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‌Chapter title: None‌

27 January 1981 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Archive code: 8101275 ShortTitle: POND27 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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and cleaned up.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.]

White Cloud is a beautiful name. It symbolizes my whole philosophy.

The white cloud represents many things. Basically, the color white is not a color. In one sense, it is a transcendence of all colors; and in another sense, very paradoxically, it is the synthesis of all the colors. All of the seven colors are part of whiteness. When they meet and merge in a certain proportion white is born.

White has the whole rainbow in it. The rainbow is created when raindrops are hanging in the air in the rainy season and the sun suddenly comes out from behind the clouds. The rays are white, and when they pass through the hanging, small drops of water -- so small that they cannot fall and remain hanging in the air --

those drops function like a prism and they analyze the white into all its seven constituents; hence the rainbow.

The rainbow needs two things to exist: the white sunrays and the hanging drops of water. And you can see it only at a certain angle. If you go close to the rainbow it will disappear. If you want to catch hold of it you will never be able to; your hands will just become a little wet, that's all. There will not be any color

left.

White is a combination of all the colors, but the combination creates something unique and new, a higher synthesis That's also why I call white a transcendence; it is not any of the colors, it is not just a combination either. If it was only a combination then all the seven colors would continue to exist -- it would be a mixture, eclectic. But it is a true synthesis; all the seven colors disappear and suddenly a totally new phenomenon arises, colorlessness.

There are two colorlessnesses in existence: one is white, another is black. In black there are no colors at 1/08/07

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all, in white there are all the colors. That's the difference between black and white: black is empty and white is full. Black is negative, white is positive. Black represents death and white represents life. Hence, scientists call certain spots in space, black holes.

There are certain spaces which suck things in; if something moves into those spaces, it disappears. It simply disappears from existence, it is annihilated, it is no more. When the black holes were discovered it was really a frightening phenomenon, because even the earth can pass through a black hole at any moment.

It is continuously revolving around the sun, and the sun is revolving around some other sun which is not yet known. And who knows at what point the earth or the sun may pass through a black hole? If it passes through a black hole, it disappears, it goes into non-existence -- immediately, instantly.

But later on they discovered that the white hole also exists; in fact the black hole and the white hole are two aspects of one hole. So you enter into the black hole and you disappear, and you come out from the white hole and you appear again, renewed, reborn, resurrected. If the white hole can be called resurrection, then the black hole can be called crucifixion.

The world has come into existence many times and gone out of existence many times. This is one of the ancientmost discoveries of the eastern mystics. The western religions only think of creation; they have never thought of dissolution. But the eastern mystics have always thought of both together, because one cannot exist without the other. If there is a certain process of creation, then there must be a certain process of de-creation. Only then can life go on renewing itself.

Many cosmoses have come into being and gone out of being. Black represents death, annihilation, rejection, emptiness. White represents just the opposite, fullness, perfection, totality, creation, life; it is a tremendously significant color.

It is not a coincidence that all over the world, all the races, in all times and ages, have colored the devil as black, and death also as black -- even the blackest people on the earth have done so.

It is strange, because the white man has done so much harm to black people that it would have been quite logical for them to depict the devil as a white man. But even the negroes depict the devil as black -- of course blacker than themselves, but still black! It is because blackness simply means all colors are absent; light is absent, hence colors must be absent. Light contains colors, both are in a way similar.

Black is below the colors, white is above the colors. In one way they are the same, and in another way they are totally different -- diametrically opposite.

White represents transcendence, organic unity -- more than just a mathematical addition, one color added to another and another, then seven colors added to each other; that will still be seven colors a kind of unity, but not union.

Union means all the seven lose their individuality; and because of that surrender, a totally new organic being is born which is not just the result of addition but something plus, something more than the sum total of the parts. That is what I mean by transcendence.

So it is a beautiful word.

And cloud is also very symbolic; it represents freedom. A cloud has no roots. It is absolutely free. It is not tethered anywhere, it has no home; hence in the East we have always thought of the sannyasin as a cloud, because he makes the whole

universe his home. He does not belong to any particular race, religion, dogma, doctrine, country, church, state. He drops all these limitations. He becomes, in a sense, just like a cloud -- floating, without being hindered by any boundaries.

A Chinese cloud can come into India without any passport, no visa is needed. Clouds don't believe in such stupid things. They don't bother about governments, geography, and the map: "We should not enter this territory -- this is India, this is Pakistan, this is Germany, this is Italy -- and you have to keep to your own country." They go on floating all over the universe. That freedom, that unboundedness has to be one of the basic experiences of a sannyasin -- he has to become a cloud.

