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‌CHAPTER 20

20 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Veet means beyond, shankaro means conditionings. Man is born unconditioned, man is born as freedom... just an open sky, with no clouds, with no boundaries, with no adjectives, no definitions – neither Hindu nor Christian nor Communist – just pure existence, an emptiness. But immediately the society starts closing in on you, starts making boundaries; those boundaries are conditionings. Then one forgets one’s original face. Slowly slowly one becomes identified with all that has been said, told, repeated again and again. This is a kind of hypnosis that is being practised on every child. It is a violation of the most fundamental human right, but it seems very difficult to know how to fight it because children themselves cannot fight it.

Children’s liberation is needed. It is the greatest need in the world because no other slavery is so deep and so dangerous and so destructive. The child is not allowed to know his self; rather, the society creates a false self – that he is this, that he is that, to behave this wayThe society gives

ideals, ideas and very soon the child becomes accustomed to the fact that he is a Christian, that he is a man and he has to behave in a manly way, that he should not cry because that is sissy. The girl starts behaving in a feminine way – she learns that she should not climb on trees, that that is boyish. Slowly slowly more and more boundaries, more and more boundaries, and they go on becoming narrower; then everyone feels suffocated. That is the situation: everybody is suffocated and everybody hankers deep down to be free. But how to be free?

It seems that the walls that surrounded one are really very powerful and strong. And people live in this kind of imprisonment for their whole life. They live in prison and they die in prison, never having known what life was, what life was meant to be, never knowing the glory and the grandeur of existence.

Buddha has called this state ‘shankaro’, the conditioned state of mind. The whole process of meditation is to uncondition it, to withdraw those walls. What the parents and the society and the

priests and the politicians have done has to be undone by the master. So the master is basically against the society. If the society poisons Socrates it is not accidental. If it kills Jesus it is very logical.

To be initiated into sannyas is to be initiated into a world of unconditioning; drop, slowly slowly, become more aware and go on dropping all adjectives and all identities. In the beginning it is painful because you will feel confused. You will not know who you are because all that you have known about yourself will start disappearing; you will be in a kind of chaos, in a limbo. And that is where courage is needed. If one can go on dropping all the boundaries, all the definitions, all that has been told, all that is borrowed and has come from the outside, one day suddenly one is free. In that freedom is joy... and that freedom is god!

My work here consists of destroying your conditionings; it is a painful process but the end result is tremendously beautiful. It is arduous, but when one has reached to the top for the first time one starts being really alive. And that aliveness I would like to give you. That is your birthright – it has to be attained.

The man who is not trying to attain it is not worth much – is not worth being called a man. The search for freedom is the most important value; it is the summum bonum.

Chitta means mind, nirodha means cessation – cessation of the mind. The most famous sutra of Patanjali is ‘Chitta vritti nirodha yoga’: the cessation of the waves in the mind is the union. The whole of science is based on this simple sutra: this is the seed. If in one’s life one can fulfil this small sutra nothing else is needed.

The mind can be in two states; one is the state full of waves, turmoil, thoughts... just as the lake is full of waves. The other state is: the lake is utterly silent, no waves; the lake is a mirror, serene, calm, quiet. The mind can also be without waves. That’s what meditation is all about: the mind without waves; it means the mind without thought. And when the mind is without thoughts you disappear, you become an absence, because it is the thought process that creates you, that gives you the feeling of being a person, that gives you the idea of the ego.

The ego is nothing but all the ideas that you have put together. Slowly slowly as ideas disappear, the ego becomes thinner and thinner and thinner and one day it is not there at all. Being is, but there is no self to be found. That state is the goal of sannyas; that state is called samadhi. Samadhi means that one has come home. The method is chitta nirodha: cessation of the mind.

So let this become the key. Help the mind to become less and less concerned with thoughts. Withdraw all your cooperation from thoughts. When thoughts come simply watch as a detached observer. Do not judge, do not say that they are good or bad; create no liking, no disliking. Remain detached, just as if you are watching the traffic move on the road, standing by the side of the road, unconcerned. Let the traffic of the thought move, and you just be a witness, with no choice.

That choiceless witnessing slowly slowly cuts the very roots of the thoughts; they start disappearing. Moments of no-thought will start coming, and those moments are glimpses into existence. Soon they become bigger. Traffic stops for a few seconds, for a few minutes, and then for a few hours and then for a few days. And whenever there is nothing moving in the mind, when there is no movement, all is attained.

