27

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‌CHAPTER 27

28 December 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means god, prarthi means in prayer. Prayer is not something that you do or that you can do: it is something in which you can be. It is a state of being, not a state of doing. Prayer simply means in deep communion with existence. It is not a dialogue, it is not a verbal communiCation; it is non-verbal. It is just energy meeting with energy. It is just a dewdrop slipping into the ocean. It is a moment when one drops separation from existence. The moment you drop separation, you are in the state of prayer. And the state of prayer transforms you into the state of a god; you are no more a human being.

To be human, separation is needed; to be divine, non-separation is a must. And unless we become divine we can never be at ease, at home, because the separation is so arbitrary that one has to continuously maintain it; still it goes on slipping out of your hands. It is so false that one has to pour much energy and work into it; only then can it be maintained, otherwise it disappears.

The real is that which needs no effort. The unreal is that which needs all kinds of efforts and props to support it. Separation is something unreal; it is not, in fact, there. It is a make-believe. We believe that we are separate so we feel that we are separate, but even if we go on believing that we are separate, we are not separate; we remain one with existence. Whenever you drop your make-believe suddenly you are one with the whole, and that sudden meeting is prayer.

It has nothing to do with the prayer that is taught in the churches and the temples; that is a verbal communication. And god knows no language so you are unnecessarily wasting your time. He cannot understand what you say: he can only understand what you are. That is the only language that he understands, the language of being. So prayer is not something to be done but something to be. It is a state of immense love for existence.

Veet means beyond, mayo means illusion. The mind lives in illusions. The mind is nothing but all the illusions accumulated in you illusions as memories, illusions as imagination, illusions as dreams,

hopes, desires. And in the very centre of all these illusions is the illusion of ‘I am’, the ego. That is the very root, the central illusion, and all other illusions move around it. They support it, they feed it, they are supported by it and they are fed by it; it is a mutual arrangement. And between these two, you and your reality are utterly lost.

Meditation simply means getting out of this illusory state – of dreams, desires, past, future – and just being in the moment that surrounds you. Just to be utterly in the moment, with no thought, is to be in reality. It takes a little effort to drop out of the illusions because we have lived in those illusions for so long; it has become almost habitual, a second nature. It also takes a little effort to get out of those illusions because we have invested in them very much. They are our hopes: it is through them that we go on living, prolonging. To drop them means to drop the future, to drop all hopes; and we don’t know how to live in the present without hope.

That is the whole art of sannyas: to live in the present and without hope. And remember, living without hope does not mean living hopelessly. Living without hope simply means that the present is so tremendously beautiful, who cares about the future? Who bothers about it? Not that one is living in despair and hopelessness, but that one is so fulfilled in the present that there is no space left to think about the future.

The person who lives in hopelessness lives an empty life. He does not know what the present is, and the future has disappeared. He was only living for the future: the carrot that goes on hanging there tomorrow and which never arrives. One goes on working hard to catch the carrot; because it is never caught, one goes on running after it. Ultimately death takes you over, and you have not arrived. This is the story of millions of people: they live in hope without any fulfillment ever, and they die unfulfilled.

To live without hope simply means to live herenow knowing that there is no tomorrow; it is always today. And then a totally different kind of life starts getting crystallised in you. It is so utterly joyous that one does not think of the past and one does not think of the future.

We think of the past and the future only because the present is very empty, because we don’t know how to live this moment. So either we run towards the past or we run towards the future, which is in a way the same. The past is no more, the future is not yet; both are nothings. Between these two nothings is this moment, and this moment is all.

Chetan means consciousness. Consciousness is the key, and if one understands how to become more and more conscious, nothing else is needed. To become conscious one need not go anywhere. To become conscious one has to live the ordinary life, as it is, with something added to it. From the outside it remains the same life; from the inside it becomes totally different, utterly different. You do the same things but with a new awareness. You bring the quality of awareness into your acts.

Eating, one can eat in an unconscious way; one can eat mechanically, as people do. They simply go on throwing things in and they are thinking a thousand and one thoughts. They may not be there at the table at all. Only physiologically are they there;. psychologically they may be roaming somewhere else on some other planet.

Unconsciousness means: whatsoever you are doing is not connected with your being. You are split: the body is doing one thing, you are doing something else. That is what unconsciousness is, a split. The body is eating and you are either in the past or in the future or somewhere else, thinking, planning, remembering. This is a split. This split has to be bridged, and the only way to bridge it is: become alert of what you are doing.

