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‌CHAPTER 7

7 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, idam means this-ness – the divinity of this-ness, the divinity of this moment. And it is the very essence of meditation: just this. To remain aware of just this is meditation – watching it, observing it, with no condemnation, with no evaluation, just remaining like a mirror. And slowly slowly the mind disappears, because the mind can live only in the past and through the past, or in the future and through the future.

The present moment becomes its grave: the mind cannot exist in this-ness. And to be in a no-mind is to be in meditation.

This can become one of the greatest secrets. k can become the very key that unlocks the door of the divine. When something is passing through the mind, remember: just this. Don’t say it is good, don’t say it is bad; don’t compare it. Don’t desire that some thing be otherwise. Whatsoever is, is, and whatever is not, is not.

Man creates much misery out of this tension. He tries to attain that which is not, and he tends to forget that which is... and god consists of this.

For example, this crying – just deep inside make it a meditation. Just say deep down ‘Just this.’ Don’t evaluate it, don’t think it should not be. Don’t think about what others will think. Let it be, and you just be a cool distant watcher. It is neither good nor bad – nothing is ever good or bad; things simply are. If we don’t judge, the mind starts disappearing. And to see reality without the mind is to see the truth. So I am giving you a name which can unlock all the mysteries.

Anand means bliss, bhakto means a devotee – a blissful devotee. The people who come to a master can be divided into four categories. The first is the student who comes in search of knowledge. He wants to become more knowledgeable: his quest is intellectual. He wants to know. He has

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a thousand and one questions and he wants those questions to be answered. He will collect information. He is not interested in god – he is interested in things about god; all his questions are about and about. He moves in a circle on the periphery, he is curious. He comes to a master just as he goes to the university. His coming to a master is almost accidental, it is just chance. Just like driftwood, he comes to a master.

The people who are like this are bound to go sooner or later; in fact they go sooner than later. Ninety percent of these people will go on moving from one master to another, from one school to another. They will go on collecting information, and through information no transformation ever happens. Through information the ego is fulfilled. You become more knowledgeable, you can brag about your knowledge, but you don’t know a thing; it is all borrowed.

The ten percent who remain with the master will change into the second category. They become a kind of apprentice. They start experimenting, they start doing something. They are not interested only in knowing – now they want to do something, they want to experience something. They are getting deeper into it.

Fifty percent of these people will leave the master because the going sooner or later becomes difficult and tough. The work of a student is simple and easy; all that is needed is a good memory. The work of the apprentice is difficult. He has to change his body, he has to change his breathing, he has to change his character. He has to change so many things and they are so ingrained that each change is a hardship. The journey is arduous. Fifty percent of the people who belong to the second category are bound to leave sooner or later – in fact, later than sooner. They will cling as long as they can, as long as they feel it is possible.

The fifty percent who remain with the master turn into the third category, the category of the disciple. Now they are really getting involved. It is not only a question of doing – now they want to feel; it is a question of the heart. The first was concerned only intellectually; the second became involved physically; the third becomes involved through his feeling, through his heart – he falls in love.

The real work starts only with the third, the disciple. And out of the disciples only ten percent will ever leave; ninety percent are going to remain. And the ten percent who leave will leave only at the last moment, on the very verge, when the fourth category is going to happen, because at the last moment the ego has to be totally dropped, and a few cannot take that much of a risk. They go as far as they can while protecting their ego, their idea of separation, the illusion of separation... as long as they feel they are safe.

They will do everything else – they will be in deep love with the master, they will be surrendered to the master, but somewhere they will keep themselves still alive as separate. Their surrender will be their surrender, their love will be their love. It will remain still centered in the self. It will be their activity, their will. They have not yet disappeared.

Ten percent of the third category will leave, and they will leave only at the ast stage when something is really going to happen, because at the last stage you have to sacrifice the ego. The master persuades you slowly slowly. He goes on taking things away from you: your thoughts, your feelings, your belief systems. He takes all the props and finally the ego is just hanging in the air... just the last hit and the ego disappears. But ten percent of the people will escape. The ninety percent that

remain and go through this fire, this dissolution of the illusion of separation, will come to the fourth category. They are called devotees, the bhakta. They have become one with the master – now there is no separation; now they are one being, there is a kind of oneness.

