22

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‌CHAPTER 22

25 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Dhamma Klaus. Dhamma means the ultimate law, the law that keeps the whole universe together, the very core of existence, the center, the soul. And Klaus means victory. The only way to be victorious is to be with the law and not against it. One can choose to be against it – that freedom is ours – but if we choose to be against the law, we are committing suicide. It is a slow suicide – one may not even become aware because it is so slow – but only one dies against the law; one cannot live.

Life is with the law, and the more you are with it, the more alive you are. To be totally immersed in it is to know life at its ultimate peak, to know the climax of life, to know the orgasmic joy of life.

And millions of people are miserable for the simple reason they are fighting against something which is our very nourishment, which is our very life. If you fight with it you destroy yourself; you cannot destroy it. It is like hitting your head against a mountain: your head will be shattered into pieces. You cannot shatter the mountain by hammering it with your head.

The ultimate law – call it God; truth, Tao – is so huge, so enormous, that we are just drops against the ocean. The very idea of fighting it is stupid. The intelligent person surrenders: the unintelligent fights. And the beauty of surrender is that it brings victory. Fight brings failure, surrender brings victory.

And this is the whole message of sannyas: surrender. Surrender to the universe, surrender to the cosmic principle, surrender to God, and then nothing can destroy you and nothing can defeat you. Surrendered to the ultimate you become the ultimate. When the dewdrop disappears into the ocean it becomes the ocean. And that’s what victory is all about.

Deva Ray. Deva means God; Ray means protection – God is protection. We are continuously protected; with thousands of hands God protects us. Because the protection is so natural and so

continuous, we never become aware of it. We become aware of things only which change. Change makes us aware, but the protection is unchanging.

You don’t become aware of your breathing unless something goes wrong. If it is hard to breathe, you become aware. If you are feeling suffocated, the air is polluted, you become aware. If there is no air to breathe, you become aware, or if there is something wrong in the inner mechanism of breathing you become aware. You become aware only when something goes wrong.

But with God and his protection never anything goes wrong; it cannot go. It is always there silently; absolutely silent it goes on working. It surrounds you in the air. It comes to you in the sunrays. It reaches you in the moonlight. In thousands of ways it comes to you and nourishes you, protects you.

To become aware of this protectiveness of existence is of immense value, because the moment you become aware of this, a great trust arises and thankfulness, gratitude. That is the central core of a religious consciousness: gratefulness, gratitude, thankfulness.

The religious person is not the one who goes to the church every Sunday; that is only a formality, a pseudo kind of religion. The religious person is one who is twenty-four hours grateful to God, never forgets it – that he protects, that he is available, that he is just by the side, that “I am never alone.”

There is a beautiful anecdote in Mohammed’s life. He is being followed by his enemies. He has only one friend with him and they both are trying to escape into the hills. They come to a cul-de-sac; the road ends. They cannot go ahead; a great abyss! They cannot go back – the enemy is coming closer and closer. They can hear the sound of the horses, their steps. The noise becomes more and more noisier; they are coming every moment closer and closer and closer! There seems to be no escape. They hide in a cave. The friend is trembling, perspiring, but Mohammed is perfectly calm and quiet and collected as ever – as if nothing special is happening, as if he is sitting in his home!

The friend becomes aware of the difference. He asks him, “Are you not afraid? We are only two, and the enemy at least one thousand. We don’t even have arms with us. Our death is sure. Are you not afraid? We are only two and they are one thousand!”

And Mohammed starts laughing and he says, “You don’t count rightly – we are three: – you, me, and God. And that is our protection. Hence I am quiet, calm, at home, because wherever I am, he is. Either he is my shadow or I am his shadow, it makes no difference, but we are together. And if he is with me, what does it matter that the enemy is coming closer? What does it matter that the enemy has a big strength? It can’t be bigger than God. And it is up to him to find a way. I trust him.”

