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‌CHAPTER 1

1 January 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Sat means truth, being, existence, rahasya means mystery, mysteriousness. Truth is mysterious. It cannot be known, it is unknowable... not unknown but unknowable, because the unknown can be known some day, will be known some day, but truth can never be known. That’s its intrinsic quality. Remove one veil and you find another. Remove another and you find still more, and it goes on ad infinitum. There comes no point where you can say that the journey is finished; there comes no point where you can say that the boundary has been achieved. It is infinite.

The more you know, the more you know that knowledge is impossible. The more you know, the less you know. The more you know, the more mysterious life becomes. It is a mystery – the sun behind the sun behind the sun. You get through one mystery and you simply stumble into another, and the other is far deeper than the first. But that does not mean that one cannot live truth; one can live, one can be, but one cannot know. So the real seeker is not searching for what truth is; he is searching to find how to live it. That’s where faith comes in, trust comes in. Without knowing it you start living it first.

It is almost like a woman getting pregnant: she does not know how the pregnancy really happens, she does not know how the child is going to grow. She knows nothing about the mystery but the child is growing all the time and the woman becomes the mother. Not that she knows how life arrives, how it grows; she knows nothing. Exactly like that, one has to become a womb for truth. One just has to be feminine, open, and one day something penetrates. That penetration transforms you and you start living on a different plane; your quality changes, your attitudes change. The world remains the same, but it is no more the same because you are no more the sameBut you never know.

You can love truth. That is the meaning of faith: loving something that you have not seen, loving something that is not provable, loving something that is almost unbelievable, that in fact should not be if the world is logical, loving something which you feel but you cannot know.

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Feeling is possible. Truth enters through the heart, not through the head.

[A sannyasin asks about her problem: It’s about shock. After primal, in the last days of primal, I had a feeling of anguish... I feel afraid.]

It is nothing to be worried about and you have to allow it. You have been resisting, you have been trying to avoid it. This is something beautiful that is coming very very close to exploding. It is the death of the ego that is very close by, hence the fear and anguish. You should be happy that it is coming close, but the fear is also natural.

It feels almost as if one is going to die. Because you don’t know yourself; you know only the ego. You know the ego as yourself; you don’t know that you are not the ego, that you are the witness of it, that you are utterly separate from it, that it is just a cloud in the sky and you are the sky, and the cloud disperses. Nothing to be worried about. The sky will not disperse because the cloud has dispersed; in fact the sky will become more clean, more clear when the cloud is gone. But for many lives one goes on thinking of oneself as the cloud, so when the cloud starts dispersing, fear arises, panic arises.

And it will always arise when you relax because relaxation is against the ego. The ego is perfectly happy when you are tense; the ego lives out of tensions, it is nourished by tension. When you are tense, occupied, engaged, doing this and that and thinking this and that, when you are in fragments, rushing all over the place, – then the ego is perfectly happy, it cannot die, then there is no fear for the ego. But when you are sitting silently listening to me or you relax or sit with closed eyes, again the tension disappears, and with the tension gone the ego starts feeling the danger. When tension disappears you have pulled out the very earth from underneath the ego. That’s why it is happening in relaxation.

Down the ages masters have been teaching people to relax just for the single reason that when you really relax the ego will be gone. The ego and consciousness cannot relax together; the ego cannot relax and a relaxed consciousness cannot have the ego.

It is like ice melting: when the ice melts, the ice will disappear; the ice can remain only if melting is prevented. Relaxation is a melting, and the frozen ice of the ego cannot exist if things start melting. The ego can exist only if you remain frozen, shrunk, tense.

Something immensely valuable is by the corner.

Don’t be frightened; I am with you. That’s my purpose here, that is the meaning of sannyas: that when danger arises you can always ask for help, you can always trust and go ahead. You can continuously remember that I am there: if something goes wrong, I will take care.

So next time, when you relax just take hold of the locket in your hand, close your eyes and go into it. Let relaxation happen and let the fear be there. Just take note of it, that it is there, but don’t be disturbed by it, don’t be distracted by it. Say, ‘Fear... fear,’ and relax!

And you will be surprised – it cannot do anything to you if you don’t get affected by it, it cannot disturb you even a little bit. It has no power. You give power to it when you cooperate with it; when

you stand behind it, it is powerful. When you slip out of it and you say, ‘Okay, you be there and I am not going to cooperate any more’... when you cop out, it is impotent, it is a dead snake it can’t do anything. You give life to it, you pour energy into it, because you have energy; it has no energy, it is just an idea. So allow it.

[A sannyasin whose son and grandson are here says: I’ve still been too much involved with my sons and grandsons and daughters-in-law this time. I hope next time I’ll be freer.]