The cloud is also free in another sense, in a far deeper sense -- it has no destiny, hence it does not care anything about the future. There is no tomorrow, this moment is enough. It does not live for any results, it is not end-oriented. It enjoys the moment -- the sun, the wind -- it dances in the wind, in the sun, without any idea of what is going to happen next. There is nothing like 'next'; this moment is all.

So it never moves towards a particular destination; hence it cannot be frustrated. If the wind is taking it towards the south it goes to the south, if the wind suddenly changes its mind -- and winds are crazy, irrational; if suddenly the mood changes and the wind starts moving towards the east, the cloud will not resist. It will not say, "What is the matter with you? We were going south and now suddenly you turned towards the east -- what has happened? And I have been desiring so much to go to the south and I had 1/08/07

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planned so many things, and I wanted to visit so many places... Now this sudden change is like a shock, and I don't want to go to the east."

No, there is no resistance from the cloud. As the wind changes, the cloud simply starts moving towards the east or the west or the north -- wherever the wind is going. Or if it is not going anywhere, the cloud simply remains wherever it is, with no desires of its own. That is its total surrender to existence.

Jesus says, "Let thy kingdom come, let thy will be done." That's exactly the innermost core of the symbol of a cloud. And when the cloud is white, both these symbols, with all their multi-dimensional meanings, come together.

A sannyasin has to be a white cloud -- creative but free, loving but untethered, containing all but not confined by anything, always remaining a little above, a little beyond.

Life is noble only when it functions according to the law of love. It is noble when it functions lovelessly.

And millions of people -- the vast majority, almost ninety-nine point nine per cent -- live in deep ignobility.

They think they know what love is, and that is their first barrier to attaining to love.

Love is such a great mystery that even those who have loved tremendously don't know exactly what it is. It has never been defined and it will never be defined. By its very nature it remains indefinable. You cannot put it into words. words are too small and love is so vast. Words cannot even contain a far away distant echo of love; but millions of people live with this stupid idea that they know what love is, and this idea that 'I already know what love is' prevents them from enquiring into the phenomenon of love.

This is a strange kind of disease, it is infectious. It is given by the parents, by the teachers, by the society, to every child. People start telling him 'Love your mother, love your father, love your brother, love your sister,' and nobody ever helps him to understand what love is, nobody ever makes it clear to him in what direction he has to search for love. They just go on preaching to him: 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.'

And he does not know what love is in the first place, so he starts looking around and starts imitating. He sees that the mother says she loves the father, the father says he loved the mother, so he learn that this is what love is all about. And what he sees is ugly. He sees that they are continuously quarrelling. And children ere very alert, very intelligent. Their way of understanding things is not like adults, because they have no prejudices at all. They can see immediately, directly. Their penetration is really keen. They have no clouds in their eyes, no cobwebs, nothing hinders them from seeing clearly what 'love' is. Whatsoever they find in

their home, in their family, they think is love, and they will repeat the programme in their own life.

They will do the same to their wife as their father was doing; they will do the same to their husband as their mother was doing.

Every child is going to repeat a certain conditioning which he caught when he was very small. And he will also think that he is loving that he knows what love is -- and this is not love at all. It is something else parading as love, something not only different but antagonistic to love.

The first thing my sannyasins have to understand is that they don't know what love is. From there the enquiry begins. Then you can put aside all your ideas and prejudices that you have gathered from others.

They had gathered them from others in their own time and so on, and so forth.

I don't know whether or not even god loved Adam and Eve. The way he behaved with them does not show love. Just for given in to an innocent temptation -- which is very human -- he threw them out of heaven. The punishment is too much. The crime was nothing; and if it was a crime, the person who was responsible was god himself.

One can expect a little bit of psychological understanding from god. If you prevent children from something you can expect that they will do it. The very prevention is a temptation; so it is not the serpent who tempted them, it is god himself... saying to Adam and Eve 'Don't eat from these two trees -- one is the Tree of Knowledge, another is the Tree of life.' Now both trees are so significant.

Each child is born with an intrinsic capacity, a longing to know. Now to prevent, to say 'You are not to eat from the tree of knowledge,' is really nasty! (laughter) The longing to know is so human, it is so basic to human nature, that only idiots don't have it, imbeciles don't have it. And Adam and Eve proved that they were not idiots, they were not imbeciles. They took the challenge, they risked even paradise.

