joy. Every fibre of your being dances with joy because now you know that death cannot take anything away from you. Now you know that you have attained the real treasure.

So be a warrior in the second sense. The real fight is in, not there on the outside, and the real fight is not with others. The real fight is with your own unconsciousness, with your own unawareness.

Our desires are dreams, all our thoughts are dreams. And we go on continuously

living in dreams because we are asleep. Dreams can exist only if we are asleep, and dreams disappear the moment we awake.

Going beyond dreams means awaking.

It is time! Enough you have sleep... for many many lives. Don't miss this opportunity to wake up because rare is the opportunity, and to miss it is very easy. So put your whole energy into waking up.

In the beginning it seems almost impossible -- how to do it? But if one goes on trying... In sleep one tosses and turns but if one goes on tossing and turning, it is bound to disrupt the sleep. And just a moment's glimpse of being awake is enough to trigger a new process in your being. Then more and more moments of awakening happen. And the day that one becomes fully awakened, twenty-four hours a day, even while one is asleep one remains alert, aware, when the body sleeps but the soul never sleeps, when one is capable of being awake twenty-four hours a day even when the body is resting -- then one should feel contented. One has arrived. Before that, make every possible effort that you can. Don't leave any stone unturned.

We live in desire. Desire means discontentment. Desire means that whatsoever is, is not right, not enough, more is needed. And desire is never fulfilled. It is unfulfillable by its very nature.

You can have as much as you desire, but the moment you have it desire goes on jumping ahead of you, it starts asking for more. Its greed knows no limits, it is unlimited greed. It is like the horizon: it looks so close -- you can reach it within an hour if you run. But you cannot reach it, you can never reach it. The 1/08/07

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distance between you and the horizon will remain the same, constantly the same, because there is no horizon; it is an illusion. The earth is not meeting with the sky anywhere, it only appears to be.

So is the case with desire. It only appears that if I could reach to that point, if I

could attain to this or that, there would be contentment. I would be happy, I would be fulfilled. But it never happens.

One has to understand desiring and its futility. In that very understanding desire disappears and one is left at home in deep peace. When there is no desire, there is no disturbance. Desire is the only disturbance.

When all desires have gone there is tremendous silence inside. In that silence you become aware of the presence of God, and that is fulfilling. That fulfils because it brings joy, infinite joy. It fulfils because it brings something of the beyond, something which cannot be taken away from you, something which is inexhaustible, something deathless. It opens the doors of the kingdom of God. It is your kingdom, because you are not separate from God and God is not separate from you.

So your work has to be to understand desiring; and in that very understanding it drops. You are not to renounce it, you are not to repress it, because if you repress it, it will come up again, if you renounce it, it will follow you. It is only through deep understanding that it disappears.

Man lives in bondage, and the bondage is not imposed by others, it is self- created. It is created because we are afraid of the insecure. In the name of security we create a bondage around ourselves. Yes, it gives a feeling of cosiness, warmth, safety, but it is all false because sooner or later death will take it all away.

Because of this we never explore, we never go beyond the boundaries of the familiar. The familiar is very small and we go on moving in the familiar, in circles. Our life knows no growth, because growth can only happen if we move not in circles but in a line. If we are linear then there is growth. If we go around in circles we go on repeating the same thing again and again.

Freedom is possible because we have made our own prison. We can get out of it any moment that we decide to. It is only a question of decision, of courage, of guts.

Freedom is the ultimate value in life. Nothing is more important than that, because out of it comes everything else that is valuable. Love arises as a fragrance, joy arises, meaning arises; for the first time life becomes significant, tremendously significant. And one is constantly moving beyond the known,

going into the unknown. Life becomes a thrill, an adventure. But we have made life just a dragging affair. It seems safe, it appears secure, but there is no security, no safety anywhere. They are impossible.

Life in its intrinsicalness is insecure. Only death is secure. You cannot take anything away from a dead man -- or can you? even death cannot do any harm to him, he is already dead. In his grave he is so absolutely secure.

Because we are so obsessed with security we have made our houses our graves. We don't live in them, we only die in them slowly slowly; it is a gradual kind of suicide.

Sannyas means freedom, freedom from all self-created securities, safeties. In the beginning one feels afraid, scared, that is natural, but once you become attuned to the insecure and you know the joy of insecurity then you never look back to those old toys that you used to think were keeping you life secure.