If you are eating then be there and let only eating happen; everything else has to be dropped for the moment. Be totally there as if the whole world has disappeared; you are focused. Eating is all when you are eating, and ’walking is all when you are walking. Listening is all when you are listening, and talking is all when you are talking. Then slowly slowly your body and your being are bridged, and whenever the body and being are bridged, a great grace arises. You can see in the person who has attained to this welding that he has the quality of presence, something solid, something crystallised.

Other people will look hollow compared with him, empty, shallow. He will have depth and he will be very transparent: you can see through and through. He will have a transparent self. There will be no clouds in him, no smoke; his flame will be without smoke. This is the man who comes to know god, life, love, and this is the man who attains to significance, splendour.

So let this be the key: whatsoever you are doing, go on bringing your consciousness to it again and again. It will slip again and again, that’s natural. Don’t be worried about it, don’t be troubled by it and don’t start feeling frustrated by it. It takes months, sometimes years, but it is worth it. And slowly slowly, for a few moments, it will start happening. Even those few moments will bring so much joy to you, more than you have ever known, even dreamt about. Even if for a single moment your body and being are welded, are in tune, you will see what-bliss means. You may not be able to tell anybody what it is, but you have tasted it. In that moment you fell into the ocean of god. In that moment you were showered on by divine energy.

Slowly slowly more and more moments will be coming and one day it happens that this becomes your very life. It becomes a crystallised thing.

That state is called enlightenment.

Anubodh means awareness. Man lives almost as if he is asleep. A great metaphysical sleep surrounds the earth. In the night we are asleep, in the day too; what we call waking is fake. Only once in a while has a person become awakened – a Buddha, a Christ, a Lao Tzu, otherwise people are somnambulists. Of course they can manage to do the daily routines of their life but that doing is just as a machine goes on doing things; the machine needs no awareness. That’s how man goes on doing things: without any awareness of what he is doing, why he is doing it, from where he is coming, to where he is going, why he is at all. Not even the most fundamental question has arisen in millions of people – ‘Who am I?’ They ask a thousand and one questions, they collect much knowledge, but without ever asking the real question.

Awareness means becoming aware of all this situation. And the first question that a person has to ask is ‘Who am I?’ and ask it so deeply that it penetrates like an arrow into the very heart, so that it goes to the very core. And once the arrow of questioning has reached to the very core of your being, a great fountain of life is released, a great fountain of light is released. Suddenly you see a fountain arising in you that you have never been aware of before: that is awareness.

Just as, if we go on digging in the earth a moment comes when water starts coming up, water wells up, in exactly the same way, if we go on digging deep inside our being, there are many layers of sleep, but if we go on digging.And the best way to dig is to make your vital question, your quest:

‘Who am I?’ This has to become your meditation. Whenever you are sitting silently ask ‘Who am I?’ and don’t be satisfied by any answer given by the mind. The mind will say ‘You know who you are your name, your address, your education, your family name.’ The mind may even become clever. It may start quoting scriptures, that you are the soul, that you are god-incarnate, and all that nonsense. Go on shoving it aside. Unless you come to know who you are, no question, no answer, is of any help, no answer has to be accepted.

Because you have avoided all answers, there comes a moment when the question becomes so pure, that it is just a fire reaching to your very being. And once you have decided not to accept any parrot-like answers from the mind, this is going to happen. Out of that fire, that quest, great light is born, and it comes from your very centre. It does not come from the Bible, it doesn’t come from the Koran, it doesn’t come from the Geeta; it comes from your very own core. You can see it arising out of your own being; and truth liberates only when it is your own.

Gayano means a song, a beautiful song. Life ordinarily is not a song. It is deep down a cry, a scream, because it is pain, suffering, anguish. How can a song survive out of pain, suffering, misery?

The song can arise only when there is some experience of bliss in you. When you have touched something ecstatic, only then is the song born. The song is waiting there, but it will need to be triggered by some ecstasy. But instead of ecstasy there is only agony. People are living in hell. They pretend they are not; they have to pretend, just to save face. They go on smiling on the outside but all those smiles are painted. They go on pretending, laughing, enjoying, and showing that they are living a real life, but they are trying to deceive others just as others are trying to deceive them. We are living in a very deceptive world where everybody is trying to deceive everybody and everybody is, deep down, suffering.

This deception has to be dropped, because this deception will not allow the song to be born in you. One has to drop all masks; only then can the real face be discovered. And the real face is that of ecstasy. Man is born to be blissful – that is man’s intrinsic nature – but somehow we are never allowed to enter into our own being; the society goes on pulling us outwards.

