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‌CHAPTER 11

11 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, marga, in Sanskrit, means the way... beyond the way.

The outward journey needs a way, the inward needs no way at all. If you want to go to the moon, there is distance, and the distance has to be covered by a way. But if you want to go into your own being there is no distance at all; you are already there. So it is not a question of travelling, it is only a question of recognising that ‘I have already arrived.’ Truth is beyond all paths because truth is already the case. It is not a question of achievement, it is only a question of remembrance: just a little more awareness and one is back home. And then the whole thing looks so absurd! How had you been missing it for so long? It looks so ridiculous – that it was already there, always there, and yet you were searching for it. It is really hilarious. The first thing that happens after a person becomes enlightened is a tremendous laugh, laughter at the whole absurdity of all search.

If this is understood, and this is only a question of understanding, not doing, but only of understanding, then this very moment, the transformation.

Sannyas is not a gradual process: it is sudden enlightenment. It is not a process in time; it is a jump out of time. It can happen in a split second... in fact, time is not needed at all. So let this moment become a new birth, it is, and from this moment start living not as a seeker and a searcher but as one who has arrived. Relax. There is nowhere to go, nothing to find, you are not to become anybody else. Relax into your being and start enjoying it. That moment-to-moment enjoyment of one’s own being and the existence that surrounds one is meditation.

Deva means divine, nirdosh means innocence – divine innocence.

And that is the greatest religious quality. No other virtue is as valuable as innocence, because it is only in innocence that god can happen. The knowledgeable mind goes on missing god because he

thinks he already knows. That becomes a barrier. He has already concluded; he has not waited, he has not been patient. He has not allowed god to enter his being. And he has concluded: either that god is or that god is not. The person who has concluded is no more innocent and is no more open either; only innocence is vulnerable. And the person who has already concluded is dishonest, insincere. How can you conclude without knowing? The person who has concluded is living in a lie. He may go on believing that he knows the truth but his truth is nothing but a lie, a falsification.

Truth can only be based on one’s own experience; it cannot be based on anybody else’s experience. Jesus may have known god, Buddha may have known, I may have known, but that cannot become your conclusion. That will be borrowed, that will be cheating, and one cannot cheat on god. One has to remain alert that one has not known yet.

To function from that state of non-knowing is innocence, and innocence is tremendously beautiful. It is vast, open, available, ready to inquire, to go on any investigation, to explore. And it is only in innocence that one day the ultimate descends. Even then the innocence is not destroyed, because when the ultimate enters you, it is so big that you cannot reduce it to a conclusion.

That’s why Buddha remained silent. He would not say whether god is or god is not. You ask him – he will smile and keep quiet. It is so big that to say anything about it is to reduce that unlimitedness to a very limited statement. That is sacrilegious. In that way Buddha remains one of the most unique enlightened persons of the world. . . so utterly honest that he will not answer even fundamental questions which every religious person is seeking and searching. He will simply put aside all great questions. He will say ‘Don’t bother about them, please learn how to meditate. Be silent and you will know. Be still and you will know. Don’t ask. Even if I say, it is useless... not only useless, it is harmful. If you cling to it then you will never know on your own.’

That’s the meaning of your name. Drop all conclusions, become a child again, and from that things start changing. Life again becomes a wonder, a mystery. Life again becomes full of awe, poetry, beauty. One is again thrilled, one is no more bored, and there are surprises on each step. Those surprises are ecstatic.…

Deva means divine, siddho means arrival – one who has arrived. Sannyas is an arrival. It is not a ritual, it is not a formality, it is getting involved with me. It is the greatest commitment one can make, although it is made playfully, there is no seriousness involved in it. That’s the paradox of it. And all that is great is always paradoxical. It is a non-serious commitment but it is a commitment all the same. One has to go into it laughing, dancing, singing, because to me the sense of humour is one of the very fundamental religious qualities. If you cannot laugh totally you will never be able to love or pray. If you cannot be playful in life, it is impossible to be Prayerful. Prayer is the ultimate form of playfulness.

