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‌CHAPTER 20

20 May 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Vedant means that which is beyond scriptures; Satyam means truth. The full name will mean truth which is beyond scriptures.

Truth is not something that can be described. Truth is not a theory: it is an experience, an experience so deep, so tremendously intense, so infinite, so mysterious, that no word is adequate to explain it. Not only can words not explain it, they cannot even indicate it, they can’t even give hints.

It is like explaining light to a blind man. You cannot explain it, there is simply no way, no method. Light can only be experienced. One who has experienced knows; one who has not experienced can only believe. And belief is very dangerous.

Doubt is far more beneficial than belief because doubt goads you towards the journey, it keeps you going in search, in inquiry. Belief helps you to fall asleep, it gives you the false idea that you have already arrived. Belief gives you a conclusion which is rlot yours, which is borrowed from others, from scriptures, from tradition. But a borrowed truth is the greatest lie in the world.

Truth can only be true when it is based on your own experience, utterly your own experience. And then it is impossible to describe it. Yes, one can help others to open their eyes.

That’s the function of a Master: the Master does not describe, does not explain, does not theorize. The Master simply shocks you, shakes you, into wakefulness. He creates devices so that you can be provoked out of your dreams, so that you can be called forth out of your slumber. The slumber is very very long: one has slept for centuries and centuries; one has been unconscious for lives and lives. Hence great effort is needed to wake a person.

Not only is the Master needed, but a community where you can be shocked and shaken from every nook and corner, where you have to face a mirror everywhere, where there is no escape possible,

where you are really trapped and caught and you have to wake up, where to sleep becomes almost impossible. That is the meaning of becoming part of a commune.

Initiation into sannyas is becoming part of a commune which is making all kinds of efforts to help people to wake up.

Prem means love, Satyo means truth. Love is the only truth. Everything else is secondary; love is primary.

Love should be the only target in life. But people go on creating other goals, forgetting love or postponing love, or putting love at the end of their lists. Love should be first because time is short and one cannot be certain about the next moment. This may be the only moment that is available, the next may never come. Tomorrow is uncertain. Love should not be postponed for a single moment. Postponing love is postponing life; postponing love is missing the opportunity.

It is only in the deepest experience of love that truth is revealed. God is another name for that experience that happens at the very core, at the very central core of love. Love is the circumference and God is the center of it. But people don’t even touch the circumference, so what to say about the center? They have not experienced love and they go on talking about God. Their talk is utter nonsense – not only nonsense, it is very dishonest. And it is not only that they are deceiving others: they are deceiving themselves, they are deceived by themselves. They are in a kind of self-created deception.

Let this be the key for you, that love has to be lived each moment as totally as possible. It is not a question of relationship; it is a question of bringing a certain quality to your being – the quality of friendliness, the quality of compassion towards all that is, the quality of trust for all that is.

The man of love is the man of trust, and th man of trust is the man of truth.

Sannyas is a quantum leap, a jump into the unknown, a great courage to become discontinuous with your own past. It is a rebirth. It is a change so great... as if the old dies, and dies utterly and totally and the new comes into being from nowhere, from nothingness, out of nothing.

If the new comes from the old it remains the old. If the new is continuous with the old then it is only a modification of the old – maybe a little bit colored and decorated and changed, with a new dress, with a new mask, but it is not a revolution, it is not a conversion.

And sannyas to be true has to be a revolution so total that the old identity is simply dropped – just as the snake slips out of the old skin and never looks back. It is a psychological slipping out of the past. It is a subtle process and only very intelligent people are capable of doing it.

Sannyas can never become a mass movement; it is bound to remain for the chosen few beause the masses cannot gather courage and the masses have sold their intelligence long before. They have settled with small comforts, petty securities. They have lost the spirit of adventure. They cling to their belongings, to their possessions, to their small positions, respectabilities.

They have completely forgotten that there is a sky beyond, that there are stars and stars beyond, that there are calls and challenges which have to be faced and encountered, accepted and lived.

They have completely forgotten that life has more meaning than money and power and prestige, that life has a totally different dimension too – that of poetry and dance and celebration.

Sannyas makes you aware of the festive dimension of life. It is an effort to dance with the trees and sing with the stars. It is a great longing to be as wild as the ocean, to be as high as the Himalayan peaks.

Once this longing takes possession of a person it almost drives him mad. But that madness is far more valuable than the so-called sanity. The so-called sanity is nothing but normal madness. Always remember never to become part of the mob; protect yourself.

There are great temptations to become part of the mob. Those are the temptations really, temptations from the devil. There is no other devil but the mass mind; that is the devil. It tempts because it can provide many comforts and securities and respect and honor and everything. But all those are nothing but toys: death will come and take them away. Before death comes one has to know something of the deathless. That’s what sannyas is all about: a search for the deathless, a search for the timeless, a search for eternity,

Move into a new dimension of great longing and passion. It has to be very passionate, intense, so that you are totally possessed by the desire, so that every fiber of your being starts pulsating with the desire, so that every atom, every cell, of your body and mind is stirred by the longing. Then the goal is not far away. It depends on our intensity. If the intensity is total the happening is possible instantaneously. It can happen right NOW.

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