24

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‌CHAPTER 24

24 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, ahmo means ego. The truth is very close by; just a thin layer of the ego is preventing it. It is really a very thin layer, because the ego is not substantial. It is not an entity, It is not a thing; it is just an activity. In fact the ego should used as a verb rather than as a noun. It is more ego-ing than ego. And to ego is the whole activity of the mind; it perpetuates the idea of I. It is a false idea, so you have to continuously perpetuate it. Even if for one moment you forget to perpetuate it, it is no more there. So whenever you forget to perpetuate it you are in tune with life, and those are the moments of joy, bliss and benediction.

Seeing a bird on the wing you are lost in the beauty and the freedom of the bird. You have forgotten yourself and there is great joy. You didn’t perpetuate the idea in that moment, you were not separate from reality; you became one. The observer became the observed.

Or seeing a sunrise or a sunset or seeing a rose flower or listening to music or being in love.… Whenever you forget ego-ing, whenever you don’t support the constant activity, it immediately disappears; it is very non-substantial. In deep sleep it disappears. You don’t know who you are, you don’t know even that you are. In a deep spiritual state – in meditation, in love, in dance – it disappears, or whenever you are totally involved in something, so totally that you cannot perpetuate the constant process of the ego. You are painting something or you are playing the guitar or you are just cooking for a friend who is to come, and you are totally in it, nothing is outside it. You are no more a doer, you have become the doing. Then suddenly there is no ego and there is great joy. Joy is nothing but absence of the ego-ing process.

And it is really a very thin layer so it disappears in a single moment. Whenever you forget, it disappears, and whenever it is not there you are one with reality. That oneness is felt as bliss. That’s what happens in a deep sexual orgasm: two persons have forgotten ego-ing. They lose boundaries, they melt into each other. They forget that they are, and the moment they forget that

they are, they are for the first time! So each moment of joy is a very paradoxical moment: on the one hand you disappear, on the other hand you appear for the first time.

And sannyas is a certain style of life in which slowly slowly you stop ego-ing. You become more and more conscious and you drop ego-ing, and then one day it becomes your natural state. When ego-ing has disappeared, you have arrived home.

Let this be the beginning of that great arrival... the first step!

Deva means divine, sonya means gold – divine gold, and this is the alchemical name. All the alchemies of the world, Eastern and Western, use gold as a metaphor for the ultimate flowering of man. Man has to be transformed from the baser metal into the most precious metal, gold. Born, man is just a base metal. Unless one works upon it, purifies it, transports it into new planes, into new dimensions, one remains nothing but the earth. If one starts working upon oneself then slowly slowly the sky penetrates one’s being; then one is no more just the earth. The earth becomes the vehicle and the sky becomes the innermost reality. Then even the body, the earthly part, is beautiful, because now the temple is no more empty; the deity of the temple has arrived. That arrival is known as the gold.

So to change man from baser metal into gold is the whole process of alchemy and the whole process of religion too. And this is what we are doing here. This is an alchemical field. Something of immense value is being done. It is not available to spectators, it cannot be; it has never been available to the spectators. It is such an inner and subtle process that one has to become a participant to know about it.

To be a sannyasin is to be an apprentice in an alchemical school. Long is the process, arduous is the task, but the payoff is infinite! And how long it takes depends on your intensity. If your intensity is total it can happen in a single moment too. It all depends on intensity. If the intensity is just lukewarm it can take lives. So let sannyas become a very passionate affair. Let it be hot, not just so-so. And then you are very close to something which you have been seeking and searching for not only in this life but in other lives too! Everybody has been seeking and searching; everybody wants to be transformed, because to live as one is born is ugly.

The way man ordinarily lives is the life of imprisonment – chained to a thousand and one slaveries, and all is dark, all is frustrating, an is just anguish. One wants to be transformed into the world of light and freedom and love, and those are nothing but other names for god. One can call god freedom, one can call god love, one can call god light, or whatsoever one wills.

Make effort and put all that you have at the stake.

Deva means divine, madhu means wine, any intoxicant – divine intoxicant.

