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‌CHAPTER 3

3 February 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin reports on doing the nadabrahma meditation for nine months, including during his job as a pilot. He finds it a great source of energy.]

It is... it is a great source of energy. We don’t know our own sources and we don’t know how to connect with those sources. When you are humming a sound you fall into harmony. The sound becomes a vibration in your body/mind and by and by, slowly, the body and mind fall into a rapport. Their conflict ceases; in that cessation of the conflict, energy is saved.

Energy is being wasted continuously, because there is continuous conflict. The body wants to do one thing – the mind wants to do something else. One moment the mind wants to do this – another moment it wants to do that.

The body and mind are almost like two enemies, and the so-called religions help this antagonism. They have not dissolved it – in fact they have created it more and more. They have made it almost unbridgeable, because they all condemn the body; they are all against the body. They think that the body is the sin, so the body has to be crushed, controlled, disciplined. The body has to be forced to be a slave and the mind has to declare its mastery. The mind is the real culprit – the body is innocent; the body has never done anything wrong.

It is the mind that has led humanity into wrong paths, but the so-called religions are in favour of the mind and against the body. They have created a conflict inside and that conflict is continuously on – waking, sleeping, the conflict continues. And that conflict, naturally, dissipates much energy. Great energy is wasted and nothing is achieved out of that friction, because man can achieve only when there is a unity.

United you are victorious. Divided you fall – united you stand.

Humming is one of the basic secrets to bridge the body/mind, because sound is the basic element of both. When you are humming, the body is humming – subtle layers of the body vibrate and the mind is humming. By and by they both start falling into one step, into harmony, into a deep love affair – a sort of orgasmic state between body and mind. Then energy is saved and that energy is great. When this energy is saved you have the right to ask for more.

Jesus says, ‘Those who have, more shall be given to them, and those who don’t have, even that which they have will be taken away.’ So when you have the energy and you are saving the energy you become capable of receiving more and more. When you are losing the energy you become incapable of receiving, so whatsoever you have is lost and you don’t get any more.

The universe supplies only when somebody is using it rightly, creatively using it – then the universe is tremendously compassionate. It gives you as much as you need, more than you need; it is very extravagant. If you are destroying its energy, it is very miserly: it will not give you, and whatsoever you have – even that will be taken away.

This saying of Jesus is one of the most important sayings ever uttered by any man anywhere... very paradoxical, very significant.

So when this harmony happens in your body and mind, or in a state of song, rhythm, rapport, you are showing that you are capable – more can he given to you. You deserve more, and more will be flowing.

You have the source of the infinite, deep hidden in your core, in your centre. When the body/mind are flowing in a rhythmic harmony, from your own innermost core energy is supplied. The innermost core is happy and wants to give many gifts to you.

And more will be coming.Continue. You will forget what tiredness is. You will never feel exhausted

– sometimes maybe spent, but never exhausted, and these are two different things.

The feeling of exhaustion is of great frustration, futility; something has been wasted without any purpose, without any goal, without any meaning and significance.

When you feel spent that is a totally different feeling – beautiful. After one has done a good job one feels spent. The energy has been used, creatively used; one feels happy. A painter when he has painted, a poet when he has written the poem that was haunting him for months or for years.…

It is said about gibbon, that when he completed his history – the great history of the world which took thirty years for him to complete.… The night he completed it he wept.out of joy. His wife could

not believe what he was doing why he was crying and weeping. She thought he was unhappy or something. He was tremendously joyful. He said, ‘I feel spent, but I am happy. My energy has been used – it has not been in vain.’

Your work is of a tremendous import. There are very few pilots who really understand their work. It is the most adventurous work... it is one of the most poetic, one of the most aesthetic. So don’t do it just as a job. It is not a job at all – it is a great creative activity. Mm? just to be on the winds in the vast sky is a tremendous joy – it has a certain spiritual quality in it and the beauty of the sky and

the clouds, and the sun and the sunrays, an ;l the rains, and the stars in the night, and the oceans below, and the infinite blueIt is very meditative. To be a pilot is to be fortunate.