And humanity should feel grateful for that; otherwise we would still be in paradise, like cows and buffaloes (laughter), grazing around, avoiding the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of life. And once they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, he threw them out for the simple reason that now they would try to

eat from the second tree. Now that seems to be a really jealous god, because the second tree was the Tree of life

-- if you eat the fruit of it, you will become immortal. That is the second deepest longing in man.

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These are the two fundamental desires: to know what it is all about and to attain a state which is beyond death. And I cannot see that there is any sin in it. Why is man not entitled to know why he exists, what for?

It is his birthright! He has to know the meaning of his existence. And he has to know whether life exists beyond death or not, because that will be very determinative, it will give a whole different texture to his life.

If life ends with death then all his values will be of one kind. If life continues even beyond death then he will have a different world of values then he has to think of immortality, of eternity, and he has to live accordingly.

If life ends in death, then what is the point of bothering about religion, philosophy, virtue, meditation, good and bad? What is the point of it all? If it is just going to end in death totally, then the whole of life loses meaning. Then it is a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing. From the cradle to the grave it is just an accidental process -- one sequence is being followed by another -- but there is no intrinsic meaning, no significance. Hence man is entitled to know whether he exists beyond death or not.

These are the two basic queries, these are the two fundamental religious quests, these are the two wings of the enquirer: to know the meaning and to know whether that meaning has some eternity to it or is just temporary, whether it is only in time or also beyond time? Everything else depends on these questions --

and god prohibited Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of those two trees.

And the serpent seems to be one of the benefactors of humanity. What he said to Eve... And certainly he persuaded Eve first, because it is difficult to persuade a male chauvinist! He is egoistic, aggressive, he will argue, and this and that. The woman is more receptive, hence all advertisements are addressed to the woman.

Now they say that if you want to sell something, don't write the letter directly to the woman, write the letter to the husband, address it to the husband, but write on top of it with red ink 'Personal'! Then the woman is bound to read it. And once the woman reads the advertisement the work is done. And the serpent was the first advertising expert! (laughter) He did perfectly well, he persuaded the woman. She was more receptive, she could understand. And the reason that he gave was that god is jealous; he knows he is immortal and he does not want you to know or to become immortal, because if you know and become immortal you will become gods, and he is afraid of you becoming gods. He wants to keep you in submission, and only if you are ignorant will you remain servants. Only if you don't know that you are just like gods will you function as subordinates. Once you know you are gods, then you will hove a totally different religion. Then that religion will not be like Christianity or mohammedanism or Buddhism or Hinduism. It will be more like an assertion of Al Hillaj Mansoor: 'Ana'l Haq -- I am god.' Or like Gautam Buddha asserting that there is no god except you. Then there is nothing to worship. All that you have to know is your own being, and by knowing it you will know all.

The Upanishadic Rishis say 'Aham Brahmasmi -- I am god.' This looks almost sacrilegious to the Christians, to the Mohammedans, even to the Hindus! The declaration 'I am god' looks very egoistic, but it is the truth; but one can know it only when the ego is dropped. one cannot know it before.

Since those days every parent has been trying to control the child, condition the child, make him obedient, give him prejudices, ideas -- what is right, what is wrong -- in every possible way programme him. This programming has to be put aside by a sannyasin so that he can again become as pure as Adam and Eve.

That's my idea of creating a new commune consisting only of sannyasins. It will be the first experiment of creating the Garden of Eden again, where everybody lives innocently and everybody is allowed to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of life, to one's fill, as much as one wants, as much as one desires, where no prohibition, no commandment, no restriction, no slavery exists. A commune where freedom is the only law. And only in that freedom can one

know what love is. When you are totally free, love arises in your being, of its own accord. It is not something to be learned from the outside. In freedom you open up like a flower -- a rose, a lotus -- and then there is fragrance. That fragrance is love.

It is indefinable, nobody can say exactly what it is. To believe in it is not right. The only way to believe in it is to know it -- and that's my whole effort here; the moment you know your own love energy, flowing, surrounding you like an aura of light, a certain flavour, then there is nobleness.

Nobleness has nothing to do with birth. It certainly has something to do with a new birth, and sannyas is that new birth -- being born anew into the world of freedom, love, bliss, awareness. And then whatsoever you do is noble, whatsoever you are is noble. Your very existence becomes nobleness.

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The Old Pond ... Plop

Chapter #28

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