14

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‌CHAPTER 14

14 April 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin and her three-year-old son are present. She says her energy is divided between what she wants to do in the ashram and what her son demands. She says she is scared of some violence which is surfacing.]

Love always contains some violence. The people who say ‘Make love not war’ are right, but when you make love, war comes in. Love leads to war. You cannot have a world only with love and without war. War is implied. All relationships contain some violence. One goes on pretending that it is not there but here with me you cannot pretend long; you will have to see the truth of it. Now, if you surrender to his needs you will become more violent because you will feel more antagonism. He will look like the enemy. Because of him you cannot go to the talk, you cannot meditate, you cannot do your groups. You cannot do what you want to do because of him.

You will not be able to forgive him. And you will take subtle revenge, which will be more destructive. That is what is happening all over the earth: mothers sacrifice and then they take revenge. And no child is ever able to forgive the mother. Children are very intuitive. They are not intellectual, they are not yet intellectual, so they are more intuitive. Intellect destroys intuition. Children are yet to be trained for the intellect; the more they are trained in the intellect, the less intuitive they will be. Then you can deceive them. Right now you cannot deceive them. You can pretend one thing but they will see through the pretension and they will see that you are feeling angry. On the surface you are showing love, on the surface you are surrendering, but deep down you are angry. They will immediately feel it. And a child who is born out of you remains very deeply connected with your psyche; any vibration in your psyche and he immediately vibrates. So pretentions won’t do.

I will not suggest that you surrender to him, because that will create more violence in you, more repression, more anger, more frustration. And a great murderous desire will arise. You will start thinking ‘If this child were not there’ That’s the same thing. You are saying in a polite way that you

would like the child to disappear. That is a murderous desire. Every mother feels it because every mother sacrifices. I am never for sacrifice. And it is not going to help him either, because the more you pamper him, the more his demands will be there.

And never think of children as just children. They are not just children, they are small people, that’s all! (a chuckle) They know everything that is happening all around. Now he is listening to everything that I am saying, he is trying to get hold of it. So don’t pamper him. Pampering never leads to anything. Just make it clear to him that this is what you want to do and the remaining time is for him. In the remaining time you give him your totality. When you give, you give totally, but when you want to go to the talk or to the meditation or the group, you have to be totally there. Then forget all about him.

This will be a good experience for him to grow; he will become more centred from right now. And he will understand that people have their needs – his mother is a person and she has her own needs, as he has his needs. She loves him when she is with him, she helps him, but when she wants to do her thing she has to do her thing. This understanding will arise soon. This is a tacit understanding. If it arises between mother and child then their life will be totally different. The life of the whole earth will be totally different. Then you don’t sacrifice; your love is just joy, there is no duty involved in it. When it is sheer joy you are not asking for any return. You will never ask. You will always feel grateful to him that he allowed you to love and allowed you to have that joy of sharing, loving. You will feel grateful and he will feel grateful to you. And he will never feel antagonistic because there will be no reason. If the mother sacrifices, the child will feel antagonistic. We can never forgive a person who sacrifices for us because he becomes a load, a heavy weight on the heart.

So just do your thing, let him do his. And children are very perceptive: once they see the point, that this is the way things are going to be, they immediately accept it. They don’t fuss around. If they do, that simply means that you are confused and they are seeing your confusion. Otherwise yes is yes and no is no. They understand it. But if they see that your yes is just impotent or your no is just so-so and deep down there is yes, if they just hit you a little more, if they go on in a tantrum a little more, the yes will come up, they can change you.If you give that feeling to the child then there

will be trouble; the trouble is created by you. If you are very clear-cut, if you call a spade a spade, they understand. They immediately accept the contract. They know what is available to them and they are contented with it.

This will give him integrity, centering, this will make him a better individual, on his own, from right now.

This will make you happy and only a happy mother can love the child. Only a mother who feels fulfilled in her own creativity, in her own world, can be loving to the child. So when you go back to him you will have a real desire to love and there will be nothing else in it.

So this is my advice to you. It will be a little hard in the beginning – all good things are a little hard in the beginning. Always remember that. Just don’t deceive yourself by sweetening things, because today you can sweeten them but tomorrow that is going to become poison. All sugar is poison. Just accept him as a small person, not a child. He has as much consciousness, in fact more, than he will ever have. He has more intelligence than he will ever have, because the school will destroy it, the college will destroy it, the university will destroy it – almost ninety percent will disappear. By the time

he is back from the university he will have only ten percent. He will be a stupid person. Right now he has all available, he is one hundred percent intelligent.