Deva means divine, parinamo means consequence.

There are things in life which cannot be made into goals, and those are the greatest things, the most valuable; those are the ultimate values of life. You cannot make a goal out of them, they happen as a consequence. For example: happiness cannot be made a goal. If you make a goal of it you will become more and more unhappy. You cannot go directly in search of it. Happiness is a consequence, it is very indirect. Playing on your guitarYou are not searching for happiness; you

are playing on your guitar and you are absorbed in it, and suddenly it comes as a consequence. You were not even thinking about it; you were not searching for it; you had no motivation in it; you were simply playing your guitar. Not even a lingering desire was there for happiness, but you got absorbed in your music and it came. It is a consequence.

So those people who start searching for happiness directly remain miserable for the whole of their lives. A painter may have it when he paints and forgets himself completely. When the painter disappears and there is only painting, happiness comes. It happens. It happens to the dancer... it happens to anybody who is capable of totally losing himself in some activity. But it always comes when you are absolutely unaware of it; it takes you by surprise.

And it is not only so about happiness, it is so with love, it is so with celebration, it is so with meditation, it is so with god. They are all consequences, not goals. You cannot desire them; desire them and you will miss them. Desire becomes the great barrier. But they happen whenever you are lost, absorbed, drunk with some activity, whatsoever it is. Digging a hole in the garden, if you are really totally absorbed in it you will feel great joy arising in you, great meditativeness. And suddenly you will feel yourself surrounded by a new climate of love. And one day all these qualities take you higher and higher and higher, and the ultimate is god. God is the sum total of love, beauty, celebration, meditation, prayer, gratitude. God is the apex, the peak of it all.

But remember one thing very fundamental – it is a consequence.

Prem means love, vedano means pain – pain that comes out of love. It is a sweet pain. It is no ordinary pain. It is the pain that brings growth, it is the pain that brings new birth. It is a pain that is far more valuable than all pleasures put together. But the basic condition is that it should come out of love; then it is purifying. Then it cleanses you, then it is a fire. And if one is ready to go through it, one comes out of it pure gold.

Not all pain is good. Pain is destructive if it doesn’t arise out of love; it is poison. But the miracle of love is that it transforms even the poison into nectar: that is the very alchemy of love. If love touches even darkness it becomes light. If love touches death it becomes life. If love brings suffering then hidden behind it are great blessings. So whatsoever love brings has to be accepted in great gratitude. It brings pain in the beginning because man is not yet ready. Much has to be dropped from his being, many things have to be cut. Man has to be peeled, and it is painful because we have lived with a certain identity for so long; now chunks of that identity start dropping.

It is not accidental that many people have decided not to love or, at the most, pretend to love. It is not accidental that many people have chosen sex as a substitute for love, many have chosen marriage as a substitute for love. Many have chosen new objects of love which are not dangerous – money, power, prestige – things. But there are very few people who really love.

The fear of love is that it brings great pain, it brings great agony. It throws you into the fire of purification, but that price has to be paid, otherwise man remains mundane, never becomes sacred. Man remains a seed and never becomes a tree. And the seed will never know the spring, remember. Spring will come but the seed will never know the spring. It is only the tree that can know the spring and the joy of spring... the glory and the splendour.

Choose love even if it brings pain. Choose love even if it brings death, because death through love is resurrection. Choose love whatsoever it brings and whatsoever the cost, and you will never be a loser.

Deva means god, ajij means friend – god, the friend.

God has been thought of in many ways down the ages: as father, as mother, as husband, as beloved, as a child. But the best way is to conceive of god as the friend, because friendship comes very closeIt is something that is not of the ordinary, mundane rut of life.

When you think of god as a father it is bound to be that you will project your own father onto him and all the traumas that are associated with your father and the father-fixation. If you think of him as your mother, that too is a biological relationship. Friendship is utterly non-biological. If you think of god as your beloved, your woman, again it is a biological, sexual relationship.

