CHAPTER 30
30 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Prem means love, sahaj means spontaneous. Love can only be spontaneous. If it is otherwise, it is something else, not love. Love cannot be calculated phenomenon. It happens of its own accord. You cannot do it, you cannot UNdo it. It comes from the beyond, hence it has the flavour of the divine. It comes from nothingness, hence its magical quality.
The mind is a calculator, cunning, clever, hence it goes on missing love. The person who lives through the mind will never be able to know what love is, and really he is unfortunate, because not to know love is not to know life; not to know love is not to know god. If love is missed, all is missed. Then life is just a futile, empty, gesture – a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. But that’s how millions of people are living, and the basic mistake in their life is that they have become focused in the calculative mind and they have lost track of the uncalculative heart.
The mind is good as far as mundane things are concerned; the mind is impotent as far as sacred, things are concerned. For the mundane, the mind is a beautiful mechanism; for the sacred it is the greatest wall.
The sacred happens in spontaneity. It comes like a breeze: suddenly it is there and you are surrounded by it, thrilled by it, exhilarated, but you cannot manage it, you cannot call it on order. It cannot be a slave to you. When love comes it always comes as a master, you have to surrender to it. And that’s where the heart enters into life: through surrender, through trust, through spontaneity. Slowly slowly, one day love arrives, and the arrival of love is the beginning of real life, authentic life, true life.
Remember it, and not only remember it, make every effort to live it. Slip down from the head to the heart. Let feelings become more important than thoughts, let feelings reign; let them be supreme.
Let thoughts serve feelings. The head has to be a slave and then it is perfectly good. When it pretends to be the master it is very destructive.
Madhu means sweet and intoxicating, and prem means love. Love has two qualities: it is the sweetest thing in existence and it is the most intoxicating thing too; it is psychedelic.
The modern generation has become so interested in psychedelics because it has forgotten how to love. It is searching for a substitute. Down the ages people have been searching again and again in different ways for some intoxicant – it may be alcohol, it may be soma, it may be LSD, marijuana, etcetera, etcetera. They have found many chemical ways to become intoxicated but they are all arbitrary, artificial.
Nature has provided man with a natural psychedelic – it is in-built – and that is love! The moment you are in love your chemistry functions in a totally different way. People in love suddenly become beautiful. People in love suddenly start functioning in a totally different way than they have ever functioned. Their eyes have a shine of their own, their faces have a grace, their behaviour is no more the same. They are not really the same person.
A person not in love is a different person than the person when he is in love. There is a discontinuity; something of tremendous significance has happened inside. And love penetrates all the layers of your being. It changes your body chemistry, it changes your psyche, it changes your being, and these are the three layers. It starts with the physical but it should not stop there, it has to move to the psychological. And it should not stop even there, because it has to penetrate into being.
On the physical plane love expresses itself as sexuality, sensuality. On the psychic plane it becomes love and on the spiritual plane it becomes Prayer, but all these are a continuum. It is the same phenomenon growing, it is the same phenomenon reaching new heights, new planes, new plenitudes; and life really becomes full of an unknown sweetness. The heart is able to sing and the body is able to dance and the being is full of gratitude. The moment of love is the most Precious moment in existence, and it is through that moment that one slips into eternity.
So remember: love is the highest religion, the highest truth. All else that pretends to be religious and pretends to be true is nothing but man’s imagination. Only love is natural – the natural way to god!
[The new sannyasin says: I seem to be attracted to ladies who don’t have much energy for me or who don’t after a short while... ]
It happens to many people, and the reason is that deep down you are afraid. It is safe to be attracted to a woman who you can trust will not be attracted to you, so you can play the game of being in love and without any risk.
The whole thing is rooted in fear, and it is not only your problem, it is more or less the problem of the majority of people. They may be aware of it, they may not be, but people always become interested in persons who are unapproachable in some way or other. For example, people become interested and fall in love with film actresses. Now, they are unapproachable. They know that they will not be able to get them, but that is a security. People become interested in persons who are so far away
that it is almost impossible to reach, to get them, so they can enjoy the idea that they are in love and without any of the risk and turmoil of being in love. Being in love is a risk, it is entering into a very chaotic world.
To be in love is to be in difficulty, because love is a challenge. Growth happens through it, but through much pain, much suffering. Ecstasies arrive but they are preceded by great agonies. You have to pay for each single ecstasy and you have to pay really hard. So many people have become very clever about it. If a woman is interested in you, you will not be interested in her, and if you are interested in a woman, she will not be interested in you, so both can have the fantasy of being in love. And a fantasy is cheap because you have not to pay anything for it.