This is a new exploration in the world of the child. A scientist in Japan has been working for thirty years with children and his experience is that every child is born with a high I.Q., and slowly, slowly his I.Q. starts dropping. He becomes mediocre and by the time he is able to do something he is almost stupid. This scientist has experimented and discovered many beautiful things. He says that even a six-month-old child is able to swim. He has experimented with children and in his school, six-month-old children are swimming! Looks very risky, but his thirty years’ observation is this: that they are so intelligent that they can do whatsoever you allow them to do. He says kindergarten is too late. The real education should be earlier than that, kindergarten is already too late. His research is going to affect the whole of humanity in the future, because my own experience is the same: children are utterly intelligent.

Now he is relaxing because once he understood that I told you not to surrender to him, he says ‘Finished!’ He is showing his attitude: ‘Finished, now it is gone!’ Just help him to be himself and you be yourself, mm? Good!

Munish. It means the silent one. And that has to become your style of life, your way of life: become more and more silent in every possible way. It is not only a question of not speaking. Speak less, speak only when it is necessary. Speak telegraphically, just the minimum. And the same is true about other things: all movements have to be reduced to the minimum. Even when walking, walk slowly, centred in yourself, without any hurry, knowing that we are not going anywhere. Enjoy the walk but don’t be goal-oriented. Eat slowly – there is no hurry. The more hurry is dropped, the more you will feel a silence is arising in you. Do everything with infinite patience as if there is infinite time.

Death ends nothing, we continue; death comes and goes, and we continue. Death is an episode in life, life continues. It is just a change of direction, a change of clothes, a change of house, a change of garments, that’s all. Just an episode – just as you change trains. Death is a junction: you change the train. From one train you disappear, you appear in another train. So is the case with life: from one body life disappears, it continues in another body.

There is infinite time. There is no end to it, so there is no hurry. Speak less, think less, do less. Lessen every activity and you will be surprised that just by slowing down the pace of life a great silence arises. And once you have tasted it, more becomes available: you can slow down more.

Magdalena... is one of the most beautiful names in human history. This woman loved Jesus so infinitely that there was no other disciple who loved him so much. Judas is one pole, Magdalena is another pole and all other disciples are somewhere in between. Judas betrayed and all the others fled away. When Jesus was taken down from the cross only Magdalena was there.

And she was a prostitute. It has been happening again and again – that sinners come closer to God than the so-called saints. There is something in the sinners that brings them close to God; that something is their humbleness. And there is something in the so-called saints which keeps them away from God, that is their ego, that haughtiness. They think they are somebodies.

And it has been observed down the ages again and again, that whenever a new religion is born, the first disciples are always from the sinners. Publicans, thieves, whores, murderers – all kinds of

people who are condemned by the society, the unrespected, gather around. All great religions are born with them. There is a subtle logic in it, because those who are already respected can’t risk, they can’t move with Jesus. They are the ones who will crucify him. They have too much investment in their prestige, power, money. They cannot take the risk of going with this madman.

Those who have power and money and prestige are always with the establishment. They are living comfortably, conveniently, so why bother? Only those who are in tremendous pain, misery, in anguish, start searching. They look for something new to happen in their life because nothing has happened yet. They have nothing to lose except their chains so they can risk. If they don’t risk, then who will?

So all great religions are born with people who are condemned and a religion remains alive only because of those condemned people. Slowly, slowly those condemned people disappear and the respected people come in and they start establishing the religion, then religion dies. Religion lives with sinners and dies with saints. Looks strange but this is how it has been.

Prem means love, Chando means rhythm – a rhythm of love. And that is the subtlest vibe of life, the most fundamental, the substratum. We are created out of the rhythm of love, and once you start looking into it, you will be surprised that the whole existence vibrates with it, pulsates with it.

When Newton started talking about the law of gravity, he wanted to call it the ‘law of love’ but he was afraid that people would think he was mad, his scientific community would think he had gone crazy. So he called it the ‘law of gravity’ but deep down he wanted to call it the ‘law of love’. A letter has been found in which he had written about this to some friend but he told the friend not to tell anybody. In fact, that is far truer. It looks crazier but it is far truer. It is a rhythm of love. To call it gravitation is to give it a very profane name.

Stars are connected with each other not by any physical law but by something called love. We move, we live, we are born and we die in love, in the ocean of love. In that sense Jesus says ‘Love is God.’ We are all formations of love, the energy called love. The stone is also love, pulsating in a different rhythm, a different wavelength. So is a Buddha, so is Jesus. There is a hierarchy – one can pulsate in a more subtle and refined way and the ultimate pulsation is called God... beyond which there is no pulsation. The most subtle pulsation is God.

