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‌CHAPTER 26

26 May 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Enough of war! Man has lived too much in violence. The time has come, it is absolutely the right time to take the quantum leap from war to love. Either man decides to take the quantum leap or he’ll have to commit suicide. Only love can save him.

War is utterly meaningless today. In the past it was not so meaningless because it was not total. Man could fight and yet survive. Man has survived; we have survived five thousand wars! So only a part was going to die, it was possible to afford that much. Now it is impossible to afford because the whole is going to die, the whole planet earth, the whole of humanity. And not only the whole of humanity but the whole of life as such. The birds, the animals, the trees, all that exists and breathes will not exist, will not breathe any more.

If war is going to happen then the whole earth is going to become a graveyard, and a graveyard of great aspirations. All the aspirations of the Bud-dhas, Christs, Krishnas will die with it. All those great dreams of bringing a paradise on earth will die with it. And the death of man will be the greatest calamity that can happen to the universe. It is not only a question of the earth, the universe will lose something of great potential. It will take millions of years to evolve human consciousness again.

It has been a long journey to arrive at human consciousness, and to destroy it for no reason at all, to destroy it just out of sheer stupidity, to destroy it because of the old habit of constantly quarreling, fighting, to destroy it in the name of ideologies, religions and all that nonsense, is so patently foolish that no man of intelligence can be in favor of it.

Anand means bliss, blissful. Socrates has no literal meaning but has great existential meaning. My sannyasin has to be a Socrates, the spirit of Socrates. Socrates represents rebellion against tradition, against the past, against all that is dead. Socrates represents inquiry not belief, exploration not superstition. Socrates represents adventure, adventure into the unknown, even at the risk of life.

Socrates represents the spirit of truth at whatsoever the cost, because nothing can be more valuable than truth. Not even life is more valuable than truth. Life can be sacrificed for truth but truth cannot be sacrificed for life. And the person who is ready to sacrifice his whole being for truth attains to great integration, becomes a soul. The Socratic spirit is the spirit of inquiry, questioning, exploring. It is going into the facticity of life and existence. It is not cheap.

Cheap are the religions: you can simply believe. nothing is required of vou. You are born in a Christian family, you are a Christian; you are born in a Hindu family, you are a Hindu. All those beliefs are borrowed. Churches, temples, mosques, represent something ugly, something that is very destructive of human spirit, because the spirit is born only when you rebel, when you rebel against all that is wrong, when you rebel against all that goes contrary to truth, when you rebel against all that makes you a slave. And that rebellion is religion.

My sannyas is not that of faith, it is not that of belief. I don’t teach you any dogmas, I don’t give you any doctrines.

I am not here to indoctrinate you. I am not here to condition you in a certain way, for certain belief patterns. On the contrary I am here to destroy all conditionings, all beliefs, all superstitions so that your spirit can be free – free from the past, free from others – so that you can be an individual. And the birth of the individual is the greatest experience in life.

That is the beginning of the spiritual journey. Only the individual can reach God. The person who lives as part of a crowd cannot reach God. Crowds have never been known to become enlightened, only individuals.

So let this become your vision, your very style of thinking, living. Be a blissful Socrates!

Each man is a seed of Christ because each man can become Christ. Christ has nothing to do with Jesus as such. Just as Jesus could become Christ, you can. Christ is not a personal name, it is the name of the ultimate state of consciousness. Christ means the crowned one: one who has been crowned by God, one who has attained to the ultimate, one who has fulfilled himself to the furthest and the deepest core of his being, one who is able to return back to the home, whose journey is complete.

Adam is expelled from paradise, that is, from the home. Jesus is received back. Jesus is nothing but Adam coming back home. The only difference between Adam and Jesus is that Adam has fallen a victim of knowledge. He has become knowledgeable by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And knowledge is a kind of sleep; he has fallen asleep. Now he no more feels, he only knows. He is hung up in the head, he has lost track of his heart.

And the moment you lose track of your heart you lose contact with paradise. You lose contact with your home because the heart is the home, is paradise. God resides there in the heart, not in the head. Expulsion from paradise simply means that the energy has moved from the heart and has become entrapped in the head.