And the more you enter into meditation, the more you will enjoy. There is risk but all joy has risk. In the risk is the thrill. The pilot is always between life and death – and that’s the beauty of it. The pilot cannot become dead and dull. If he becomes dead and dull it is his own responsibility; he has forgotten what he is doing.

It is a great adventure; take it as an adventure and start loving it. Make it more and more meditative.

It is one of the experiences of all the meditators of the world that the higher the altitude, the easier is the meditation. That’s why so many people used to go to the himalayas: not for the mountains – for the altitude. The higher you go, the less is the pull of gravitation. The less the pull of gravitation, the less you are a body. You start feeling a little bodilessnessyou become more weightless.

As I conceive it, sooner or later spaceships will become the most useful places for meditators. They are completely out of the grip of gravitation, and man has no weight; he can float like a balloon inside of the ship. Those will become great experiences for meditators.

So the higher the altitude, the lesser is the grip of the earthly, the earth, and you are closer to the sky. You are less tethered to the instinctive, to the heavy, and you are more open and available to grace.

So down the centuries meditators have travelled to the Himalayas. It was risky, very risky, but once they started meditating there it was difficult for them to come back – it was so easy there. Just the very altitude changes the whole chemistry of your body, and the changed proportion of the oxygen makes a lot of difference.

The more oxygen that goes into your being, the more pure the atmosphere, the less the carbon dioxide, the lighter you will feel. The same happens through fasting – it changes the quantity of oxygen. The same thing happens through Dynamic Meditation – it changes the quantity of the oxygen. All yoga breathing is nothing but an effort to change the chemistry, but on higher altitudes it changes naturally.

If some day it becomes more and more possible that more and more people can go into spaceships, there will be a great explosion of meditators in the world. The first space explorers all felt this. Their diaries, their memoirs about their experiences, are tremendously religious. They all felt a certain religious quality happening to them.and they were not religious people.

One explorer wrote in his diary, ‘I have never been in the church and I have never been interested in god, but out here in space it is so silent, so eternally silent that I suddenly feel god exists. The very silence clicks something in me.’ And he wept out of joy: God is!

Another explorer wept out of joy because for the first time he could see the earth as one: no Russia, no America, no India, no China – just one! With the very feeling that the whole earth is one, at that moment he became a universal man: neither christian nor hindu, nor white nor black – simply a dweller of the earth. That too is a great experience of religiousness.

My feeling is that these experiences came because of the state of no gravitation.

So start loving your work. Make it a meditation – go on humming, be meditative. Love your work: it is one of the best that one can happen to have.

[To a sannyasin, recently arrived:]

Begin to mix and melt with the orange people, mm? You will lose your separateness and then things become very easy.

The greatest problem is how to lose the ego. That’s why my insistence so much on orange, the change of the name. Then you lose your personal identity: so many orange people – [you are] one of them. Mm? the personal, the distinct, is no more meaningful; the similar becomes the meaningful. With the changed name, you forget your past by and by. The name does not echo anything of the past, it is fresh and new.

Dancing, the sufi dancing, will help you to melt more and more. For this month, simply melt and mix and mingle, and then the work starts. Then the work is very simple. Otherwise in the groups the whole problem remains how to shatter your ego – and much energy is wasted in shattering that ego. When the groupleader or the group tries deliberately to shatter your ego, naturally you start defending... and that is very unconscious.

That’s why groups become so meaningful here: because before a person enters a group he has already lost that problem; he is available and open. So ninety percent of the work is already done – now the real work can start, and immediately – there is no need to go into the primary things. So just forget yourself here, mm?

To forget oneself is the way to remember oneself. If you can lose yourself, you will gain yourself; there is no other way. The people who cannot forget themselves cannot remember.

The only way to become, is to be lost. Then all that is wrong is lost, and all that is true is saved. All that I accidental is lost, and all that is essential is saved.

Right now the case is such that ninety-nine percent of the accidental has accumulated around the essential. The essential is completely lost in the accidental.

