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CHAPTER 23
25 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Ma Anand Kosha. Anand means bliss, kosha means body – body of bliss.
In the East we have discovered that man consists of five bodies. Five layers of bodies are there; we don’t have one body, we have five bodies. And the first, the most superficial body, is the physical body, and the last, the most subtle body, is the body of bliss. That body of bliss surrounds our souls, that is the milieu in which the soul lives.
Hence we constantly seek for bliss. Consciously or unconsciously the search is one, the search for bliss, because that is our real body.…
[A couple ask about their relationship. The husband feels restricted: in the groups he opens up and back in the family he feels he is shrinking. The wife who is pregnant feels tired and has difficulty expressing her feelings.]
A few things to be understood.First, we have a concept of a family structure in the mind – of how
it should be; that becomes the constriction. We don’t allow the family to grow naturally. The woman has a concept of how the husband should be, the husband has a concept of how the wife should be, and they both have concepts about how the relationship should be and these concepts destroy the whole relationship. It is not a growth; it is something put together.
Hence, tiredness is bound to come because the innermost being is thirsty for something growing, evolving, alive. And anything that is put together is dead. It tires, it frustrates, it becomes a dead – weight. One starts wondering why one should continue in this way, and one starts feeling to escape from it.
So the first thing is: if you really want to grow into love and happiness then drop all concepts of how things should be. That is one of the most dangerous things to carry around, and we all carry it around! We have fixed ideas of how things should be.
Just drop them; be natural, be like animals. We are so much afraid of the animal that it has become a term of condemnation; we tell people ‘Don’t behave like animals’. In fact animals behave the natural way: it is man who has gone wrong, not the animals.
So behave naturally and you will feel alive. And when I say to behave naturally, it is implied in it that sometimes you may not like the presence of the other and sometimes the other may not like the presence of you. There is no need to like each other for twenty-four hours; that has to be accepted. Otherwise if you try to like the other for twenty-four hours, all love will disappear.
There is a rhythm in everything. Try to understand the rhythm.… Everything is a rhythm. Just like day and night, summer and winter, everything is a rhythm: love and no love. If we accept the state of no-love it never turns into hatred. If we don’t accept it, it turns into hatred. It is something very fundamental.
If you accept the state of no-love – that it is part of the rhythm of life: one moment of love is followed by a moment of no-love – I am calling it ‘no-love’, not hateIt is simply no-love: you are not flowing
because one cannot flow twenty-four hours. One has to gather energy to flow so sometimes one stops all flow. One gathers energy, becomes a reservoir: that is the moment of no-love.
If you understand me, I call that moment of no-love the moment of meditation. Don’t call it the moment of hate, call it the moment of meditation and then there is acceptance, welcoming acceptance.
So rather than telling to her that you want to be alone, tell her that you would like to meditate – and see the difference. In fact it is the same thing: you want to be alone. Meditation means to be alone and love means to be together. Love and meditation – this is the rhythm.
When you are alone you will gather energy. When the energy comes to a certain point from where it starts overflowing and you cannot hold it any more, then you need the other. Then you can give because you haveyou can pour your energy into the other.
When you are closing and you need to conserve energy, if the other goes on interfering it becomes a deep anxiety – ‘What to do with the other?’ So you pretend... as if you are loving. You do all the empty movements of love: you kiss the woman, you hold the hand, you hug her, and there is no hug and there is no kiss and you are not holding her hand at all! You are not there at all! That’s why you feel that you shrink. If you move naturally, if you accept this shrinking as a beautiful moment, this misery will disappear.
Nobody can love twenty-four hours. Unless you have become a non-being, unless you have become so empty that nobody exists inside you, and then rhythm disappears, you cannot love for twenty-four hours. Before that happens one has to live in the rhythm. It is just like a pendulum of a clock moving: this way, that way it swings. So try to understand each other and allow space.
A family is a real family when it allows space for the other to be. Even if it hurts you sometimes, you allow the freedom to the other and then the other allows freedom to you. A family means ‘I will protect your freedom, you protect my freedom’; that is the agreement. Freedom means ‘I will help you to be yourself, you please help me to be myself’. It is not a bondage, it is a mutual agreement to give freedom to each other.
