23

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‌CHAPTER 23

26 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem Marion. Prem means love; Marion means rebellion. Love is the greatest rebellion in the world. It is the greatest rebellion because love is not part of this world; love belongs to the beyond. Love is God’s nature.

To be in love is not to be of this world. To be in love is to transcend the world. To be in love is to surpass nature. Love is the greatest reach towards the beyond hence it is the most radical phenomenon in existence. Very few people gather courage enough to be in love.

Hence men have created many pseudo kinds of love. Unless love brings you to God, remember, it is pseudo, it is not true; you are deceiving yourself. Love, to be true, has to prove itself by only one criterion: it should bring you to God.

Sannyas is a love affair. It is groping for the divine. It is a deep, deep search for the meaning of life. And the day you have arrived at the innermost core of your being, you know the meaning. Love is the meaning. Love is the way and love is the goal.

Anand means bliss; Shunyam means absolute emptiness.

Man can either be full of oneself or utterly empty of oneself: these are the two possibilities of being. If one is full of oneself, one remains empty of God: that’s the way of the ego. If one is empty of oneself one becomes full of God; that is the way of a sannyasin. Egolessness is the way of a sannyasin.

One has to annihilate oneself totally. It is only out of that annihilation that a new life arises. As the seed dies and the sprout comes up, exactly like that the moment you die something utterly new, utterly fresh, is born in you. And that is your true nature, that is your true being.

That which dies is false because only the false can die. The truth is eternal, the truth is deathless. The ego can die because it is false. The egoless being cannot die because it is truth. It is part of the fundamental truth of existence; it is part of the cosmos itself.

Sannyas is learning how to die as false so that one can be born as true, as truth. Empty yourself of yourself! If you can create emptiness within you, God rushes in you from every nook and corner, from all sides, and fills the vacuum.

All that we have to do is to create the vacuum; the remaining is done by God. The fulfillment happens through him. We have just to become ready to receive, vulnerable, empty, doors open, waiting. And one can wait only when one is empty. Emptiness is what waiting is.

When you are not empty you are in a hurry; the ego is always in a hurry. When you are not empty you are full of thoughts and desires and dreams, because the ego is full of dreams, thoughts, imagination, memory. The ego exists, survives, through them. Once you are empty there is no thought, no desire, no ego – just a silence, a total silence, infinite space. Immediately God rushes in. One is fulfilled. One comes to know what life is. It is tremendous beauty, benediction, bliss.

Prem Pedro. Prem means love; Pedro means rock. Love is the real rock on which you can build the temple of life – the only rock which can support the temple.

Without love people go on making their houses in sand. They are bound to fall; they are bound to bring frustration. Without love, life knows only failure and frustration. You can have money, you can have power you can have everything this world can give to you, but you will not have peace and you will not have fulfillment and you will not have contentment unless you have found the rock of love and that becomes the foundation of your life.

Everybody is trying to make a temple of their life but nobody seems to be concerned about the foundation. And the reason is that the foundation remains invisible; you never see it. You see the temple, you never see the foundation. You see the tree, you never see the roots. And the roots are the most important part, and the foundation is the most important thing, but they remain invisible.

So is love. Everything else you can see – money, power, prestige – everything is there exhibiting itself. Only love hides, only love remains silent. It makes no noise, it does not advertise; it is utterly silent. Only in rare moments, if it says anything, it whispers.

That’s why many people go on missing the real point, because it is invisible. They believe only in that which they can see; love cannot be seen. Money can be seen, hence people believe in money; people have made money a god. Notwithstanding what they say, ninety percent people worship money as God. And the remaining nine point nine percent people worship power as God.

Just point one percent people are left to seek and search for the invisible. You can call it God, you can call it love, you can call it truth; those are just different names for the same reality: the invisible.

A sannyasin has to become an inquirer into the invisible, because the invisible is the foundation, and once you have found it, everything else follows. Jesus says: Seek ye first the kingdom of God, then everything else shall be added unto you. He is right.

Love is the kingdom of God. Seek ye first love and all else shall be added unto you. Miss love, and everything is missed. Find love, and everything is found. Let love be your God.

Anand Anatto. Anand means bliss; Anatto means no-self, the state of egolessness.

Bliss is possible only when we are ready to sacrifice the ego; that is the price which has to be paid. And it is worth paying, because ego is worthless compared to the state of bliss. But we go on clinging to something which is only a shadow, which is only a non-entity, just an illusion, and we go on ignoring the real, the true.

There is a reason behind it: the truth will dissolve you into the ultimate. You cannot be separate, you cannot have your own identity. You will be part of the oceanic existence and you will disappear into it like a dew drop. And the dewdrop is afraid to lose its identity; it wants to be itself. It resists, it fights, it fears; it protects itself in every possible way. It wants to be away from the ocean, because once it slips into the ocean it will not be found again.

The fear seems to be logical, but it is one-sided. We have not seen the other side of the picture. On the one side the dewdrop disappears into the ocean, is no more there – on the other side it becomes the ocean. It is not really losing anything; it is gaining all.

Disappear as an ego and be possessed by the whole: that’s the meaning of your name. And then there is only bliss and nothing else. Misery is the shadow of the ego, and bliss is a natural state when ego is gone. When the ego is not there misery is impossible.

