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CHAPTER 24
26 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Deva means divine and prayaga means the meeting of the three. Just as in christianity there is a concept of trinity – that god is three and yet one, three aspects of one reality – in the same way in Hinduism there is a concept of the meeting of the three; that concept is called prayaga.
That’s why Allahabad is also called prayaga; because three rivers meet there. Two rivers are visible, one is invisible: the Ganges and the Yamuna – you can see meeting there; the third is Saraswati which is invisible. It is a metaphor.
In the same way man is the meeting of the three: you can see the body and the mind, the Ganges and the Yamuna, but the innermost core of your being, your consciousness, is invisible. All appears before it, it never appears before anything else. Everything is an object to it but it cannot be reduced to an object. It remains the subject, it remains transcendental. You cannot look at it because you are it, hence it is invisible. It sees all but you cannot see it because who will see it? – it is you!
Hinduism also has the concept of trimurti, three faces of god: brahma, vishnu, mahesh. These are the three energies: one energy creates, one energy sustains, one energy destroys. They all work together. If you want to create you will have to destroy, if you want to destroy you will have to create, and between the two will be the sustaining energy. These are the three faces of god.
Science also basically comes to the same concept. Deep down, the deepest analysis of physicists is that matter consists of three elements: electron, proton, neutron. That is the whole existence: three faces, three realities merging into one or one reality expressed as three.
So the concept of prayaga is very very meaningful. I would like you to remember that the body is one river, the mind is another, but these are the visible rivers, gross; hence you can see them. Behind
these two is hidden the third and that third is your reality. So don’t get lost in these two. The third has to be remembered, provoked, called forth. That is the meaning of sannyas.
By becoming a sannyasin you are taking a step towards the third energy within you. By choosing a master you are trying to grope for the invisible.
By surrendering to a master you are surrendering to your innermost core.
The gross is surrendering to the subtle, the manifest is surrendering to the unmanifest, the created is surrendering to the uncreated, time is surrendering to eternity...
That is what sannyas is all about.
Prem means love, bhuma means fullness, absolute fullness, and fullness comes only through love; one feels fulfilled through love and only through love! One can have the whole world but if love is missing one will remain empty. One may live but that life will be just a dragging. One can have riches, one can have power, prestige, but deep down one knows that one is hollow and there is nothing.
That’s why people are afraid to look within – because within is hollowness, just a deep impotence, a poverty. One feels afraid to look because it is a bottomless abyss and there is nothing. That nothingness scares so people go on rushing outwards, doing this, doing that, running from here to there, always running.
They are always somewhere else, they are never where they are, because if they are there they will have to encounter the emptiness, the hollowness and that is too much. So people are always somewhere else; their mind has already left the place, they are always ahead of themselves.
Only through love does one come to a deep fulfillment and the hollowness disappears: one feels full, love-full, one starts overflowing. In love one starts sharing with existence; otherwise one has nothing to share. One is nothing so what is there to share?
People who don’t have love in their beings are exploiters, suckers. If they come in contact with you they will suck you. You will feel tired, you will feel exhausted when they leave. They have nothing, they are just hollow, so they start exploiting the energy of the other. They are not sharers, they are hoarders.
When love overflows one becomes a sharer, and in that sharing is offering: one offers oneself to god. Flowers won’t help: one can go and take flowers from the trees and offer them to a statue. Both are substitutes: the statue is false, man-made, and the flower you have borrowed from the tree; it is not your flower.
Man flowers in love. When you have your own flowering, then you can offer. There is no need to go to any statue. Both are substitutes: the statue is false, man-made, and the flower you have borrowed from the tree; it is not your flower.
Man flowers in love. When you have your own flowering, then you can offer. There is no need to go to any statue; god is everywhere, all around.
Bhuma is a beautiful word, one of the most beautiful. Sometimes these moments come when one feels full. Rare are those moments but sometimes they come naturally too because that’s how one should be! Sometimes you forget and you don’t create your misery, sometimes you forget and you are not rushing, sometimes you forget and you are not in the mind.