Try to understand it. Mm? soon things will start happening. Just a clarity is needed, nothing else.
And never be a victim of the idea that if you change women things will be better, or if she changes men things will be better. Just by changing the partner nothing is ever improved; it is an illusion. In the beginning things will look good because both will be pretending. Again the same thing will happen, again and again you will be in the same trap. So rather than changing the partner, change the very quality of relationship; that will be something valuable.
In the West now changing the partner has become very prevalent. That is helping people not to grow because the whole emphasis has changed: just change the partner and things will be good! So go on changing partners your whole life – and nothing is ever improved.
You remain in the illusion that again you have found the wrong partner, you will find somebody else and things will be good again. And they are never good because the real thing remains the same: you are not changing, your quality of consciousness is not changing, how you relate is not changing. And so it is the case with the other. So you can go on changing partners again and again but the total result will be exactly the same. It is better to change the quality of the relationship, to bring more clarity.
Sit together, try to understand each other. Love means that. You say that in a group you feel very good; why do you feel very good? Because people are open, people are saying things, they are putting their hearts in front of you. Why can’t you do the same in your relationship? And they are strangers! You love each other and you have been with each other and you are invested in each other. Why can’t you do that?
Why not sit every night for one hour and just bring out all the problems, open your heart, don’t hide. Help her also to open, and accept. Limitations are there, certainly they are there; nobody is perfect.
And it is good that people are not perfect otherwise love would be impossible! If two perfect persons meet they will not love; there is no need! Why should they love? – they are happy alone. It is imperfection that brings people together.
You are imperfect, she is imperfect; you both meet together and you think, ‘We may be able to create a unit which will be perfect, more perfect than me, more perfect than you. We are both imperfect; we will complement each other, supplement each other. You have some limitations, have some limitations; we will fit together. Maybe I have something that you don’t have, maybe you have something that I don’t have. So the totality of us both may be more perfect than each individual taken separately.’
That’s what ‘family’ means: two imperfect persons meeting and trying to create a perfect circle. It can be created but it is not available ready-made: you have to create it. The family has to be created every moment, every day, every month, every year. Never take it for granted; it is never a ready-made thing. That’s where man proves to be very stupid.
You meet a woman: in the beginning you create some energy, she creates some energy because both are interested in creating. Then you settle, creation stops. You take her for granted and she takes you for granted; then things start falling apart. It is tired, dusty... just something like a duty to be done; you are bored.
So you start thinking of other women, she starts thinking of other men. Even if you are still together it is just because maybe she is pregnant and you have some responsibility for the child. Maybe both are insecure financially; together it is better. Maybe you have promised her and now how to go against the promise? All these things... but these are not of any worth. At the most you can remain okay. That’s what she is saying, that’s what okay means; but you are not happy, and if you are not happy it is not even okay.
So my approach is to give some time every day to each other. Make it a group! Talk openly, don’t be afraid. What more can go wrong? At the most she can leave you! (to the wife) And don’t be afraid: at the most he can leave you!
So always remember what is the worst that is possible and accept it, and then lay your cards on the table; it will be helpful. Try to understand, don’t argue. It is not a question of arguing, it is not a question of convincing the other. It is simply opening your heart to the other. And see what can happen. I think within a month you will be flowing again.
Let it be a daily thing, a daily meditation together; half an hour, forty minutes will do. Before you go to sleep just talk about everything, finish the whole day: whatsoever has gathered, put it in front of the other and be finished with it. Go clean into sleep. In the morning, start again.
And continue to create the family. It has to be created every day; only then is it there, otherwise it is not.
[An ashram resident says his roommate seems to think they have a marriage, but he simply sees her as a roommate.]
Just be roommates, mm? No need to think in terms of being married or anything. One is always happier being friends, and friendship is a higher state than love. Friendship implies love but love does not imply friendship.
Two persons can be in love and enemies. In fact that’s how things are: people in love are always enemies, always at each others’ necks.
