7

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‌CHAPTER 7

7 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Annapurna: It means the goddess of nourishment. India has many symbols and thousands of god. Each symbol ultimately has to become the symbol of god. So about the goddess of nourishment they have a very beautiful concept; they call her ‘annapurna’.

‘Anna’ means food, ‘purna’ means perfect. And the mother is annapurna, the woman is annapurna; she is the goddess of nourishment. She not only nurses the child physically, she nurses the child spiritually too – because food is love on the lower plane and love is food on the higher plane...

The path is: become so loving that whomsoever comes close by is nourished by your love... and be without any concern about who he is, who she is.

If one can flow in all directions in love, then god is not very far. If god is not attained it is only because we are not flowing in love. A river only reaches to the ocean because it flows. A pool of water cannot reach to the ocean because it is not flowing.

When a man is flowing, he is love; when he is not flowing, he is just a pool – stagnant, static, dead. When life energy is flowing every moment you are reaching closer and closer to the ocean, to god.

Love is your path, so whomsoever comes by, even a stranger, receive him as a guest, as a friend; nourish him and you will be nourished infinitely.

Give and you will get, share and more will be given to you.

[A sannyasin says: I just finished vipassana... and now I’m out (of the group)... I feel a discrepancy very strongly between the inside and outside.]

I can understand... it happens! Vipassana is such an in-going group, such an in-going process, that it takes time to adjust again with the world. If it really goes deep, for a few hours or sometimes even for a few days, one remains disoriented. So don’t be worried about it!

Good... it shows that something has happened. When somebody has gone in, a gap arises with the outside world. And when you come out it is almost like flying by plane when you change a zone, a time zone. The body takes at least twenty-four hours to adjust. It is a flight into the unknown.

And the change is far more intense. The change is not only bodily; it is bodily and more! It is a psychological change. It is looking at yourself in such a different way that when you start looking back again in the old way the eyes need a little time.

Breathing changes when you are doing vipassana because when the mind becomes silent, breathing has a different rhythm. And with the change of the breathing the whole chemistry of the body changes; the whole proportion of carbon dioxide and he whole hormonal system changes, the blood changes. When you come back everything will have to be resettled. It will take a few hours... but good.

Now make it a point to give at least one hour every day to Vipassana; any time, for one hour go in. The method has been of real help to you. This was only an experiment because in a few days, one week or ten days, much cannot happen, but you have tasted a little bit of it. So continue for at least one hour every day. At the weekend if you have time, do a few more hours; you can use Sunday for Vipassana.

Alka: It is a Hindu mythological name. Alka is the city where gods live, in heaven, in paradise – the town of the gods. But that is just a metaphor. Each person can become a city of god... and you have to become!

A person is not a small thing. A person is so vast that he can contain the whole universe. If you think in terms of a city, a person is such a big city that London or Tokyo or Calcutta are nothing.

Seventy million alive cells live in you – seven times more people than in London – and each cell has a self of its own. They are not even aware of you; they go on doing their work, they go on doing their thing. The human body is a huge city. And this is about the body. Your mind even is vaster than your body and your soul is as vast as existence itself.

Now it depends on you when you invite there. You can invite all devils; then they will reside. You can invite Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung; then they will reside there. You can invite Jesus, you can invite Buddha, you can invite Krishna. Then that will become their city; it depends on you. And nobody can enter without your permission; you are the whole, sole owner of your being.

So... I have simply indicated a way for you – to invite gods to stay in you! – send invitations! [Someone asks: What should be done... about the effects of science on the environments?]

It is almost too late... and the way that people are thinking to do something is not the way. The problem is very complicated and complex. If we can destroy all technology and we can de-school

society and universities are closed for one hundred years at least and people are again allowed to become absolutely ignorant and primitive, then only.…

This is one possibility – which doesn’t seem possible, because we cannot afford it. We cannot drop technology now because dropping technology will mean reducing the world population to such a drastic extent that the whole world will be full of corpses.