Friendship is the only relationship which has no connotation of biology. Friendship is utterly luxurious; it is not part of nature. It is not needed for survival: it is a pure sharing. It has no motivation. You don’t need anything from the friend; you simply meet the friend. You are happy that the friend is there. Just his being is enough of a fulfilment. You don’t use the friend as a means to something; the friend is the end, he is not the means.

This is all involved when you start thinking of god as your friend. And when you think of god as your friend you need not be self-condemnatory, you need not think of yourself as inferior. You need not think of god as superior, high and far away. It is more human to think of him as a friend. He comes closer, you become equal, and love can arise only between equals. If god is very high and man is very low then a bridge is impossible. If god is all purity and man is all sin then the bridge is not possible at all, they cannot be bridged.

Think of god as a friend and then all inferiority and superiority and all those complexes disappear; and that is tremendously helpful. If you can think of god as your friend, then just as a corollary to it you can think about your friend as god, and that is of tremendous significance.

Prem means love – that’s what you have missed in your life and that’s what you are seeking and searching for.

If love is missed one starts feeling very empty. It is only love that gives you a feeling of fulfilment. And if love has not showered in your life then you can manage to live but life is not much of a life. It is more or less a drag. One can manage, but it is an empty gesture; there is no substance in it. It is a formality. It is just that one is not dead, that’s all, but the joy of living and the thrill of being here in existence is not there. And it is only through that joy that one comes to know beauty, truth, god.

All that you need is a jump into love. That is going to be your therapy. So while you are here befriend as many people as you can. Be loving to people, become available. Don’t be afraid and don’t be shy. Don’t hide yourself, because if you hide yourself then others start hiding themselves. If you shrink back, immediately the other reacts and shrinks back. Open yourself, come closer to people. You need a certain warmth, and once that warmth is around you, your heart will start pulsating with a new energy. And that is possible, there is no problem in it.

But if one has lived long enough without love then it looks almost impossible. From where to begin? How to be friendly? How to be loving? But in this commune it is possible, because the whole milieu of the commune is that of love. If it cannot happen here it cannot happen anywhere else. So don’t miss this opportunity. Mix with people, drop your defences and don’t be afraid of coming closer to people. They are just like you: just as you are lonely, they are lonely; just as you are pulling on in your life somehow, they are pulling on in their lives somehow.

So don’t be worried that somebody will look at your emptiness, will see that you have nothing inside you and that that will be very shattering and your image will fall to the ground. No need to be worried. At least here with my people nobody is trying to carry any image. People are trying to be authentic, true, sincere, as they are in their utter nakedness – they are trying to be true.

So you just remember that. And do a few groups, they will help you to unburden, a little bodywork, and things will settle.

The East represents a few things: one is the inward journey. The West is extrovert; the East is introvert. The West explores others, the world; the East explores oneself. The East is just a metaphor for going inwards. The more you go inwards, the more blissful you become, and when you reach to the very core of your being, bliss explodes.

And bliss is not ordinary happiness that comes and goes. It only comes and never goes; it is eternal. Shantiprem.It means love for peace, love for silence.

Man ordinarily loves fight, conflict, struggle, violence. That’s the ordinary love of mankind. It is destructive because it is only through destructiveness that you can attain to a strong ego. The more you destroy, the more you can become an egoist.

But that love is a wrong love; it is suicidal, it poisons you. It does not bring to your life anything of the eternal. It brings misery to others and to you, it brings anguish, anxiety, to others and to you; it creates hell. Whenever love goes wrong hell is created. Hell is nothing but love gone bitter/sour.

The right kind of love is that which longs for peace, for silence. Once you have fallen in love with peace and silence your life will take on the flavour of creativity. And you will not only be blissful, you will become a blessing to others.

That’s all meditation is about: love for peace, silence.…

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