4

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌4 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Gian Carlo. Gian means God’s gracious gift; Carlo means a man. To be a man is God’s gracious gift. It is no ordinary happening. It is very rare, unique, because in this whole universe where millions of solar systems exist, it is only on this small planet earth that life has arisen. And life has millions of forms, from the lowest amoeba to man.

Man is the highest expression of life, the highest reach of evolution. Man is a great hope, a promise to be fulfilled, a destiny to be attained. Just by being born as a human being we don’t become human beings. It needs great effort to become a human being.

To be human is the whole art of religion. It has nothing to do with the divine, because if a man is really human he is bound to be divine. Divine comes as a consequence: when the human flower has opened the fragrance that arises out of it is divine. Man contains God within him.

Once we become aware of this immense potential a great challenge arises in life. Then each step has to be taken very cautiously. Then each moment is precious. One can miss, that is the danger. But if one is alert there is no need to be worried. One cannot miss if one is alert.

Man misses because of unconsciousness, hence consciousness has to be developed. Each small act, each ordinary act, has to be the focus of your consciousness. Eating, walking, sitting, but remain alert. Awareness has to be spread over your twenty-four hours’ life.

I am including even your sleep. First begin being aware while you are awake. Then the second step is become aware while you are dreaming. And then the third and the final step is become aware while you are fast asleep, not even dreaming. When a man is capable of becoming aware in profound, dreamless sleep, he has arrived home.

Anand Narayani. Anand means bliss; Narayani means a goddess – a goddess of bliss. That’s what we are meant to be – gods and goddesses of bliss. And if we are not it is simply because of our own foolishness; it is simply because of our own misunderstanding of life. We are responsible. Nobody is preventing us from becoming what we are supposed to be except ourselves. We are the only enemies. The whole existence is friendly towards us, but we are not friendly towards ourselves.

We have been taught to condemn ourselves; we have been taught that we are worthless. We have been told in thousand and one ways that we are dirt, and that has become part of our conditioning.

The first step in sannyas is: respect yourself, because if you don’t respect yourself you cannot respect anybody else in the world. Not even God can be respected, because even God comes number two; number one is you.

Love yourself. If you can’t love yourself you cannot love anybody else. And if you cannot love yourself, who is going to love you either? And when there is no love and no respect for one’s being, life becomes a desert, because it is only through love and respect that one makes a garden out of one’s being, that one starts learning how to play on one’s own heart’s harp. Then one starts learning how to be more and more poetic, graceful, aesthetic, sensitive... because life is such a great opportunity, it has not to be missed. It is such a treasure, it has not to be wasted.

So the first step and the most fundamental step is: love yourself, respect yourself. And that does not mean that become an egoist. Loving yourself is not creating an ego. The trees love themselves and there is no ego; and the birds love themselves and there is no ego.

Ego arises not out of love for yourself but out of comparison. When you compare with others, ego arises. Then ego can have two sides: either you will suffer from inferiority complex, that is the one side of the ego, or from superiority complex; that is another side of the same disease. But both arise out of comparison.

So when I am saying love yourself, I am saying simply as if you are alone here in the whole of existence. There is nobody else, so there is no possibility of comparing. Respect yourself not comparatively; simply respect yourself, just respect yourself. And in that respect you will respect life because you are life, and in that love you will love life because you are life. And in that love and respect you will respect and love the whole existence.

That’s what prayer is all about, but it can arise only if you move in the right direction. Loving oneself, respecting oneself, is the right direction. And one then starts growing naturally.

Growth is not something which has to be forced upon one. We have only to create the context and the growth happens. You put the seed in the soil, you put on the manure, you water it, and you wait. You have created the context, you have created the space for the seed; now it is for the seed and its nature to sprout. And it will sprout in its time and it will grow. You need not pull it; it will grow on its own.

Growth is not an effort; it is an effortless, natural phenomenon. All that is needed is creating a right space, a right context. That’s what sannyas is all about.

[To a sannyasin, returning after four years:]

CHAPTER 4.

Be very relaxed while you are here. Don’t make it a tense affair. Move slowly; there is no hurry. Speed is more or less a hindrance and never a help. And the modern mind is too much speedy. And because of that tremendous craziness for speed we go on missing all that is significant.

Instant coffee is possible, but instant God is not possible, so if one insists that “I would like only that which is instantly possible,” then only one will have coffee and no God. Then life becomes trivial, mundane; and it is a sacrilege to destroy life in small things.

Life has such immense potential that it can reach to the ultimate peaks of joy, ecstasy, celebration. It is not only for small things. Small things are good in their own place; I am not against coffee. Coffee is perfectly good in its own place, but coffee is not all.

Just keep that in mind. Be very relaxed, and much will happen. The slower you go, the faster you reach. The faster you try to go, the more impossible it becomes to reach. So just imbibe the spirit of relaxation. That is my flavor.

Do all these groups, do meditations, but playfully, as if nothing is to be achieved out of them. They are not means to some end but ends unto themselves. Then great things happen and unexpectedly they happen. In fact all great things happen unexpectedly.

[To a sannyasin, on her first visit:]

Just be here and feel at home. That is the most important thing: to feel at home here. Don’t feel as a visitor. And then things start happening, but they always happen when you are at rest, at home. So forget for these six weeks all time and everything else. This commune is your whole world for these six weeks, as if nothing else exists, as if the Third World War has happened and only these crazy orange people are saved and everybody is gone! And that is very much possible; it may happen. And then live as if only these are the people and this is the world; and there is no other world and there is nobody else.

Then on its own accord a rhythm starts arising in the deepest recesses of your being. That rhythm is God, that rhythm is freedom. That rhythm is the truth, the truth of all truths, logos, Tao.

And next time come for a longer period. Good.

[Another sannyasin, on his first visit, says: I’ve been having a pain in my heart since I’ve been sitting here.]

Mmm! That’s a good sign – feel fortunate – because to feel pain in the heart is to feel love. When love is too intense it feels like pain; it is not pain. It is not a heart attack; it is a love attack. But they both appear almost the same in the beginning.

Any intensity becomes unbearable, and love is the most intense thing possible in life. And it rarely happens, very rarely, so we remain unaware of the possibility that the heart can feel pain in moments of joy, in moments of intimacy. People have become completely oblivious of their hearts. They live in the head, and if they know of anything they know only of headache. Heartache, the very word has gone out of use; you never hear it. Headache of course is there, but heartache...

This is heartache, and it is good. Accept it joyously. Allow it, don’t repress it; because the natural tendency of the mind is to repress anything that is painful. By repressing it you will destroy something that was growing. A sprout was coming out and you will destroy it; a door was opening and you will close it. A vision was just on the way and you will turn your back towards it.

Allow it; not only allow it, welcome it. Not only welcome it, rejoice and dance with it. And then a miracle will be felt: the pain will disappear and for the first time you will feel a new kind of pleasure. It is the transformation of the same thing. The heartache will disappear and for the first time you will feel heartfulness – otherwise the heart remains empty – a kind of overflowing love, not addressed to anybody in particular.

Love always begins in a particular context. For example, your heartache has started because of me, but that is just a triggering point. Once it is triggered, then it loses that context of two. Then it is not a question of I and thou; then it is simply there, not for somebody in particular but simply there for all that is – for the trees and the sun and the moon and the rivers and the mountains. Then it is simply there; and when love is simply there unaddressed, it is prayer, it is meditation. But in the beginning it always starts as a pain. But you are blessed, so dance with it, sing with it...

< Previous | Contents | Next >