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CHAPTER 16
17 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Shunya means the ultimate experience of nothingness, of non-being, of no-self, and jiten means conqueror – conqueror of the no-self. It is very paradoxical but life is paradoxical, truth is paradoxical. If truth is not paradoxical you can be certain that it cannot be truth.
Life exists only through death; that is the paradox. And one can become conqueror only by surrendering; that is the paradox. One can have only by losing; that is the paradox. One can be only by non being; that is the paradox, and one can be full only when one is empty; that is the paradox.
So this is your name: ‘the conqueror of nothingness’. Keep it as a deep awareness in your heart. The name is not just a name to be used, it is not just a label. When I give it to you it has in it all that you need, that you will ever need. Your whole life will be needed to decode it; it is a formula. If you can decode it nothing else is needed.
So start thinking in terms of paradox. If you want to be, then learn not to be. If you want to have, dispossess, lose all that you have, even yourself!
That’s the meaning when Jesus goes on saying again and again, ‘The last will be the first in my kingdom of god and the losers shall be the winners. Those who save will lose and those who lose will save.’
Christianity has not been able to understand Jesus rightly because to understand Jesus a long tradition, a long, long tradition of paradox is needed, and that is missing in Judaism, in Christianity, in Islam. They are very consistent philosophies, logical, mathematical, man-made.
There exists nothing like theology in India, it exists only in the West, because India cannot think of god in terms of logic. Theology means ‘god in terms of logic’: ‘theo’ means god, ‘logy’ means logic.
There exists nothing like this in India because we cannot conceive of god in terms of logic; then god will not be much of a god. God can only be illogical, contradictory, paradoxical, polar.…
On one hand you have to lose, on the other hand you will be surprised that you are gaining. Here you become empty and there suddenly something starts descending into your emptiness and you are fulfilled.
Try to be somebody and you will remain nobody. Become nobody, then you are unique! [The new sannyasin says: I hope I can learn something here that I can keep.]
If you think in terms of losing here you will earn, otherwise you will miss. Because the very mind that wants to learn something, earn something, is a loser’s mind... it is because of greed.
Drop that. Don’t be american here! The world of religion is absolutely non-american; it is not the world of the businessman. Just enjoy. Forget about earning, keeping. Just enjoy being here for the moment. Don’t be too result-oriented, goal-oriented, because that’s how we have been missing.
So dance, sing, meditate, become more and more suffused with my presence, allow me to enter you as deeply as possible: don’t bar, don’t prevent. Don’t slam your door shut, keep it open. And you will learn; that’s not a problem, that’s very simple. Mm? one need not be serious about it, it is such a simple thing.
You will be able to have something and not only be able to keep it, because these things are such that once you have known them there is no way to lose them. You cannot keep them; they become part of your being, they become you! But if you try to keep something it never becomes you; it is always a possession and can be lost. It is at the most a memory, not a real knowing.
So simply live in a totally new way here: simply forget that you have to learn something, that you have to earn something, that you have to earn and keep something. No need to be worried. That comes on its own.
If you can be in a mood of rejoicing here, things will happen. So just don’t think in terms of results. Mm? Live in the moment, live joyously.
And it is for me to see that something happens to you. By becoming a sannyasin, you need not be worried; now it is my work.
Deva Dasana. It means servant of god. Keep that in mind and become a servant of all, because that is the only way to become a servant of god. Everyone is divine and everything is divine, so from this moment think in terms of service, of love, compassion. Look at the whole existence as one looks at one’s own master and many things will start changing.…
That is the meaning when Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the meek.’ By becoming a servant one becomes meek and humble and by becoming a servant one loses the ego, and that is the only barrier – the only barrier. Once the ego is dropped you are both the master and you are the servant.
So this is just a means of dropping the ego – to think in terms of being a servant.
Prem means love and neeravo means utter silence, absolute silence. And that kind of silence happens only in deep love, never otherwise. So neeravo is a special silence, not the ordinary silence. The ordinary silence is just a negative state: if there is no noise around you, you say that it is silent. Lack of noise is the meaning of ordinary silence; something is missing, the noise is missing, but nothing is present.