You will have to see the point that deep down you are afraid of women; the very awareness will start changing you, will be the beginning of a change. There is nothing to be afraid of in a woman, there is nothing to be afraid of in a man. They are all alike and they are sailing in the same boat, suffering in the same ways, desiring the same joys, afraid of the same traps. If you look deep down you represent the whole humanity: your fears are everybody’s fears. The woman is also afraid, so when you become interested in her she starts escaping.
Even when people somehow manage to be together, the real togetherness very rarely happens. They live together but they are not together. Togetherness is something very deep and inner; it means that two persons are welded together. That is a real wedding: when you are welded, when you start functioning as a single unit, when your feeling reaches to the other even without being conveyed, when you feel as the other feels, when the other’s shoe is pinching, you feel the pinch; then two persons are really together. They have really cared for each other and they have dropped all defences, all armour, and now they are open, vulnerable.
Because people are afraid to be open, they are afraid of love. Because people are afraid that the other may take some advantage of their vulnerability, they protect. They continuously create more and more barriers, armour, .so that the other can be kept at a distance. So even married people are not together, not married. They may have lived together tor years, they may have produced children, but still they have not yet touched each other’s heart. They have not come to that state which can be called union. And unless that union happens one has not known the woman or the man. And if the man has not known the woman, he will not be able to know himself, and vice versa, because by knowing a woman you will know the man. The woman will become the context, the contrast; the woman will define you. The woman will give you an opportunity to see your face in her being. She will become the mirror... and nobody wants to see their face either.
But this is going to happen – wait. All these groups will peel you; they will take away layers of rubbish from your being and soon you will be raw. It will hurt, mm? because those layers and layers of conditioning have become almost like skin. It will hurt, but once it is dropped you will feel so unburdened, so weightless, and then love is possible.
My whole work here consists of making you capable of love. If I can succeed in that I have succeeded in bringing you to god. Because the person who is incapable of love will remain incapable of reaching to god, because god means the ultimate love-affair! If you are afraid of the woman, how. can you approach god? – because that is the ultimate mirror. You will be reflected in your total nudity, mercilessly. Unless you have started to love your nudity you will not be able to reach to god. Jesus
is right when he says ‘God is love.’ I go a step further; I say ‘Love is god.’ Wait... things are going to happen!
Atita means the transcendental. Reality is not finished at that which is apparent, at that which is obvious. Reality goes far deeper. Reality is not confined to the known, it reaches into the unknown. Reality is not only that which is available to the senses; it is far bigger. All that we know of reality is through our five senses. There are animals who have only three senses; their reality is confined to three. They cannot even become aware that there are people who have five senses and whose reality is bigger. There are animals who have only one sense; their reality is even more small. If man had ten senses his reality would be far richer.
Just think of a blind man. In his reality there is no place for light, no place for colour; his reality is very poor. Without colour, without light, he is living in a very small cell. He is missing great beauties. He will not be able to see the splendour of a rainbow, he cannot even imagine it. You cannot explain it to him – there is no way! And whatsoever you say he will misunderstand because he will be constantly translating it according to his understanding, and his understanding is confined to his ears. Now, what the eyes can know cannot be translated into the language of the ears; you cannot see music and you cannot hear beauty.
Don’t think that we are confined to five senses. This is the beginning of religion. There is far more to be known, to be explored, and once you start exploring it, you start growing new senses, new sensibilities, in you, and that is the whole miracle of the religious search.
Once you start exploring something, some potential in you which has been dormant starts functioning. Now the brain surgeons say that half of the brain is almost non-functioning. The ancient Yoga scriptures say that that half is far more important than the other half which is functioning. The lower half is functioning, the higher half is non-functioning. It will function only if you start doing something for which it is needed. For example, when a person starts meditating some new centres in his brain start functioning. They were never needed, they remained dormant.
There is no end to human potentialities. Man has all that is needed to know the whole. But the basic thing is to remember that we are just at the beginning of the journey and much has to be done, much has to be known, much has to be loved, much has to be lived.
That is the meaning of the transcendental: that there is always something beyond us, waiting, calling. Hear the call of it! And sannyas can become significant only if you start moving into the transcendental, into that which is not available to the ordinary senses. It is all your birthright, but one has to grow new sensibilities, and meditation is a new sensibility. It makes you aware of the beyond, of the infinite, of the eternal.
