9

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‌CHAPTER 9

9 November 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, nikash means criterion. Love is the criterion, the touchstone. One has to test everything in life from the criterion of love. If love says it’s okay, then it is okay; if love says no, then you are going astray. If one simply follows the subtle indications of love one arrives at god naturally, without any effort. There is no need to search for god; all that is needed is to go on judging yourself on the criterion of love. Love is decisive.

The man of knowledge will fail on the criterion of love. That means that knowledge is not wisdom, because knowledge does not release love energy in you. Wisdom immediately releases love energy. Wisdom expresses itself as love, as compassion. Knowledge may even make you more cruel. Rather than making you more loving, it may even destroy the love that you already had, because the more the head becomes burdened by knowledge, the more the passage towards the heart is blocked.

Wisdom arises in the heart, and the shadow of wisdom is love. When wisdom arises in you, you will know that the light has arisen in you; others will see only love growing in you, not your light. Light is an interior experience, love is its outward expression. Only the person will know that the light has happened in him, but everybody else will become aware of his love.

Love is the outer reality of the light which is the inner reality. So if you try the criterion of love you will never go astray. Do whatsoever you want to do; always remember ‘Is it going to help my love more? Is it going to make my love more intense, deeper, more valid, more authentic?’ Then it is good, then it is virtuous. If not, then it is evil; it is better to avoid it. It will be destructive to others and it will be destructive to you too.

Destruction or creation, both are double-edged swords. If you destroy others you will be destroyed automatically. You cannot be destructive to others without being destructive to yourself. In fact, to

be destructive to others you will have to be destructive to yourself in the first place. Before the anger reaches to the other and burns the other, it will have to burn you; it will arise in you like a fire, like a poison. It will reach the other only later on; first it will be destructive to you.

And so is the case with creativity: if you are creative in your relationships with people, with the world, simultaneously you are creating yourself. To be creative means that one is giving birth to oneself constantly, and that is real life: to be born anew each moment, every moment. Love is creativity, love is virtue, love is prayer, love is freedom. And in the ultimate sense, love is god.

Deva means god, animesh means without blinking the eyes: searching for god without blinking your eyes, looking for god continuously, constantly. Not only when one is awake but even when one is fast asleep the search should continue; it should become an undercurrent. You may be involved in the market-place but deep inside the remembrance goes on. That’s what Sufis call jikr: remembrance. One has to do many things, life requires them – you have to earn your bread, you have to work – but still something deep inside you can go on remembering god. And god can only be remembered that way. People try to remember god at a particular time. Every day, early in the morning they will say a little prayer, or in the night going to bed, for two or three minutes they will pray to god and fall asleep. This is not going to help. This prayer remains superficial; it cannot go to the very core. A constant hammering is needed.

It is just like breathing. If you breathe for only two, three minutes in twenty-four hours, you cannot be alive. Breathing has to be there for twenty-four hours; even while you are asleep it has to be there. You may be in a coma but the breathing continues. Remembrance of god has to become just like breathing.

That’s why many schools, esoteric schools, try to associate breathing with god’s name so the association goes so deep that whenever you take a breath in, a subtle memory remains there that you are taking god in, and when the breath goes out, a remembrance that you are pouring yourself out into god. The ingoing breath is god pouring himself into you; the outgoing breath is you pouring yourself into god. If this can become a silent, continuous process, it transforms, it changes, your whole life. This constant remembrance automatically helps you to drop a few things.

For example, such a man will not be capable of Being angry because anger will disturb his remembrance. Such a man will not be greedy because greed will disturb the remembrance. Atl these things, which become disturbances in remembrance, automatically drop. Such a man will be loving because love helps remembrance; he will be compassionate, compassion helps remembrance; he will be very friendly because friendliness helps remembrance; he will always be ready to serve because service helps remembrance.

So become a continuity of jikr, a continuity of god’s remembrance. Looking at the tree, remember god... looking at the river, remember god. Looking at people, remember god. Looking at your own face in the mirror, remember god. With closed eyes, looking inside, remember god. Remember as much as you can. Slowly slowly it becomes autonomous. Then you need not make any effort, it is simply there, and when it is there, it has tremendous beauty.

This is the greatest secret. It changes your whole chemistry, not only of the body, not only of the mind, but your very being itself is transformed.

