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‌CHAPTER 28

28 May 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss; Jorrit means a Farmer.

Once a farmer asked Buddha “I never see you doing anything. What is your work? What are you doing in the world?” Buddha laughed and he said “I am also a farmer, but my farming is invisible. I sow the seeds of bliss and love and truth. For them different eyes are needed to see, a different kind of perception is needed. Hence on the surface,” Buddha said, “you may think I am not doing anything, but I am also a farmer just as you are.

“Your farming is in the visible; my farming is in the world of the invisible.”

To be a sannyasin is to be a farmer, sowing seeds of bliss, truth, joy, celebration. And not only sowing seeds – helping them to grow, nourishing them, watering them. And one day the moment certainly comes when one can reap the crop.

That moment is called God. That moment of reaping the crop of bliss is itself God. God is not a person but that experience, that experience of utter bliss and ecstasy that one is totally drowned in, lost forever, gone beyond the point of no return.

To be a sannyasin means a great work in the inner world. It is the beginning of a new life. And much has to be done. It is arduous; it is an uphill task. But it is worth it because when you reach the Sunlit peaks then you know that whatsoever you have done is nothing compared to what you have gained.

Satyam means truth; Matthias means a gift of God. Truth is always a gift of God. It is not attained through human effort; it is not something that we can achieve. We can receive it but we cannot achieve it. It is not a byproduct of our effort; it is the ultimate outcome of our surrender.

God is always giving but we go on missing because we are not on the receiving end. God is continuously showering but we are not open. We are like buds, not like flowers, hence we go on missing the sunrays which are ready to dance on the petals. Hence we go on missing the butterflies which are ready to come and visit us. And we go on missing the utter joy of releasing the fragrance that is hidden in our beings.

Truth is a happening. All that is needed on our part is an opening towards it. And we are very closed. Our religions make us closed, our ideologies make us closed, our belief systems make us closed. Without knowing anything of truth we have gathered too much rubbish about truth. And one can go on collecting great information about truth, that is not going to help. To know about truth is not to know truth.

We have to drop all that information that has been forced on us or which we may have gathered on our own. We have to become utterly innocent and empty of knowledge. The moment we start functioning from the state of not knowing we are ready to receive. Blessed are those who are capable of not-knowing.

That’s what Socrates means when he says “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” But that is the moment when the bud opens because there is nothing to keep it closed any more. And suddenly all that was missing arrives, all that was not fitting fits. Suddenly one is no more fragmentary; one becomes integrated. Suddenly one is part of this great celebration called the universe.

But this does not mean that you have just to be lazy about it, that you have just to be a fatalist about it: “What can we do? – if it is a happening,

whenever it happens, it will happen.” This paradox has to be understood: truth cannot be achieved through effort; that is the first part of the paradox. And the second part is: much effort has to be done. Truth cannot be achieved with effort and it cannot be achieved without effort either.

The paradox is only apparent; if you go deeply into it it is not a paradox. All your efforts to achieve make you aware that you have to drop efforts. When you have put every thing at the stake, when you have got totally involved in the search, at that peak moment when the involvement is absolute, the realization happens that “It is not possible through my effort.” And in that very realization effort disappears.

But that moment is not of inactivity. There is no action but there is great alertness. It is not a lazy moment; it is not a kind of sleep. One is passive yet - tremendously full of energy, vibrant, overflowing. Action is not there but great energy is there. And that energy is released only when you have made all the efforts that you can make.

Effort brings you to the moment of effortlessness, and effortlessness makes you available to God. So effort is not absolutely unnecessary, remember. It is not a condition to attain truth but it is a condition to attain effortlessness. It is just like when for the whole day you have been working hard, then in the night you move into a very very deep sleep. But if you have rested the whole day then in the night you will toss and turn and there will be no deep sleep possible. The whole day’s effort makes it possible for you to relax.

Exactly the same is the case with truth. Do whatsoever you can do, and by doing it non doing will flower. By doing it you will be able to relax. And when the relaxation is total, truth simply descends. It is a visit of the beyond.

Sat means truth; bodhi means enlightenment – true enlightenment, true awakening.

Man is fast asleep. Man’s whole life is a long, long journey in dreams. Even while we think we are awake, we are not. With open eyes we are still dreaming; a thousand and one dreams are going on inside the mind. Thoughts are nothing but a translation of dreams into words, just as dreams are nothing but translations of thoughts into pictures. Dreaming is a primal language, a primitive language. And thoughts are more sophisticated, more cultured, more dressed up. But deep down it is the same thing: we are dreaming in sleep; we are dreaming when we think we are awake.

The dreaming stops only when we become so alert that thinking disappears. And that moment is of true enlightenment: a state of consciousness without any content, just pure awareness, nothing to see, no thought, no dream, no memory. The mirror is completely empty, nothing is reflected in it.

That is the ultimate goal of sannyas. And once you have known that you have known all that is worth knowing. Once you have known that you have known love, you have known bliss; you have known God, you have known freedom. You have known all that is worth knowing. And that knowledge is not ordinary knowledge, it is not just information. It is your own realization, it is a revelation.

All doubts disappear, just as darkness disappears when the sun rises. When your enlightenment has happened all doubts disappear, simply disappear – not that they are answered, they are not found at all.

Real trust arises only when you have experienced truth. Otherwise what you call belief and faith, these are all bogus things. These are pseudo-entities to befool people. These are the opium for the people.

My work here consists not in indoctrination. I don’t want to give you any doctrine about truth. I don’t want to give you any teaching; I am not a teacher. I simply want to hit you so hard that you have to wake up!

My work consists of shaking, shocking, and all kinds of devices in which you can be pulled out of your long long state of sleep and dreaming.

It can be done only through devices. It is not an intellectual work; it is existential. It cannot be done by analysis. The analysis will remain intellectual, will remain a mind-trip. But a certain context can be created, a certain space can be created, where it can happen. That space is sannyas.

Sannyas is nothing but a gesture from your side that if I hit you, you will thank me!

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