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CHAPTER 11
11 February 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means bliss. Lotte is Teutonic; it means human being – a blissful human being.
Man is not man just because of his physical shape and form. It has to be earned; one has to become human. Man is born only as a potentiality to be man; it is not already the fact, it is still to happen. So all men are not human beings yet, only very few, very rarely. And to be human is far more difficult than to be a saint. To be a saint is really the least difficult thing in the world, because it is a choice. One can be a sinner - - that is not difficult; or one can be a saint – that too is not difficult. The sinner has chosen the dark side of life, and the saint has chosen the light side of life, but both have chosen halves.
To be human means to be both together – light and darkness, summer and winter, love and hate, pain and pleasure. To be a man means to be a harmony between this polarity, this extreme tension between the opposites, and still to be non-tense. To be in this tension and still to be non-tense, that is the meaning of being a human being.
Sinners certainly fall short, and saints too fall short. Both are inhuman; both are half, lopsided. To be human means to be total.
And that’s my effort here: through sannyas, making you capable of being the polar opposites together, without any discord. And when one can be happy and unhappy too, and when one can allow both to happen, one is free, one is no more tethered, not in any bondage. It is difficult to allow yourself to be sad; but unless you allow yourself to be sad sometimes, your happiness will never have depth, it will be shallow. It is difficult to allow yourself to cry and weep; but if you don’t allow that, your laughter will be false, pseudo.
A man can be a man only when tears and laughter are both allowed, given total freedom, and one is ready to move to any extreme. One does not become attached to any extreme, one remains
available to the polar opposite. This availability, this vulnerability, is what I mean by being a human being.
Prem means love, aloka means light – light that arises out of love. Love makes a person luminous; without love, one is darkness and nothing else. With love, a flame starts arising in the heart; with love, you are no more unlit. And to have the flame of love is the beginning of the death of the ego and the birth of the divine.
Love is the bridge between that which we are and that which we ought to be. Man is a seed, and much has to happen before one can feel fulfilled. Just remaining the way one is born is not going to give fulfillment. Something tremendously important is waiting to happen. Unless we allow it to happen, it is not going to happen. It cannot happen against us, it cannot happen in spite of us; it can only happen through us, it can happen only through our co-operation. We are responsible, whatsoever we are. If there is hell, we are responsible for it, and nobody else is responsible.
This responsibility is great, but it opens doors. If we are responsible for hell, then we are responsible for heaven too. So on the one hand the responsibility may look like a great burden, but on the other hand it is our only hope.
Man has to become love, because then and only then can he become light. And when one is light, one can see that which is, one can see the truth of existence. That seeing is liberation.
Anand means bliss. Michael is Hebrew, it means one who is like god. In fact everybody is like god. The whole existence only reflects god, the whole existence functions as a mirror. God is the green of the trees, the red of the trees, the gold of the trees. God is in the stars, god is in the rocks. These are different reflections of the same truth – universal reflections, multi-dimensional reflections, but of a single entity.
It is as if you are looking in many mirrors, as if you are standing in a room with many mirrors: you are everywhere. Of course each mirror will reflect you in a little different way. The angle will be different, the glass may be different, certain mirrors may distort you a little bit, but still, even in those distortions, it is the same reality reflected.
Michael is a beautiful word, so I will keep it. Become more and more blissful by realising the fact that you are like god.
Down the ages, the priests have condemned man, they have poisoned the very source of our being. They have created guilt – that is their strategy to dominate. The guilty person is always ready to fall into anybody’s trap. He is so shaky, so afraid, so self-condemnatory, that he is ready to bow down to anybody; he is just searching for and seeking somebody to dominate him. He knows that he is unworthy, so if he follows himself he is bound to go wrong; he has to follow somebody else.
That is the strategy of the priest: create guilt and people will follow you. But the moment a person starts feeling guilty he starts becoming sick, he is no more healthy. His energy has started shrinking, he is no more expanding. He is no more alive, he has started dying.