The unmoving mind is the ultimate ecstasy. It is a state of absolute awareness but there is no object to the awareness. Awareness is there but not of something; it is non-objective awareness. There is nothing to be aware of; awareness is just there. It is as if a candle is burning: the light is spreading but there is nothing, no object, on which the light falls, no object which it illuminates. In utter emptiness the awareness becomes aflame.

That experience has been the greatest experience of human consciousness. Those who have attained to it become free; they are no more tethered to anything at all. They know something which is deathless and they know something which is timeless. That timelessness, that deathlessness is bliss. Unless that happens, one remains in misery, one remains in hell.

Prem means love, anugraha means gratitude – love and gratitude. And these are the two fundamentals of prayer: love towards existence and gratitude towards god... Love towards the world, his creation, and gratitude towards the creator... Love for that which is visible and gratitude for that which is invisible. These are the two wings, and once they are both functioning you are ready to take the great flight – the flight from the alone to the alone. So these two things have to be imbibed. Start feeling more and more love for existence.

The religions have harmed, have poisoned, people’s minds; they have created a kind of hatred towards the world... and this is very strange. If you hate the painting how can you love the painter? If you love the painter you will love the painting too. But the religions have been teaching ‘Hate the world, renounce the world, only then can you attain to god.’ That is utter nonsense. If you hate the creation you have hated the creator; you have taken a step in the wrong direction.

I teach love for the world. Love this earth – it is really beautiful... it is utter splendour. Love from the smallest, the dewdrop, to the greatest star. Let this whole existence be your love object, let it be your beloved. Love has to be all-inclusive. And then only will you know the second thing, then only is the second possible – gratitude. Because when one is in love with existence one feels such blessing, such bliss, that it is natural to bow down in deep gratitude, and when gratitude arises, prayer has arrived.

So remember these two things: be loving and wait for gratitude to arrive. And when it comes, don’t resist, because the ego may create some resistance. Gratitude goes against the ego. Gratitude means surrender, gratitude means bowing down. Gratitude means saying to the unknown energy, the unknown force, god, ‘I was not worthy and you have given so much to me. I was not worthy and you have filled me with such love. I was not worthy and you have given me such a beautiful existence.’

This goes against the ego... So remember: love also goes against the ego, because in love also you have to put the ego aside. But in love you put the ego aside; in gratitude you simply drop it forever. So love is a training for gratitude. First you put the ego aside, then it comes back again and again. Then slowly slowly you start feeling that it is a separate thing from you. If it can be put aside, it can be dropped too. It is not you.

And also, whenever you put the ego aside you feel such joy in you that naturally you start learning the lesson: whenever the ego is there sitting on top of you, it creates misery; whenever it is aside, bliss arises. The arithmetic then is simple – if you want to be eternally blissful drop this ego forever; and

that is the second step, ‘anugraha’, gratitude. Once these two steps have been taken the journey is complete. In two steps the journey is complete.

Deva means divine, mitta means friendship – divine friendship. Befriend the whole of existence, befriend the rocks and trees and animals and people. And start this journey of befriending with yourself, because the first thing is to be friendly to oneself. Very rarely are people friendly to themselves; people are very antagonistic towards themselves. They have been taught not to love themselves; self-love has been condemned. And then arises a great problem: the person who cannot love himself cannot love anybody else either.

Love has to start from your centre – and you are the closest person to it – only then can it go on spreading. It is like you throw a stone into a silent lake and the ripples arise. First they arise just around the stone, and then they go on spreading to the far-away shores. This is the way love arises.

And giving you sannyas means that I am throwing a stone into the lake of your heart. Let love arise! But you will be the first beneficiary and then others... only then others! That’s why Jesus says ‘Love your enemy as you love yourself’... but the first love is love for oneself.

But a misunderstanding has happened: people think to love oneself is selfish. It is not. To love oneself is the foundation of all altruistic love. Not to love oneself is dangerous; then you will never be able to love anybody. You will use people but you will never love them; you will exploit people but you will never befriend them. And that’s what people are doing: exploiting each other, using the other as a means, and that is ugly. To use any person as a means is ugly, is irreligious, is violent, is a sin, because each person is an end unto himself; nobody should be used as a means.

That is the meaning of befriending the whole existence.…

Prem means love, dwara means a gate. Love is the gate, not logic; not mind but the heart! Those who go on thinking about the truth go on round and round but they never penetrate to the centre – they cannot. The centre is available only to the heart because the heart is the centre. The head is the periphery of your being; it is not our depth. If you want to penetrate into the depths of existence you will first have to be in contact with your own depth, because only the depth can have contact with depth. The circumference can only have contact with the circumference.