Adam’s back is towards God and Jesus’ face is towards God; that’s the only difference. Adam is moving away from the heart and Jesus is moving towards the heart. It is the same person, it is the

same entity. They both represent each of us. You are Adam when you are hung up in the head; you are Jesus when you start descending towards the heart. And when you have reached the heart, when you are welcomed back into the home, you are Christ, you are the crowned one.

Be blissful, because the possibility of being a Christ is the greatest bliss, the greatest gift of God to us. And be blissful because the journey is long and only the blissful ones are capable of covering it. The miserable ones become tired too soon, the miserable ones become hopeless too soon. The miserable ones lose inspiration, aspiration too soon.

The journey can be completed only if you go dancing, laughing. And it is a hard journey; it is arduous, it is painful. So unless you are smiling and laughing and dancing you will not be able to bear it.

To bear a Christ within your heart is like a Woman becoming pregnant. Those nine months are going to be hard, but because she loves, because she is happy and feeling fulfilled in being a mother, she sings, she dances. All the pain of those nine months, and the weight and the illnesses are not agony to her but on the contrary she is ecstatic.

The same is the situation with each of us: we are pregnant with God and the journey is long and those nine months can be nine lives. It all depends on us, with what intensity we search and seek. Those nine months can be reduced to nine days or even to nine moments or even to a single split second. It depends on our totality. If one can be really ecstatic it can happen right now; one need not wait for it. The seed can suddenly become the flower. There is no need for it to go through the who!e process of becoming a tree.

That is the meaning of conversion: the seed suddenly becoming a flower. That is the meaning of transformation. That is real mutation, real revolution. And sannyas is nothing else. It is a learning for that great revolution, it is preparing for that great revolution, so that you can give birth to Christ in your being.

[The new sannyasin says: I have a problem of stuttering, and sometimes I have a great fear, especially in the presence of people I like and also people who are beautiful – women. During the last days here I want to do something about this problem.]

Mm mmmm. Do one thing: start deliberately stuttering. Deliberately try to stutter. Here, try with everybody.

Enjoy! And it will be gone, it will be gone. It is a simple thing. (much laughter) Whomsoever you meet, deliberately stutter as much as you can!

Puzzle him, confuse him! (much laughter) And enjoy it. Before you go it will be gone!

[A sannyasin says: I sometimes feel the flower within me blossoming, but very often it feels closed and hard.]

Mm mm. It is natural. It is a rhythm like day and night, summer and winter. You have to accept both. Sometimes it is a bud closed and sometimes it is a flower open. Both are good. Don’t reject

anything; not even the negative has to be rejected. The negative has to be absorbed – that is the real art. One can be positive by rejecting the negative but then one will always remain half. One will never be whole and never be holy either. The negative has to be absorbed, digested. The negative has to enhance the positive, enrich the positive, has to become its strength, its energy, its nourishment.

So don’t be worried about it. When you feel closed it is okay to be closed. Accept it. That is the time for rest. Otherwise when will you rest? If the flower is open twenty-four hours a day soon it will wither. It needs a little rest. So in the morning the lotus opens; by the evening when the sun sets the lotus closes. For the whole night it is in a deep sleep, closed. In the early morning it will open again; it will be fresh, young, rejuvenated.

That’s what we do: the whole day we are awake; in the night we are asleep. That sleep is a must: it makes you capable of being awake again next morning.

Always remember that life exists between polarities, and both the polarities are essential, absolutely essential. Rejecting any is very dangerous. One becomes lop-sided, one becomes unbalanced. And to be unbalanced is to be sick – spiritually sick. To be unbalanced is to be mad. To be balanced, utterly balanced is what sanity is all about. So one has to find a balance between the day and the night, between closedness and openness, between joy and sadness, between warmth and coldness. And that is so on each level of life.

If you accept both sooner or later a new phenomenon will start happening: you will become a witness of both. By accepting the witness arises. Then you are neither worried when you are closed nor exhilarated too much when you are open: nothing to be worried about, nothing to be ecstatic about. Then silence descends and one is simply a witness of whatsoever happens. One simply takes note of what is happening and remains unperturbed, undistracted. That is transcendence, that is the ultimate goal. At that point one becomes a Buddha, one becomes really awakened.

So don’t be worried about it. Relax, accept. All is good, all can only be good.

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