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‌CHAPTER 20

21 December 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Arhata means one who has arrived. Man is in a constant wandering. He is always departing from one point for another, but he is never arriving anywhere. It is much ado about nothing. The mind goes in circles, and when you move in a circle you cannot arrive. You can go on moving forever, for eternity. And unless one arrives at a point of contentment, unless one arrives at a state where all desires disappear, life remains unfulfilled and life remains one of agony.

Once you feel that you are at home, that now there is nowhere to go, now there is no need to go, now there is no desire – that feeling of at-homeness, relaxation with the moment, utterly in tune with it, that is arhata, a state of desirelessness.

No desire can ever be fulfilled because each desire brings many more desires in its wake. By the time you are coming to fulfil one desire, it has produced many others to be fulfilled; it is a long chain. Unless one understands, unless one becomes so alert and aware of the whole futility of the desiring mind... The desire goads you, pushes you, pulls you, tortures you, and goes on and on taking you farther and farther away from yourself. And it is not one desire: there are many desires and they are pulling in different directions.

That’s why every person feels in such a tense, strained state: there is such stress, such pressure that everybody is falling apart. Somehow one manages and keeps oneself together. This togetherness is not much; it is a hodgepodge, it is managing somehow. It is a mess, covered over by a blanket. The blanket looks very beautiful: inside is madness.

And desires cannot be dropped, because the very idea to drop desires is again a desire. That is the point to be understood: you cannot drop desiring. You may think that by dropping desire you will feel blissful so you will drop desires, but this is a new desire and the mind has tricked you again. Now the desire for desirelessness has arisen. It does not matter what you desire; it is the same mind

desiring. Now it desires a state of desirelessness. Again the agony, again the same nightmare, and maybe this nightmare will go deeper than any other nightmare because other desires are not so absurd.

Somebody desires a house; it is possible. Somebody desires a woman; it is possible. Somebody desires a man; it is possible, it is not impossible to fulfil it. It may lead into other desires but this desire can be fulfilled at least. But to desire desirelessness is impossible; you are creating a contradiction.

Then what has to be done? How does this miracle happen, that desires disappear and one becomes an arhata? It happens not by dropping but by understanding the mechanism of desire, by seeing the futility of it. Not creating a new substitute, not making any effort to drop it: just seeing through and through it, just watching it, becoming more of a witness of it. Slowly slowly, seeing again and again that desire leads into frustration, one day that ripeness happens. Suddenly, in a single moment, you have gone beyond desiring. It is a quantum leap. Not that you have dropped them; you have simply understood the futility and they have dropped on their own accord.

That state is called arhata. That is the goal of all religion, and that should be the goal of all psychology too.

Prem means love, paramo means ultimate. Love is a ladder; it implies the lowest and the highest both. It is a ladder from sex to superconsciousness. One part of it is very earthly: the other part, very heavenly. It is a paradox because it contains the opposites; those opposites are not really opposites but complementaries. The earth cannot exist without heaven and heaven cannot exist without the earth; they exist in a kind of interdependence, they support each other. If one disappears the other will disappear automatically; they are two aspects of the same phenomenon.

Love is the whole rainbow, all the seven colours of existence, all the seven notes of music, all the seven days of time, all the seven chakras of the inner body of man. Those seven chakras are seven rungs of the ladder. One has to go higher and higher – in love; and one can go higher and higher if the lower is not denied, because the lower has to be used as a stepping stone. If you avoid the lower rungs of the ladder you will never reach to the higher: the higher happens by going through the lower.

This is my approach: the lowest is sex, the highest is prayer; both are forms of love. In sex the body is ninety-nine percent; in prayer, the soul is ninety-nine percent. In sex there is only one percent of god; in prayer, only one percent of earth. And the ultimate means going beyond both, transcending the duality – not only going beyond the lower but going beyond the higher too. You reach the higher from the lower and then from the higher you reach the ultimate. The ultimate means you have used the ladder; you drop it. You have used the boat; you get out of it and forget all about the boat. You have reached the other shore.