And they were not securities, they were simply prisons, chains around your being.

One need not be a Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Catholic or communist -- these are all self-created prisons. One need not live in an ideology. One should be free from all ideologies, all dogmas, creeds, scriptures. Only then is life an exploration, because when you don't have any conclusion you can explore.

We are brought up in such a way that we are reduced to slaves. And the slavery is so subtle that very rarely do we become aware of it. We go on living life as a slave thinking that this is all that there is to live.

This is not all, this is nothing. This is not even the beginning.

Life begins only when you become free from all kinds of bondages: the bondage of nation, the bondage of race, the bondage of church -- ideological, social, political, religious. When you become free from all these imprisonments, when you simply drop all that you have been told is important, when you simply drop all that you have been told to believe in; when you neither believe nor disbelieve a great freedom arises in your being. That freedom is sannyas; and that freedom then takes you higher and higher towards the ultimate.

Only a free person can know what truth is, and only a free person can know what

god is, what love is.

Freedom is very essential because it is the foundation of all that is beautiful and great.

Light is the stuff that existence is made of. Mystics have been saying so for centuries, now physicists 1/08/07

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also agree with it in their own way. It is the only point on which mystics and the physicists agree, that existence is made of light. Mystics have come to it through the experience of their own being. The deeper you go, the lighter it becomes.

In the beginning, when you start entering into yourself, it is very dark, very very dark, unimaginably dark. You cannot believe that darkness can be so thick and so dense. that's why many people escape immediately. It is frightening, it looks like death. But if you persist, and great perseverance is needed, if you go on digging deeper and deeper, the darkness becomes less and less dark, a little light starts arising. At the innermost core of your being there is nothing but light.

Now start moving inwards, and don't be afraid of the darkness that you will encounter, which is bound to be encountered. When you encounter darkness it is a good sign, you are moving in. and if darkness is encountered than light is not far away. When the night is very dark, the dawn is very close.

We are born of light, we are part of infinite light, and one day we have to disappear into that infinity again. We are just rays of a faraway sun. We have forgotten our home, we have forgotten our source.

To be a sannyasin means that now you are getting ready to remember it. Sannyas is a gesture that "I am available to be reminded of my home, of my real home, of my real source."

We are rays of light. We are not gross, nothing is gross. Because existence is a manifestation of god, everything is very subtle. Even matter is not material, even

matter is just pure light, condensed light.

Everything is a different manifestation of light, a tremendously mysterious wave in the ocean of light.

To see it, to feel it, to recognize it, is meditation. Watch inside, watch outside. In the beginning it is difficult to see walls as pure light, but even physicists agree that they are pure light, nothing but electrons, condensed electricity. And walls are not static, rocks are not static; electrons are continuously in a tremendous dance. The whole existence is a dance.

When you start seeing it all around you it is a transformed world. And the day you see it inside too, the division between the inside and the outside disappears, then it is all one, it is the same phenomenon. One loses one's ego, one loses one's identity as a separate being. One becomes part of the whole. And to be part of the whole is to be holy. That is true holiness.

Those phony holy people you meet in the churches, in the mosque and in the temples are not holy at all.

They have no idea of the whole. They are very egoistic. Of course they have very pious egos, holier-than-thou, but a pious ego is the most egoistic phenomenon in the world. It is the most poisonous, because it is so subtle.

Enlightenment is a forgotten language, it has to be remembered. Sannyas is just the beginning of turning in, looking in.

Following Christ does not mean following Jesus. When Jesus disappears Christ is born in him. When Gautam Siddhartha disappears Buddha is born in him. They are totally different phenomena, but people have got them mixed-up. They think that to follow Christ means to follow Jesus. Nobody can follow Jesus because nobody can be like Jesus; God never creates the same person again. But Christ can be followed because Christ is a state of consciousness. It has nothing to do with the person, Jesus. He is one of the Christs, that is true, but there have been many other Christs and there will be many more.

Anyone who attains to the ultimate flowering is a Christ. To be enlightened is to be a Christ. To know who you are is to be a Christ. But Christianity has taken a very wrong route. It became too focussed on Jesus, the person, they completely forgot about the flowering, the fragrance which really makes him valuable.

Without that fragrance he is nobody, just an ordinary carpenter.

