12

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‌CHAPTER 12

13 July 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, leaving, asks: How do I find when I am the witness?]

It is something self-evident: when you are, you know it; no extemal proof is needed. If the question arises that means that you are not, otherwise the question does not arise at all. It is like having a headache: nobody asks, “How am I to know whether I have a headache or not?” If you have one, you know, there is no question of how.

But a few indications will be helpful... Whatsoever can be observed is not you; you are always the observer. If you witness witnessing, then you are not witnessing; that has become an observed thing. It is already a thought, an experience, something separate from you. You cannot witness the witness, remember. You will have the total feel of it, but you cannot witness it, you cannot see it. Who will see it? It is the seer, it can never be reduced to the seen. It is the observer, the eternal observer. Its very nature is observation; it cannot be reduced to the observed.

So whatsoever you can see, whatsoever you can observe, whatsoever you can witness, it is not you. You always go on moving behind and behind and behind. Then one day suddenly you find that there is nothing to witness, nothing to observe... eternal silence, no content. That is the moment you will have the feel – I say feel. You will have such a tremendous feel of it that it becomes self-evident. No other proof is needed, no other validation is needed; it validates itself.

Anand Julian. Anand means bliss; julian means young, youthful, youthfulness.

Bliss is always young; it is never old. It is always fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops in the morning, as fresh as the sun rays. It never gathers dust or rust. It never becomes a past experience, it is always in the present.

The moment you know that you are blissful, it is already past. You are only remembering an experience that is no more existential. When you are really in bliss you feel it is tremendously there, within and without. You are engulfed, you are overwhelmed, flooded with something of great power, something from the beyond. But you don’t have time to observe it, you don’t have time to think about it. The moment you think, it is already old, it is no more true, it has already become a part of your memory. The mind has possessed it and reduced it to a thing.

Bliss is the experience of the present moment. Bliss is to be present to the present. Bliss is to forget all past and all future. Bliss is to transcend time.

And that’s what sannyas is all about: remaining eternally young, remaining eternally in the present. The present is eternity. The past is time, the future is time; the present is not time at all. The present is part of the divine etemity. And to be in contact with it is to remain young, is to remain alive.

Bliss is neither of the past nor of the future. When past and future are both dropped then you are in it, you are it!

Prem Janine. Prem means love; janine means divine grace. Love is both: it is divine and it is grace.

Love exists on the earth but is not part of the earthly existence: it is a penetration from the beyond. A ray of light penetrating darkness, that’s what love is. It is the only possibility for us to transcend the darkness that surrounds us. It is the only ray of hope, because it is the only bridge between man and God. Hence the moment you start moving lovewards you start becoming graceful.

The closer you come to God, the more you are filled with grace. Grace is the only proof that a person is reaching closer to God. Grace is the fragrance that starts happening only when you start coming closer and closer to the center of existence.

On the circumference there is no grace; at the center there is grace and only grace. When you move from the circumference to the center you grow in grace. And there is no other way to move towards the center except love.

Anand Meik. Anand means bliss; meik means rebellion. Bliss is the greatest rebellion there is.

The world lives in misery, and the world lives in misery because people are not rebellious enough, they don’t rebel against slaveries. They bow down to slaveries. They are ready to be exploited, willing to be oppressed. From the very childhood they have been taught to be obedient. It has gone deep into their blood and bones, so deep really that it has entered their marrow. They have become obedient robots; they have forgotten how to disobey.

And the day you forget how to disobey, you lose your soul. You are no more an individual; you don’t have any dignity. It is rebellion that brings dignity to you, makes you an individual. But it needs courage... because the society consists of slaves. They are a miserable lot, and they are never willing to accept anybody who rebels, who is blissful, who lives his life in his own light. They are very annoyed with such a person, irritated, angry, inimical, because he is going against the mob psychology.

Sannyas is initiation into individuation; it takes you away from mob psychology. Slowly slowly, all that the society has done to you has to be undone. You have to be given back your soul, only then will you be blissful; otherwise you cannot be.