Man can find god only when he learns how to forget himself. Forgetfulness of oneself is the remembrance of god. You cannot keep both together – it has to be either you or god. We all are too full of our own selves. We are continuously remembering ourselves, hence it is impossible to remember god; they don’t mix. They are like light and darkness. If you want darkness then you cannot bring light in; if you want to bring light in, you have to renounce darkness, you have to lose your love for darkness. The ego is love for darkness; god is light.

We cling to the ego so deeply that we talk about god, but basically we are afraid, frightened of god. If suddenly god comes and knocks on your door and says ‘Can I come in?’ you will not be able to say ‘Yes’ immediately; you will say ‘I have to think about it.’ And you may take lives to think about it, because to allow god in means that you disappear, you will never be found again!

That is the meaning of becoming so intoxicated with god that one forgets oneself. Intoxication is a metaphor for forgetting, for losing one’s self. And the greatest experience of life is to lose one’s self and yet be conscious. That condition has to be fulfilled. Many people lose the themselves – in alcohol, in psychedelic drugs, in sex. Many people lose themselves, but just by losing themselves they have not attained anything, maybe a few moments of relaxation, but again the whole misery comes back and the whole hell starts. And it is even worse than it was before, because when you were oblivious of yourself, it was gathering, collecting around you, it was accumulating.

To be intoxicated and to be conscious... then the miracle happens. That cannot be done by ordinary intoxicants, because the moment you are under the impact of alcohol you forget yourself, but you are not conscious either. So self-forgetfulness becomes unconsciousness too.

And that is the whole process of meditation: to help you to become intoxicated and yet keep you alert and awake. A conscious self-forgetfulness – that is the subtle art of meditation. It is very delicate. It is easy to remember yourself, it is easy to forget yourself, both are easy. Any chemical drug can help and you can forget yourself. The difficult thing is to forget yourself and yet be aware. When there is no self but only the pure light of awareness inside, that is the moment god comes in, that is the preparation. That is when you become ready to receive That is when you become a womb, that is when you become pregnant with the divine.

So this name has to be an indication. It has to be decoded, it has to become your very life style. Drop the self and remain conscious. People are self-conscious. The self has to be dropped and the consciousness has to be raised higher and higher. When there is no self and only consciousness – that’s what meditation is all about – the door opens and infinite mysteries start flooding in from every direction. From every nook and comer of existence god rushes towards you and fills you. When the self has left, you are empty; now you can be filled. The condition to be filled is to be empty.

Trust is not belief. Belief is never without doubt; belief is a repressed doubt. You have hushed the doubt inside and you have painted it on the surface as belief. So in each believer you will find deep down a doubter. Hence the believer is always afraid to talk about his belief. He is afraid to listen to something that goes against his belief. He knows that anything can provoke his own doubt, anything can help the doubt to come to the surface. He is very defensive, very protective, always on guard. And his belief is superficial; it is borrowed. He has taken it from others – parents, society, state, church; he has not earned it. It is not his own. growth, hence it is a burden. It is luggage that he has to carry, and unnecessary luggage because it is a dead weight; it has no life in it.

Life happens only when some experience is authentically yours, then it is alive, then it has a heart- beat in it. Whenever you have taken the experience from somebody else it is a lie. It may have been a truth to the other person, but it can’t be a truth for you. There is no way of borrowing truths; in the very borrowing they become lies. Each one has to arrive on his own.

Each one has to seek and search and suffer and go through all the pains of the journey, all the turmoils, all the anxieties, all the pitfalls. Only then does one become ripe enough. That ripening is

absolutely necessary. You cannot be spoon-fed. Truth is not Like that, it is not transferable from one hand to another. One has to live it; that is the only way of knowing it.

So trust is not belief, trust is your own experience. Never believe in anything but remain open for everything. That is the foundation, the very ground, of a real search: being open to everything and not believing in anything. How can one believe unless one has known? I am not saying to become a disbeliever, because that too is a belief, a negative belief but still a belief.

