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CHAPTER 12
My whole work is to help you to die
12 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means bliss, neelamber means blue sky – blue sky of bliss. And there is a particular meaning of blue sky in the eastern symbology. Sometimes you may see a small white cloud floating in the sky and then receding back far away, far away, disappearing, and suddenly it is gone.
Only the blue sky is left... empty, totally empty, utterly empty, and not even a trace of the cloud is left. Exactly the same happens – the inner space is like the blue sky and the ego is just like a cloud, floating. It can disappear without leaving any trace behind. The cloud is accidental – the sky is essential.
The very existence of the cloud is just arbitrary – it may be, it may not be. There is no inevitability in its being. In fact that it is, is a miracle. It should not be.
The blue sky has always been there – it is eternal. It cannot be... it is essential. But this is the irony of the game: that the accidental overwhelms the essential. The accidental overpowers the essential and the accidental sometimes becomes so important that one loses all contact with the essential. It happens when the sky is clouded – you completely forget that the sky exists... only clouds and clouds and clouds. And you know well that just a few days before they were not there, and just a few days after you will not be able to find them again, and that which is, is still there – but you cannot see it.
By giving you the name ‘neelamber’, I am giving you this method: to remember the essential and by and by forget the non-essential, the accidental. You are accidental – you are the cloud. don’t get lost in it. Just hidden behind you is the real, the eternal. And this cloud has to disappear... recede
as far away as possible. Then by and by lose your boundaries and disappear. And when the blue sky erupts, explodes, then for the first time you have known what it is to be, otherwise one is just in a dream.
Prem means love and digamber means naked. It is a metaphorical word. Literally, it means one whose only clothing is the sky... one who has no other clothing than the sky. It means the nakedness.
There is a jaina sect called digamber. Their prophet, Mahavira, used to live in the nude. I call you naked loveAnd love can only be naked – there is no other way for love to be. Clothed, it is no
more love – it has become a lie. Masked, it is something else – it is not love.
Love can only be naked. In your absolute nakedness love flows, never otherwise, because that absolute nakedness is your primal innocence. And the whole existence is naked, except man. Man is hiding himself. It is not only clothes he is hiding behind – he is hiding behind a thousand and one things. He is very shy and ashamed – and the whole shyness comes out of the ego.
In the biblical story, when Adam has eaten the fruit of knowledge, he immediately goes and hides behind trees and bushes. God comes searching for him, and he calls him forth:‘Where are you? Where are you hiding, Adam?’- And Adam says,‘I am ashamed’.Knowledge has entered.
Just a few hours before, he was naked and unashamed – that was innocence. Now he is hiding. And the moment he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge he became aware that he was naked – that was his first awareness. Eve became aware that she was naked, and they started making their first primitive clothes of leaves, fig-leaves. That was the beginning.…
But this hiding comes through knowledge. Knowledge makes you egoistic. You start feeling that you know. The moment you think you know, you will feel ashamed – sin has entered. Knowledge is sin, and in love one has to drop all knowledge.
Love cannot tolerate knowledge. Love cannot exist with knowledge. One has to drop knowledge, one has to drop the ego. One has to drop all hidings, masks – one has to come in the open, and just be as one is. That is the meaning of being naked – just to be as one isauthentic, whatsoever
the cost. You will never be a loser.
In the beginning it may be difficult, because the whole world is full of people who are phoney. Everybody is living with a mask, and if you start living without a mask you will be exposed, you will become vulnerable. In the beginning it will be difficult – you may be hurt many times, but it is worth it.
This is my interpretation of the biblical parable – that if adam had not escaped to hide somewhere, he would still be living in paradise. There was no need to fall out of paradise, or be expelled. When you start hiding you have accepted the fact that something is wrong.
It was not god who declared that something was wrong. In fact it was adam who, by hiding, declared that something was wrong. The moment you hide you have accepted somewhere deep down that something is wrong. Now you are trying to make it.to pretend, polish, make a facade. That’s why
man has become incapable of love.
Only a naked being can be full of love. So I give you this name’prem digamber’ – it means naked love.
And start being courageous and by and by, slowly slowly, drop all masks. I’m meaning it in a metaphorical way – I’m not saying to move naked... that is not needed. Because I have seen people in India – there are people who move naked, and they are not naked at all. Even their nakedness is phoney.
Man is so cunning that even that nakedness is like subtle clothes – behind that nakedness he is hiding. On the surface he is naked, and deep down very complex and very cunning. So be simple.… Don’t hide anything – there is no point. If you are good, good. If you are bad, bad.
There is no need to do anything which is not really happening – there is no point. Once you have learned this simple thing – to be just exactly what is happening and remain with it – nothing else is needed. God will come seeking and searching for you. When you are not hiding he will become available. So become a naked love!
Prem means love, and diganta means transcendence of space – love, the transcendence of space.
There are two paths to the divine: one is awareness, the other is love. Through awareness you come to a point where time is transcended. Through awareness you fall into the now. There is no more past and no more future. Now is all, and now is not part of time at all. Now is beyond time – it is part of eternity. It is not part of the flow of time, because now has no duration. You cannot divide it. It is so subtle that it has no duration. It is so sudden that it has no duration. So when you become perfectly aware, time disappears.
On the other path – love – when you are deeply in love, utterly in love, space disappears. Then you are in the here – and here is not part of space. Just as now is not part of time, here is not part of space. Now has no duration, here has no extension. Space means extension and time means duration. Now has no duration and here has no extension.
And if time disappears, space automatically disappears – or the vice versa. If space disappears, time disappears, because space and time are not separate.
In the western consciousness for thousands of years it has been a settled thing that time and space are not separate. In the west the concept – that time and space are not separate – is very modern and entered with albert einstein. He coined one word, ‘spaciotime’. They are not two. We can say that now and here are not two. Nowhere or herenow is one word – should be one word, because reality is one.
These are two ways to transcend: either you enter from here or you enter from now.
The male mind enters through awareness, through the disappearance of time, because time is a male thrust. The arrow of time is phallic – it is male sexuality. And space is feminine – it is the womb.
A woman has space, a man has no space. Man lives in time, and woman lives in space. That’s why man is always restless and woman has a subtle centering. Man is always on the go – he has to go.
Maybe he is not aware of where he is going, maybe there is nowhere to go, but he has to go and he has to find more and more speedy ways to reach there.
If you insist on knowing where he is going he may not be able to answer it, but he will say, ’That is not the point. I will reach there, and I am going to reach in a speedy way – I’m not going to use bullock-carts. I will use a jet plane. I don’t know where I am going, but I am going.…
A woman is more settled.In India, the woman is called the home, the space, because she has the
wombshe is spacious. So the feminine mind enters into meditation through love – love is deeply
related with space – and the male mind enters through time, awareness, because the male ego is deeply rooted in time. Both reach to the same ultimate point.
[A sannyasin recently returned says: I’m melting!
That’s right. Don’t hold! Melt completely, mm? It is difficult – one tends to hold back, because melting seems almost like death, but let death be, and you will attain to a greater life through it. Because nothing ever dies.
We die on one plane and on another plane we are born. On one level we die – on another level a new life becomes available. One door is closed, another opens immediatelyand a door to a higher
magnitude. So don’t be afraid.
My whole work is this – to help you to die so that you can be reborn. And I can see that you are melting, mm? so help the process!
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