Any situation can be helpful.…
Looking at the moon in the night one is cool and collected and relaxed and suddenly, bhuma – the fullness, the benediction. Sometimes looking at the sea, the roaring waves, you are lost; only waves and waves and waves and you are not there! The observer has become the observed: you have become the wave, the tidal wave that is coming. The distance is lost, there is no division and there is bhuma – the benediction, the fullness.
Sometimes holding a hand of a friend, a lover, and there is bhuma. Or sometimes just looking at a child, giggling, and suddenly it is there... because it is our nature. We are trying hard to avoid it. It is really impossible to avoid it but we have succeeded in doing the impossible.
We are born full because we are born out of the fullness of god. We are born emperors, we are not beggars, but we have forgotten the language and we are lost in an alien language – the language of money, the language of power, pull, prestige. We have lost the language of love.…
I am giving you this name so that you start learning the language of love. And start from ABC. People are very deluded; they think they know love, they already know what love is – hence they go on missing.
First one has to understand that one doesn’t know what love is and then things can start. From the very beginning, from ABC, one starts learning.
Deva means divine and kutir means a small hut – a small hut for the divine, a small shrine for god. Kutir is a poor man’s hut: the guest is great and our hut is a poor man’s hut but if we invite the guest he comes!
Suddenly the hut becomes a palace... instantly! The moment he comes there is a transformation, a metanoia, a radical change. Then all your poverty disappears, you are rich, and you are rich for the first time. Then death disappears and you are immortal, all misery disappears and you are pure bliss. But without god a man is just a poor man’s hut. It is up to you to invite the guest.…
Ordinarily it happens that the guest knocks at your door but you don’t open the door. Sometimes, even if you open the door you shut it immediately because you cannot recognise the guest... and unless you welcome him he cannot come in.
This is all that I am doing here: making you alert about who is this guest, making you alert so that when he knocks at the door you are not fast asleep, and when you open the door, if he is there you can recognise him. That is the whole purpose of a master.
I recognise him and I would like to impart my vision to you. I would like you to look through my eyes and have a little glimpse.
[The new sannyasin says that it’s very difficult for him to relate to people and especially to women. He would like to go to people and relate to them but he finds it very difficult.]
Mm mm, wait a little. Do a few groups and it will disappear. Don’t be worried about it, it is not really a problem: it is a symptom, the problem is somewhere else. The problem is that you are not confident about yourself, hence this is a secondary thing that arises out of it.
If you are not confident about yourself it is difficult to relate; you are shaky, you don’t have a centre to relate from. And particularly with women it will be more difficult because to relate to a woman you have to go deeper into your being. With a man it is more superficial: he is just like you so you are more confident because you are walking on known territory.
When you are with a woman you are moving in unknown territory so there is more fear. When the fear is there you start shrinking and you become closed; when you become closed the relationship is not possible.
Relating is very simple when you are open, so the real problem is how to become open. Once you take an unreal problem as real you will be in difficulty because you will go on trying to solve it and it cannot be solved.
It is like cutting the head of a shadow: you can have the softest sword in the world but you will not be able to succeed: you cannot cut the head of a shadow. If you want to cut the head of the shadow you will have to cut the head of the man whose shadow it is. Then suddenly the head disappears, but you cannot directly cut the head of the shadow.
Relating is just a shadow-problem. So do a few groups, then I will see. And after each group remind me how things are going, mm?
Don’t be afraid. I have very dangerous women around here! (laughter) Soon you will find the difficulty is just the reverse: how to escape from them! They will haunt you and jump on you and grab you! Yes! we have no ordinary women here! (bhagwan chuckles) So you just wait! (much laughter)
[A sannyasin says: You said the way is very simple for me, but I don’t know what I have to break in myself.]
You have nothing to break, that’s why I said it is very simple. But if you want to break something it will become difficult because you have nothing to break, so you are looking for a problem which is not there.
Simply relax; there is nothing to break! Simply relax and start enjoying life! That is your prayer. You don’t need to work at all, you need only to play. If you work you will create trouble; if you just play around things will settle by themselves.
I can understand your difficulty because everybody wants to break something, but to break something you need some blocks in the first place and you don’t have any blocks.