Christhood means that meditation has come to its peak. One has gone beyond misery, beyond ego, beyond mind, beyond time. One has become one with the whole.

Blissfully follow the subtle path of being a Christ. Never be a Christian, be a Christ. When one can be a Christ why settle for being a Christian? When one can be a Buddha why be a Buddhist? That's my basic message here, that you are carrying within you the ultimate. There is no need to settle for less than that.

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... that the person cannot even see that it is there. and it works from the back door, it is never there in front of you. It works from the depth of your being. Your saints, your mahatmas, are nothing but egos painted in a religious way.

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But the real sage is one who is no more. He has drowned himself in the totality, he has merged with the source. That source is light and that source is God.

We are made of light; hence when you enter into deep meditation you start feeling more and more light inside. When you reach to the very central core all is light, pure light. That experience is called enlightenment for the simple reason that you become light again.

Each being is born enlightened. Each being is born a Buddha, a Christ. These are not states which have to be achieved, these are states which have to be only recognised, which we only have to discover within our own being. One has not to go anywhere, one has not to do anything. It is not a process of becoming, enlightenment is a state of being.

Becoming means desire. Becoming means that it will happen in the future.

Becoming means that you will have to strive for it. You may succeed, you may not succeed. Who knows? Becoming means that you will remain tense until it happens -- and enlightenment cannot happen if you are tense. Enlightenment cannot happen if you live in desires, in the future. Enlightenment is possible only when you are desireless, relaxed, utterly herenow. So it cannot be made an object of desire. To make it an object of desire is to miss the point from the very beginning. It is pure understanding that we are already in that space, we just don't look in. We have not lost it, we have only forgotten it.

The early Christians used to call themselves bearers of the Christ, carriers of Christ in the heart. The ordinary, so-called Christian also carries Christ -- but in the head, not in the heart. to understand it is of great significance.

Carrying Christ in your head is absolutely meaningless. And that's what Christians are doing, and others are doing the same: Hindus carrying Krishna in the head, Buddhists carrying Buddha in the head. And these are not things of the head, these are not thoughts. These are deep, deep experiences, profound feelings. They can happen only in the heart. And when they happen in the heart you don't become a Christian, you become a Christ. You don't become a Buddhist, you become a Buddha.

It is ugly to be a Buddhist or a Christian. When you can be a Buddha or a Christ, why settle for being a Christian or a Buddhist? That is settling for something plastic, something pseudo.

Christ is a state of consciousness, just as Buddha is a state of consciousness. Really, the state of consciousness that in the East is called Buddha, in the West is called Christ. It is not different, only the language differs, but both words indicate the same flowering. Your heart becomes a flower, a lotus, and a great fragrance is released. That fragrance is bliss.

So remember, don't allow sannyas to become part of your head. Let it go down deep into your heart. The relationship with me has to be of the heart, not of the head. The heady people are going to miss me totally.

They may think that they understand me but they understand only words. They don't understand me.

Only the people of the heart are going to be my people, because only they will be able to understand that which cannot be understood. Only they will be able to

comprehend that which is incomprehensible.

The mysteries can only be revealed to those who have chopped off their heads completely, who are no more heads but just pure hearts.

Man is not as small as he appears. He is vast, he is tremendously vast. He is oceanic. Even the ocean has boundaries, and man has no boundaries. Even the ocean is not so vast. Man's vastness is the only proof that God is. God is another name for man's vastness. We are not confined to the body and we are not confined to the mind either. We are beyond both.

The whole process of sannyas is that of peeling an onion. There are many layers of identification, and we have to drop all the layers slowly slowly slowly. Finally nothing is left -- that nothing is you.

Only nothing can be vast. Something is bound to be infinite. Only nothingness is infinite; hence God is ultimate nothingness. God is not a being but the ultimate non-being. He is not somebody, he is absolute nobodiness. He is only a presence, infinite, unbounded. and so are we. we are not different from god. We are part of that infinity.

Everyone is a god. Nobody can be anything else because only God exists. God is synonymous with existence. To be means to be a god. But we don't remember it, we are absolutely oblivious to it. So the question is not how to achieve godhood, the question is how to remember it. It is a forgotten language.

My effort here is to help you to remember something that is already there. Nothing has to be achieved.