The ultimate means transcendence of all duality – the duality of body and soul, the duality of matter and mind, the duality of negative and positive, the duality of sex and superconsciousness, and finally, the duality of life and death. And this is possible through love.

Let love be your only law. It will take you slowly slowly to the ultimate.

Deva means divine, shama means a candle – a small divine light. And it is there; it is our very life! We may not have looked at it because we are looking outwards and it is our innermost core. A small candle is burning there. We are alive because of it, we are conscious because of it. We are because of it. And that light connects us with god; we are small rays of god’s sun. But if we go on looking outwards we will go on missing it.

Now the time has come to look inward. The time has come to look with closed eyes, to listen with closed ears, to smell with closed nose, so that the inner can be felt. And once the inner is felt, all the treasures of the world are yours because then god is yours! And one cannot find god in any other temple, in any other church. You are the temple, you are the church: god has to be found inside you. And in fact you are not separate from god; howsoever small, we are part of him.

This is the higher mathematics of life, that the part is equal to the whole. In the lower mathematics the part is smaller than the whole; in the higher mathematics of life the part is equal to the whole. A single drop is equal to the whole ocean because it contains all that the ocean contains. If we could understand a single dewdrop we would understand all water – not only of this earth but of other earths also; we would have found the secret of H2O in a single dewdrop. And that is the whole secret of water. The difference between a dewdrop and the ocean is only of quantity, not of quality, and the difference of quantity is no difference at all. It is a difference that makes no difference; qualitatively they are the same. Man is only quantitatively small – qualitatively as divine as god himself.

This is the ancient declaration of all the sages of the world: Aham Brahmasmi, I am god; Ana’l haqq, I am truth. Jesus says: I am the way, I am the door, I am the truth. All that is needed is just turning inwards, and sannyas is a step towards turning in. Turn in, tune in, and all that we are missing is immediately achieved. In fact we had never missed it; it is just that we had forgotten about it.

God is not lost so there is no need to seek and search; he is only forgotten. All that is needed is only a remembrance, a reawakening of the lost memory.

Deva means divine, akasho means sky – divine sky. Our boundaries are false; we are unbounded. In fact all boundaries are false because nothing is separate, nothing can be separate; all is together. The whole existence is one unity, it is a cosmos. That’s why it is called the universe; uni means one. It is not a multi-verse, it is a universe. So things appear separate but they are not.

The sky contains all. Each single being is part of this infinite sky, and the part of any infinite is always infinite. The part of any infinite cannot be finite, because if the part is finite then the total will become finite. So the part of the infinite is always infinite. You can go on putting it into small pieces but the infinity remains; you cannot destroy the infinity. So we are parts of this immense sky, unbounded, infinite, and we are as infinite as the sky itself. We may be small skies but the infinity remains intact. And how can the infinity be small? So smallness is just an illusion. In truth everything is absolute, the whole.

Meditate on the sky and feel one with it. Let that become your meditation. Get lost in the sky, disappear, melt, merge. And it is only a question of learning the knack of it. One can merge. The only thing that can become a barrier is fear, because when you start merging into something bigger than you a great fear grips the heart as if you are dying. Only that fear has to be overcome. Once

that fear is overcome you are the sky! And it is a great joy to feel the infinite throbbing in your heart, to listen to the heart-beat of the eternal within you, at your core.

Then life has a different flavour. then misery is impossible. agony is impossible, death is impossible, disease is impossible. Not that disease will not happen to you, not that death will not happen to you: diseases will come and death will come but nothing will happen to you. They will come and go just as clouds come in the sky and pass and nothing happens to the sky. Let this become your meditation. Something to say to me?

Deva means divine, mutribo means musician – a divine musician. Life is a musical instrument, an opportunity to create great music. People create only noise, and ugly noise at that; and they were meant to create great music.

