29

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 29

30 January 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem sandurga – love context.

Man is the opportunity for love to happen, the occasion for love to happen, the context. And if love does not happen, the opportunity is lost. Then you didn’t use it rightly; you were not creative in it.

Love is the flower of human consciousness. A tree is unfulfilled if it doesn’t come to fruition and flower. That is the sadness you see in people’s eyes: they live but they have not flowered. There is deep anguish, something is continuously missing. They feel it; the feeling is very unconscious but it surrounds them. They know that something has to be there which is not there; what exactly it is they are not aware. That’s why they go in search of god: they seek religion, they go to church, to the temple, to meditation, to prayer. But the real thing that is missing is love. That is the most essential thing in prayer, god, religion, meditation, yoga. The thing that joins them all, the thread, is the thread of love. If love is found, all is found; if love is missed, all is missed. So think about your whole life in terms of love. Whatsoever you do make it in context, in reference to love, then your life will have growth. Otherwise life energies dissipate. It is like a river lost in a desert in a thousand and one streams; it evaporates, it cannot find the ocean.

There has to be one essential thing upon which everything else hangs. Then there is a kind of inner direction; then one moves from one point to another, from one plane to another. Growth is only possible if your life has an inner connection, if things are not fragmentary – one thing being done in this context, another in some other context. Then one can go on doing a thousand and one things but one never arrives. One can do a little poetry and a little painting, a little meditation and a little prayer, a little this and a little that; there are millions of attractions and one can be lost in the desert of those attractions. But if one thing is remembered, that whatsoever you are going to do, one thing has to be part of it... eating, sleeping, talking, listening, moving, doing, not doing anything, one thing has always to be there as a kind of inner presence; that I call ‘love context’.

Anand means bliss and purana means ancient – ancient bliss. And bliss is ancient, it is not part of time. It has always been there. It never changes, it is the constant factor in existence. So really one has not to achieve it, one has only to start non-achieving it. It is not to be invented but only rediscovered. Not for a single moment have we lost it, there is no way to lose it. Because it is you, how can you lose it? But still one can fall asleep and forget; that’s what has happened to everybody. The misery is just a kind of sleep. It is an invention of the human mind. It exists only in your dreams. The moment you awake you will not find it at all; instead you will find eternal bliss. Then one really laughs at the whole ridiculousness of it, that one has been searching for something which has always been with oneself.

[To a visitor who says he is unable to speak now.]

And you are on some kind of search, you are groping in the dark. You may not be exactly aware of what you are groping for, why you are groping, but I can see the groping. And this place can become a fulfillment for you; things can become clear. That’s all we do here – work towards clarity. The whole work consists of bringing clarity to you, so you can see things as they are. And once you see things as they are, things start changing. The very awareness of them brings transformation. We remain hooked into habits, mechanical habits, because we are not aware of them. And we cannot change those habits because there is nobody to change them either. Those habits are there and at the most you can change one habit into another habit. That’s all that can be done, but that makes no sense; the other is as mechanical as the first, it is the same rut.

So the emphasis here is not on changing you; the emphasis is on making you alert and aware of where you are, what you are, what things are surrounding you. In that very awareness, in that very light, you start changing. That very awareness becomes a new phenomenon in your life; you are already changed by it. You start seeing things in a different light, with a different vision and then things become very easy: if you see something is wrong, in that very seeing, it disappears. It is dropped, not that you drop it. If you see something is beautiful, in that very seeing you adopt it; in fact it adopts itself, it adopts you.

[A sannyasin who had declared himself realised and threw his mala in the river, asks: I just wanted to know what happened, because sometimes I was sure but then I wasn’t sure at all.]

It was just a mind trip – because when it comes you don’t feel that you have become enlightened. When it comes you simply know that it is all nonsense – being enlightened and unenlightened. Then you simply laugh and are finished. You don’t go around declaring it; there is no point in declaring it. And you don’t become enlightened when it comes because it is not a point of becoming; it is just a recognition that nothing has ever been missed. It is not that you have attained anything; just a dream is lost. In the morning you don’t go declaring to the people ‘I am awake and there is no more any dream.’ If you do, people will think that you are crazy, that you must be dreaming.

It is a very simple phenomenon. It need not have any recognition. And then there is no question of certainty or uncertainty. If you feel that you have become enlightened there is a problem, the uncertainty will be there: Who knows? Are you simply imagining? Who knows? Are you simply pretending? Then you will look at others, at what they are thinking. They will create suspicion, because nobody is going to accept that [you] is enlightened so easily!

... because they themselves are trying to become enlightened before you! (laughter) There is a great competition. When you became enlightened, two more people immediately became enlightened (more laughter) because naturally they can’t lose that race. So if you ask them, they will create suspicion in you. And you ask them only because it is a mind trip, so you need some support from the outside.

Enlightenment is nothing like an achievement; it is not something to brag about. When it happens you become simple. Nobody may know about it, you may not even say what has happened; there is no point. You will enjoy it. And there will be no need to throw the mala away or to change the dress; there will be no need. That very need shows that it is a mind trip. You will be simply as you are; whatever you are, you will continue; you will not make any stir about it.

This is going to happen some day... but wait a little! Don’t be in such a hurry.

[The sannyasin says: about twenty days ago I exactly had that feeling of simple and unbelievable ordinariness when I all of a sudden... I lost my humour and I said ’No, this can’t be... ]

... But then you became extraordinary because of this!

... Yes, that’s where you missed. The thing was coming close. Next time don’t miss it. When you start feeling ordinary, immediately relax into it. Don’t make any extraordinary ego out of it, otherwise you will miss it.

It happens many times: the glimpse comes and you jump upon it, you start making something out of it, and in that very effort it is gone. People continuously come close by... because it is your nature, it can come any moment. Any morning that you are feeling fresh, you have slept well and the stomach is functioning okay, suddenly you are close to it. Just talking to friends, suddenly it is there; sipping tea and it is there. But the moment you jump upon it, the ego has come back. That has to be learned: when you are feeling ordinary, just feel ordinary. There is no need to make anything special about the fact that now you have become ordinary. A declared ordinariness is not ordinary. It has to remain undeclared. And I am not saying only ‘declared to others’; even if you declare it to yourself, you have missed the point! So it will be coming soon, mm? Good.

< Previous | Contents | Next >