So it should be clear: let it be just a friendship, don’t be bothered about marriage or anything. And whatsoever happens in friendship is good, whatsoever does not happen, that too is good. So be completely unburdened about it. It is not a marriage or anything; don’t take it in that way. Just be friends, and whenever you want to be together, be together; whenever you want to be alone, be alone. So when you come back try it this way.
[Your roommate] has a very very understanding heart. She will understand; there’s no problem about it. Once she understands the thing clearly she will do it that way. It must have been some sort of misunderstanding in her mind, otherwise there’s no question.
And it always happens: a woman has a different outlook to a man. It is very difficult to make friendship with a woman because all that she can understand of friendship is love. That is her interpretation always, a woman’s interpretation of friendship is love.
Up to now friendship has been almost a masculine affair. Maybe just because of historical reasons women were never allowed to be in the society, so they have not developed the quality of friendship. It was always man going to the war so there was a camaraderie, in the club there was a camaraderie, for the hunt there was a camaraderie; all the clubs were boys’ clubs. The society has been man – oriented and the woman has been put aside. Whenever a woman knew anything of friendship it was always of love so the two have become very much entangled – the idea of love and friendship. It is difficult to be friendly to a woman; she immediately understands it as love.
So it has just been a misunderstanding; nothing to be worried about. Be clear and she will be clear! Just be together as friends, behave as friends, love as friends, and don’t bring the problems of love affairs. They are ugly problems, very destructive. They will not help you, they will not help her.
I have put you with her for a certain reason: I wanted some feminine energy around you because you are hard... too masculine, too yang, the yin is missing. Some feminine energy around you will make you softer, will make you relaxed and will be helpful for your growth; you will be more open.
And in fact that’s how it happened in the beginning: for a few days before you went to England you were open and flowing, more than you have ever been. But by and by the thing started settling like a marriage; then you became afraid. You started escaping from her and fighting and things started going ugly.
Drop all fear. And with me things are so easy that if any problem arises, divorce can be allowed in a single second (with a chuckle). So there is no problem, there is no legal procedure about it (laughter).
Never be afraid: if something becomes heavy and you feel that it is becoming heavy, a single moment and you are free, so there is no problem about it.
So you can go completely free. When you come back be with her for one month and see if friendship works. If you think that it doesn’t work and it brings the same problem again and again you will move into your own room... no problem about it. Good!
Nirvana. It means enlightenment... but with a specific quality about it.
In India we have three names for enlightenment; they come from three traditions. The hindu tradition calls it ‘moksha’; it means freedom, absolute freedom: you will be there, absolutely free. The second name is ‘kaivalya’; that comes from the jaina tradition. It means absolute aloneness: you will be there but absolutely alone, purely alone.
And the third name is nirvana; it comes from the buddhist tradition. It is the most difficult of all the three and the most meaningful of all the three. It means cessation of the self.
In moksha you will be there, free: the bondage will disappear but not you, the prison will disappear but not you. In the jaina terminology, ‘kaivalya’, aloneness, the other will disappear and the other is the world, the other is hell, so you will be absolutely alone – only you, only you: nobody to interfere, nobody to make you defined, no limitation to yourself. You will be expansive, infinite.
In nirvana the prison will disappear, the other will disappear and you also. That is the beauty of the buddhist term: it says that all will disappear, because Buddha said, ‘If you are there, some sort of prison will continue, because the very concept of “I am” is an imprisonment, the very concept of “I”, “self” is a limitation. And if I am there, then the other exists – maybe very far away, but he exists – otherwise how will I define myself? I can be defined only by “thou”.’
So Buddha brought it to the ultimate flowering. He said, ‘Thou will disappear and I too. The prison will disappear and the prisoner too, because sometimes it happens that the prison is no more there but the prisoner is there and then the prisoner carries his own prison.’
Nirvana means utter cessation, all disappears, there is simple emptiness. In that emptiness there is tremendous consciousness, fulfillment, but no centre to be fulfilled. To know it, it has to be experienced.…
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