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CHAPTER 13
Meditation is the door to timelessness
13 January 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Prem means love and bindu means a drop; a drop of love. And a drop of love is big enough – it can become an ocean. It contains the ocean in it – it is not a mere drop. No drop is a mere drop – not at least the drop of love, because the very energy of love is expanding, opening, flowering. And when the drop flowers it becomes the ocean. So this is one of the most beautiful names. It reminds one that one is very small, and yet it reminds one that one is not just confined to this smallness.
All that the great ocean contains is contained in the small drop. If you have tasted one drop, you have tasted the whole ocean. If you can analyse one single drop and know all about it, you have known all about the oceans – past, present, future... not only of this earth, but of other earths and other planets too.
So the drop is small and yet not small. The finitude contains the infinite. It is a microcosm, a miniature world. It reminds one that one is small, and yet it reminds one that one is not the small. And that’s how one progresses in life.
Feel humble so that you can feel divine. Now this looks paradoxical, because when you feel divine people think, ‘Have you gone mad? You are very egoistic thinking yourself divine!’ But whenever you feel humble you will feel divine. Whenever you feel yourself a drop you will suddenly become the ocean. It is not paradoxical – just the appearance is so.
Deva means divine, and akal means two things: one is timelessness and another is deathlessness. One word has both the meanings because in the eastern mind – particularly in the indian consciousness – time and death are synonymous.
Whatsoever happens in time is going to die. In time, the eternal is not possible. Time is the field for the impermanent, the flux, the changing. Whatsoever is born in time will have to die. Nothing can be permanent in the flux of time. You cannot step in the same river twice. Everything is fleeting and nothing is staying.
Time is basically the field of death. So akal means both things – time and death. and akal means no time, no death. Once your consciousness transcends time, it has transcended death too. Once you can have a glimpse of something within your being which is not temporal, which is not born in time, which has nothing to do with time, which stands outside time, then you know that you cannot die. and that certainty is a radical change, because that certainty changes your whole pattern of life, your whole attitude, your total approach.
Ordinarily, whatsoever you are doing, you are surrounded by the fear of death. You may not look at it, but that doesn’t make much difference. You may avoid it... you may look at some other things. You may remain occupied in something else so that you need not look at death, but it is there; whether you look or not makes no difference. Your look is irrelevant – it is there. It is constantly eating at your roots.
Each moment death is happening. Each moment you have died a little more, a little more, a little more... drop by drop. One day suddenly you find that you are exhausted – nothing is left. Time has flown out of your hand.
Death is not something that happens aker seventy, eighty, ninety years – death starts the moment you are born. Even a one-day-old child has died. He has died already... at least one day. One day is less. The arrow of time has started moving towards death.
So whether you look or not, death is surrounding you – you are like an island, surrounded by death from everywhere. And it affects you. If you love, you cannot love totally, because death is there – how can you love totally? How can you love when death is there? It looks impossible to love when death is there. How can you see the beautiful when death is there?
How can you look into a rose flower and be charmed by its beauty – how? Because death is there – already the petals of the rose are falling. Death is happening in you, in the rose – everywhere – and how can you be happy when death is there? It is impossible to be happy, to be loving, to celebrate, to sing, to dance – death is there!
Once you have entered a moment of no time, death disappears. That moment we call akal.
You may have heard the famous slogan of the sikhs:‘Sat shree akal.’ That means ‘Only the deathless is true – everything else is false.’ That is their mantra. Only the timeless is true – everything else is false; And unless you have attained to the timeless, you have been just collecting pebbles and seashells on the seashore. You have been playing with toys... you have been childish.
Meditation is the door to timelessness. When thinking stops, when there is no thought moving on the screen of your mind, suddenly the timelessness – akal – -is there. Because with the disappearance of thoughts, time disappears. Time cannot exist without thoughts; it needs thoughts to be there. Once the screen is empty and your mind projector is not Working, not functioning – even for a
single moment – you have dropped into the interval. In the pause between the two notes, silence... absolute silence, and then you have the first taste of your being.
So keep alert about it, mm? Whenever you are sitting silently, just wait for the moment, the pause between two notes. Relax silently, wait for it. One day it comes. It can come any day... it can come right this moment. It knows no barrier. Just a readiness, a receptivity, an openness is enough, and a heart who can accept, receive. So be feminine, and any time it is going to happen.
Sometimes it can happen in dancing, in meditating. Sometimes it can simply happen when you are sitting. It can happen any moment because no time is against it – all time is the same. Each moment is sacred, and it can happen in any moment, so just be alert. I’m not saying to make much effort for it, because if you make effort you will become tense. I’m saying to simply be alert. Be alert in a feminine way – passive, watching, waiting, but not doing anything in particular for it.