A man can live totally only when he accepts himself joyously, welcomes himself, knows his glory, splendour, feels himself as divine, as part of god, like god. And remember, these experiences, these
feelings, are not egoistic at all. They become egoistic only if you think you are like god and nobody else is; then they are egoistic. Then you are free from the trap of the priest, but you are trapped by your own mind, which is a far more subtle bondage. But if you see that the same is reflected everywhere, you are as respectful to a tree as you are to yourself, then there is no question of any ego arising. You can declare ‘I am god’ and that declaration will not create any kind of bondage for you; it will be a liberation.
[A sannyasin says he wants to stay and at the same time he is scared, but doesn’t have real commitments in the West.]
So it is good: go and finish things and all commitments and say good-bye to people and come. It is always good to say good-bye to people, mm? So in these six months, finish things. Don’t make any more commitments. Now I am your commitment!
[A sannyasin says he wants to return with his two children. He has a lot of fear of leaving, because his wife at home is not sannyasin, and previously he used to become very depressed.]
But would she (the wife) like to come? There is no need to make her a sannyasin – let her come first.… I will manage – you just try! With women I have my own ways!...
This time it will not be the same. Something has changed in you. The fear comes because of the past, but I can see – the future is going to be totally different; it will not be a repetition of the past, unless you work hard to repeat it. Basically the grip of the past is already so loose on you that you can slip out of it easily.
Whenever you start feeling any depression coming, start enjoying it immediatelyDon’t have any
fear about that. Enjoy it, identify with it; there is nothing to be worried about. Be really depressed
– that’s what I mean when I say enjoy it. Sing songs of depression, dance very depressive dances
– do whatsoever you can do for the depression. Be very artful about it, let it be a welcome guest, and immediately you will see its energy is changing. If you start enjoying depression, it is no more depression: you have transformed it, you have transcended it.
Sadness is sadness only if you don’t enjoy it. It looks like a paradox – how to enjoy sadness? – but it is not; it can be easily enjoyed. And what is the point of missing it? When it is already there, enjoy it; at least enjoy it!
Come back soon! Keep it (a box) with you, and whenever you need me, just put it on your heart. Help my people in Italy.
Just tell your wife from me that she need not be so afraid of sannyas; she can come without being a sannyasin. And unless she asks thrice, I will not give her sannyas! I have started working on her – you just go!
[A sannyasin, leaving, has just completed the Encounter group in which much happened for him. He realised he put his whole energy against changing. Now he is unsure about future plans.]
This is what everybody does: everybody puts great energy against change. That’s the way of the mind, that’s how the mechanism of the mind functions.
The mind is very orthodox; it clings to the known, to the familiar, it is very conventional. The mind is never revolutionary, cannot be. Even the Communist mind is as anti-revolutionary as the Catholic; there is no difference between the two. The mind as such is anti-revolutionary. It is against change, because not to change is safer, secure. You know where you are, you can be certain; even if you are miserable, you are certain about your misery. The mind is very much afraid of uncertainty, because in uncertainty it starts collapsing; it needs very certain props. Even though the uncertain is more blissful, the mind will choose the certain – even though it is miserable. A miserable certainty is far more important for the mind than an uncertain bliss.
So this is how everybody is functioning, this is the way of the mind. It does not want to change, it does not want any change anywhere, so that it can always move on certain and solid ground, so that it always knows the answers, so that its knowledge is worth something, so that its efficiency can function.
The moment you go beyond the known, you are no more efficient, your answers are no more valid, your knowledge is ignorance. You are a child again – and that goes against the ego.
But if you start exploring a little bit... It will be with hesitation and fear in the beginning. It is natural, this fear and hesitation, but if you start exploring just a little bit – just go a few steps into the unknown and come back to the home base, but go on trying exploring – one day you will be gone forever. You will never come back to the home base – because once you start tasting the freedom of the unknown, the freedom of the uncertain, the innocence, the spontaneity that is bound to happen with the unknown and can only happen with the unknown, once the thrill has taken over, once you are possessed by the adventure, you will never come back.
But it takes a few explorations. Many times you will come back home, many times you may become too afraid. So there is nothing to be worried about; this is natural. Don’t ask the impossible – this is simply the way of the mind. Just give a few experiences of the unknown to your being, then the being will never listen to the mind.
The being is always a revolutionary. We have only to give it a few tastes, just a few dew-drops – and once the taste is on your tongue, then the mind cannot have any sway over you.
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