It is possible. It is very easily possible to bring a harmony, to become a melody: just a little effort is needed, and that little effort consists of three things.…

One: the head should not be allowed to dominate; the heart should be given the reins of life. Second: the mind should not be predominant in the body. The body should be given all freedom, because the body has all the doors of sensitivity, the body has great mysteries. The body is a gift of god and the mind is just a human creation. That’s why there are different religions and different philosophies, different kinds of beliefs and dogmas, but as far as the body is concerned it is the same; the Hindu body, the Mohammedan body, the Christian body, is the same. You cannot judge from the body whether it is Hindu or Christian or Jewish. lust by testing the blood nobody can know whether the blood belongs to a Jew or to a Catholic or to a Protestant. The body is still uncontaminated. Thoughts are Christian, Hindu, Buddhist; theist, atheist, and different kinds of ideologies are there.

The second important thing is to come down from the mind to the senses. The first is from the mind to the heart; the second, from the mind to the senses; and the third and the ultimate thing, from the mind to no-mind. The mind means the thought process, that continuous inner talk. That is the noise that is disturbing the inner music; you cannot hear the music because of the noise that the mind goes on making. Cessation of the thought process immediately makes you aware of great music that is just there inside you, part of your being.

This is the meaning of mutribo. These three things have to be done in life; and we are doing just the opposite. Nobody listens to the heart, everybody listens to the head; nobody bothers about the body. All the religions have been teaching people to be against the body, anti-body, as if the body is the enemy. And the body is the door to god, the body is divine! They are imposing ugly mind-ideologies on the beautiful body. Everybody is trying to gather more and more knowledge, and all that knowledge becomes noise inside. So we are doing just the opposite of these three things; that’s why the music is lost.

And the inner music is the way to god. It is on that wavelength... once you have started listening to the inner music, it is on that wavelength that you start reaching to god. That music takes you, you ride on it. It is the greatest experience in life to hear the inner music. In the East we call that music anahat nad: the unstruck sound.

Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping. It is really the meaning of the word ‘logos’. All the translations of the Bible translate logos as the word. It should not be the word; it should be the

sound.’In the beginning was the word’ they say. No: in the beginning was sound, unstruck sound. In the beginning was music, not the word. Word is not the right translation of logos.

In the beginning was music, and music was with god and music was god – that’s my translation.

Manu is a significant word. It really means the most essential quality of man. The English word ‘man’ comes from manu. Manu means the capacity to contemplate; manan, the capacity to meditate. Man is the only animal who can meditate, and a man is not really a man unless he becomes a meditator. Otherwise he is only a man in name but not in reality. It is meditation that gives you the real space to grow as a man.

So I will keep the name, but try to make it an actuality. When the mind is without thought, it is meditation. The mind is without thought in two states: either in deep sleep or in meditation. If you are aware and thoughts disappear, it is meditation; if thoughts disappear and you become unaware, it is deep sleep. Deep sleep and meditation have something similar and something different. One thing is similar: in both, thinking disappears. One thing is dissimilar: in deep sleep awareness also disappears but in meditation it remains. So meditation is equal to deep sleep plus awareness. You are relaxed, as in deep sleep, and yet aware, fully awake; and that brings you to the door of the mysteries.

In deep sleep you move in god, but unawares. You don’t know where you are being taken, although in the morning you will feel the impact and the effect. If it has been a really beautiful, deep sleep, with no dreams disturbing you, in the morning you will feel fresh, rejuvenated, alive, again young, again full of zest and juice. But you don’t know how it happened, where you had gone. You were taken in a kind of deep coma, as if some anaesthetic was given to you and then you were taken to some other plane from where you have come fresh, young, rejuvenated. In meditation it happens without anaesthesia.

So, meditation means: remain as relaxed as you are in deep sleep and yet alert. Keep awareness there; let thoughts disappear but awareness has to be retained. And this is not difficult: it is just that we have not tried it, that’s all. It is like swimming: if you have not tried it, it looks very difficult; it looks very dangerous too. And you cannot believe how people can swim because you simply drown! But once you have tried a little bit it comes easily; it is very natural.