That is the meaning of ‘bhakto’ – the fourth category; that is the goal of every sannyasin. And only at the fourth does truth happen. When you are gone, gone forever, god arrives. Your departure is his arrival. When you are utterly empty of the self, god rushes in from every nook and corner towards you.

Just as nature abhors vacuum, god abhors vacuum too. When the disciple has come to the point of being empty, utterly empty, grace descends; one is fulfilled. That is god-realisation or enlightenment or nirvana; that’s what Jesus calls ‘the kingdom of god’. And the kingdom of god is within you, but you are the barrier to it. You have to disappear, you have to give way. The kingdom of god does not arise from anywhere else. It wells up within you. Once the rock of the ego is removed, the spring starts flowing.

Remember: one has to move from the student to the ultimate state of being a devotee. To be a student is easier because nothing is involved, there is no commitment. To be an apprentice is a little more difficult because you have to do something. You are entering into the stream... you are still on the shallow bank but you have entered the stream.

The work of a disciple is even more difficult because he has to go into the middle of the river. And the work of the devotee is to be drowned, to become one with the river so that the swimmer is no more separate, so that the river is all... so that this river of life is all. And then there is bliss, and then there is benediction. This is the state of paradise.

Prem means love, agni means fire – love fire. And that’s what to be in satsang is. To be with a master is to throw yourself in the fire. Sannyas is initiation into love-fire, hence the colour of the fire has been chosen as a symbol for sannyas. It has to burn you utterly.

The parable of the phoenix is the parable of the resurrection of the soul: when you are burned, utterly burned, you are born anew. Something absolutely new arises which is discontinuous with the past, because if it is continuous with the past it will remain contaminated by the past. It may be a little better, more modified in this way or that, more decorated, but the central phenomenon will remain the same: it will be a continuity.

And the spiritual birth is not a continuity. The old simply disappears and something arrives which is utterly new. There is a gap between the old and the new, an unbridgeable gap.

Satsang is fire; to be with a master is the meaning of satsang, and it is the greatest fire. Each disciple has to go through it and many times. It is almost like forging steel: you cannot forge steel by putting steel in fire only for five minutes. You have to throw it into the fire and when it is hot you have to beat it, and you have to beat it hard; that’s what tempering is. Then you have to let it cool, and then throw it in again. As many times as the steel is thrown into the fire, tempered, cooled, thrown in again, the better it becomes.

Exactly the same is the case with a disciple. And whenever the master sees that a disciple has some unique quality which can be evolved, the master is harder on that disciple than on anybody

else. That hardness is because of compassion. The master cannot be just nice, and the people who are just nice are deceivers.

An ancient Hassidic saying is: ‘God is not nice, god is not your uncle – god is an earthquake.’ I love this saying! God is fire. That’s why very few people come to know god. They are afraid to die; how can they know god? They want to know god as they are; they don’t want to pay for it. And the price is great: the price has to be paid by your ego. You have to dissolve as an individual, disappear as an individual; only then can one see god.

When one is not, one can see god. When one is not, seeing arises. Then there is space enough to see. When there is nobody inside you, you can see. If there is somebody inside you... even if there is this much idea of ‘I am there seeing god,’ then that god is false. It is your imagination, the mind is befooling you; it is your hallucination.

The Zen masters say ‘If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him.’ That’s what they mean. They are saying ‘If you come across Buddha before you have disappeared – only then can you become Buddha – then kill Buddha. It is your imagination; it is not the true Buddha.’

When truth happens you are not there as an individual to take note of it. Yes, seeing is there but there is no seer. Loving is there but there is no lover. Experiencing is there but there is no experiencer. That is the paradox, and it can be understood only when it happens; there is no other way to understand it.

It is so absurd, logically it looks impossible. If the seer is not there how can seeing happen? Logically it is a very mad statement. But in life also there are moments when the seer disappears and seeing is felt. For example, looking at the moon, the full moon, suddenly you are overwhelmed with the beauty. The seer disappears; seeing is there. Or in loveWhen one falls in love, the lover disappears; love

is there. But we are so unaware that we cannot take note of these things, otherwise life makes everything available. Life is very generous. It goes on teaching us all the secrets in every possible way but we are so unconscious, so unaware, that we go on missing the point. Yes, it it happens even in ordinary life. It has nothing to do with religion particularly.

