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‌CHAPTER 10

10 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand Rosalba. Anand means bliss; Rosalba means a white rose. Bliss is a white rose. It is white because white is the combination of all the colors. White represents totality. White is the most positive phenomenon, just as the black is the most negative. The black represents the absence of all colors, and white, the presence of all colors.

And my sannyasin has to be a white rose. Nothing has to be renounced; everything has to be rejoiced. Nothing has to be rejected; everything has to be accepted and welcomed, because it is through acceptance that transformation happens. Transformation never comes through rejection. Rejection is suppressive; it is cutting your intrinsic parts. It leaves you bleeding, it leaves you half- alive; it leaves you lukewarm. It takes all energy away from you and it creates a conflict and inner war.

If you repress sex you will be in constant war, and you can never win. Failure is absolutely certain, because the more you fight with your sex, the more you give energy to it. And the same is the case with anger, jealousy, greed. Fighting is not the way of wisdom; it is the fool’s path. The stupid and the mediocre fight. The intelligent ones transform; they absorb.

Sex has to be transformed into superconsciousness. And it contains the seed of superconsciousness, just as anger contains the seed of compassion and greed contains the seed of sharing. They are not enemies, they are friends; they have to be befriended.

One has to learn to accept one’s all energies; then only life can become an orchestra. And the white represents the orchestra of life and the rose represents the opening of your heart.

Bliss is a white rose. It is opening of the heart and it is absorbing all the energies that God has given to you. In that opening and in that absorption there is benediction.

Anand Maria. Anand means bliss. Bliss is the ultimate state of consciousness, the purest form of being, utterly devoid of all content. When there is no reflection in the mirror of consciousness, when the mirror is utterly empty, that is the moment of turning, the moment of revolution. Suddenly all that was dark before becomes light and all that was misery becomes bliss and all that was death becomes eternal life.

The secret is simple, simple to say but arduous to follow, simple to state but difficult to practise. The secret is: one has to empty one’s mind totally of all content: thoughts, memories, imagination, desires. There is a great crowd in the mind. That crowd is like dust clinging to the mirror of your being. And there are layers and layers of dust, and the mirror has almost become a no-mirror. It mirrors nothing because the dust is so much.

Becoming a sannyasin means that you are taking a tremendous step towards emptying all this rubbish that one naturally gathers as one moves in life. And we have been moving in life for millions and millions of years. This is not our first life: we have lived in many forms, in many bodies. Bodies go on dying but the mind goes on accumulating. The mind is so greedy that it never leaves anything; it goes on accumulating. And the mind has such tremendous capacity to accumulate that it is almost unbelievable.

Modern scientists say that a single mind can contain all the libraries of the world. It has such great capacity to memorize, to accumulate, and it has accumulated. It has accumulated so much, that’s why the difficulty of dropping it. And one feels afraid of the emptiness also, that once all desires, thoughts and memories are gone one will be utterly empty. But to be empty is to be ready to be filled by God.

That is the first requirement, otherwise all your prayers are false. That is the basis when one can invite God. One is ready, and the moment one is ready God comes. When you are utterly empty, something from the beyond descends in you. Call it God, call it truth, call it bliss; it is the same.

And “Maria” is also a very beautiful word: it means revolution. It is the name of Jesus’ mother. And I love it because only out of revolution a man like Jesus is born. The birth of Christ-consciousness can only be out of the womb of revolution. One has to be a rebel. Rebel against all that is untrue, rebel against that which is imposed by others. Rebel against the status quo, rebel against all the vested interests. Rebel against the past. Rebel against all that in some way or other creates a bondage.

And all that the society teaches you creates bondage. The whole system of education is nothing but to create prisoners. It is a very subtle mechanism to keep people unalive, to allow them only minimum of life. And it is a great conspiracy against men because it poisons their consciousness. It makes them ambitious, ambitious for money, power, prestige. And life is so short that they waste their precious life running after futile things.

The real education will not teach you ambition, cannot teach you ambition. It will teach you the beauty of being non-ambitious... because only a non-ambitious person can be loving and compassionate, and only a non-ambitious person can be really humane. Only a non-ambitious person can be non-violent, non-greedy, non-jealous.

The real education will not teach you how to move into the world of power and politics. It will teach you how to go in, how to turn in. It will teach you the inner journey. It will not teach you concentration; it will teach you meditation. But whatsoever exists in the name of education today never teaches you meditation. Certainly it teaches you concentration, because concentration is the way of the violent mind. Be focused on a target and put your whole energy into it, because life is a tug-of-war and you have to fight, and you have to be tough. You have to become an arrow moving with one-pointed concentration towards a target.

Meditation is a totally different phenomenon; it is not concentration. Meditation is relaxation. Concentration is narrowing of the consciousness. Meditation is widening of consciousness, opening all the doors, just being silent, relaxed, just being with oneself, just going in and in and in, being centered in one’s own being.

But society is not willing that people should relax so much, that people should go so much inwards because the moment they go inwards, the moment they relax, they cannot be reduced into slaves. They become rebels.

Truth makes everybody a rebel. And the experience of one’s own ultimate life makes one utterly fearless. One knows then even death cannot destroy, so who cares? Nobody can force a person to do something who knows that he is eternal. There is no power in the world who can crush such a soul. You can destroy his body, you can crucify him like you crucified Jesus, you can poison him like you poisoned Socrates, but you cannot destroy his soul. His soul remains free; he knows what freedom is. The society is very much afraid of people who know the taste of freedom. And that’s what happens when you go in.

