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CHAPTER 19
22 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand Franz. Anand means bliss; Franz means freedom. Bliss is a state of freedom; misery is a state of bondage. The more limited we feel, the more miserable we are. The more unlimited we feel, the more blissful. Freedom means a state of no limit, a state which has no boundaries, no China walls surrounding it.
Hence if we remain identified with the body we can never be blissful: body is very small and limited and we are vast. Ordinarily people think we are in the body. The truth is just the contrary: the body is in us. We are bigger than the body; the body is only a tiny part of our being. We are a bigger circle, and the body is just a small point in the bigger circle. To get identified with the body is to become too much limited, is to live in a prison cell, a dark cell. It creates misery.
To be identified with the mind is a little bigger, bigger than the body, has a little more rope, can wander here and there, but still it has limitations. It cannot go into the unknown; it remains limited to the known. Knowledge is its limitation: it cannot move beyond its knowledgeability. And the truth is unknown, and truth cannot be reduced to knowledge. Hence becoming identified with the mind, although it gives a little more freedom than the body, it is only a difference of quantity. Still one is limited. Soon one finds that that too won’t do.
In fact any identification won’t do. One has to learn to drop all identifications – with the body, with the mind, with the religion, with the state, with the church, with the country, political, religious, philosophical, any kind of ideology that gives you a limitation – all those things have to be dropped.
When all ideologies are gone, knowledge dropped, identifications cease, then one is freedom and one is bliss. They both come together, aspects of the same energy. On one side it is freedom, on another side it is bliss.
In the East, the ultimate state is called moksha, absolute freedom. No western language has any equivalent term. The western mind has divided human possibilities into three: the earth, the hell, the heaven. In India we have brought the fourth state: moksha, absolute freedom from all limitations... because hell is a limitation, so is heaven. In hell it is misery that limits you – in heaven it is pleasure that limits you, but in every way whether you are in heaven or hell, you are limited. They are not worth seeking and searching.
One need not be afraid of hell and one need not be desirous of heaven. One should long only for one thing: utter freedom, moksha, because bliss is possible only in absolute freedom. Absolute freedom is bliss.
Satyam Lise. Satyam means truth; Lise means God. Truth is God; there is no other god than truth.
The word “God” creates trouble: it immediately gives a sense as if there is a person, and one immediately starts thinking of the form. Hence all kinds of idolatries are born. Idols are made, images created, temples raised – worship, ritual, prayer – the whole nonsense, just because we use the word “God”! It is better to use the word “truth,” because then there is no need of any image.
And the moment we say truth, our whole approach becomes different. Then it has to be discovered, not worshipped. Then it has to be found, not prayed to. You cannot pray to truth; it is utterly pointless. And there is no need of the priest. The whole business of religion can disappear from the earth if we change back from God to truth. And then there is no question of a Christian and a Hindu and a Mohammedan.
It is the image of God that divides people. You have one image, I have another, then the division arises. The Christian says God is this way, and the Mohammedan says no. And there are three hundred religions on the earth, and no religion is true. All the religions have falsified the great Masters. Christianity means the people who have falsified Christ and Buddhism means the ideology that has falsified Buddha. These people – Buddha, Christ, Krishna – are all for truth not for God. But in the ancient days God was equivalent to truth.
God literally means that which is. It means truth, but it has taken wrong associations. Priests have used and exploited the word too much.
So you forget about God, you start meditating on truth. Truth needs no mediator, no agent to go in between, needs no priest, no prayer. Then what it needs? It needs a silent mind, it needs an innocent heart. It needs the childlike quality of wondering. And if one can have the eyes of a child again, truth is immediately available. Jesus says: Unless you are like a child you will not enter into my kingdom of God. One has to be reborn. Sannyas is a rebirth.
From this moment, feel again the wonder that you used to feel when you were a child. Look with fresh eyes at things, not with knowledge. Look with innocence. And then the trees and the birds and the animals and the people, everything starts taking a majestic form, a mysterious quality.
It depends on you whether you live in a material world or you live in a spiritual world. It depends on your eyes, it depends on how you look at things. If you look through knowledge, then the world is just flat, with no mystery. But if you look with wondering eyes, it is an inexhaustible mystery.
CHAPTER 19.
And that is truth – inexhaustible and mysterious. And to move into it is to move in a totally different dimension. It has nothing to do with the mind; it has certainly something to do with the heart. Nothing to do with logic but certainly something to do with love. Truth is revealed in a state of love.
Prem Deviko. Prem means love; Deviko means goddess – goddess of love.
Man is capable of becoming a god, and less than that is not going to satisfy. Man has the potential of becoming a god. Less than that will fall short of the potential and one will go on feeling something is still missing.
That’s why millions of people go on feeling something is missing, although they have everything that is possible – money, power, prestige, all kinds of gadgets that science has made available. Nothing is lacking as far as material things are concerned; still a tremendous emptiness, something is missing. They may have beautiful families, nice children, good relationships, friends, and still there is no meaning in life; life seems to be utterly meaningless. And they go on stuffing themselves with the same things more and more, as if quantity is going to make any difference.
You have two cars, you can have four; you have two houses, you can have six houses. You can have a bigger house. You can fool around and can have many love affairs. This is just going after quantity: one woman is not satisfying, one man is not satisfying, then find another. Maybe something is wrong with this partner, so go on chasing. But the whole chase is for quantity and quantity makes no difference. It is not a question of having one woman, two, three, four, five. It is not a question of having one car or six cars.
It is a question of fulfilling your potential. One has to come to a flowering. And when man flowers he is a god, when woman flowers she is a goddess. And the flowering happens through love. The beginning is love, the middle is love, and the end is love. Love is the seed and love is the tree and love is the flower.
If love becomes your style of life it will change the quality, not the quantity. Logic works in the world of quantity, and love transforms the quality of your being. That is the only phenomenon which changes the quality of your being, nothing else can do it. Love is a magic, love is the ultimate alchemy. And it is only through love that man has attained to the ultimate heights and the ultimate depths together.
Fulfillment is possible only when nothing in you remains potential, everything becomes actual, when you are not exhausted. One can be exhausted also, and nothing is left inside. That is a negative state. That’s what is happening through gaining more and more things: people become exhausted, tired. But tiredness and exhaustion and being spent in futile exercises can leave you only in a state of darkness.
One has to bloom, one has to release one’s fragrance to existence. What the existence has given to us, we have to return it back. We have to offer it back to God. When the offering is total, one is fulfilled. And that state of contentment is benediction.
[A sannyasin arriving has difficulty saying what he wants to say.]
It is certainly difficult to say yes! It is nothing special, it is absolutely normal. No comes easy. It is very ordinary, because to everybody no comes easy. And it comes easy because nos satisfy the ego; ego feeds on nos.
Yes is difficult because it is the death of the ego. In a single, total yes the ego can commit suicide. And there are two ways of committing suicide – either wholesale or retail!...
Wholesale – in a single leap, or slowly, very slowly – that is retail! You can choose, and I am happy either way. But the ego has to go sooner or later, and sooner will be better.
Do the groups, meditate. Yes will become possible, because it has so many treasures in it. No is empty; it satisfies the ego because ego is also empty, and emptiness can live only on emptiness. Yes is so rich, multidimensionally rich. It has all the beauties and all the blessings of life. Yes contains the whole God and the whole kingdom of God.
You can remain with the no; you will remain poor. With the no you will remain a beggar; with the yes you can become a king. This is a paradox: that by surrender one attains victory, by dying one is reborn. And unless you die you cannot enter into my kingdom of God!
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