Anand means bliss, divo means a small lamp – a small lamp of bliss or a small flame of bliss.

Life can be light or it can remain darkness; it depends on us. We are born with the possibilities, both alternatives are open: we can choose either to remain in darkness or to become light. The way to remain in darkness is the way of desire. The way to remain in darkness is the outward-going way. The farther you go away from yourself, the more you will be in darkness; the closer you come to yourself, the more you will be in light. And when you are centred at the very core of your being there is absolute light.

The way of desire, the outward-going energy, creates a shadow behind; that shadow is darkness. The majority of people live in darkness. It is very rarely that a person is intelligent enough to understand the process. And whenever one is intelligent enough to understand the process, one turns, one starts moving inwards. The way inwards is the way of no desire.

Desire means that you will have to go out. Desire means tomorrow, the day after tomorrow; desire means the future. Desire means that you cannot enjoy right now; first you have to prepare, first you have to achieve something and then you can enjoy. Desire means postponement; it is ad infinitum. The desired moment never comes; it cannot come in the very nature of things because the future never comes. That which comes is always the present. And desire knows no way to connect with the present. With the present only a mind which has no desires can have a communion.

When you don’t have a desire then there is nowhere to go. Then suddenly one falls into one’s own Being, and in that very falling there is great light. The light is there but we are keeping it at our back because we are going outwards. A one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn is needed, and that’s what sannyas is: a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. If we turn, suddenly att is light; and light is bliss, light is delight.

Don’t miss this opportunity. Be converted from the outside to the inside. Change the style of life that depends on desiring and create a new style of life that depends on celebration, not on desiring.

Desiring makes conditions. ‘First, conditions have to be fulfilled, then I will celebrate.’ And those conditions are never fulfilled, so celebration never happens. When I say to make your life founded on celebration, it means don’t make any condition.

Celebrate now; don’t say tomorrow. Don’t postpone, there is no need. Atl that is needed to celebrate is already there: you are breathing, you are alive, you are conscious, you are intelligent. What else does one need to celebrate? One can dance right now, one can sing right now. And the more you dance, the more you sing, the more you become capable of celebrating.

Deva means divine, sadhvi means purity, holiness, saintliness – divine purity.

There is a purity in our very being which is virgin. There is no way to pollute it; it is simply beyond pollution, it is simply beyond the touch of the world. Nobody can reach it except yourself; not even the person who is in great love with you can penetrate it. It is not even available to love; it is only available in meditation. It is a virgin being where nobody has ever trekked, reached. And that’s its beauty and its splendour: it is utterly private; it’s privacy is absolute, hence it cannot be dragged into the world of the crowd.

Love brings a purity but that purity depends on two persons. It is a purity of relationship. It is very fragile; it can be here one moment, another moment it is gone. It is very momentary; it is almost like a dream, a fantasy. When it is there it appears to be very real, but when it is gone it seems to be almost as if it had never happened.

But the purity that comes through meditation is eternal. It is not fragile; it is the very rock that cannot be destroyed by the processes of time. Only on this rock can the temple of life be built. In fact, in love also you have a glimpse of this purity, just a glimpse from a far-away place. But glimpses are glimpses. You can see the Himalayan peaks, snow-covered, from thousands of miles away. When the day is clear and unclouded and the sun is bright you can see those snow-covered peaks from thousands of miles away, but you have not arrived yet. It is beautiful to see them that far away, but one moment they are there, another moment the clouds have gathered and they are gone.

So is the case with love: love only gives glimpses. Meditation brings you to the very space, and to attain to that space is to become holy.

Holiness has nothing to do with formal religious rituals, Christian holiness and Hindu holiness; it has nothing to do with that kind of holiness. That is all imposed, cultivated; that is just a facade, a mask. Real holiness arises in you when you have reached your private territory which is given only to you and only to you; nobody can ever trespass in it. The person who has attained to that holiness is a saint.

All others are pretenders. They may be good people, of great character, of great service to humanity, that is not doubted, but still they are not saints in the real existential meaning of the word. Their saintliness is only according to a certain pattern. So one person may be a saint according to Christians, and may not be a saint according to Hindus. And one person may be a saint according to Hindus and may not be a saint according to Christians. So that saintliness is defined by a particular tradition; it is not eternal.