Maria is a beautiful name. It is really synonymous with religion; rebellion is religion. Be blissful and you will be a rebel; be a rebel and you will attain to bliss. They go together like two wheels of a bullock cart; they move together.

Deva Elida. Deva means God; Elida means chosen one – chosen by God.

There is an ancient Egyptian saying that you can choose God only when he has already chosen you. The saying has a great truth in it: man never thinks of God ordinarily, and the moment man starts thinking of God that simply shows that God has started thinking about you. The initiative is always from God. It has to be so, because we are lost in darkness. We are even incapable of remembering him. Unless he calls forth we may go on and on wandering into darkness. Unless he pulls us back there is no hope.

There is another saying also in Egypt: that when the disciple is ready the Master appears. And when the disciple is ready then God starts calling forth. The moment God calls you is the moment when the Master appears. The Master is nothing but a vehicle of God; the Master is only a messenger. He has nothing of his own to give to you; he is simply a medium.

Becoming a sannyasin means: now God has called you and the Master has also appeared. Both the sayings are fulfilled. Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity. Miracles are possible: surrender! Great surprises are waiting for you: surrender!

Deva Arpana. Deva means divine; Arpana means surrendered to, offered to, dedicated to – offered to God.

Sannyas is an offering of oneself to God. We don’t have anything else to offer; everything else will be just mediocre, mundane. If we offer money, it is meaningless. All that we can offer is our own being; that is the only true offering. So don’t hold back, because either it is total or it is nil. If one holds back, then the whole effort becomes nullified; then it is an exercise in futility.

My effort here is to help you not to hold back; to push you, to go on pushing you to the point where you can take the quantum leap, when you can offer yourself in toto, not just a part. A part cannot be accepted because the part will be dead, and God can accept only life. And life belongs to your organic unity, your totality. If I offer my hand it will be dead; if I offer my eyes they will be dead. They are alive only in my organic unity. I can offer only my organic unity; then only it will be a life offering.

God is absolute life, the ocean of life. We are drops of life. The ocean can accept only if we disappear into the ocean with no conditions, with no expectations, with no demands. And then great bliss happens on its own accord. Just feel – the very idea is tremendously blissful. It is very calm and cool, it is very serene, silent – just the idea of offering oneself to the universe with no conditions.

And I am saying this is just the idea that gives you the feel; what will be the real experience is inexpressible. One has to experience it to know it. There is no way of saying anything about it. No word is adequate enough; no word can contain that experience. That experience is very mercurial, elusive: the more you try to catch hold of it, the more it slips out of your hands. I can show you the way; I cannot tell you what it is. I can point towards the moon, but you will have to experience it.

The world of religion is that of existential experience. It is not of speculation, thinking, philosophizing. It is a love affair, hence offering is needed. And only one offering is acceptable to God; that is your whole being.

Sannyas is just the first step towards it; it is the beginning, not the end. So don’t be satisfied by just becoming a sannyasin; it is just entering into a journey which knows no end.

[A sannyasin, arriving, says: I feel that my heart or my head, I don’t know which is closed towards you. Will you... will you still be...?]

I am with you unconditionally. Whether you are closed or open makes no difference. Sometimes when you are closed I will be even with you more because I have to open you.

When you are open, then there is not much worry about you. So you can enjoy! Sometimes you can be closed – nothing to be worried. I will go on knocking on your doors.

[She answers: Then I don’t have to have so many head-trips about it anymore? – That this is wrong and I ought to be and I should be like this... ]

No. Drop all this! There is no question of shoulds with me. That’s what my whole approach is, that I don’t want to impose any should on you – that you should be like this and you should not be like that. I accept you as you are and I begin from there. And whatsoever is going to happen is not to be

forced to happen; it will happen of its own accord. You need not force the bud to become a flower. One has to learn patience. When the time comes, when the right time comes, the bud opens. And the spring is not far away.

[A sannyasin, arriving after a sudden trip to Germany.]

Now relax and be here, and don’t try to escape! Enough is enough! Escaping is a sheer wastage of time. And you cannot escape really. Once you are trapped with me, you are trapped! I give you enough rope: you can go to Germany, to America but that doesn’t make much difference, the rope is long enough!

But now become a little more alert of what you are doing, because time is really precious.

I am here today; I may not be here tomorrow. Something is possible today; it may not be possible tomorrow. And then there will be a great repentance and then you will be miserable your whole life, just because you missed a great opportunity.

And these opportunities are really very rare, and they are becoming rarer every day. So when the door is open, enter. Don’t fool around, because the door may be closed any moment and then there is no way to open it. While the wind is ready to take you, go along, go with it.

So become a little more alert what you have been doing: you have been doing things very unconsciously. And only consciousness can help – now that is to be remembered.

[A sannyasin is returning from a visit to the west because of her health.]

Now be dissolved in the commune! Don’t keep yourself separate. Up to now you have existed as a separate individual. Don’t remain an island any more. And you will not be losing anything by losing your ego; you will be gaining everything. You will be becoming bigger, you will be becoming more.

The commune has to exist without islands. The commune has to become one ocean. The islands hinder the progress; they become blocks on the way.The commune has to create one soul, only then it is a real commune. Otherwise it is a crowd, a mob, and I don’t want a crowd here.

So now you start committing suicide, but that suicide will bring you to eternal life.

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