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CHAPTER 23
12 September 1976 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means bliss, and bhavana means feeling – the feel of bliss, the feeling of bliss. And remember that blissfulness has nothing to do with thinking. It is a feeling. People who are stuck in their heads can only be unhappy and miserable. For them there is no other way. The head is hell, the very centre of hell. Hell is not somewhere underground. It is in the head. It is there that the devil has his workshop.
So fan more and more towards the heart – and you can fall very easily; there is no problem. Just allow it. The society does not help it. The society is against the heart. The society is very stubbornly foolish. The society is only for the head because it wants people to be more and more efficient mechanisms, nothing else. The only requirement from the society is that you should be efficient. The problem is that the head is efficient and the heart is not. The heart can never be efficient, and the head can be very very efficient. So by and by the society has come to train the head and bypass the heart.
In fact the more feeling the person has, the more incapable he becomes of doing many things. For example, he cannot be a soldier; he cannot kill. He cannot be a butcher. He cannot be a politician, because that is a very subtle butchery. He cannot be a criminal, he cannot commit any crime; it becomes impossible.
Once you start feeling, you start feeling that you are so much in tune with existence that even to hurt a small leaf on a tree is unimaginable. One cannot hurt anything – and the whole society depends on violence. It depends on violence, on hurting, on creating suffering for people, on torture. The whole society is violent, so the heart has been bypassed, and by and by a shortcut has been made by schools, colleges, universities. Their whole function is to connect your energy to the head, and not to allow it to move towards the heart. They prevent the movement of energy in every way from
going towards the heart. Then a person is efficient, but dead. He is a robot – mechanically perfect – humanly absurd, meaningless.
Then life has utility but no significance, because all significance is of the heart. You have a social life but you don’t have any individuality, because all individuality is in the heart. Then you are simply a member of a group. You are a Hindu, Christian, Indian, American, Russian. You don’t exist; you exist as a number. When an Indian dies, who dies? – nobody. When an American dies, just a number dies. You can replace an American by another American, but if you die, you are irreplaceable; you cannot be replaced.
An American can be replaced, an Indian can be replaced, a Hindu can be replaced. They are numbers – they don’t have any souls. But if you die, then you simply die, and nothing can be done about it. You were never before and you will never be again. You are simply unique, unrepeatable.
But the head can be replaced. Any day the computer is going to replace it. But it is impossible to conceive that science will ever be able to replace feeling. Thinking can be replaced. It is already on the way – it has already been replaced. The technology exists; now it is only a matter of time. Any day man will not be needed the way he has been needed up to now, because the machine will be more efficient than you.
Now the competition is going to be between the machine and man. Up to now the competition was between man and man. Even that competition has created much mechanicalness. Now the competition is going to be between man and machine. Then there will be no future for the competitors, the politicians – head people.
But the heart can never be replaced. And when I say heart, I don’t mean the physiological part. I mean the capacity of love, the capacity to love and the capacity to receive love... the capacity to give and to take love.
The word bhavana means all this. Become more and more a feeling. Drop from the head downwards and start living through the heart. It is risky, certainly risky, because a man of heart can never succeed in anything he is doomed to fail. But even to fail as a man of heart is more tremendously beautiful than to succeed as a head person. A man of heart will never be the first in the world – he will be the last. But Jesus says ‘Those who are the last in this world will be the first in my kingdom of God.’ He’s talking about a total reversal of values.
In this world, people who are very violent, aggressive – maniacs – succeed. Humble people cannot succeed. Love is not a value.
But by becoming a sannyasin, you are entering the other world – the separate reality, the different valuation, the different outlook towards life. Hereby you enter into the kingdom of God.…
Once you settle, things will start happening.
Deva means divine and naveena means newness – divine newness. And in fact there is nothing old under the sun. Everything is so new that if we don’t look through the mind, it is absolutely new It has never been so and it will never be so again. Each moment is so unique, but the mind is repetitive, so
if you look through the mind, you feel repetition in life. Put the mind aside and everything suddenly bursts into newness. God is new – as new as the morning dew, as new as a leaf just sprouting... always young.
And that’s what the divine quality is. To remain new is to be virtuous. Not to get old is virtuous – not that the body will not get old. The body will get old, but one can remain always new, fresh, vulnerable... always ready to be surprised. That is the quality of innocence. Innocence, and nothing else except innocence, is virtue. A calculated virtue is sin.
So I give you this name, Naveena, as a discipline. This is going to be your discipline. Always look at life with new eyes. Look at people with new eyes. Look at things with new eyes. Never bring in the old. Never look through the memory, never look through experience. They are all clouds which surround you, and through which you lose the freshness of life. Always make way and look direct, immediate, and you will see that everything is so new.
Because of that newness a religious person is never bored. Because of that newness a religious person is always like a child, wandering in the world and wondering. Each moment and each step brings so many mysteries... it is a continuous surprise. It never ends. One never becomes a knower.
That is what I mean when I say be new, be fresh. Never become a knower – always be a learner. Always remain in the knowing; never become a knower. Learning is beautiful, knowledge is ugly, because learning never corrupts your innocence and knowledge is poisonous. The moment you know, you are closed.
So go on dropping knowledge and always remain learning, learning. Learning is open, knowledge is closed. Don’t carry any conclusions, and life will bring such a benediction. That benediction is divine...
[A sannyasin says: I don’t feel I’m completely here. Sometimes I don’t feel like a disciple.]
I understand. It is natural. It has nothing to do with you, mm? Everybody feels that there are moments when he is not with me, because to be with me totally is almost impossible. Only in rare moments are you a disciple. You are not a disciple twenty-four hours. Even if those rare moments are there, it is enough, more than enough; more than one can expect. But they will do. By and by, more and more moments will be coming when you will feel closer and closer and closer. One day, disciplehood happens.
By your taking sannyas it doesn’t mean that you have become a disciple. It simply means that you have given me an indication that you would like to become a disciple. It is just a beginning of disciplehood, not the end. It is just entry into it.
So there will be many negative moments. And to cope with me is difficult because I am not an ordinary teacher. So many times I hurt you; I hurt you so much. That is part of my whole work: I have to hurt you. If I don’t hurt you, your ego will never be gone.
But it is natural that you will feel you are always only half here. To be fully here you will become enlightened.
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