Ajijo... it means the unconquerable. There is something in every being which is unconquerable, and that is his true self. The body can be conquered, can be killed, can be chained; the mind can be conquered, can be conditioned, can be hypnotised, can be manipulated. But beyond the body and the mind there is something more – the core, the very core of your being, which cannot be destroyed, cannot be conquered, cannot be put into a bondage; there is no way.
That self has only one quality: that quality is witnessing, awareness, meditativeness, it is a pure observer. And unless one knows it one remains a slave – a slave of the political system one lives
in, a slave in the religious organisation one is part of, and a slave of many more things. The whole world consists of slaves. Very rarely is there a man like a Buddha or a Jesus, one who is not a slave; hence we call them the masters.
And why are they the masters? Because they have come to know something in them which is unconquerable, and that something is in everyone. Just a little effort to penetrate into one’s own darkness, just an effort to become more aware of one’s body and one’s mind and their functionings, that’s all, and suddenly one day it explodes!
Then you have freedom, and freedom is joy, freedom is dignity. It is only freedom that can feel grateful to god and it is only freedom that can become a celebration.
[Aurobindo means a lotus.]
The lotus is the most loved flower in the East and it is tremendously significant as a symbol. The lotus is the most soft flower, the most feminine, very receptive, and that’s what the East has been searching for: the quality of being feminine, soft, receptive. Because god cannot be conquered – one has to surrender to god, and only the feminine can surrender.
God has to be a guest and only the feminine can become the host. God has to be received and welcomed, and one has to learn infinite patience because one never knows when the guest will come; there is simply no way of predicting it. its ways of coming are infinite but there is no way to know them beforehand. its ways are mysterious, and only the feminine heart can understand the mysterious.
The male mind is aggressive, hard; the male mind is a seeker, an adventurer. It cannot wait, it is impatient. Science is the by-product of the male mind, hence deep down science remains a kind of rape on nature, as if we are forcing nature, coercing nature to reveal its secrets to us. We cannot wait, we cannot allow nature to reveal its secrets in its own time. We cannot persuade, we cannot seduce, nature. And that is the quality of the feminine mind: it is seductive.
And god has to be seduced, persuaded, provoked, called forth. One need not go in search of god. Where will you search for him? You don’t have any address. Even if you come across him you will not be able to recognise him because you don’t have any previous experience. God can only be waited for, and in true waiting he arrives. The lotus flower represents that quality of waiting, softness, grace, femininity, receptivity. It sends its fragrance, it releases its fragrance and waits.
So that has to be remembered: religion is basically feminine just as science is basically male. Western psychology is male; the Eastern psychology is feminine. And just in understanding it you will find a grace arising in you; tensions start withering away. That’s why women are so beautiful, so round. Even in small children the baby girl is silent, more quiet. Even when the child is in the womb the mother can know whether it is a boy or a girl, because the boy kicks and moves and starts doing his thing, and the girl is silent, unobtrusive, undeclaring. Experienced mothers who have given birth to two, three children, become absolutely aware whether it is a boy or a girl inside the womb. Just the very qualityThis quality has to be learned because this becomes meditation.
I am not against the mate mind; it is perfectly good as far as scientific investigation is concerned. The feminine mind cannot give birth to science. That’s why the East has not given birth to science,
to technology; it is basically a Western contribution. But the mate mind cannot give birth to poetry, to music, to dance, to religion, to god. Alt the great religions were born in the East; even the religions that are being followed by the West were born basically Eastern. This is not just accidental. And the greatest religions were born at the very centre of the East.
That’s why Christianity is not so religious; something of the materialistic and something of the male mind is mixed with it. Hence the great effort to conquer other people, to convert them, to force them to become Christians – those great crusades and murderous efforts and killing and all that bloodshed. Because it was just on the fringes of the East that Christianity was born, just on the boundaries. And so is the case with Islam. It was not born at the very core of the Eastern heart, not at the very core of the lotus flower, but just on the boundaries, peripherally.
If you want to really understand what religion should be then you have to look at Buddha and whatsoever has come out of Buddha, because he was just at the very centre of the East. And just looking at Buddha you will feet the quality of the feminine. Friedrich Nietzsche has condemned Buddha saying that he was womanish, and in a way he is right. He was, but there is something superb about it; it is not a condemnation. Become more and more feminine, relaxed, and suddenly you will see that something starts surrounding you, it becomes your climate. That climate is meditation. It is an emanation of the feminine quality growing in the heart. It is a radiation of the feminine quality.