Listening to music, the listener disappears. listening continues. The music is there, the experience of the music is there, but there is nobody inside you. You are so full of music that there is no space left for you to be there. These are all glimpses of the ultimate. I am all in love with beauty, with poetry, with music, with dance, with love, because all these are the small windows that open suddenly and through which you have a glimpse of the beyond. And then one day you can get out of your shell. You can simply fly out of the window and can become one with the sky.

It is love-fire that transforms, and we are creating that love-fire here. You all have to become sacrifices... you all have to become offerings to this fire that I am creating here. Only then can I be of any help to you. Only by destroying you can I help you, because the you that you think you are, you are not. And the you that you really are, you have no idea of. The personality has to be mercilessly destroyed; then the essence arises. That is you and that is me, and that is all, because that essence is not separate; it is universal. Personality is private, essence is universal. Personality is human, essence is divine. But to allow that essence to arise, great destruction is needed. Before every creativity much has to be destroyed.

[A sannyasin asks: You told me to give up my ego and when I do groups the therapists tell me to be more aggressive and to use my aggressiveness. I’m a little bit confused about this.]

There is no contradiction in it. One can express aggression without being egoistic, and one can be very humble and yet egoistic. One may not express one’s aggression and yet be egoistic. In fact, when you are totally involved in aggression, the ego disappears. When you are really angry you are anger; there is nobody who is angry. Watch it and you will find that. It is later on when you say ‘I was angry’ but when the anger was really happening there was no ‘I’; there was only anger.

When sex takes possession of you there is no ‘I’, only sex. The ‘I’ is always later on. It is when you start remembering the past that the ‘I’ comes in; the ‘I’ is an artifact. If you watch moment to moment you will never find it. It is always found in the past or projected in the future. You can think of yourself becoming the president of the country or the prime minister in the future and then the ‘I’ comes. Or you can think of the past – you were angry; now, you can think ‘I was angry.’ But that is a falsification of the fact. When anger was there you were not there; there was only anger. And to know this – that when anger is there you are not there, when love is there, you are not there, when greed is there, you are not there – to know it is to dissolve the ego. And once the ego is dissolved, you will be surprised: many things simply disappear. Aggression simply disappears, anger disappears. But it is not that you have to repress them.

So the therapist is right – you have to express whatsoever is there, but there is no need to be egoistic about it; it is nothing to do with the ego. In fact people don’t express their aggression because of what people will think. It is because of the ego that they don’t express their aggression. They smile, are very polite and very nice and deep down they are carrying all kinds of poisons. On the face the smile is just painted – it is false, it is a mask.

The therapist is right: you should express all that is there. If you express you unburden. If a person goes on expressing whatsoever is the case, he remains unburdened; he doesn’t carry scars and wounds and pus never gathers in his being. He is always innocent like a child. Watch a child: when he is angry he is really angry – he is just pure anger. And pure anger has a beauty in it. You will never find the child ugly when he is angry; you will see fire, you will see life, aflame. Such a small child and ready to destroy the whole world! Such a tiny child but he has forgotten all tininess.

That’s what therapy suggests, that slowly slowly you unburden yourself. What I am saying is something beyond therapy, but the therapy prepares you. Unburden so that one day there is nothing to carry, and when there is nothing to carry the ego cannot exist. The ego exists through possessions – they may be outer or inner – but if there is nothing to possess then you cannot exist as an ego.

Therapy’s work is limited: it helps you to be sane, that’s all; it keeps you sane. My work goes beyond therapy, but the therapy has to prepare the way. That’s why there are so many therapies in this ashram. I have deliberately arranged those therapies. They clean the ground; then I can sow the seeds. Just cleaning the ground is not going to make the garden. That’s where therapy is missing in the West. You go to the therapist – he cleans the ground, he helps you to unburden, and then you start accumulating the same things again, because the garden is not prepared at all. What are you going to do with clean ground? You will gather all kinds of rubbish again.

Therapy prepares the ground and then roses can be grown in you. So the therapist is right; aggression, anger, sadness, despair, love – everything – has to be expressed, accepted. Then

my work starts; then I can tell you how to drop the ego. Now there is no need to carry it – you can drop it.

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