This is just an accident that one is born in a christian family or a hindu family. This is just an accident that one is born in a white family or one is born in a black family. This is just an accident that one is a chinese and one is an indian. These are accidents of birth, of culture, civilisation, religions – but all accidents; nothing is essential in them.

These become very important. They become such a hard crust around you that your essential being is completely lost. This crust has to be broken. When this is broken and the essence starts opening, has space to flower, there is great joy... and that is the search.

Unless that is attained, never rest satisfied – go on moving, go on moving.…

[A visitor says: I just don’t know why I’m here. And at the moment I just feel very confused about what I want to do, or even if I want to be here. I just feel very blocked – in my body as well as in being myself.]

That happens to everybody – that’s very natural – because it is such a change, and the mind is very orthodox. The mind is never for change, the mind is never revolutionary, cannot be. The very nature of the mind is to be conventional – it moves in the old rut. Whatsoever you have done, the mind is ready to do it again and again and again. It is like a broken gramophone record: it can repeat the same thing again and again; it is never bored with it. In fact the more it repeats, the more skilful it becomes. The more skilful it becomes, the more it wants to repeat it. Anything new and the mind feels afraid – for so many reasons.

First, with the new the mind feels inadequate. With the old the mind is adequate. It can tackle it – it knows what to do. With the new it does not know what to do – hence the block. The mind is simply at a loss. It cannot say yes, it cannot say no, because how to say yes and how to say no? – because nothing is known.

With the unfamiliar the mind goes into a shock. It wants to recoil back into the old pattern. Then it is relaxed because it knows what is to be done and what is not to be done.

Sometimes it happens that the mind even clings to misery if it is old and may not be ready to go into a new bliss because it is new. At least the misery seems to be familiar. One belongs to it, it belongs to one, and there is a sort of understanding. But the new? A trembling and nervousness arises. This is natural – this happens to everybody. This stops immediately a person becomes a sannyasin, because then you have taken the jump – then there is no problem. You start looking in a totally different way... you start exploring the new situation.

This problem remains only when you are outside the gate, so once you have entered, the mind becomes interested. Now what is the fear? You have taken the jump – whatsoever has to happen has happened – so why not explore? Then one starts exploring.

This is my experience with everybody. So take a jump into sannyas! [She answers: I have this feeling of not being ready... ]

Nobody is ever ready! People become ready only when they go into it. How can you become ready?... If you want to learn driving you have to take the wheel in your hand. You are not ready and you will be trembling and you will be shaking and you will be nervous. If you look at the road you will forget the accelerator, and if you remember the accelerator you will not look at the road, and all sorts of things will happen – but that is the only way to learn! And I am by your side! I am a teacher who teaches how to drive, so you need not worry... you need not worry at all.

Just take the jump. Difficulty is there, even in taking a jump there is difficulty, and particularly for the modern mind it has become very very difficult. The modern mind has forgotten a few things.

The one thing is – how to be an apprentice; the modern mind has completely forgotten that. The modern mind has completely forgotten how to be a disciple. The modern mind wants to be the

master before becoming the disciple. The modern mind wants to teach before ever learning. The modern mind wants the answers even before it has been able to ask the questions. This is happening all over the world – this is nothing special to do with you.

This whole generation is in a very difficult situation. The situation is that nobody wants to learn. Learning gives a very deep fear, because learning means learning the new – so people are dropping out from all sorts of learning.

And this too is a learning, and one of the most significant. You will never be the same again once you have learned this that I am teaching here!

But the problem is that you can know what it is only by going into it; there is no other way to be convinced about it. You can think about it and you can drive yourself crazy – that is not going to help. It is not a question of thinking about it, it is a question of tasting it.

So if you have a little courage then let the nervousness be there... in spite of it go into sannyas. Do a few groups, meditate, and within two, three weeks all nervousness will disappear. You can see – so many people are here and they are all just like you, and they were in the same fix once. Then they took courage; they said, ‘Okay, let us see what it is.’ And they have never repented for it – and they will never repent for it.