You cannot make a Buddha miserable. You can kill him but you cannot make him miserable. You can poison him but you cannot make him miserable. He will be ill just as everybody else is; he will become old just as everybody else becomes; he will die one day just as everybody else dies... but you cannot make him miserable. He will live laughing, he will die laughing. Laughter will be his flavor. He will laugh at death, in the very face of death, and that will be his victory... because he knows now he cannot be destroyed. He has already dissolved himself.

That’s exactly what happened when Buddha was dying. Disciples started crying, weeping, and he said, “Stop all this nonsense! For whom are you crying?” One disciple said, “Because you are dying we are crying.” And Buddha said, “You never listen to me! For forty years I have been telling you that I am no more, so who can die? I have died forty years before – the day I dropped the ego I died. Since then I am not. So only the body will be going into the earth, dust unto dust. And the air will go into the air, and the water will go into the water; all the elements will go into their sources. And I have not been there for forty years, the house has been empty. And now you are weeping and crying – for somebody who is not. How can I be dead now? – I have already died!”

One who drops his ego becomes deathless. One who drops his ego drops all misery.Then bliss is natural, spontaneous.

This will be your new name: Swami Anand Narottama. Anand means bliss; Narottama means superman.

Man is really only a bridge; man has no being. Man is a becoming, a process. He has to arrive; he is still on the way. Man has to surpass himself. He has to become a superman, because only in surpassing himself will he find himself. The only way to find oneself is to surpass oneself.

Hence human life is a pilgrimage. Each day one has to die to the past and be born again: that’s what I mean by surpassing. One has to go on dropping one’s past so it does not accumulate and hinder your progress. One has to be continuously aware not to accumulate anything from the past, so that one remains fresh, young, alive.

Each sunrise should find you in a new space: that’s the true way to live. And the sunset will not find you in the same place again where the sunrise had found you. You have moved, the river has moved.

Heraclitus says: You cannot step in the same river twice. He is absolutely true. But people are no more rivers; then you can step in the same dormant water again and again and again. But if you are a river, then of course you cannot step twice in the same river; you cannot be the same person twice.

And that’s how one should be: that’s what I mean by surpassing. And when the flow remains a continuity and one goes on moving onwards, reaching to new peaks, new experiences, new spaces, arriving at new dimensions, one goes on becoming more and more rich. Not that one gathers anything – because whatsoever you can gather will be taken away by death – but one becomes more and more authentic a being.

And the ultimate state of authentic being is superman. That is the meaning of narottama. When you have arrived to your deepest depth, when there is no more to go anywhere, when you have reached to the core, the very center, then you are no more a man.

A Buddha is not a man; he is a superman. So is Jesus, so is Krishna, and so are all the awakened ones of the earth. And you have to become part of those chains of awakened people: you have to become part of the glory that belongs to an awakened one. Each of my sannyasins has to become a superman.

And superman has nothing to do with race, blood. I am not using the word in the sense Adolf Hitler used it. I am using it in a totally different sense: the ultimate state of your awakening. Then how you can be called just a human being? You have surpassed; you have gone beyond. You have reached the other shore.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says he still thinks of the woman who left him six months ago. He has not felt like being with another woman.]

Then you are creating the problem; then you want to keep the problem. If you have loved a woman and the love has been a fulfillment and it has brought many pleasures to you, of course those pleasures are never pure and cannot be ever pure. Much pain is bound to be there.

The human love is, out of necessity, dual, because there are two persons, hence many conflicts are bound to be there. Love brings both: it brings agonies, it brings ecstasy. Hence one becomes afraid of love on the one hand, and on the other, one still longs for it because of all those ecstasies. And when a woman leaves you, slowly slowly you forget all the agonies and you remember only the ecstasies. Then it becomes very difficult to get rid of the memory.

The best way to get rid of the memory is to get another woman!

She will give you again pain, again agony! You understand?

She will again make you suffer. And you have to go through a few karmas more – a little suffering will be good and cleansing! And this time it will take you to newer depths of experience.

One day one is simply finished, one day a full point comes. But then afterwards you don’t remember, then no memory is left. Unless that happens you will have to go again and again into the same experience. You are not yet mature enough to be completely free from women.

A maturity is needed. When one is absolutely mature – man or woman it doesn’t matter, it is the same – when one is completely mature, aware, then the last relationship simply withers away leaving no trace. Then you don’t remember; then you don’t feel any emptiness because of it.

But right now that maturity is not there. Few women will be needed to help you. And they are really great helpers! And one should not be shy in taking help, because you will be helping them and they will be helping you. That’s how people help each other and grow.

Love is the best growth group. No Encounter, no Gestalt, no Primal Therapy, can be compared with it; it is incomparable. In fact Encounter, Gestalt and Primal are needed because people have forgotten how to love. Otherwise in the ancient days love was enough – that was the only therapy. And it is a natural therapy: it wounds, it heals, and finally it brings you to a point where you become so aware of the agony and the ecstasy that you see the whole game – that both are going to remain together, you cannot choose one. Either you have to choose both or you have to drop both.

And the day one becomes so alert that he can drop both, a great silence descends, a silence that is not of the earth. That silence is freedom, that silence is absolute freedom. You can then love a woman or a man with no attachment, with no possessiveness. You can simply share your love energy, but it creates no trap.

I am not saying that a mature person should not love. Only a mature person can love, but his love is a totally different phenomenon. He simply shares his being and never looks back. He has no past, no future.

That’s what you want – no past, no future, just the present – but for that you have to go through few fires more. So find a fiery woman! And then next time when you come remind me how things are going.

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