Chapter title: None

‌Chapter title: None‌

28 June 1980 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8006285 ShortTitle: IMPRIS28 Audio:

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Just as in spring miracles start happening in nature, bliss brings a spring to your inner world and miracles start happening. Bliss is the springtime of the inner world. Without bliss nothing flowers, here is no fulfilment, no fragrance, no meaning. Life remains a drag. One can go on existing somehow, but it is not true living because there is no celebration in the heart. There is no dance in your being; one remains hollow and empty.

And because of this emptiness we go on doing a thousand and one things to fill it, to forget it, to cover it somehow, but nothing ever succeeds. Maybe for the time-being you can cover it; soon, you will have to encounter it again. For the time being you can forget it; you can become so occupied in outward activities.

But for how long can one remain occupied? One needs rest, one needs relaxation. And the moment you are at rest, suddenly the inner emptiness is there.

That's why people go on moving from one occupation to another. Even on their holidays they cannot rest; in fact they work more on their holidays than ever. They are afraid, afraid of something inner -- that they may have to face it. They don't want to face it.

From immemorial times man has remained interested in all kinds of alcoholic beverages for the simple reason: to forget. He wants to forget the inner emptiness. But for how long can you remain intoxicated?

Sooner or later you have to come out of it, and the inner emptiness is there, hurting. It is like a wound that goes on becoming bigger and bigger. It heals only when you have been able to attain a state of bliss. Then suddenly all wounds disappear, and instead of wounds there are flowers. Each wound becomes a flower, a lotus flower.

But there are very few people who try to seek bliss, because the journey seems to be that of absolute aloneness. And it is: nobody can accompany you. And we have become addicted to the crowd, we always want company; we are very much scared of aloneness. That is one of the reasons why only very daring souls go into the search for bliss, because the first step is: you have to be alone, because you will be going inwards. Outside you can have company but inside no company is possible. The deeper you go in, the more 1/08/07

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alone you will be.

The whole art of meditation is a training in being alone, without any fear; in fact, tremendously curious to explore one's aloneness. When one becomes allured by this adventure of being alone, then bliss is not far away. The more alone you are, the more bliss starts happening. When you are absolutely capable of being alone your whole consciousness becomes full of bliss -- and that is the springtime for the soul. After that you can be in the crowd, in the marketplace, you can have as many relationships as you want, friendships, all kinds of friendships, but you will never lose your rootedness in your aloneness; hence nothing will be a distraction.

Once the taste of aloneness and bliss has penetrated into every pore of your being it remains with you wherever you are. Then your whole life becomes full of aloneness and full of bliss. Bliss and aloneness are two aspects of the same coin.

Bliss is the goal of life; meditation is the means, the way to it. Bliss is the end; meditation is the bridge, the boat that takes you to the farther shore. Without meditation nobody has ever known what bliss is.

It is not pleasure. Pleasure is physiological, chemical; it has no depth and it is very momentary. For example, a sexual orgasm is pleasure. For a moment you feel on the top of the world, but only for the moment. And in the wake of that moment deep sadness and depression sets in; hence after love people immediately fall asleep. That's a way to avoid the sadness that is bound to come in.

Watch animals making love; after they have made love you will see sadness even on their faces. They don't seem to be ecstatic. If you observe closely, you will see that they are disillusioned; they are feeling as if they have been cheated. And it is in fact, a trick of nature. Nature is cheating you. It has its purposes; nature wants to reproduce the species and nature has devised clever means. The most clever is the pleasure that you attain for a moment. It is for that pleasure that you are ready to reproduce. If there were no pleasure at all, the whole sexual activity will look so silly. It would look like gymnastics or doing yoga... it would look foolish.

It is because of that pleasure, that one is ready to go on doing any kind of stupid things. But it is just a chemical phenomenon, hormonal, physiological; it can't be deep because physiology is not deep.

Bliss is not even happiness. What we call happiness is psychological. Whenever you find a certain moment of elation your ego is fulfilled, you feel happy. You have become the president of a country, you feel happy, but only for the time being, because your ego is fulfilled. You have defeated all other competitors, you have arrived; whereas others have failed, you have succeeded... or you have much money, power, prestige, fame. But soon one becomes tired of it all.

Only the successful people know how tiring success is. Only the rich people know how utterly disappointed they are, but they cannot even say so, because to say so seems to be even more foolish, people will laugh. They have wasted their whole life in accumulating wealth and now they say that it is stupid.