The whole mechanism of the society is to keep you an extrovert. It creates great lust for things; that is a device to make an extrovert. It creates great ambition, for money, power, prestige; these are all just devices, strategies, to make your mind go outwards. And once you have learned the ways of going out, naturally you tend to forget the ways of going in. If you don’t ever go in those ways are lost. And ecstasy happens at the innermost core of your being.

Sannyas means creating paths again in your inner territory so that you can reach and know who you are. Once that fragrance is there, that experience is there, one’s life becomes an ecstatic song; then the whole of life is a song. Then whatsoever you do is singing, whatsoever you do is a dance.

My effort here is to create people who can dance, who can sing, who can love, who can celebrate, because I don’t see that there is any possibility of knowing god without becoming utterly ecstatic. Ecstasy is the door to god, and people who have reached are the people who have danced the

whole way, sung the whole way. The people who have reached have reached with great laughter and joy.

That is the meaning of gayano: a song is waiting there in your heart – you have to give birth to it. And in giving birth to it, you will be born and your real life will start.

Deva means divine, islama means peace. silence, stillness – divine peace. Man has been conditioned to always be in conflict: the body is fighting with the mind, the mind is fighting with the body. The whole past of humanity has been a constant conditioning to make man a split personality; and it has succeeded.

There was a reason for it: if a man is in constant conflict he becomes weak; that is the sure way to make man weak. Because he dissipates energy in fighting with himself, he cannot fight with anybody else. And that’s what the priests and the politicians needed: they wanted weak people who could be dominated easily, they wanted weaklings. They found a very psychological strategy. The strategy is to create a conflict in you so that you are always fighting with yourself and dissipating your energy, becoming weaker and weaker. And because you are divided, you can be ruled. ‘Divide and rule’ – that has been the fundamental policy of all the politicians and all the priests down the ages.

Now the time has come that man should come out of this whole stupid nonsense. The priests and the politicians are not going to help, because if man becomes one then there is no possibility for any priesthood to exist in the world. If man becomes one he will not need any leaders to lean upon. He will be enough unto himself, he will be a light unto himself; he will not need guidance. That will destroy their whole business, and it has been really a great business; no other business can compete with it.

To attain to inner peace means drop all fighting with yourself, don’t condemn any part of your being. Respect, love, and love all that you are, nothing excluded. Then only will there be peace, then there is bound to be peace, and in that peace you will become powerful. That peace will bring power; as conflict has brought weakness, that peace will give you strength. That peace will soon make you so powerful that you can rise above the law of necessity, cause and effect, and you can enter into the world of power and grace. That peace will make you a pool of power, overflowing, and that overflow of power is love!

Only a silent person can be a loving person, because only he has something to share and give. The man who is in conflict, how can he love? He is so tired, so exhausted, so spent; he has no more energy to share. Love is a luxury: you can share only when you have more than you need. You can share only when if you don’t share your own energy will become a burden on you. You have to share it, it has to be released. A peaceful person naturally becomes a loving person.

And the secret of becoming at home, at ease, is simple: stop fighting with yourself. Try to understand yourself rather than fighting with yourself. Fighting will bring you more and more defeat: understanding becomes a victory.

[A sannyasin says: In trusting myself I’ve found that I’m questioning a lot of things... and one is whether you’re my master.]

Whenever you want to drop me, you can! But that simply means that the trust you think is arising is not trust but only ego.…

If it is trust, then it will make you more trusting of me. Trust cannot create doubt: trust only creates more trust. If the disciple attains to trust he becomes more grateful to the master, he trusts the master more. Trusting oneself never goes against the trust in the master. If it does then you are simply giving it a good name. It is just the ego asserting itself and pretending to be self-trust. Then all doubts will arise and everything will arise.

But if you enjoy it, that’s perfectly okay!...

If you are enjoying this trip that you call trust, it’s perfectly okay: enjoy it! There is no problem in it.

People have very absurd ideas. They think that somebody is destined to be their master, as if it is something fixed, preordained. If you are a disciple to me, I am your master; if you are not a disciple to me, I am not your master. Your disciplehood makes it happen. But people have very foolish ideas. They go on asking me ‘Are you my master?’ as if my being their master has nothing to do with their disciplehood!...

It all depends on the disciple. I am not here at all – to be your master or not to be your master.