Neeravo is a positive silence: not only the absence of noise but the presence of silence. It has a totally different taste. And one who knows this type of silence can be silent even in a crowd because the noise is never a disturbance to it, not destructive at all. You can remain silent and the noise can continue on its own. It has its own plane so it doesn’t matter. You remain cool; in fact you become more silent when there is noise because in contrast you can feel it more.
So the negative silence needs an absence of noise and the positive silence is happy whether there is noise or not. Even when there is noise it is utterly happy because the silence is felt more in the contrast.
The negative silence is against love, because if you want a negative silence – as people have tried to attain down through the ages in monasteries, in caves, escaping outside the societyThey were
all against love. Mm? there is a subtle logic in it: if you love, the other enters, and with the other the crowd! You love a woman, then you become two and then a child comes and you become three and so on, so forth, and it’goes on. A single couple can create the whole world. That’s how the whole world was created: Adam and Eve, a single couple.
So negative silence is basically against love. It cannot allow love because love will bring the other and the other is a disturbance. All those who have followed the negative silence have become anti-love, anti-life, anti-social; their whole attitude becomes life-negative...
‘Prem Neeravo’ – loving silence: a silence that is not against love but on the contrary is based on love, a silence that flows through love, a silence that fulfills love, a silence that is life-affirmative and enjoys life, delights in life; this is real silence!
Keep this in mind: love more and love silently, become more and more silent but never allow your silence to become loveless. If these two things – love and silence – can be together, one grows tremendously.
[A visitor says she has to leave soon as she has commitments in the West.]
You can make a greater commitment to me (chuckling) and then smaller commitments are nothing! If it is a question of commitment you can create a greater commitment and be finished with the smaller ones...
Something is growing in you but it is very unconscious. You have been seeking on and off but it has not been a persistent effort. You go astray very easily, and great perseverance is needed.
You have been in good company, I can feel your energy, but it was only good company, it was not great company. And there is a lot of difference: good people are good people but their presence cannot be transforming. At the most they can also make you good but no radical change is possible.
For a radical change you have to be around a very dangerous person. Sometimes he may not even be good; he may be a perfect rascal!
But radical change happens only around a person who has something of the transcendental. You have been in contact with people but you have not come around a really dangerous person yet.
A very dangerous person is needed because a real transformation is almost like a suicide: you become discontinuous with the past, the old simply goes.
And it is possible... you are a potential being! Just a little courage and much is possible! Prem means love, indira means goddess – goddess of love.
Let love be your path, mm? That is the essential sufi way – love. And if one can be loving, all follows, all else follows by itself. The love just has to move further and further away from what we call love. The real love is almost the very opposite of it.
But I am never condemnatory in any way of the ordinary love because the real comes out of it: the real is very far away from it but it grows out of it just as a lotus grows out of mud.
The lotus is far away from the mud – if you see the mud you cannot believe that it can become a lotus. If you see the lotus you can never conceive that it could have come out of dirty mud, but it does; it is hidden in the mud.
In the ordinary love a great love is hidden, hence the beauty of love and the misery too. Because as it is it is just dirty mud, hence the misery. But the lotus is also hidden in it, hence the beauty.
Love is the lowest thing in the world and the highest too. So love is the greatest paradox: it touches hell and heaven both. It is a ladder. The lowest rung touches hell and the highest rung touches heaven.
So one has to go moving further and further away from the ordinary love, and when I say ordinary, I mean the love that is contaminated by jealousy, contaminated by possessiveness, contaminated by ego – demands, contaminated by domination, power trips, contaminated by all sorts of conditionings.
When you start dropping conditionings, demands, and love becomes purer and purer, one day you suddenly see that you are in love with the whole. Then it is not a question of being in love with a person – you are simply in love. It is not a question of relationship either – you are love! And in that moment one is divine.
That is the meaning of your name. In that moment one is a goddess or a god – and everybody is a god or a goddess. Hidden in different forms all are gods and goddesses, all playing different roles, acting different roles, but the reality is of the divine. Unless love happens the reality is never experienced; it remains just an idea. And that love becomes possible.
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