Bliss is our intrinsic nature, but unless we are allowed to be natural bliss cannot express itself. And we are not allowed to be natural – society wants us to be artificial. It calls that artificiality culture, civilization, religion. It gives beautiful names to slaveries, to prisons; it decorates the prisons, it creates golden cages for you. But a cage is a cage. It doesn’t matter whether it is golden, whether it is studded with diamonds or not; it may be just a poor cage or a very rich cage, but a cage is a cage.

Let sannyas become the assertion of bliss, the assertion of individuality, the assertion of your intelligence and your nature. Sannyas is rebellion, and to be rebellious is to live life in its totality. And to be rebellious is the way to know God. Jesus knows because he is a rebel; Buddha knows because he is a rebel. The priests don’t know because they are not rebels.

Deva Guido. Deva means divine; guido means life.

Life is God to me. God is not anything separate from this life. God is not that but this; God is not then but now. This very earth is divine and this very body, the Buddha.

In the past the so-called religions have been against life, hence they have made life ugly. They have condemned so much that they have made people afraid to live, guilty about living. They have respected the life-deniers. They have sanctified them, called them saints. In fact they were masochists, they were suicidal, they were suffering from a deep pathology.

My effort here is to create a new kind of religion – rather, a new kind of religiousness which loves life, which respects life, which does not make people feel guilty about living, which has no condemnation for the earth. Not a religion which renounces but a religion which rejoices: a religion of celebration, of song and music, of love and poetry; a religion which is creative and beautifies the earth.

I am not interested in any paradise after death; I am interested in this moment. This moment has to be transformed into a paradise. If this moment becomes paradise, the next is bound to become as well. If this life becomes divine, the other life that will follow is bound to be divine, because it is a continuum. We need not worry about the next life or the next moment.

Transform this moment, hallow this moment. Make this ordinary world extraordinary, sacred, holy.

Prem Nilima. Prem means love; nilima means infinite blueness. Nilima – the color blue – represents depth, infinity. That’s why the sky looks blue. In fact it has no color; it appears blue because of infinite depth, unending depth. There is no boundary there, it simply goes on and on. This very depth makes it appear blue. That’s why wherever water is deep it looks blue; if it is shallow it is not blue.

And love is the only depth that a soul can know. Love is falling into the depths of your being. It has the color blue; the blue represents that depth too.

In India Krishna has been loved tremendously. He is represented as blue. In fact people are never blue. Either they are white, yellow, red, black, but nobody is ever blue, except for a few blue children who suffer from some blood disease. But they cannot survive; blue children don’t survive.

Krishna is painted as blue. One of his names, Shyam, simply means blue, the blue one. He is represented as blue, painted as blue, metaphorically. It is a symbol that he is a love god, that he represents love and the depth of the inner soul.

Become love, and let blue spread all over your being. Become blue. Let it become your life symbol too.

I teach life. I don’t teach God, because if love is learned, God follows automatically; it comes of its own accord. Love creates the required space in which God has to descend, is bound to descend, is inevitable. Hence we need not talk about God, but love has to be understood, love has to be learned, love has to be refined. Love has to be made more and more subtle and free from gross elements

For example, sexuality is a gross element, anger is gross, greed is gross, jealousy is gross, possessiveness is gross. Love has to be freed from all these things. Slowly slowly, when love remains just a pure perfume, just the sheer joy of sharing your being with existence, then the right context is created. Now God is bound to happen, it is inevitable.

[A sannyasin says: I can be hurt very easily and back in the West it can be worse, so I’m afraid to go back.]

Don’t be afraid – I will be with you! Give all your fear, all your worry, to me.

There is nothing to fear in life, because life is nothing but another name of death. So what is there to fear? It is all going to go; it is already a lost battle. The day one is born the battle is lost! Then there is nothing to fear.

See it clearly, and no worry arises. And then one can dance and celebrate – what else to do? Before death comes, in the little time that is available, dance, sing, celebrate! And if one starts dancing and celebrating, death never comes. Then instead of death, God comes. Even in death, a new door opens to eternal life. It is not an end then, but a beginning, a real birth.

To transform death into real birth is the whole art of meditation.

[A sannyasin says she is afraid of the Satori group; to be in silence for seven days.]

No, no, it is a totally different Satori group, don’t be worried – no silence at all! It is a deception, that name is a deception – you will not find a single moment of silence, don’t be worried. It is a very western satori!

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