It is as if you don’t have any disease and you go to the doctor and insist on having some medicine... but you don’t have any disease! The only disease that you have is the idea that you have a disease; that’s the only disease.
So what can the doctor do? He will give you a placebo, he will give you sugar pills, mm? And he will say ‘Take these and the disease will go – don’t be worried’. But you will not be satisfied because you would like him to examine you rightly first. He should do an x-ray examination, cardiogram and things like that.
If the doctor is very alert about problems like this he will send you to the x-ray specialist, send you to have a urine test, a stool test, this and that. He knows that you don’t have any disease but just to satisfy you he does those things so that you know you have been examined perfectly well. Otherwise from the very beginning he could have said to you that you have nothing but that wouldn’t satisfy you.
You can create your problem; the problem is not there. There are many people who don’t have any problem but they cannot trust this – that they don’t have any problem. This looks so unusual, in fact so abnormal – not to have any problem. When everybody has problems, when everybody is going crazy and you don’t have any problems, you cannot believe that you can be so abnormal, mm?
You must be having some problems somewhere maybe hidden in the unconscious, in some deep nook and corner in the darkness of your soul, but you must have some problem! How is it possible that you don’t have any problem? That’s why you cannot accept it – but you don’t have! I can see through and through: you don’t have any problem!
If you want, you can create one (laughter), then you can break it, but that will be just absurd. Simply start enjoying life!
Love, eat, work and enjoy! Enjoy small moments. Small things are there: sipping tea or coffee or just lying on the bed and relaxing, enjoy! And make them so tremendously enjoyable that they become almost divine, sacred.
Turn small things into great things. Taking a bath enjoy it so deeply... as if you are in prayer. And how can a person be deeply in prayer if he cannot be in prayer while he is sitting under a shower? It is so beautiful; the water falling on you is god falling on you! It is god’s element and it is very basic to life, life cannot exist without water.
Your body consists of eighty percent of water. The moon is lifeless because there is no water, millions of stars are lifeless because there is no water. Unless water is, life cannot exist: first comes water, then life starts. The first glimpse of life comes in the sea; the fish is the first to evolve life.
So while sitting under a shower become a fish. Enjoy it! It is so beautiful. It is the very substratum of life, the very substance. Sway, sing, pray... feel grateful.
Eating, make it a sacrament. Loving your woman, make it meditation. Playing with your child, play with god... because it is only god! Names are different, forms are different.
That’s what I mean when I say it is very simple. You don’t have problems, you have to start living! And with this message I am sending you: start living! Don’t wait – there is no problem to be solved!...
Good. So you try to live. If you cannot live and you create some problem, in autumn we will see. And if you feel it is very difficult to live without a problem, in autumn we will create a problem, mm? But if you listen to me it is really simple.
[A sannyasin asks: Sometimes I think creativity is a means of growth, sometimes I think creativity – painting, writing, making things – is an escape.]
It is not an escape, no! It is very very helpful. Become more creative and you will be growing towards your being more easily, in more of a flow, because when you create something you are creating two things: the thing is created outside, inside the creator is created.
So the painting is not as valuable as the painter that is created while you are painting. You become integrated; when you are painting you have to be one. All thoughts disappear, only the painting remains there.
You have to pour your whole energy into it, so painting becomes just a medium for deep meditation: you forget the whole world, the painting becomes your whole world. Even if the house catches fire you will not be aware of it, you are so absorbed. So in this absorption something inside you settles, becomes centred.
Creativity is part of growth but growth goes higher than creativity alone can go. So creativity alone can sometimes become an escape; if you think it is ail and ail it can become escape. Creativity plus meditation – then there is no fear.
Remember, creativity is very good but not enough; something more is needed, something plus, and that plus is meditation. If you meditate and create there is no problem of escape, you cannot escape. So let your creativity also be a meditation and your meditation a creativity. By and by both will become one and then escape is not possible.