Adityo. It means the sun. The sun represents three things: life, love, light. All life comes from the sun. But life is just the beginning of a great pilgrimage, it is not the end. And those who think it is the end miss the whole point of life. They have taken the manure for the flowers. It could have produced great It flowers but manure itself is not the flower. It can become the opportunity to grow great roses, it can create the basic necessary condition, but still it is not the rose itself. And if you go on collecting manure your house will stink. That’s what happens: people who become too greedy for life start stinking. Their life stinks of greed, of possessiveness, of violence. Their life cannot ever have any perfume because they have completely forgotten the whole point: the manure is good if used as manure; it is not to be collected. And if it is used, the same energy that becomes stinking can become great fragrance; it is transformed.
Life should not be taken for granted. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people take it as if this is the end. These are the worldly people and these are the people who have made the earth ugly. These are the mundane, the mediocre people. They become politicians, they become great hoarders, they become exploiters. Their whole existence seems to be directed towards one thing: to survive. But if you ask them ‘For what?’ they have no answer. They live in a vicious circle. They live to survive, and if you ask them ‘Why do you want to survive?’ they want to live more. ‘And what are you going to do by living more?’ Just making more efforts to survive. They move in a circle: live long, make more efforts to survive, survive long so that you can live more.…
But this is utter stupidity! That’s why you will feel stupidity spread on the faces of people all over the world. No sign of intelligence, because they have not taken even the first step towards being intelligent.
Life lived without any love and light in it is horizontal. It is only one-dimensional, boring, flat, can’t have any poetry in it. It is impossible to have any celebration in it. At the most one can live from one
entertainment to another entertainment. All its joys are very superficial. They cannot even be called joys; at the most they can be called pleasures. A pleasure is something that keeps you occupied pleasantly for a time. And again you are bored, so you need another new toy to play with so that you can remain occupied.
Love means introducing a new dimension into your life: the dimension of feeling, the dimension of the heart. If life is the goal and an end unto itself then one lives through the head and only through the head. One lives through calculation, through arithmetic; one lives only motivated towards profit. One lives in the past and in the future; one knows nothing of the present, because thinking can have no contact with the present. Either it is memory of the past or planning for the future.
The moment feeling is introduced, the moment the heart is brought in, something immensely beautiful starts happening: you start becoming aware of the present. Past and future lose significance, because love knows only one time and that is present. It is spontaneous, it is non calculating. It is not arithmetic; it is poetry. It is not mathematics; it is music.
Now you can have joys. Now you can have some depth in your being. Now you don’t live only on the horizontal plane: the vertical has entered into your being. You live now in two dimensions. Your life becomes rich. But there is a third dimension also: the moment you introduce meditation your life starts moving towards light. The first state called life is very dark, and the last state called light is absolute light, as if an inner sun has risen. That’s exactly what all the mystics of the world have been saying – that when they reach to their innermost core a sun bursts forth far brighter than the outer sun.
Life is darkness: one simply gropes, guesses, stumbles. Love is mid-way, a twilight: a little of darkness and a little of light, the meeting of light and life, a bridge. And the third state is pure light: everything disappears in that light. Not even you are found; you dissolve into that light, you become that light. Life lives in the past and the future, love lives in the present, light is non-temporal. It knows nothing of time, it is eternal.
The sun represents all these three dimensions. Search for the inner sun! Let first life become involved as love and then as meditation. First let your heart start functioning, and then be a witness to the head and the heart both. Then you live three-dimensionally. Mm? that is the symbol of the trinity or the Hindu symbol of trimurti. The figure the has been of immense importance down the ages for the single reason that ultimately everything comes to the number three. You can call it trimurti, three faces of god, you can call it trinity, but one thing is certain, that as you go deeper only three are left. And those three are not separate from each other; they are aspects of one phenomenon. That phenomenon is adityo, the sun, the inner bursting forth of light.
[A sannyasin returning from the West says that she doesn’t know what to do; she feels separate from others in the ashram who are working.]
There is no need to know anything about the future – just be here as long as you feel and enjoy.
This time try working. It will be of great help, because the more you get involved in work, the closer you come to the family. Otherwise you remain a little aloof and apart, and the more you get involved in work, the more you get involved in me.
The work is not just work; it is a device. If it was just work then there would not be much of a question, whether one works or not is not much of a question, but it is a device too. It is part of your inner growth. If somebody can surrender absolutely to the work, growth will happen in great strides.