Don’t be a believer, don’t be a non-believer, just remain open, a seeker, a searcher. And one who is ready to do that has already taken a very very essential step towards truth. Because the mind always wants to believe. The mind lives through beliefs, borrowed information, theories, philosophies, systems, religions. The mind is nothing but all that you have borrowed from others; the mind lives through borrowing. The moment you stop borrowing the mind starts disappearing; it accumulates no more.

Sooner or later you are in a kind of emptiness, and that emptiness is the true beginning; the beginning of the great pilgrimage that ends in god or truth. And only when you have experienced something does trust arise. Trust is absence of doubt. Belief is repression of doubt. Trust is beautiful, belief is ugly.

Idam means thisness; shunyo means nothingness. The only right way to live is to live in the now; neither in the past nor in the future but in the present, because the present is the only reality and only the real can be the door to the ultimately real.

The past is no more, it is only a memory, a hangover. Living in the past one can never find god. And living in the future is living in imagination, in that which is not yet. Living in the future nobody can ever find god either.

The door to god is this moment, now, here. That is the meaning of idam. It means to live in this. This is it – there is no need to go anywhere, there is no need to search into the past, there is no need to desire in the future. This small atomic moment is the door to god. And whenever you are herenow suddenly you are surrounded by the divine. Whenever it happens, knowingly, unknowingly, whenever it happens suddenly there is the quality of the divine. Listening to music it can happen. Sitting silently doing nothing you can fall in tune with the present moment; then it can happen. In the mountains, with the silence of the mountains, you can fall in harmony and it can happen. It can happen in a thousand and one ways.

And it happens to everybody, once in a while it happens to everybody. It is very rare to find a person who has not tasted of the divine in some moment or other. It may be that he has not recognised it as divine. He may not even have taken any note of it, because it is so absurd; it does not fit with the rest of his life. It is so outlandish that one thinks maybe it is just a figment of imagination or maybe just a mood or one was feeling good, one had a certain well-being, this and that... things were going well and nature was beautiful.One finds rationalisations, one tries to find an explanation for such

beautiful moments which really have no explanation, which come from the beyond, which descend whenever one is herenow.

So idam has to become your meditation. Whatsoever you are doing be in that moment, and if the mind moves here and there, bring it back.

One has to behave with the mind just as you go with your dog for a morning walk. The dog goes here and the dog goes there, and he enters into this bush and he tries to fight with some other dog, and you have to pull him back again and again. The mind is like a dog: it goes into the past, it goes into the future. You have to constantly pull it back to the present. Slowly slowly it becomes accustomed. It is a kind of training, a discipline for the mind.

‘Idam’ is a very significant word. It contains the whole discipline of meditation. This single word is enough.

A Zen master was dying and the disciples had gathered for the last message. This has been a tradition in Zen: in the last moment the master gives his final message; it may be a small verse, a haiku, just a simple statement or a gesture. So the disciples were waiting and then one disciple said ‘Sir, you are slowly slowly leaving your body; we can see that you are disappearing. What about the last message?’

The master opened his eyes and at that very moment a squirrel ran on the roof, making noise. The master raised his finger and he said ‘This is it!’... and he died with his raised finger. The message is absolutely clear and loud: ‘This is it!’ This is the whole message, not only of Zen but of all true religion.

In English we have to say three words: ‘This is it’. Idam contains all the three in a single word. It means: this is it! So bring yourself again and again to the present.

And the second word, ‘shunyo’, will be the outcome of it. Shunyo means absolute nothingness. When one is in the present, one disappears, one becomes a nobody. Great space is created inside, and that space is god. Nothingness is the beginning of all.

The first taste is that of nothingness, all disappears, and then suddenly something starts descending. Into that emptiness descends the beyond. First one has to become spacious enough for god; the space has to be created. Idam creates space; that space is known as shunyo. Actually the word means zero. A great zero arises in you; your name disappears; nothing is left. And that is the moment of transformation. When nothing is left, all falls into you. When you are nothing then you become all. Then one is one with god, and that is the goal of life.…

Just be here... just drink of me as much as you can, become more and more available to me. Something immensely valuable can happen, something of which you have never even dreamt is possible. And you are so close to its actualisation that just availability will be enough.