For example, the Christian saint can drink wine, and there is no problem. In fact, wine was first made by Christian saints and monks in the monasteries. In a few monasteries they still go on making wine. Now, no Hindu could think of it – a saint drinking wine? That’s his idea of a sinner! The Christian saint can eat meat and there is no problem in it; his tradition allows k. But the Jaina tradition does not allow it at all. What to say about eating meat? – you cannot even eat at night... not even vegetarian food! You cannot even drink water unless it has been purified in every way, because there may be a few germs and they may be killed!

The Jaina monk does not walk in darkness, he cannot go for an early morning walk, because there may be small insects on the road and he may become the cause of their death. There is a certain Jaina sect which keeps a strip of cloth to cover the mouth and nose, because hot air goes out of the mouth and nose, and it can kill small germs in the air. Now these people could not think of a saint eating meat; that would be simply unbelievable.

According to the Christian, the Jaina monk will not look like a saint because the Christian definition of a saint is one who has devoted his whole life to service, who serves the ill, the poor, the blind; service has to be his flavour. The Jaina monk never serves anybody, service is not any part of his sainthood. According to the Christian, those who are not of any service to anybody are pretenders.

The saint should serve, he should be like Saint Francis; he should go and hug the lepers. The Jaina monk will not hug even a perfectly healthy person, not to speak of a leper! He will not even touch the body of anybody else because even to touch the body is sin, even to touch the body is, in a subtle way, to enjoy it; he’s so against the body. And according to the Jaina monk the leper is suffering because of his past sins, he deserves it, so service is out of the question.

According to the Christian, the Hindu and the Jaina are not real saints. The real saint must go to the masses and serve the poor, help the poor, and help just as Jesus did. He cured the blind, he cured the deaf; he even helped dead people to come back to life. This is real saintliness.

If you look into the definition of saintliness you will be puzzled. There are at least three hundred religions on the earth, and they have three hundred different definitions of saintliness. Those are all tradition-bound definitions, not true definitions. The true definition has to be existential, not tradition- bound. It cannot be Christian, it cannot be Hindu, it cannot be Mohammedan.

You have to go into your own innermost shrine and let things happen there, and whatsoever happens from there is saintly. The person who lives from his centre is saintly. Then whatsoever he does or does not, is good.

Love has to be meaningless. Love is great only when it is meaningless. All meaning is mundane; whenever something has meaning it is ordinary.

All that is great has no meaning. Beauty has no meaning, truth has no meaning, god has no meaning, because they are not commodities in the marketplace. A beautiful rose flower – what meaning has it got? It is utterly beautiful but without any meaning. You cannot reduce it to some meaning. It has no purpose, it is simply there. and what meaning has the sky full of stars? No meaning at all.

Meaning is a man-made idea. If man disappears from the earth roses will go on blooming, stars will go on shining, the moon will rise, and all will go on happening, but there will be no meaning. Meaning was man’s creation. God created the world, man created meaning; and because it is man’s creation, it remains small, trivial.

Somebody asked Pablo Picasso... he was painting and somebody asked him ‘What meaning has your painting?’ He was very angry. He said ‘Go out and ask the rose flower what meaning it has. If the rose can exist without any meaning, why can I not paint without any meaning?’ His answer is tremendously significant.

Love has no meaning. Love is a rose flower, beautiful as it is; but it is not a commodity. You cannot evaluate it, you cannot fix its price, you cannot able how valuable it is, what price it has got; it is invaluable. But the paradox is: things which are meaningless are very significant. that is the difference between meaning and significance. A thing may be meaningless – that does not necessarily mean that it is not significant; on the contrary, the more meaningless a thing is, the more significant it is.

The person who simply lives through meanings starts feeling life to be insignificant. He collects money, money has meaning; he becomes very respectable, respect has meaning; he becomes

politically powerful, power has meaning. But his whole life becomes devoid of significance. He lives and dies but never comes to know the poetry of life.

The poetry is available to those few who are ready to live meaninglessly, who are ready to live purposelessly, who can enjoy things for their own sake. Meaning means that everything has to be used as a means to some end. When I say that things can be enjoyed on their own accord it simply signifies that each thing is an end unto itself.

Meaningless love can become the foundation of a greatly significant life.

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