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You have only to discover yourself, to discover who you are, and you will know that you are God. And the moment you know you are God the whole existence becomes divine, then everybody is god. And that day is of tremendous joy, when

the whole existence looks divine to you. You are surrounded by gods. Naturally, great rejoicing arises in your heart.

From the very beginning we are that which we have been seeking all along. We are already that for which we are looking everywhere. It is our self-nature. Truth, bliss, freedom, God - they are different names of our self-nature.

One need not go anywhere, one has only to dig within oneself. On the outside one will find only frustration, failure. You cannot find that which can fulfill you. Yes, one can have as much money as one wants, one can have a great kingdom like Alexander, Napoleon, but one still remains a beggar, still seeking and searching. There seems to be no fulfillment through power, prestige, money. And the reason is not that fulfillment is not possible.

Sigmund Freud says that it is not possible because he never looked within. He says that man is destined to remain miserable, so all that we can do is to help him to be a little less miserable. We can help him to understand his misery, to accept it, and live with it and not to make much fuss about it. It is how things are.

That is the whole understanding of modern psychology. It is pessimistic for the simple reason, that it has not yet been able to penetrate into the inner world of man.

That's where religion differs. Religion says that it is true that there is no contentment on the outside, that is never possible. But there is an inner world too. There is no need to overlook it, there is no need to ignore it. To ignore it is only ignorance.

Sannyas means not ignoring the inner. On the contrary, it is giving it more and more attention, more and more awareness, more and more exploration. And when you start getting deeper into your own interiority you are surprised, because you discover an inexhaustible treasure. Your life becomes a joy, a benediction, a blessing, not only to yourself but to others too.

White has always symbolised the ultimate flowering of spirituality because white is the synthesis of all the colours. It is all the colours in deep harmony dancing together, merging, melting, meeting in each other so deeply that they disappear as separate colours and an new colour arises -- that is white.

Black is the absence of all colours, white is presence of all colours. Black represents the devil because it is absence; hence in all the mythologies the evil force, the devil, satan, is depicted as black, dark, absolutely dark.

God is white for the simple reason that God is the ultimate harmony. Light is white, but passing through a prism it becomes seven colours; the prism divides it. That's how the rainbow is created. In the rainy season small drops of water hang in the air and the sunrays passing through those small drops of rainwater create the rainbow.

Mix all the seven colours in the right proportion and white arises. The number seven is also significant.

There are seven planes of consciousness. The lowest is sex and the highest is samadhi. In the lowest centre, at the lowest plane, there is only sexuality, nothing else. On the second plane there are two things, on the third there are three, and so on, so forth. On the seventh plane all the seven energies meet together and merge together and a white lotus opens in your being. These are all metaphors.

The white lotus is worshipped in the East. You must have seen pictures of Buddha sitting on a white lotus. When you have reached the ultimate peak, when all your energies have come to a harmony great beauty descends, great silence descends, a new kind of dance enters into your being, a new celebration, because it is a new birth.

Keep remembering that the white lotus is our ultimate goal, that we have to become white lotuses in which all energies have been consumed, absorbed into one synthesis, when all the seven notes of music have created the ultimate melody.

Kent is a beautiful name. It means that you disappear as many and you become one, you become integrated, centred. You put the prism of the mind aside and you are white.

White symbolises freedom, freedom from division, from split. white also symbolises wholeness. Red is only one colour, blue is one colour, green is another. Green is not the whole, blue is not the whole; no colour is whole except white.

God is whole, god is another name for totality; hence those who have

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him as a tremendous whiteness arising in themselves. They become lost in that dazzling white. The mystics say that it is as if thousands of suns have risen suddenly. It is all light and all white.

The journey of sannyas is from mind to no-mind. Mind means many, no-mind means one, and to be one is to be whole, healthy, sane. to be one is to be blissful. It is with the many that conflict and misery arises.

For centuries manliness has been praised. It is time to drop that whole nonsense. It is because of that praise that humanity has suffered much.

Manly qualities are aggressive, violent. We should start praising feminine qualities. The most feminine quality is receptivity, openness, vulnerability. Man has dominated long enough and that domination has been destructive of all that is fragile, beautiful, of all that is flowerlike. Only rocks have remained, flowers have disappeared.

My whole effort here is to praise the feminine qualities. The world needs them. If I love Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, the most fundamental reason for my love is that they are all feminine, they are not masculine.