[The new sannyasin says she is doing social work in South India, now she feels it is egotistic and not for her, and how to be aware while she is there.]

No, continue the work. Right now there is no need to leave it, mm? And just start thinking in terms not of the ego. Ego can be derived from any kind of work and anything can feed it. Even renouncing the work can feed it. So that is not the question. You can renounce the work and you can feel very very fulfilled in the ego: ‘I dropped it! Look at the sacrifice. It was so ego-fulfilling and still I dropped it!’ Now another ego arises.

That’s how you find the so-called saints and mahatmas – very very egoistic, because they say they have renounced the world, their family, money, power, prestige: ‘Look at what I have done!’ The ‘I’ becomes more and more subtle. That is not the way to get rid of it. The only way to get rid of it is to be constantly alert about how it arises, why it arises, from where it comes. There is no need to

fight with it. If you fight you will create another kind of ego, but still it will be the ego – a spiritual ego, a materialist’s ego. But ego is ego. Don’t fight it, just watch it. When you are deciding something, when you are giving something to somebody, when you are distributing gifts or anything, just watch how it arises, why it arises, from where it comes. Just go on watching.

And don’t try to get rid of it early, too early. Just watch, and let watching become a ripe phenomenon. In that very ripeness ego disappears. One never needs to drop it. If you drop it, it will remain with you. It will come in from the backdoor. Just go on watching silently, laughing at it and enjoying the show and seeing how ridiculous mind is... with no condemnation. Just a good smile, a good laughter, and go on watching. And slowly, slowly you will see how it arises. The moment you have seen how it arises, it stops arising, because it can arise only when it remains unconscious – that is the source of all ego. It can exist only in a state of darkness. When light penetrates, it can’t exist; and awareness is the light.

So right now continue the work and whenever you can find time come here for a few days, do a few groups here, go again. Just be here for as many days as you can make available. Each time you come do one or two groups and go back, and slowly, slowly, things will start changing. Things have to change slowly. Then they ripen, mature and something really happens. Never be in a hurry.

Now it will be different, mm? – I will be with you. So whenever the ego arises I will give you a hit! That is what sannyas is: then I start manipulating.

[She says she will come back soon, but doesn’t have many holidays.] In India you don’t have many holidays?...

India has more holidays than any country in the world! In fact how India runs is a miracle, how it survives is a miracle. I have been in a government service and out of three hundred and sixty-five days I was enjoying holidays for two hundred days... two hundred days! And when you enjoy two hundred days holiday out of three hundred and sixty-five, the remaining days are just between two holidays so nothing much can be done. How can you? – one holiday is finished, then one day’s work; another holiday starts, so nothing can be done. So nothing is ever done in India – everything just goes on happening. You can come as many times as you like! In India everything is possible.

[A sannyasin, newly returned from the West, says that he is worried about settling in. It was hell some of the time there, and he didn’t even have to go.]

No nothing to worry about – just two, three weeks and things will settle... nothing – just time.… It is hell but you wanted to go.…

Mm, there was no need, but that s how the mind goes on working. The mind goes on creating troubles which are not needed at all. If some trouble is inevitable, it’s okay, it is understandable. But ninety-nine troubles are just creations, they can be avoided easily. Just to see the point.If you ask

how, you have already accepted the trouble. Just see the point, that this is futile, and in seeing it let it drop. Don’t try to drop it. If you are trying to drop it that means you have not understood it, hence the ‘how’.

How always arises out of non-understanding. A man of understanding has no how’s – he simply sees the thing: that this is a wall and he cannot go through it. If he tries he will hit his head and will be wounded, so he simply goes through the door. He does not ask how to go through the door and how not to go through the wall. There is no how, you simply see: this is the door and this is the wall.…

Always read what is written on the door; sometimes it is pull, sometimes it is push!...

You start doing things without reading! When it is written ‘pull’ you may be pushing; it won’t open. Things are very simple – just a little observation and everywhere there are written signs inside you, everywhere there are hints. Just read rightly.

[The sannyasin asks if it will always be painful to return to the West.]

It will happen again and again, it will be more and more painful. The more you come close to me, the more painful it will become. Finally this has to be the home of all my sannyasins, because you will start missing me and that’s what makes the misery.

When you leave here you are not just leaving a country for another country. You are leaving somebody whom you love. You may not be even conscious of how much you love me and then, when you are far away, the love arises more violently. Here it is easy to take me for granted; the farther away you are, the more thirst there is and the more you will miss me. So each time you go it will be more and more misery. But that’s how it should be, so slowly, slowly you will understand, because people understand only through misery.

Just two, three weeks and everything will settle – don’t be worried.

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