That will be good, mm? – it is time to become disengaged from everything. You have remained engaged your whole life; now it is time, mm? – you should look more and more inwards. Not that one becomes unloving... in fact, one becomes more loving, but one is no more obsessed, one is no more worried. One starts preparing for the real purpose of life. The real purpose is to know oneself, and if that is not fulfilled before death then life has been a wastage; then whatsoever you have done makes no sense.

You may have many children and children’s children and prestige and money and fame, respectability, everything – but that doesn’t matter. The day you die, all has to be left behind; you will not be able to take anything from that. You can take only one thing with yourself and that is self-knowledge. That nobody can take from you, not even death can take it away from you. That is real wealth. Money is not real wealth because it is borrowed and the world will take it back sooner or later. And our relationships with children and children’s children are good, but the basic relationship is with existence, with god. That has to be fulfilled, otherwise all relationships are just toys to play with. Sooner or later death comes and destroys all the toys and then we are very miserable and are at a loss as to what to do.

Very few people are capable of facing death because very few people have anything that they can take with themselves and which death cannot destroy. When all that you have can be destroyed by death, you are destroyed, because you are what you have. When you have something which cannot be destroyed by death, then you know something of deathlessness, of immortality, of god. So by and by become disengaged.

Love them; but don’t keep yourself focused on them; now the focus has to go inwards. Now we have to close our eyes and see what is there inside. There is the greatest experience of life and the greatest joy. Once one has tasted of it there is never any misery. Then you are never unhappy; whatsoever the situation your happiness remains intact. Even death cannot disturb it, illness cannot disturb it, old age cannot disturb it. So next time you have to be more concerned about your own ultimate journey.

... For at least one hour sit silently and just look in. In the beginning you may not be able to see anything. There is no worry; there is no need to see anything, just sit silently. Even sitting silently is in itself very valuable.

First you will see those old thoughts and things moving in the mind but by and by they all settle. Then you will see darkness, so don’t be afraid of it. Because we have never gone in, our eyes have become accustomed to see only outside. So when we move in, first we feel only darkness. Then by and by you start seeing a little light and one day you suddenly see that all darkness has disappeared. And to know that inner light is to know god. Everyone is a shrine of god and the flame is burning there, but we don’t look.

God goes on calling from the innermost core of your being, but it is a very still, small voice. So enough of the children and the grandchildren! And they are very noisy people.

[A sannyasin says: I’m always kicking myself for doing things wrong, and that I’ve always done. I’m always really tense and I can’t relax at all.]

Stop kicking yourself, mm? And don’t start kicking yourself because you are kicking yourself, otherwise you will think, ‘Now I have to stop’ and if you kick yourself, you kick yourself more.

Mistakes are perfectly okay, nothing is wrong in mistakes. Everybody makes them and everybody has to make them. Don’t ask for perfection. Mistakes are good, they keep you human. Otherwise you will either become inhuman or superhuman, and both are not good. To be human is very beautiful but to remain human one has to err. And nothing is wrong in making mistakes! Why make so much fuss about it?

But you have some idea that you should not commit mistakes; then you torture yourself and feel guilty and condemn yourself. There is no need; everybody commits mistakes. Just remember one thing: not to commit the same mistake again. I’m not saying that you have to feel guilty for it; make some new mistakes! That is how one grows. Get fed up with the old and find out some new ways to commit new mistakes. Every day commit at least one new mistake. Try: find at least one thing to do wrong every day, and enjoy it!

Be human and don’t keep inhuman ideals in your mind. That’s the space we want to create here, a very human space where everybody is accepted as he is. Not that growth will not happen; growth will happen only then – when acceptance is there for oneself as one is.

If you have made a mistake there are two ways to treat it: one is to feel guilty. If you feel guilty, you will commit the same mistake again. Guilt is the way to help the mistake come back. You are trapped, because when you make the mistake you start feeling guilty; this is a way of looking at something else. You forget the mistake and you start focusing on the guilt. The mistake will be repeated again.

The second alternative is the right alternative: when you commit a mistake, see why you committed it, how you committed it, how it goes on happening; go into the mechanism of it. Repeat it deliberately, see why it happens, go into the very process of it. And there is no need for any guilt. Be scientific about it, go into it: ‘Why do I commit this again and again?’ And I am not saying that you should not commit it; just find out why, how it happens, what is the mechanism, how it takes hold of you, how it arises from the unconscious. Just go and watch the whole process... and joyously. There is no need to feel guilty at all, then you will never commit it again, because you have looked into it and you are finished with it.

Guilt never gets rid of any mistakes; it perpetuates them. Feel guilty and you will commit the same mistake again and again and again. And you will feel very righteous too, because you feel guilty – what else can you do?