If India wants to remain natural, with a pure climate, the population has to go back at least two thousand five hundred years. In Buddha’s time only twenty million people were in India; now there are six hundred million people.

If technology is dropped only twenty million people will be saved out of six hundred million people just in India, so that is not possible; technology cannot be dropped.

All the people who are thinking about how to save the environment and the ecology are against technology, but it cannot be dropped. It is almost impossible, it is not feasible.

We have gone too far in technology; we didn’t listen to Lao Tzu. He said three thousand years ago, ‘Don’t move into any technology,’ but for three thousand years we have denied him. Now it is too late. Now going back is not possible.

The only thing that I think is possible is to go into technology even more, because now to go back to nature is not possible. To go into technology to such an extent that technology itself starts cleaning the atmosphere – that is the only possibility.

If technology has polluted the atmosphere then a technology can be found which can de-pollute the whole atmosphere. Now the way goes through technology, not against technology.

If rivers are polluted and oceans are polluted and the air is polluted, we have to develop super- technology to purify the air, to purify the rivers, to purify the oceans. Now this is the only possibility! The other alternative looks easier but is impossible. And that’s what is being proposed all over the world. It seems simple – Gandhi proposed it in India: to go back, just live like primitive people, to drop all machines, railways, airplanes, everything! Seems simple but seems to be very suicidal. We cannot afford so many deaths; and what is the point?

If out of six hundred million people only twenty million people can be saved, what is the point? Then why not destroy all? Let things take their own shape if that seems meaningless.

Education cannot be stopped, and we have depended so much on technology now. Now it is impossible to think of living without electricity, impossible to think of living without allopathic medicine, impossible to think of living without cars, aeroplanes.

All these things dropped, nature can come back; but how to drop it? It is impractical. So the only possibility is: create better cars which don’t pollute – which is simple, not impossible.

If man can go to the moon it is just absurd why we cannot create better cars which don’t pollute. Why can’t cars run on electricity or on solar energy? Why should they continue to run on petrol?

Why can’t we create aeroplanes which don’t pollute, ships which don’t pollute? That can be done. It is just that we have not looked in that direction. And we have not looked because our whole concentration has been on war – how to create more death in the world; that has been our whole effort. That’s why absurd things have happened.

We know how to destroy a city within a second but we don’t know how to cure a common cold. It looks so foolish! We know how to reach the moon and we don’t know how to create a fountain pen which doesn’t leak! It is simply absurd! But we have not looked into these things. Who is worried about a fountain pen which doesn’t leak and who is worried about the common cold? We should orient our science more towards life and less towards war and death.

Now whatsoever science has done can be undone only by science. Gandhi is irrelevant, so is Tolstoy, so is Kropotkin. Now the only way left is to go into technology far more deeply but with a new orientation.

[The leader of the satori group says: I just trust everything that comes up absolutely totally and it feels very good but it feels peculiar.]

It is going very well... it is going very well. And allow it; it will happen more and more.

Once you are totally in it you will see what miracles can happen – and without tiring you and without exhausting you. Otherwise if you are too worried about it.and worry is natural when you are a

doer – what to do, what not to do.

When you are not a doer, just an instrument to me, just a medium there is no worry! Then you simply move moment to moment, and in those moments of spontaneity the insight is deepcertainly deep.

When you are not tense your help becomes more important, because when you are tense the person you are helping feels your tension. And everybody knows instinctively that a tense person can’t help; he himself is in a problem. A groupleader is a healer, a groupleader is a therapist. A groupleader is really a process of therapy; his presence should become therapeutic. So if he is tense, he himself hinders the process. He has to be utterly relaxed.

If you leave everything to me and you simply move wherever I am taking you, you remain relaxed. In that very relaxation your presence will become very therapeutic.your very touch will have a new

dimension and a new quality.

People will feel, and they will become more open to you, more vulnerable; then there is no fear. When you are tense they become tense: tension creates tension in the other.

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