And this way or that, both are perfectly okay with me. It is a question for you to decide whether you are a disciple or not. The question of whether I am your master or not should never be raised; that is a secondary thing. If you are a disciple, I am a master; if you are not a disciple, I am not. But the beginning has to happen in you. And disciplehood means trust, it means a tremendous love, the courage to surrender.

Because the ego obstructs all these things it can start playing the game of ‘What is the need? Self- trust has arisen.’ But you can try your self-trust. Drop sannyas and try your self-trust, and see what happens with it. If something happens, very good; if you grow, very good. If you don’t grow, you can come back. There is no other way.

But you can try it! If you feel that something is arising in you and you can just be on your own, try it. Don’t make any problem out of it. And if doubts arise. then whatsoever I am saying now will again be the same: you can doubt it also.

So I give you total freedom. A disciple has to be totally free. It is his decision to be with me and his decision not to be with me; I don’t enforce anything.

Just one thing I should make clear: the first time you take sannyas, it is one thing; the second time it will be difficult. I may not give it or you may have to earn it. The first time I give it with no conditions: the second time you have to earn it.

So think about it and you decide for yourself. Asking me is of no use. Asking me is of use only if you trust me, and then there is no point in asking. But remember one thing: if it is really trust arising in you, it will deepen your trust towards me; it cannot be against it. Otherwise it is just an ego-trip.

For example, if you are in love with somebody and great love arises in you for yourself, is it going to enhance your love with the other person or is it going to destroy it? It is going to enhance it, it will make it deeper, more intimate. In fact only the person who loves himself can love the other. If your love for yourself becomes a hindrance in the love for the other, that simply shows that it is nothing like love. It is just the ego asserting itself behind the name of love. This is the criterion. That criterion can be used in many ways and has to always be remembered, because the ego can go on playing many many games.

Self-love always helps you to love the other more. Self-trust always helps you to trust the other more. If the disciple trusts himself then great trust arises in the master. If it is not so, then something somewhere is fishy, something somewhere is wrong.

So think it over, and whichever way you decide is good. If you decide to remain a sannyasin, my blessings. If you decide not to be a sannyasin, my blessings. Good!

Anand means bliss, disha means direction, dimension – the direction of bliss or the dimension of bliss. Sannyas is a new dimension.

People live a two-dimensional life. Sannyas is a third dimension. When you live a two-dimensional life it is flat, it has no depth. Only the third dimension brings depth, and with the third dimension you become a trinity, something becomes whole inside.

A two-dimensional life is a false and phony life, it is superficial. For example, if you see a person you only see his face, his behaviour; you cannot see his being. His face is almost as if it is a mask. If you turn the mask around, behind it you will not find anything. People’s faces are almost like masks. And this is the case because you have not even looked behind your own face, so how can you see behind somebody else’s face You have lived outwardly – sometimes going to the left and sometimes going to the right; the leftist and the rightist: those are two dimensions. For or against, those are two dimensions; love or hate, those are two dimensions.

There is a third dimension which is neither love nor hate, which is non-dual, which is only a choiceless awareness, which is neither rightist nor leftist, where you become just an observer of all that is happening, of all that you are doing. That observation is the direction of bliss, that awareness is the direction of bliss; and when you have started feeling your own depth, then you will see people in a different way, then you will see them also as three-dimensional beings. Now you know that behind the face there is a being, and your behaviour will change.

The person who has never known his own depth can be very cruel. For example, a person like Adolf Hitler – he can be very cruel, very violent. He can destroy millions of people very easily, with no conscience, with no repentance, because he sees only two-dimensional people – as if they are made of paper and there is no depth, there is no soul, as if they are only machines and there is nothing else. You need not be very compassionate to a machine, and if you destroy a machine you need not have a deep pain and anguish in your being. A machine is a machine; who cares about a machine? Adolf Hitler could burn millions of Jews because he himself never knew his own inner depth. So he could only see people as flat, two-dimensional beings who could be easily destroyed; nothing was at risk.

The world needs more and more three-dimensional people, then there will be less cruelty, less violence, less war.

And that’s what a sannyasin is all about: a three-dimensional being. That is the meaning of your name search for the third dimension, the depth. Look inwards more and more and find who you are there; and the day you have found your centre, you will be surprised: when you open your eyes, every person in the world has a centre. Not only people but trees and rocks and birds and animals, all have their own centres. Then this whole existence is three-dimensional.

To know existence as three-dimensional is to know the trinity of god. That is the meaning of the concept of trinity.

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