But you can think – if you want to think and want to become more nervous you can do it! I am here to relieve you of nervousness. The mala will simply take away your nervousness.

You can close your eyes and think about it a little here now. Close your eyes and think about it.

[The visitor answers: I feel that before I do something like this I should be just completely whole- hearted about it.]

How can you put your whole heart and your whole being into it? Have you ever put them into anything?...

I have never seen anybody putting in anything, but still you do things. You eat without putting your whole heart into it; you take your bath; you go to sleep without putting your whole heart into it. Sometimes you fall in love also without putting your whole heart into it. You have been doing a thousand and one things and you have not put your whole heart into anything.Just for sannyas?

But you can think – I’m not pushing you. You can think about it.but those are the ways to avoid.

The whole heart – how can you do it? It is humanly impossible to put the whole heart into anything.

One day it becomes possible but that day is far away – when you can put your whole heart.not

only in sannyas, in anything. You eat and you eat only, and in that moment there is no thought – your whole heart is there in eating. You become the eating. You look at a rose flower and you become just the look, nothing else, everything else disappears. You are just eyes and eyes and eyes and nothing else. You hear a bird singing and you become just the ears and the ears and the ears. All over from toe to head you are just a big ear, listening.

That’s what total heart means: being total in each moment whatsoever one is doing. That comes one day That is what meditation is all about – an effort to bring it. It is a cherished goal but you cannot fulfill it in the first step. It will be the last step of your journey, and you cannot make the last step the first step. If you try, you will never take the first step.

The first step has to be taken in hesitation, in confusion, in unclarity. The first step has to be taken half-heartedly. At the most you can think only that the greater part of your heart is with it, that’s all – but the whole? Impossible – just the greater. Maybe fifty-one percent is for and forty-nine is not for, but that’s enough – that will do; that’s enough. And that too will not be always so.

In certain moments you will feel yes, and certain moments you will again relapse, and again the ‘no’ part will become big.

In one of the oldest Indian scriptures it is said, ‘Whenever you want to do certain good things wait for the moment when the yes comes, then don’t hesitate a single moment. Do it immediately, because it will not be so for long. And whenever you want to do something wrong, wait for when the no moment comes, then take the decision – otherwise the no moment will disappear. When something good has to be done – you wanted to give a gift to somebody – then when the yes is there, do it immediately. Don’t rely on the mind; a moment gone and the yes may go.’

I was reading Mark Twain’s lifeHe says he went to a church to listen to a priest and the sermon

was tremendous – he had never heard anything like that. He heard just ten minutes of it and he thought, ‘I am going to give one hundred dollars to this church.’ Then he listened for ten minutes more and his mind said, ‘Why? One hundred is too much, fifty will do.’ He had not said anything to anybody, he was just thinking in his mind.

Ten minutes more, and he said, ‘But why fifty? I have no obligation to fulfill, ten will do’ And then

five... and then one.…

He writes in his autobiography, ‘Then I escaped, because I became afraid that I might take something from the plate if things are going like this: from a hundred to one I have come! (laughter) So before I decide to take something from the plate, I should escape from this church. It is dangerous to stay here!’ This is how the mind goes.

But you can think for a few days if you like, mm? that’s for you to decide. My feeling is that you are ready... and you will never be more ready than you are right now: less you may be – more you will not be.

What should I do? Mm? [The visitor finally nods.]

This will be your name: Ma Deva Bhadra.

Deva means divine, and bhadra means grace – and this is my hope for you. Become a divine grace and let grace be the key. Walk gracefully, look gracefully, sit gracefully. Make it the point of your awareness – be graceful in everything that you do. If you can remember gracefulness, within two, three weeks you will see a subtle meditation arising in your heart, and a great silence.

Everybody has to work in a different way. This is your meditation – grace. So whatsoever you do, remember to be graceful. Even if you are angry, remember to be graceful; be gracefully angry. If you want to shout, shout gracefully. Even if you are fighting, fight gracefully.

So remember grace as your key, and it will work miracles for you.…

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