Mahavira and Buddha who renounced their kingdoms, must have been really courageous people. It needs courage to renounce. It needs courage to recognize

the fact, "This was all stupid and we have been living a stupid life up to now." The ego does not want to do that; the ego wants to go on keeping the illusion. So on the surface you go on smiling, but deep down there are tears and nothing else, deep down there is anguish. Whenever ego is fulfilled, you feel happy.

Bliss is not happiness but a totally different phenomenon. It is not pleasure because it is not physiological. It is not happiness because there is no ego fulfillment. On the contrary, it is dissolution of the ego, it is dissolving your separate entity into the whole. That's what meditation is all about, merging, melting into the whole, totally forgetting that you are separate, remembering your unity with the whole.

That's why Gurdjieff used to call his meditation process "self-remembering"; it is really a remembering.

Buddha used to call his meditation, "right remembering".

We are one with the whole; even though we think we are separate. We are inseparable. Just by thinking we are separate, we cannot become separate. All that is needed is a remembrance; all that is needed is dropping this false notion that we are separate. And in those rare moments when you can put aside your ego, your personality, your body-mind complex, and you are just a watcher, a witness, a consciousness, you know the first taste of meditation. And with that, immediately great bliss comes, it rushes towards you from all directions, from all dimensions. All your inner emptiness is immediately filled. It becomes a lake of bliss. That is the end, the goal of sannyas. And the method and the means is meditation. There is no other method, there is no other way.

Hence one has to learn to imbibe the spirit of meditation. However long it takes, whatsoever cost one 1/08/07

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has to pay for it, one has to be ready. Once you are ready to have it at any cost, then it is not difficult. That very readiness makes you worthy of it, and things become very simple.

The search for bliss is as scientific as any objective science. The difference is only of direction. The science watches the objective world and enquires into the reality that surrounds us. Religion moves into the watcher, into the subject, into subjectivity itself. Science is concerned with the object; religion is concerned with subjectivity itself -- but the approach, the method, the attitude, is exactly the same.

Religion is not superstition, it is not belief. It is not at all a dogma in which you can believe; it is something to be experienced. Just as science works through experimentation, religion works through experimentation. The experiment of religion is, of course, far deeper than that of science, far more individual, personal. Science and its enquiry is collective, objective; others can watch. But when you are moving into meditation, nobody can watch; except for you nobody else will be there to be a witness of it.

Of course, others will be able to see that something is happening to you, but what exactly it is they will never be able to decipher. something mysterious will start surrounding you, and those who are very perceptive will be able to have some glimpse that you are no more the same old person. Something new has entered your life. You have changed -- but to what exactly there is not way to judge from the outside or to measure from the outside. Only you know it.

It is like love: if you love, you know. Prayer is even deeper, far deeper than love. Meditation is the deepest; there is no more depth than meditation. But one thing which modern man has completely forgotten has to be remembered, that religion is also a science.

All the so-called modern thinkers go on saying, writing, proving, arguing, that religion is superstitious, it is dogmatic, that it is nothing but blind belief. All these assertions are basically wrong. They are true as far as the so-called organised religions are concerned -- Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Judaism

-- but they are not true about Buddha or jesus or Krishna or Mohammed, they are not true about the really religious people. They are true about people who have been conditioned as Christians and Hindus, who have never explored on their own what exactly it is, who have simply believed as a formality.

They go to the church every sunday, just as a social formality. It is another kind

of club. Rotary clubs are there and Lions' clubs are there, and the church -- Catholic, Protestant, this and that... These are just clubs, good meeting places. and they give you a certain kind of social status. People think that you are religious, that you are a good person. and people thinking that you are religious and a good person helps you in your business, in your social life, in your relationships. It functions like a lubricating agent. So cunning people go to the churches, to the temples, to the mosques. They use religion, but they are not religious.

To be religious one needs a really daring spirit, a tremendous longing for the unknown, such a deep desire and thirst for truth that even if life has to be sacrificed, one is ready for it. those few people are religious -- and they are not superstitious at all.

Buddha says again and again to his disciples, 'Don't believe in what I am saying, don't believe that this is written in the scriptures, don't believe that all the past Buddhas have said it; believe only when you have known it, otherwise don't believe, because to believe without knowing will keep you blind forever. and a blind person cannot see truth, cannot see god.

Religion is a very precise science of creating clarity, perceptiveness, transparency, within your being, so that you can see things as they are. and the moment you see things as they are you know god is. You simply know god is -- just as you know when the sun rises that light is. No other proof is needed. Proofs are needed only for believers; for those who have experienced, experience is self-evident. it needs no proof at all.

The Imprisoned Splendor

Chapter #28

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