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CHAPTER 26
29 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Come here. Close your eyes. Listen to the sounds... I am sorry that you had to wait so long to get in, but I am also happy that you waited with love, prayer, hope. Those are the basic qualities of a sannyasin: to wait patiently, to wait with trust. Even if it takes infinite time, love knows how to wait.
Love never becomes hopeless, it never loses hope. If it loses hope it is something else; it is not love. It trusts unconditionally, and it knows at the deepest core of one’s being that everything is all right as it is and everything will be all right. That basic trust is the very foundation of a sannyasin. To live with that trust is to live blissfully.
God is available only to those who are ready to wait, even if it takes millions of lives. And then it can happen instantly too. That’s the paradox to be understood: if you are in a hurry it will take longer time; if you can wait, it can happen this very moment.
Anand Amrita. Forget the old completely, as if it never belonged to you. Just dropping the name helps immensely, because with it goes your whole past; with it goes all your memories, hang-ups. Dropping the old name, suddenly you become new, fresh. Losing the old identity, for a moment again you are a child.
And this is that moment: you are a child again. And unless one is a child again initiation is impossible. If the old continues then you can change the clothes; it won’t help much. The old has to be dropped very deliberately, very consciously. We have to become discontinuous; we have to start from ABC.
So from this moment, think of yourself as a newborn child.
Socrates used to say to his disciples that “I am a midwife.” And he was right: each Master is a midwife; he helps you to be born again.
And that’s my function here: to help you to be new, and to help you to understand the very process of renewing yourself again and again so the old never accumulates. The old becomes a burden. It is dust, and the more the dust gathers on the mirror, the less the mirror is capable of reflecting that which is.
And that’s what God is: these birds, these trees, these people, this earth... this is what God is! God is not somewhere else. But our minds are not reflecting: they are full of noise, full of memories, full of the past garbage.
In a single stroke of the sword one can cut oneself off from the past. Think anew! From this very moment you are no more the old. For a few days the old memories will go on, but remember, you have nothing to do with them. Think of them as if you have read in a novel or seen in a film. It is somebody else’s story; it is not your biography.
Your biography begins from today. Count your age from today!
Anand Sue. Anand means bliss; Sue means a graceful, white lily. Bliss is a lotus, it is a lily, it is a flower. Bliss can only be conceived as a flower because it is an opening, the opening of the heart.
Ordinarily the heart is like a bud, closed. Thousand and one fears keep it closed – and all those fears are absolutely unnecessary. People are afraid of death, and death is a lie; it never happens. One never dies, one only changes garments. One changes certainly the bodies, but one never dies. Death is the greatest lie in existence, but it keeps people so much afraid.
It is like seeing a rope and imagining a snake, and escaping and trembling and perspiring and panting. One can even have a heart attack – just by seeing a rope and thinking that it is a snake – although there was no snake at all. That’s how it is with death: death is a rope, we think it is a snake.
And the reason why we can’t see it is that we always see others die. Naturally the body becomes dead: the bird, the invisible bird, flies. That was the real person, but we had never seen him; we had always believed him to be his body. So the cage is left there, dead, silent, because the bird is no more there – no song, no fluttering, no noise, no movement. But the bird continues in another cage somewhere else, in another womb, in some other body, in some other form.
And ultimately one becomes a non-body, a non-physical, invisible existence. Ultimately one becomes one with the cosmos. That’s the last death, the ultimate death. When the death happens the body dies, but one is no more born into another body.
The East has been searching for it. It calls it moksha, the ultimate freedom; nirvana, the cessation of the ego – stopping of the wheel of birth and death. That has been known by the mystics as the greatest misery. We are bound with the wheel; and the wheel goes on moving, and we have to move with the wheel. It is a torture to be born again and then to die, and to live in a confinement in the body.
The body knows illness; the soul knows none. The body knows limitations; the soul knows none. The body is going to die, but the soul is a continuum; it is eternity. But how much we are afraid of it, and how much we are afraid of life too!
CHAPTER 26.
The most strange thing about man is that he is not only afraid of death, he is afraid of life too. That too for a certain reason: because it is life that brings death. Man is afraid to live, because if you live, death is bound to come.