Now one scientist in Japan has proved it experimentally that a child of six months of age is capable of swimming; just the opportunity has to be given. He has taught many children of six months of age to swim; he has done a miracle! He says ‘I will be trying with smaller children too.’ It is as if the art of swimming is in-built; we just have to give it an opportunity and it starts functioning. That’s why, once you have learned swimming, you never forget it: you may not swim for forty years, fifty years, but you cannot forget it. It is not something accidental, it is something natural; that’s why you cannot forget it.

Meditation is similar: it is something in-built. You just have to create a space for it to function; just give it a chance. And that’s what sannyas is all about: giving meditation a chance to grow.

Laghima means the power to fly. And that’s what I teach!

Meditation is a flight into the inner sky. Meditation makes you capable of transcending all gravitation. It helps you to transcend all that is gross, material, earthly. It takes you into a totally different dimension where all is light, weightless, where all is subtle, sublime. It is a change of dimension.

A person who lives without meditation lives in the gross world. He knows nothing of the subtle, he knows nothing of the higher realms of being. He is utterly unaware that there exists something more too; he thinks this is all. Have a little money, a good house, a car, a family, a little name and respectability; this is all. His life consists of trivia. He is utterly unaware that he carries a great potential the potential to become a demigod, the potential to become divine!

Meditation will give you the first taste of a totally different world the world of the invisible, the unknown, the mysterious.

Laghima means the art of becoming light, weightless, the art of transcending gravitation. Science has proved one law, the law of gravitation. Religion has proved another law, the law of grace. Gravitation pulls you down; grace, the law of grace, pulls you up. But you have to learn to be so weightless that the law of grace can pull you upwards. It cannot pull rocks, and people are like rocks: they don’t feel, they don’t have hearts, they don’t sing, they don’t dance. They are dull, dead, hence god remains unknown to them.

You just have to become light, available, open, and immediately a totally different law starts functioning on you. You are pulled upwards and upwards and there is no end to it. Even the sky is not the limit.

Vishuddha means pure, utterly pure, innocent, and bharti means one who belongs to India. India is just a symbolic name. I don’t mean the geographical India and I don’t mean the political India, but India has become a symbol of the inner search. For five thousand years that has been India’s innermost desire. It has become the centre of all those who are in search of themselves; it has become a shelter. It is a metaphor.

By purity, by innocence, I mean the state of a child uncontaminated by the society, uninfluenced, unconditioned. That state exists still in you. It is covered by many layers, but those layers can be thrown any day that you decide, because that which you have brought with you from your real home, from god or from the very source of life, is still there, hidden behind layers and layers of rubbish. But even if a diamond falls into the mud and is covered by layers and layers of mud, nothing is lost: the diamond remains the diamond, and you can clean it any day. It can be found any day because it is there.

I am talking of that diamond of inner innocence which cannot be contaminated. That virginity is absolute; there is no way to pollute it. You can cover it with mud but the diamond is there; it only needs a little bath. And meditation functions like an inner bath, an inner shower: it cleanses the dirt, it takes your knowledge from you, it burns your scriptures. One day suddenly you are again a small child, and that very day the revolution has happened.

[A sannyasin going to the West says: I think I’m crazy going so soon.]

No, there is nothing to be worried about. I exist for crazy people, don’t be worried. And I love crazy people, because they are the cream! They are the very salt of the earth. If the world becomes sane,

as sanity is understood, it will become a very ugly world. It is because of a few crazy people that the world remains beautiful. It is because of a few crazy people that there are a few poets, a few mystics, a few musicians, a few dancers. If all become sane, then the marketplace will be the only reality and business will be the only life. It is because of a few crazy people that god has not died yet, that poetry lives, that somebody can still dance and sing and rejoice and shout ‘Hallelujah!’ Otherwise sane people, they simply earn money. They don’t have any time for prayer, for meditation, for joy, for love, for celebration. The world is tired of sane people!

So don’t be worried. Go and come back!