People who are hung up in the head only know the most superficial part of life. They know bodies but they never know the souls; they know the world but they never know god. They miss the real thing. The real is available only through love, because love is your depth. So the first thing for a sannyasin is to search for one’s heart and be rooted there.

Every child is born with the heart functioning but sooner or later we force his energy towards the head because the head is very useful in the society. Only by the use of the head will you become a head clerk, or the head station master. Only by using the head will you become the head of the philosophy department. If one cannot use the head then one will be just hands; one will be a labourer. That’s how society is divided between heads and hands. The labourer is called a ‘hand’ because he works with the hands. He is condemned; he is not respected. The people who function through the heads, they are very much respected.

But the real person is neither of the head nor of the hands. The real person is exactly in the middle of both – he lives in the heart. And the person who lives in the heart can use the head and can use the hands; both are available to the person of the heart. But the person who lives in the head cannot use the heart.

The centre can use the periphery but the periphery cannot be the centre because the centre is the master; the periphery is just a servant. The moment one forgets the heart the servant becomes the master and everything goes topsy-turvy. That’s the situation of a normal human being: he is not normal at all; his situation is neurotic. And his neurosis can only be dissolved if love arises in him, if he again becomes a child and starts functioning from the heart.

Initiation into sannyas is initiation into love. And this commune is just an energy field – to bring you down from your head to the heart. It needs courage because we have so much invested in the head. One gets into a panic, one starts trembling because what will happen if the head disappears? If the head disappears, god happens, truth happens, love happens, celebration happens. But that is possible only when you have dropped the head and gone into the heart. One cannot make you believe it.…

If you feel trust in somebody then you take the plunge. This is the plunge, sannyas is the plunge.

Prem means love, ushmo means warmth... warmth – love warmth. The mind is very cold because it is calculative – calculation is bound to be cold – and this coldness keeps one frozen. So people are no more flowing; they have become ice cubes. Their heads can function only in a cold way. And because they function only through the head their whole life becomes cold, and out of that coldness arises a frozen personality. No possibility of dance then, no possibility of flowing into the other then... no possibility of any aliveness.

The heart functions as warmth; just as the head functions as coldness, the heart functions as warmth. And once you allow the heart to overtake you, you start melting: slowly slowly blocks disappear. And love burns all that is unessential and purifies the gold of your life. And when life is a flow, god is not far away.

Every river reaches the ocean, but no pond can reach. The pond may be just on the bank of the ocean; then too it cannot reach. The river may be coming from far-away mountains, thousands of miles away, but it reaches. The pond is on the bank but cannot reach. It is the flow that brings one ultimately to god.

God is exactly what the ocean is – an ocean of consciousness – and we are small rivers of consciousness. Unless we attain to the ocean and we merge with the ocean, life remains meaningless, joyless, a drag. When the river dances and falls into the ocean, that is the moment ecstasy, of orgasmic ecstasy. And each heart longs for it.

Let that longing become intense, let that longing become passionate, let that longing become really hot.

Prem means love, bela is a flower – a love flower. And it is only love that helps one bloom. Without love there is no flowering in life. Love is the spring.It is only in the climate of love that one’s hidden

treasures start surfacing.

Bela is one of the most beautiful flowers... very fragrant. Its fragrance is very subtle, not gross. It does not attack you – it simply comes and surrounds you. It is not loud; it whispers. It is not male – it is very feminine. It is not aggressive; it only invites. And it is very shy... does not want to show itself off.

So is love very shy... does not want to show itself off, is not interested in exhibition, remains hidden, does not broadcast itself, remains a secret. And love is patient – it does not attack, it waits for the beloved to come.

Love is not loud – it is very silent. That is why whenever one is in love words start disappearing. The lovers cannot talk; they have so much to say and yet nothing to say. Silence becomes pregnant, silence becomes their communion. And love is not gross. When love is gross it is lust; it is no more love. It is a subtle fragrance. You cannot catch hold of it, you cannot possess it. You can enjoy it. The moment you start trying to possess it, it becomes elusive; it starts disappearing. If you want to hold it in your hands, you have killed it.

So become a fragrance of love – subtle, delicate, soft, feminine, patient – and then great transformations happen. Whenever one is ready and ripe in love, god arrives.