The moment Mohammed said, “I trust him...” he must have said with his totality. Such people live with totality, without holding anything back. It must have been one of those rare moments when a statement comes from your very guts. He said, “I trust him. It is up to him to protect or not to protect; that’s not my worry.” Immediately the noise started becoming lesser and lesser The friend was puzzled – what happened? The enemy had taken some other turn; it was not coming to this side. Within minutes the noise disappeared.

I love this story! And that is the meaning of your deva ray: God is our protection. Trust, surrender.

Anand means bliss; Sagaram means the ocean – the ocean of bliss.

Man appears only to be small, but he is not. From the outside he looks like a dew drop, but in his interiority he is an ocean. We are not confined in the body and we are not confined in the mind either. We are not confined at all. Our being is unlimited; it is immense, beginningless, endless. It is eternal. Birth is false, death is false, because we were before birth and we will be after death. They don’t define us. Life does not start with birth and does not end with death. Millions of births and millions of deaths have happened in life. They are episodes in the life itself, turns. The river takes a turn; that does not mean that it dies. It moves in a new direction; that does not mean it ends. Even when the river disappears in the ocean it does not end: it only becomes the ocean

But this truth can be known only from the Inner. You cannot observe it from the outside. If you observe man from the outside he is just another kind of animal, very limited, really tiny – so much limited that if we think about limitations we will be shocked.

We exist between twelve degrees of heat and temperature – between ninety-eight degrees and hundred ten. Just an expansion of twelve degrees, that’s our whole life. Fall below and you die; go beyond hundred ten degrees and you die. Just if you are not allowed to breathe for two minutes you are dead. A bullet is enough to kill you. Just a stroke of the sword is enough to finish the greatest man.

If we observe man from the outside he is really very limited – seventy years at the most. If you are not allowed to drink water you cannot exist long. If you are not given food you will die. If one goes on noting down all the limitations one will become really very much scared. Just a very small virus can kill you – a virus that cannot be seen by your eyes; if you want to see it you will need a microscope. But he can kill you. Our power is very limited. It is really a miracle that we exist at all.

But if you look from the inside, if you stand there at the center of your being and observe yourself, then a totally different perspective opens up. All limitations disappear. Suddenly you see yourself as God, as pure consciousness, as immortality.

And that is what meditation is: to stand at the center of your being and watch yourself. Science observes man from the outside, hence it has taken all dignity of man away. It has made man just a little above the monkeys. Religion watches man from the innermost core, and immediately man has immense dignity and glory. Then he is just below the gods.

See the difference: science makes him just above the monkeys, and religion makes man just below the gods. Scientifically, fall back a little bit and you are a monkey. Religiously, one step more into consciousness and you are divine.

That’s the meaning of your name: an ocean of bliss. Actualize it, realize it!

Prem Amrit. Prem means love; Amrit means elixir. Love makes one immortal; love is elixir.

It is love that has been the search down the ages of all the seekers, because it is only through the alchemy of love that one transcends time, and by transcending time, transcends death. Mind is bound to die, the body is bound to die, but there is something in us, if we become aware of it, which

is not going to die. Only that will give us a fearless life. And one becomes aware of that innermost core only in moments of love, never otherwise.

Love opens the doors of the temple of the inner world, because love stops thinking. Love happens in the heart; it has nothing to do with the head. The head disappears in love, and the disappearance of the head is the beginning of a totally new dimension, a new pilgrimage. Love is a feel, not a thought. Love is sensitivity. And slowly slowly, as love deepens, it brings awareness, it makes one more alert.

There are only two ways to reach to God. One is by becoming alert. That is the way of Buddha: be more alert, be more aware, and one day love will follow awareness; it will come as a shadow of it.

The other way is that of love: the way of the Sufis, Bahauddin, Jalaluddin, Rabiya. The way of love means be more and more loving, and one day awareness will come of its own accord as a shadow.

And both are right, because love and awareness are two aspects of the same coin; they are inseparably one. Love is one side of the coin, awareness is the other side. If you can find one side you have automatically found the other too.