And the day you realise – any moment which you feel was beyond time, when time had stopped – then come immediately to tell me. Mm? it is going to happen any day!
[A visitor said that for one year she had been haunted day and night by frightening fantasies – ever since the end of a love affair.]
That’s what I wanted to know – how it started. Mm! love is almost like acid – it can sometimes do these things. It can start a trip. Good, bad; both trips can start.
And you have not been in love with anybody for this one year? [She answers: No.]
That’s what is needed! It will stop only when you go into a deeper love than you were ever in before, because whatsoever has been done by love, can be undone only by love.
... I will help... I will help! Mm? nothing to worry about. But I am just suggesting this so that you remain open for a love affair, because that is going to settle everything.
It is a chemical phenomenon that has happened – it is not psychological. While making love your body was in a certain chemical situation, and it has remained stuck there; it needs unwinding. And it is a chemical thing – it is not psychological, so you cannot do much about it – but your body chemistry can be changed.
How long can you stay here? She answers: six weeks.]
Okay. So for six weeks just listen to me. Whatsoever happens, let it continue. Start doing meditations, dance as much as you can. Your energy has to be poured out. You are hoarding it. For one year you have lived like a miser. You go on holding your energy in, and then the same energy is creating the havoc. You have to release the energy – dance and sing, and go crazy. If you put craziness outside, the inner craziness will disappear. You follow me?
... It will happen – I will do it! First become a sannyasin! [She replies: I cannot believe you, but... I can wait.]
You become a sannyasin – there is no need to wait! Belief will come only by experience – there is no other way. How can you believe by waiting? You have waited for one year – you have waited your whole life. By waiting, belief never comes. Belief is not a question of waiting. It comes through experience.
If you become a sannyasin and if you allow me to work in your innermost core, something will happen and that will create belief. Otherwise how is belief going to come?
And if you are not a sannyasin it is impossible for me to work on you, because you won’t allow me in! I will come and knock at your heart, and you will say,‘I cannot believe you’.It will be futile.
I can help only orange people because they have taken the first step. They at least have shown their initiative – that they are ready to go with me; then I can take them. I cannot drag you. You have to cooperate with me – only then is something possible. I cannot force you. These things are not such that they can be forced on anybody. Only you can cooperate, and if you cooperate out of your own will, something can happen. If you want to wait you can wait, but you wait at your own risk.
My suggestion is that there is no need to wait! Become a sannyasin, be in orange, and start doing meditations, and then I will suggest one or two groups; you go into groups. Just put this problem aside, and within six weeks it will disappear. You are carrying it too much, giving it too much importance, making too much fuss about it; it is nothing worthwhile. I have many more crazy people, on a longer and deeper trip than you – far out! Your problem is nothing!
So would you like to wait and think about it?
... So you wait, mm? You wait. But if nothing happens, don’t tell me that nothing happened – that is up to you. Things will start happening only when you have become a sannyasin, not before. So you think about it, mm? Good!
Prem means love, and ketan means an abode; an abode of love. Ketan is not an ordinary house – it means home. A house is a physical thing; a home is a spiritual thing. A house protects you from the outside – its function is negative – from rains, from wind, from the sun. It is just negative, it does not nourish you; it has no positive function. A hotel can do, a caravanserai can doany house will
do. It is just a protection. Its function is negative – it is a shelter. In itself it is not nourishment.
A home is moremore than a house. It is a plus. It protects you, that’s okay – that’s not the basic
function. It nourishes you.it feeds you. It is a love space.
By and by homes have disappeared from the world – there are only houses and houses and houses. That’s why the world has become so miserable. A house is like a life insurance – it protects you, that’s all. It is not life – it doesn’t feed you, doesn’t nourish you.
Ketan means a home, a love space. It is not physical really – something innera different kind of
quality. And you can feel it. If you go into a house where people love, where love flows, where love
sings many songs, you can immediately feel a different quality to the atmosphere, a different vibe. It pulsates on a different wavelength. You can immediately become aware that this is a home – the warmth, the welcome. Even if there is nobody and you are sitting alone in a home where people love each other, where love flows, you will feel the pulsation, you will feel accepted... as if the home is rejoicing in your presence. It is not rejecting you.
In a house everything is neutral. There is no welcome, there is no warmth – it is cold. It may have a central-heating – that is not the point; it is still cold. The coldness is psychological. It does not pull you – it pushes you away.
So that is the meaning of the word’ketan’. And I would like you to become a home. Your very being should become a love home, because only in a being who has become the home does god become a guest. God comes only when you have become a host. Only then... the guest.
People go on asking,‘Where is god?’ Their questions are foolish because they have not yet become hosts. It is pointless to ask. God is not a theory, not a dogma. It is something from the beyond that, when you are ready, when the abode is prepared, suddenly in that high energy, god descends,and there is a contrast.
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