Friedrich Nietzsche has condemned Buddha and Christ for the same reason -- they are not manly enough. I praise them for the same reason -- they are not manly enough. That is good; they have a grace, the feminine grace.

We have to change the whole gestalt of human consciousness. we have to make it more surrendering, more receptive, we have to teach it how to relax and how things can happen in a deep let-go. all that is great

-- truth, love, bliss, god, freedom -- happens in a state of let-go. You cannot force them to happen. that is not possible, that is not i the nature of things at all.

You can only be a host, you can only be pregnant with those qualities, you can allow then to happen.

Don't hinder, that's all that you can do. Keep the doors open, keep the heart open, and you become a song.

God starts singing through you. You become a joyous spirit, you become a celebration.

A strong spirit is always a gift of God, the most precious gift. He gives a strong spirit to everybody. God is absolutely generous, he gives more than you will ever need. He gives courage, he gives strength.

But the society turns every possibility into its opposite. Rather than making you more and more courageous, helping your courage, strengthening your courage, it destroys it, it makes you cowardly. The same energy that can become courage can become fear. All that is needed is a headstand: put everything upside down. The society has learned the art of creating cowardliness in people because only cowards can be dominated. The society destroys the individual in every possible way, because the society is afraid of the individual.

The individual cannot always be obedient, he will be obedient when he feels that it is right to be obedient. But you cannot rely on him. Sometimes he may feel that this is not right, then he will defy all your orders, he will say no. He will live through his own inner light. He cannot be commanded, he cannot be reduced to a soldier, he cannot function like a machine. He will say yes when he feels that it is right, it will come from his own heart. But he will never be a yea-sayer, nor will he be a no-sayer. He will not cling to no or yes, he will remain free. Every moment he will choose whether to say yes or no. He will not function out of a conditioned mind -- conditioned for yes or conditioned for no.

The society does not want individuals. The society lives on the death of individuals. So the more a society becomes organised, the more and more individuals disappear. For example, in Adolf Hitler's Germany, individuals completely disappeared because the society was too organised. The whole society was turned into a military camp. That has happened many times. In ancient days in Japan, the whole society was turned into a military camp. That was the highest value, to be obedient.

All the churches also teach obedience because the priest is afraid of

individuality, because the individual raises awkward questions which nobody else can answer. The individual creates restlessness in the status quo. The individual creates embarrassing situations for the people who are in power, who are in authority.

They may be popes or kings or presidents or prime ministers, it doesn't matter. Religious heads or political heads, it doesn't matter. Every establishment is afraid of individuals. And the only way to destroy the individual is to turn the gift of God into a curse.

My effort here is to remind you that you can still change your whole pattern, you can still put things as they should be. You can still be courageous, adventurous. You can still be strong in spirit, because it is only those who are strong in spirit who can travel the path to God.

Katja means purity -- the purity that you see in the stars, the purity that you see in the flowers, the purity 1/08/07

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that you see in the song of the birds... that purity. and man can become all. He can be a flower full of fragrance. He can be a star full of light. And he can be a bird singing in praise of God, in praise of sunrise.

Man has multi-dimensional potential. He can be the whole universe.

Man is capable of so much but he is not aware of it. He is capable of flying but he goes on just crawling on the earth. He is capable of becoming pure love but he remains only animal, lust. He is capable of becoming pure spirit but he remains just dust. We are not aware of our own potential. We don't know how much we are carrying within ourselves which can be realised any moment that we decide to realise it. But it will not be realised unless we decide to realise it.

Many people die without knowing that they were carrying a treasure within themselves. they die like beggars and they were meant to be emperors.

Out ultimate expression is divine love, and out of that is all creativity, all service, all compassion. Out of that much happens, but we have to be alert to create the right space in which our potential can become actual.

Sannyas is only a methodology to create a space, a certain space within you, to prepare the ground so that your seeds starts sprouting. It is just a process of inner gardening. And each sannyasin has to become a garden with many flowers, much perfume. It is possible, I am not talking about the impossible. It is within our reach, we just have to start groping for it. And my function here is to help you to grope in the right direction.

Once you are on the right track then miracles start happening.

[There follows an interview with Ma Deva Tanmayo, which is not included here.]

If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself Chapter #9

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