And for you it will be easier to find love first than awareness. Be in love with life, be simply in love. It is such a beautiful existence that it is very unbelievable why people are not in love. It is such an incredible existence: each moment is so precious and each atom is so beautiful. Still people are without love! For what they are waiting? We cannot find a better world than this, we cannot find a better existence than this. This is the most perfect existence possible, and the most beautiful and colorful world possible. So many birds singing, and so many trees blooming, and so many mountains and rivers and stars... and still people don’t feel any love arising in their hearts. They must be dead. They must have forgotten all about their hearts. They have to be reminded.

My function here is to remind you of your heart, to take you slow4 slowly towards your heart, to create love energy in you, to help you to become more heartful. All the devices that are being used here – either they are to bring awareness in you or they are to bring love in you. If one is achieved, the other is achieved automatically.

But you follow the path of love: be a Sufi!

And remember, my sannyas has nothing to do with the old idea of sannyas; it is just the very opposite of it. The old sannyas was and is life-negative. My sannyas is life-affirmative. To me life is God, to me there is no other God than life.

And if life is God, then love is the only prayer possible. And if life is God, then today is important, not tomorrow. If life is God, then one need not worry about the other world. One has to make this moment, the herenow, as beautiful, as blissful, as possible, because the next moment will be born out of it.

One has to make life a celebration, and not only life but death too. One has to live lovingly, dancingly and one has to die lovingly and dancingly. And if one can manage to live and die rejoicing, one has attained. Then God is found in your very heart of hearts. Then God is not a distant reality but is immediate. Then God is not something somewhere else, but herenow. Then God is not something to be worshipped but something to be lived.

My sannyas makes the whole life a temple and transforms the ordinary into sacred. Just remember this, and with this remembrance great things are going to happen. I don t give you any ritual, I don’t give you any particular prayer, I don’t give you any mantra. I simply give you an insight. Any ritual will bind you, will make you a slave. Any mantra will be a subtle trap. Any discipline will create a prison around you. Hence I don’t give you any discipline. I simply give you a love for life – life as it is, with no shoulds.

And if we can love life as it is, religiousness comes of its own accord. Then your daily routine – cooking food, cleaning the house, looking after the children, everything that you are doing – starts having a new quality to it, a new dimension to it. It becomes your prayer. I want to transform the whole life into prayer. I don’t want to give you a prayer in addition with your life, but I want to transform your whole life into a prayerfulness.

And this is very simple and easily possible: just a little awareness, remembering, intelligence! And it is always there; we have just to tap it, that’s all.

That’s good! Much more is going to happen. Things happen only when you are in a happy mood. Things happen only when you are blissfully ready to receive them. Things never happen in negative moods; a very positive state is needed. The more positive you are, the more you are entitled to miracles.

And you are positive, you are happy. Just keep this state. Remember not to fall from it. Remember not to destroy it and not to be distracted from it. Then things simply start happening; one need not do much. But if one is not happy, then one can go on doing many things but nothing will happen. With a negative heart the world simply becomes disconnected. With a happy heart you are bridged, bridged to millions of things around you.

So keep this happy flavor around you.

[A sannyasin, arriving, says: I am happy to be here.]

That’s very good. Enjoy the moments that you are here as much as possible. Just enjoy like a small child, with wondering eyes and a receiving heart, with innocent being – no intellectuality, no knowledgeability. And then the whole sky is yours.

[A sannyasin, on her first visit, says she has nothing to say.]

There is no need if there is nothing to say. It is far better to be in a state of non-questioning, then answers are very close. And when you are too full of questions, answers are very far away. The non-questioning mind is the answer, and the questioning mind never finds the answer.

So be here in a non-questioning mood. Just be here, for no particular motive. Let it be a holiday! Just enjoy rest, relaxation, singing, dancing. And then something starts happening without your knowing; you become aware only when it has happened. A motivated mind can never achieve anything of value. Only the unmotivated mind achieves the real, essential things of life.

So be here utterly unmotivated, not even the urge for spiritual growth. That too is a motivation, a greed. Be playful, unmotivated, for the sheer joy of being here!

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