Deva means god, viharo means dwelling in – dwelling in god. Let that become your meditation, that all is god. We are in the ocean of god, we are like fish surrounded from everywhere by god. Each and everything is divine.

This is what Sufis call ‘jikr’, remembrance – that wherever you are walking you are walking on holy ground, and whatsoever you are doing, nothing is mundane, all is sacred. Then one’s whole life becomes permeated with a remembrance.

Even if you are playing with your dog, remember: god is in your dog too. Look into the eyes of the dog, remember god and you will be surprised: glimpses start coming. And if one can remember then one is constantly exhilarated. Then one is constantly surprised, because each moment is a miracle, and at each step there is a mystery. Just because we are not aware we go on missing. Otherwise there are mysteries and mysteries surrounding

This has to be your contemplation. Even looking in the mirror, seeing your own face, remember that this too is god’s face. Looking into the mirror, looking into your own eyes in the mirror, remember: god is within you as much as without. And it brings such a chemical change – one’s whole life starts taking on a new gestalt.

Deva means divine, anusati means remembrance – remembrance of the divine. God is not lost – there is no way to lose him because he is not separate from us; wherever we are he is – but we can forget about him.

So all that is needed is not an effort to achieve god but only an effort to remember. It is just a forgotten language. It is still there – just a little effort, a little search inwards and suddenly one is suprised that god was hiding within oneself! And one was never without god, not even for a single moment. He is our life, he is our breath, he is our awareness. A rememberance means a turning in. That is the meaning of the Christian word ‘conversion’: turning in, looking back towards oneself.

Ordinarily we are rushing outwards; that’s how god has fallen to the back. One just needs an about- turn, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and suddenly god is found, because god was never lost. It is easy because it is only a question of remembering. It would have been really difficult if god was lost... it would have been impossible.

[A sannyasin had to leave suddenly for the West as his father had died. He says: I feel a lot of conflicts about my mother. I just felt hopeless about helping her. I find it very hard to leave her and yet I don’t feel satisfied that I can really help her. I almost feel that I’m betraying her somehow by leaving her.]

There are situations when one is helpless. One has to accept those situations too. That hurts the ego when you feel helpless, but that’s a good experience. That’s how it is: there are situations where you cannot do anything. Somebody is getting old – what can you do? Somebody is on their deathbed – what can you do? And I am not saying don’t do anything; I am saying do whatsoever you can but still you will feel helpless. That’s how life is.…

Man is helpless, but I am not saying don’t do anything; do whatsoever you can but still you will feel helpless. You will not feel contented because basically what can you do? If somebody is dying, somebody is dying. You would like to do something – you would like to prevent death, but that cannot be done.

[The sannyasin adds: I really want to make her happy somehow.]

That too is impossible. One should try but that too is impossible. Nobody can make anybody happy. If it was possible to make people happy the whole world would have been happy because everybody is trying to make everybody else happy. The father is trying to make the child happy, the husband is trying to make the wife happy, the wife is trying to make the husband happy, but nobody seems to be happy! Unless one decides to be happy there is no possibility... and very few people decide to be happy. They have decided to be miserable, because in misery they are powerful. In misery they become the focus of attention. In misery they dominate. When they are happy all domination disappears. The happy person cannot dominate and the happy person becomes almost anonymous; nobody pays attention to him. Unless one decides to be happy, nobody can make one happy. But whatsoever one can do, one should do.

So don’t feel that you are betraying or anything. All is good! One day life ends, and it is good that it ends. Just think if it continues and continues and continues then it will be more difficult; one will feel more helpless.

Mm, seventy years is more than enough! Just think: if you had to live seven hundred years and there was no way to commit suicide. It would be impossible.

There is a famous story about Alexander the Great.He was in search of nectar, and it is said he

reached the place where there was a pool of nectar hidden in a cave. He was so happy that he had arrived; now he would never die! He cupped his hands – he was just going to drink the nectar, and a crow was sitting on the rock and it said ’Wait! One minute! Listen to me, otherwise you will repent for your whole life and then there is no way of going back. I have drunk that nectar and now I cannot die; that is the problem. I have tried everything; no poison affects me. I have jumped from

hills; nothing happens. I have entered into fire.… And I am bored! So think twice before you drink. You will never be able to die, never.’

And it is said Alexander waited for a few moments and then escaped, ran away, because he became afraid that he might be tempted to drink that nectar, then there would be a real problem.

So whatsoever is, is as it should be; one should learn to accept it. Don’t be worried about it.

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