So millions of people simply don’t live; they only exist, cautiously, never taking any wrong step. And because they are so much afraid of taking a wrong step, they never take any step – because who knows? – it may be wrong; you have never taken it before. Afraid of committing any mistake, they don’t do anything. They are as if never born. And to live means to live dangerously!
I used to know a professor; he was a colleague of mine in the university. He was so much afraid of flying, so tremendously afraid! And he used to go to other countries and to other universities, and he had to fly. It was such a nightmare. He came to me once and he said “What to do with it? I cannot even tell it to anybody because people laugh. But I am almost on the verge of death the moment I have to go to the airport. I start praying – I never pray ordinarily. I know that this is going to be the last, I will not survive. The fear grips me! And I cannot say to anybody, because people will laugh and will think that I am stupid. Even children are not afraid. They are playing in the plane and I am stuck to my seat.
“I cannot even move, just almost paralyzed!”
I asked him, “How many planes fall? And how many people, in what percentage, die in plane crashes?” He said, “Not more than one percent.” I said, “Do you know, and how many people die in their beds? Ninety-seven percent people die in their beds! You should be afraid of the bed and not afraid of the airplane!” He said, “You are a dangerous man! I had come to get rid of the fear of the airplane – now I will be afraid even of my bed.” This is true; ninety-seven percent people die in the bed.
If you start being afraid, you cannot even lie down in your bed. You cannot go to your bathroom – many people die there! Everywhere there is fear. But then one cannot live, and because one cannot live one remains a bud, closed.
The only way to open up is to drop all fear. Death is non-existential, hence there is no need to fear. And you are indestructible. Many deaths have happened before, many will happen, but they have not even touched you, they have not even scratched you. They cannot. You are intangible, invisible; you are part of eternity.
Trusting this, feeling this, living this, one starts opening up. In that opening there is grace, there is beauty, there is benediction. One becomes a lily, one becomes a rose, one becomes a lotus.
[The new sannyasin says: You know, I was terrified on the airplane... and then there was the taxi from Bombay!]
That’s right! That’s why I had to invent this professor! I have to invent so many storiesNow don’t
be afraid of your bed!
Anand Catherine. Anand means bliss; Catherine means purity. Bliss is a state of absolute purity, innocence, childlike innocence. Bliss is not cleverness; it has nothing to do with being clever, cunning.
Everything else in the world is attained through cunningness, cleverness, but not bliss. Bliss is attained through being innocent. And that is one of the most difficult things, because we have lost it; it is paradise lost And it is very difficult to search and find it in the whole garbage of the past. It is somewhere still, like a diamond in the mud. If we search long enough, passionately enough, we are bound to find it. We have not really lost it; we have lost only the track of it. There stands a great wall between us and our childhood, but that wall can be crossed, it can be dynamited.
And that’s what sannyas is all about: the wall has to be destroyed mercilessly, because only then we can find back the pure source of energy.
Jesus says: Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God. He is saying the same thing. That’s what I am trying to evoke: a state of not-knowing. And once you can have a little taste of it, it’s so tremendously beautiful that you would like to have it more and more and more.
A great discontent then arises in your being, because then you know what you are meant to be and what you have become. You were meant to be a king, a queen, a god, a goddess, and you have become just a beggar! The mind has made you a beggar because the mind continuously desires, and desire is begging.
The innocent heart never desires. It knows nothing of desire, it has not heard about it at all. It simply lives; it lives moment-to-moment. It lives in trust and devotion and prayer. It lives in meditation. That’s what is meant by purity.
And this word “Catherine” has few other meanings too which are significant. It also means beauty, grace, devotion. They are all facets of purity. It also means intelligence because only an intelligent person can attain to innocence.
By intelligence I don’t mean the intellectual, not the so-called intelligentsia. Intelligence has nothing to do with intellect; intelligence is the function of love. When love acts, one is intelligent. Not logic but love.
Remember all these qualities and you can make the space ready for bliss to descend. Be pure, innocent, intelligent, graceful, and then bliss is not far away. Create devotion, and it starts pouring into you.
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