Ordinarily your question is relevant: many people escape through creativity. They are worried, tense, they don’t know what to do with themselves. Creativity becomes a passage to escape from themselves. They start playing a guitar, playing a flute, painting, and they become engaged, occupied somehow. This helps them to tolerate themselves, otherwise they don’t love themselves. Alone, left to themselves, they don’t feel good, so this is like alcohol, an intoxicant.
If creativity is without meditation it can become an escape, so your question is relevant, the fear has some meaning. But if you are meditating there is no need to fear.
So go on meditating and start being creative. Whatsoever line you choose is good, mm?
[A sannyasin says he feels a shadow inside near his diaphragm when he goes deep inside.]
It is not something to be worried about. It’s the natural boundary between the conscious and the unconscious. When you go deep, when you go just on the boundary, you feel something changing.
Everything before that boundary seems to be clear and after that everything becomes unclear, confused, shadowy, dark.
When you cross that boundary it will give you a feeling that you are not one but two. When you are only in the conscious you are one; you are not aware of the unconscious. When you become aware of the unconscious also you start feeling as if you are split, as if you are two. The unconscious looks like a shadow because with the conscious you are identified: this is you, so the other must be the shadow.
But nothing to be worried about it. You have to go on trying to penetrate it, relax and go into it. A moment will come when you will become more acquainted with the conscious; then this shadow will by and by start disappearing. When the boundaries make it easier for you to move from one place to another and it will not be like a barrier, the shadow will disappear.
The day the shadow disappears is a great day because then the conscious and the unconscious have lost their division. That day you have become schizophrenia-proof; you cannot become split. Otherwise any day anybody can become schizophrenic because the other is there. The other is also you but because of the division you cannot feel that it is you. So this division will disappear by and by.
It is a good indication that you have started feeling a shadow. Continue, mm?
Alankar means ornament and deva means divine – ornament for the divine, a decoration for the divine... and each person has to become that.
Unless we become that we cannot feel contented. Unless you become a glory to god, not only a glory to yourself but a glory to this existence, this cosmos – not only that you are happy in your being but that the whole existence feels happy that you are – then only will you feel contented. That is the meaning of alankar – that if you are lost even god will miss you, that existence will never be the same if you are not here.
So make yourself so silent, so happy, so blissful, that you start creating something new in existence that was never before and which was waiting for you to happen. Each person has such a unique possibility, a unique potentiality.…
In the jewish Lore there are many beautiful parables. One is that when Moses was dying he refused death. He said, ‘I will not die – go and tell god! I have been serving him so much. Is this right to kill me? Go back and tell god that I am not going to die!’
The beautiful story says that death had to go back because Moses was really such a beautiful person. She became afraid that if she did something god might be angry with her, so she went back. It has never happened before and has not happened since. God could not gather enough courage to send death back again, so he came himself and he tried to persuade Moses saying, ‘Listen, where is your father?’
Moses said, ‘He is dead.’ ‘Where is his father?’
Moses said, ‘He is also dead’, and so on and so forth; everybody up to Adam had died.
Moses said, ‘Yes, everybody has died, so what? Adam was a thief, he had to die; I am not a thief.’ And in that way he related everybody’s crime. God was at a loss: now what to say to this man? And really he was such a pure man.
So god started thinking about what to do. Then he found out that once Moses had killed an Egyptian. An Egyptian was beating a Jew and Moses became so angry that he hit back and somehow it happened that though the hit was not so hard the man died. It was not meant to be so: Moses was not a murderer; it was just an accident.
God said, ‘What about that Egyptian that you killed?’
Moses says, ‘What about so many people that you kill every day?’ (laughter) This is beautiful... this I loved!
Mm? ‘I killed only one man and you go on killing people century after century. What about that?’
But Moses must have been an ‘alankar’, a decoration to existence. Even god is trying to persuade him that it is good to die because it is natural, so no one should be an exception. Finally it had to be settled that Moses would not die an ordinary death. He would disappear into the clouds and be received in heaven. Death would not be sent to him; he would simply disappear.
Such parables are of tremendous beauty. They simply show that even god.When a Buddha or a
Moses or a Christ is here god feels blessed. And these people have done something so beautiful in their being, their very being is so precious.…
One can become that.one should become that! It is everybody’s right. So try it, mm?
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