You write two plus two is five and then you feel guilty. You beat yourself, you don’t take food, you fast; now this is foolish! How is a fast going to correct your mathematics? How is beating yourself

or keeping yourself in a torture chamber going to help your arithmetic? It is useless, and you have changed the whole problem! You have to look into it, into why two plus two becomes five again and again. There must be some wrong association in the mind; somewhere it has become very deep-rooted. Go into it, search for it, for the cause of it, and once you have found the cause it will disappear. To know a thing totally is to be free of it.

This is not the way; kicking yourself is not going to help. Whenever you commit a mistake again, go into the process of it, see why, how, it happens. And if you enjoy committing mistakes then there is no need to change. I am not saying that you have to change it. If you enjoy committing mistakes then it is perfectly okay, because there are a few mistakes that people enjoy. Then there is nothing wrong; they are innocent. Everybody has the right to enjoy a little. But if you don’t enjoy it then the very understanding of its cause will help. You will get rid of it, and without being torturous. For one month, don’t kick yourself; rather go into the process.

[A sannyasin says: For fifty years I’ve been looking for something and now I’m here.]

Mm mm. Stop looking, and it will happen! Looking too much for it becomes the barrier, because there are things which happen only indirectly, you cannot look for them directly. All that is beautiful happens only indirectly – happiness, love, god. It catches hold of you unawares, it is always a surprise. But if you are looking for it, that means you will not allow it to be a surprise. And you have been looking too intently, hence you have been missing. Because to look intently means one becomes very tense, and for something to happen you have to be relaxed.

Forget all about it. Just be here, meditate, enjoy, for no specific goal as such but for the sheer joy of it. And then one day you will be surprised and you will not be able to believe that it has happened while you were not looking for it.

[The sannyasin answers: I read a lot of indian scripture... ]

Just forget all about it. Those indian scriptures are very dangerous; they destroy people’s minds, and ninety-nine percent of them is just rubbish.

[The sannyasin continues: I loved Zen buddhism.]

Love won’t help, because love is also your intellect. You liked it...

Mm, intellectually it was a pleasure to you. But these things are not to be loved or liked; you have to become a Zen person. And that’s what I’m trying to say – to relax and forget all about and burn all the scriptures. That’s what Zen is... and zen scriptures are included. When you burn scriptures, burn not only Christian and Hindu; Zen scriptures are included. And when you destroy the statues, Buddha’s statues have to be destroyed with others. Then one becomes clean. You have been looking too much, that’s why you are wearing such big glasses! Rather than finding anything, you have simply harmed your eyes.

Do a few groups here.

These three groups I suggest to you; try to manage to do them. One is Intensive Enlightenment, the second is Zazen and third is Vipassana – these three. If you can manage three, good, otherwise

two, but manage, because they will give you an insight into real meditation. These are all Zen, all the three. You have been reading Zen, that won’t help; you have to have some authentic experience of it. These groups will give you experience. These are not reading, these are doing. Zen has to be done, it is an activity.

[The sannyasin continues: I would like to know anything about my wife. She died five years ago, and for me she was everything – heaven and earth.]

Are you still after your wife? Let her rest in peace! Are you after her?...

You know about yourself; why are you worried about your wife? The day you know about yourself, you will know about your wife too; otherwise not. And let her rest peace! Don’t dig up her grave now.

[The sannyasin adds: I’m always interested in other people... I phone and ask ‘How are you doing?’

First phone yourself! You have not even phoned yourself. You have not asked yet how you are. You have to work on yourself; your wife will have to work on herself. Don’t be worried about your wife. It is very good that she is gone; she is freed from the world...

You have to know about yourself; I can help you to know about yourself – about your wife I cannot. I am not interested in wives at all! (laughter) Husbands and wives, I’m not interested in. You just try to go into yourself, and then it is possible: if you go to your deepest core it is possible to have a contact with your wife. But that is secondary.

Prem means love, and digambar means naked – naked love. And that is the door to god. Naked love is pure love. Naked love is undecorated love, uncultivated love. Naked love is innocent love, the love of a small child who knows nothing of calculation, cunningness, cleverness. So become that purity of nakedness.

And one has to go to truth naked, utterly naked. All the clothes, all the prejudices, all the doctrines have to be dropped. All that clamours around you has to be dropped; that is the meaning of digambar. The literal meaning is ‘sky-clad’. A nude person has only the sky as his clothes; when the sky becomes your clothes, then you are close to god.

I am not talking about dropping your clothes; I am talking about dropping your mind, because that is your real clothing. And once the mind is gone, the heart is pure. In that purity is all.

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