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CHAPTER 28
28 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Prem means love, shakti means power – love’s power. And that is the real power in the world. It is very paradoxical, because love is very humble; it is not powerful. And that’s its power. Love is surrender, but that’s its victory. It is a very passive way of conquering, it is the feminine way of conquering. It is the watercourse way. It is not like a rock: a rock t has a power, apparent power – very male. Water also has power but very female, not apparent, very humble, liquid, ready to change into any mould, ready to surrender, passive. But finally water wins over rocks.
And that’s the power of love. Once one knows how to be humble, how to be surrendering, how to be loving, one is victorious, without making any effort for it. Lao Tzu calls it wu wei; action without action.
Love is the magic, the secret of action without action. You don’t do anything, but it starts happening.
Deva means god, kanta means beloved – god’s beloved. The most fundamental thing in life to learn is that existence cares for us, that we are not orphans, that we need not worry about ourselves. Existence is not indifferent; it is full of love, and it is full of love for all that arises in it. Existence is a mothering phenomenon. It is a matrix, mater, mother. We are being taken care of in infinite ways but all those hands are very invisible. They are not tangible, you cannot see them; you can only feel them. Unless one is very sensitive, one goes on missing. Those hands are god’s hands. To me god is not separate from existence; it is another name for existence, it is another name for nature.
And once this understanding settles, great trust arises. Then we are not alien and there is no possibility of alienation. Then we are part of this existence, and a necessary part, not accidental. Existence needed you the way you are. You are fulfilling something immensely valuable in the life of existence, in the growth, in the evolution; you are not meaningless. Each moment of your life is in service – knowingly, unknowingly, that is another matter. If you know it you will feel tremendously
happy; if you don’t know you will feel burdened. But whether you know or not you are serving some great purpose. The modern man feels very accidental because god has disappeared from the horizon. The modern man feels meaningless, alienated, because meaning is possible only when you relate yourself to something higher than you, bigger than you. Meaning needs context. Unless you are part of something bigger, you can’t feel meaningful. A single word is meaningless; when it is part of a poem it has meaning. The single poem may be meaningless; when it is part of an epic it has tremendous meaning.
Meaning arises out of the context, and modern man has lost all context. He seems to be simply isolated, an island, unrelated to existence, and that is creating great misery. People are feeling more and more suicidal. Life seems so meaningless that death seems to be a kind of shelter, a relaxation. Death seems to be the remedy. But this has happened for the first time in the history of humanity that life has become so meaningless. We have made it so. We have lost the capacity to trust, to love. We have lost the sensitivity to feel the infinite around us. We have forgotten how to relate with the totality, how to relate with trees and rivers and clouds and the moon and the sun and people. We have forgotten even how to relate with our self, with our own body, with our own mind. Our own self even! We are living unrelated, hence meaninglessness, hence this sadness that is surrounding the whole of humanity, a gloom as if man is doomed.
Sannyas is an introduction, an initiation into the wider context of existence. You are a tiny ripple, but behind you is the great ocean of god. You are his river. Even if you are a drop, without you the ocean will be less. And the ocean is nothing but millions of millions of drops together.
You contribute something to god. That very idea, that one is needed in existence, gives roots.
Deva means divine, mitta means friend – a divine friend. Man is being conditioned continuously for ambition. Down the ages all the societies and all the education systems have been poisoning humanity and the basis of their poisoning is: create ambition.
Now, once you create ambition in a person he becomes inimical to everybody; he is always in conflict. All are competitors; he has to fight his way. On the surface he may show friendship but deep down that friendship remains political, diplomatic. Deep down he is fighting; he is alone against the whole world because all are competitors. If you are after money then all are competitors. Either you will succeed or they will succeed. You both can’t succeed, you all can’t succeed.
This has created a subtle enmity, the whole earth lives in that enmity. It creates wars, it creates all kind. of violence. It creates a state of lovelessness in the world, and without love there is misery. It creates hate, and with hate there is hell.
Sannyas means dropping ambition. Jesus says ‘Those who are the last will be the first in my kingdom of god, and those who are the first will be the last in my kingdom of god.’ He is giving the secret of non-ambition: be the last and you will be the first, and you are the first. Be the last, just be a nobody, and you have arrived. And out of that nobodiness love flows, friendship flows, because now there is no question: you are not fighting with anybody, you are not coming in anybody’s way; you have renounced fight, conflict, ambition.
This is true sannyas, true renunciation: you don’t renounce the world but you renounce competitiveness. You don’t renounce the family but you renounce domination. You don’t renounce
your husband, your wife, your children, but you renounce all kinds of possessiveness. And then suddenly there is a great transformation. One is at home, and one becomes then a friend, a divine friend, to all!
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