[A sannyasin says: At the moment I’m working in Vrindavan (the ashram canteen).

In Vrindavan? Work in Vrindavan. Just surrender totally, otherwise it becomes hard. If you surrender then it is a joy. Take it as part of your sadhana. Surrender totally: forget that no exists. Just become yes, and then there is no resistance.

Resistance destroys much energy. You do something and you are resisting: you don’t want to do something and you do it, you don’t like doing something and you do it.Then it becomes an

unnecessary conflict within yourself; it is very destructive.

The art of being in Vrindavan is just to say yes, totally, and go into it. Then you will really gain much out of it.

[A doctor from Nepal says: My health is not perfectly right... mainly lack of energyI have tried

the Western medical science, and I have done all possible investigationsI’m doing Gourishankar,

Nadabrahma.Vipassana meditations.]

Don’t do any strenuous thing.

And when can you come back for a longer period? because this can be changed. It has nothing to do with the body; it is just psychological. But whether psychological or physiological, it is there, so a problem is there. And when it is psychological it is more difficult because then nobody knows what to do about it.

You have lost interest in life; you will need interest to be re-injected into your system. You have lost meaningfulness, life has become a boring thing. Somehow you have been carrying on because it has to be carried on.

At this age it almost always happens to all intelligent people, more or less; it always happens. There comes a point in every intelligent person’s life somewhere between forty-two to fifty when he starts seeing the futility of life. He may not be very conscious of it, but in the background it starts lurking, the feeling that life is futile.

Children are very interested in the future. Naturally, they have a great hope: something great is going to happen tomorrow. By the time you reach the age of forty-two you have seen so many tomorrows and nothing happens, so the hope is lost; now tomorrow is no more meaningful. You know it is going to be just the same as today. Then what is the point in living? Then why wait? When hope disappears, to live becomes pointless. One starts vegetating.

But if life is very strenuous – for example, one is struggling to live, struggling for food and shelter – then one has no time for it. It happens only to people who are well-settled, who have a good job, who are not worried about their bread and butter. It does not happen to poor people, it cannot happen. They don’t have any time to brood, to think, to think backwards or forwards; they have no time. The everyday struggle is so much that they are constantly occupied, so in a poor country people remain more hopeful than in a rich country. In a rich country hopelessness starts settling; that’s what is happening in America. The more affluent a society becomes, the more meaningless life becomes. Because all that is needed to survive is available, now survival is not the question. Then what to do?

For centuries we have been totally absorbed in the struggle for survival, so the mind knows only one way to remain occupied and that is survival. Now, if your survival is secure – you are earning well, everything is going well – then suddenly everything flops.

That’s what has happened. It is a natural consequence of intelligence and a well-secured life; it has nothing to do personally with you.

You will need a new vision of life so hope arises again. You will need a new project to work out. It is not low energy: you have lost direction so your energy has gone low. Energy needs challenge to remain vital. It almost always happens to everybody in some moments: you come home tired, utterly tired, no energy at all and suddenly the house is on fire; then you forget your tiredness. You forget everything! For the whole night you will be awake putting the fire out, and so full of energy that you will not be able to believe next day that you could do so much and you were so dead tired! The house on fire gave you a such an immediate project, it was such a challenge, that the energy simply rose, rose to meet it!

At the age of forty-two everybody feels a crisis. By everybody I mean everybody who is successful in life. Otherwise there is no question. Nothing fails like success, and success fails at the time near about forty-two. Then all kinds of symptoms arise: people have heart attacks and blood pressure and this and that, and it is nothing but that life has lost meaning. So all problems start becoming bigger and bigger and you don’t have energy to face them. You don’t even feel that there is any point in facing them: Tolerate them, accept them, let it be so; one day everybody has to die.

Come for a few days to do a few groups, a few meditations. I don’t see that there is a problem. Your energy will be back, it just needs new challenges. And we have so many challenges here that even if you bring a dead person there is every possibility he may be revived! (laughter)

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