So become one with my people, with this energy-field, and whatsoever you can do, do. Dance, sing, meditate, sit silently, and just remain available to me, that has to be the keynote, in a kind of passive receptivity.

If you can do that, then the remaining I will do!

Prem means love, sandipti means aflame – aflame with love, afire with love. Love is fire, and a very necessary fire to pass through.

Those who avoid it are unfortunate. They become afraid of the fire, they become frightened and scared. But it is only by going through the fire that one’s life can be transformed. The mutation cannot happen without it; without it one remains just a mind. Only by going through it does one become a heart. It is the fire of love that creates heart, and not to have a heart is the greatest calamity that can happen to a man. But millions of people are living without a heart. And when I use the word ‘heart’ I don’t mean the physical heart.

The heart is a spiritual centre of your being. It is not the pumping system to purify your blood; that is not the real heart, it is the physical part of it. Hidden behind it is a centre which is not functioning in millions of people, and that’s why they are in misery, because only the heart can bring joy. Those flowers bloom only through the heart, in the heart. They are heart flowers.

So those who avoid fire because of fear remain hung up in their heads; their whole life remains just of calculation, cleverness, but utterly ugly and utterly impotent. They never come to know what fulfilment is. They lose all possibilities of attaining any meaning. Meaning is possible only when you go through the fire.

The fire makes you afraid only because you have not entered it. Once you enter it all fear disappears. One becomes really enchanted. The adventure is such that one is ready to risk all for it. And the deeper you go, the cooler does the fire become; only the first impact is hot. The deeper you go, the cooler becomes the fire. At the deepest, love is the coolest breeze possible. Then fire is only light, it burns no more. But those are the experiences which happen only to people who go into it.

Never be afraid of love, because it is love that will bring you close to your heart, and it is the heart that can open the doors to god. God can enter only through the heart; he cannot come through the head. The head has no possibility of having any contact with god. The head can create great science, great technology, but it cannot create great poetry, great mysticism; those are not its possibilities.

So remember it: my fire is the fire of love. I initiate you into sannyas just to initiate you into deeper realms of love, because the ultimate climax of love is god.

[The new sannyasin says:... will you help me? Will you be my father?]

I will be more than a father. Fathers can’t help. In fact they have disturbed the whole thing! So I will be something more, something far more. A master is a father, is a mother, is a lover, is a friend, is a guide all rolled into one!

Don’t be worried – all help will be given to you. Once you become a sannyasin it is my responsibility. For you it is easy to become a sannyasin. For me to accept you as a sannyasin is a great responsibility. Because when you become a sannyasin you are unconscious, you don’t know what you are, you don’t know what you are doing. But giving sannyas to you is a great responsibility for me. I am doing it in total awareness!

You need not be worried about it. I will be all that is needed; but I may not fulfil your expectations because your expectations cannot be right. They come out of your mind. Mm? you have a certain idea of how a father should be. I am not going to be that kind of a father. I will be a grand father! I will not fulfil your expectations.

But they need not be fulfilled at all, because if I fulfil your expectations I will not be able to change you. Fulfilling your expectations will be giving you more support as you are, and that is where the problem is. So leave it to me. You will get whatsoever is needed.

If pain is needed, pain will be given to you. If agony is needed, agony will be given to you. If ecstasy is needed, ecstasy will be given to you. Everything will come as the need arises. But drop all your expectations, otherwise you will be in constant trouble. Because you don’t know how much more I want to help you, your ideas will be very small. I want to really transform you all totally.

You come with small desires and small demands, and you will be very happy if those demands can be fulfilled, but I know that there are greater treasures available and I can give those treasures to you. But for those treasures I will have to change you, I will have to cut many chunks out of your being. It is painful, but once you have passed through those painful tests you will see a new person arising, a new being born, and birth is painful.

Leave that to me. By becoming a sannyasin you have given the signal to me that now I can start working on you!

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