12

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‌CHAPTER 12

12 February 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, anupam means uniqueness. It is a paradox – but existence itself is a paradox – that each individual is both universal and unique. It is very illogical, because if we are all one, then how can we all be unique? – we will be similar. But that is not the case. We are all one and yet each individual is unique. It is a paradox, it is illogical, but this is how it is. And existence has no obligation to follow our logic, it need not bend to our logical patterns. If anything has to change, it is our logic that has to change.

That’s what happened in modern physics when for the first time they discovered electrons. A great problem arose, the greatest that science has ever faced: what to call it? – because it was behaving very illogically. It was behaving as a wave and also as a particle, simultaneously, which is absolutely absurd. It is not logically possible – either something is a particle or it is a wave; one thing cannot be both together and simultaneously. One thing may be both at different times, that’s possible, but behaving in both ways at exactly the same moment destroys our whole geometry, mathematics, logic. But the physicists had to concede the electron. They had to shrug their shoulders but they had to accept the reality: it was so. And for the first time science came across a real paradox.

Mysticism has always faced it. It started accepting it very early in the growth of human consciousness. For at least five thousand years, man has accepted paradox in the world of mysticism. That’s why we call it mysticism – because it is illogical. But for the first time science is becoming mystical. Anything becomes mystical whenever a paradox arises for which we cannot manage any logical explanation and which we have to accept as it is.

This is one of the greatest paradoxes, that each individual is universal, and yet individual. Each wave is part of the same ocean, yet each wave is unique; no other wave is like it, although all waves belong to the same ocean.

Prem means love. Richard is Teutonic, it means rule or powerful ruler. Your full name will mean: love, the rule, the discipline. Love, if it becomes the discipline of your life, is the greatest transforming force. If it rules your life, then it becomes a totally different life. Love brings rebellion, revolution. Love brings insight into what reality is. Love brings light, clarity, things start becoming more and more transparent. Love bridges you with people and with existence; you are no more alone, all loneliness disappears.

The world is not strange, it is your home – and one can relax only if existence becomes one’s home. If we remain outsiders we cannot relax. Outsiders are bound to remain tense, because they are in an alien country, in a foreign land.

Modern man is feeling it very deeply, that he is an outsider, and the reason is that love has disappeared from the world. Nothing else has changed, everything else is the same – the same trees and the same moon and the same sun and the same people. Only one thing has disappeared: love is no more there. Logic has taken possession of man; logic rules man, logic has become his discipline. That’s why man is feeling so alien, uprooted, a stranger, an outsider. And when you live in the world as if you are an outsider, your whole life will be of great anxiety, tension, fear, paranoia.

It is bound to be so, unless love becomes your rule, your very life. Then suddenly a transformation, a metamorphosis, happens. Everything is the same and yet it is no more the same; you are bridged. It is your home. You have new eyes to see life and existence.

To be initiated into sannyas is to be initiated into love. Sannyas is a step out of logic, into love.

Prem means love, divo means a small lamp – a small lamp of love. But that is enough to make one’s whole life full of light! And the moment there is light we are no more groping we are on solid ground. We know who we are, we know from where we have come, we know to where we are going, and suddenly life starts having significance and meaning.

Without love, man lives in darkness. He stumbles gropes, falls, goes astray and is continuously trembling in fear, because he is not aware of who he is, of why he is.

Even the most fundamental question ‘Who am I ?’ remains unanswered. And if that fundamental question remains unanswered, everything else also remains unanswered. One is always indecisive, continuously thinking whether to do this or to do that. And whatsoever you do, you will repent, because whatsoever you choose out of darkness is going to be wrong; no choice can be right.

This is the miracle of light: you need not choose, you simply see where the way is. Without any choice you move in the direction of the right, because the light is there. And nothing else can bring the light except love.

Let your life revolve around the centre of love. Focus on it, pour more and more energy into it, and one day suddenly, the flame is lit. That is the moment of great rejoicing.

Prem means love. Pilar is Latin; it means to drift, just like driftwood, with no idea of any direction, like a cloud drifts without any will of its own, just wherever the winds take it. It is a state of let-go, utter let-go.

And that is one of the greatest secrets, if one can relax totally with existence and can say ‘Let thy will be done. I have no more desires of my own, so now whatsoever happens is good; now wherever I reach that is the goal.’ In this surrender, in this let-go, no frustration can ever happen, because frustration is a by-product of expectation. If you don’t expect anything, nothing can frustrate you; then life has a calmness and a coolness in it.

Love is the art of let-go. Drift in love, drift in trust. Learn the secret of surrendering more and more to existence. If you can call this existence ‘god’, good – it becomes more personal, more intimate, a dialogue becomes possible. If you cannot call it ‘god’, no need to be worried about it. One can attain to truth without believing in any god. God is only a device – a device to create a communion between you and the whole, a device to create a dialogue – but it is not absolutely necessary. It is just an arbitrary device to help. It can be dropped: Buddha dropped it and yet attained, and many others have not used it and yet have reached.

The secret is not belief in god; the secret is in let-go. What matters is surrender. To whom you surrender – to god or to existence – doesn’t matter. Surrender matters, surrendering matters.

Shanti means silence, peace, serenity. Lisa is Hebrew, it means divine. Divine peace – that will be the full meaning of your name.

Man is a tension, and only if man enters into the divine does he become capable of going beyond tensions. These tensions that human beings experience in life are not accidental; they are very much a part of human existence, part and parcel of it. Because man is half animal and half divine, hence the conflict, the tension. Half of man is being pulled backwards, and half wants to go ahead; it is a kind of tug-of-war. Half of man is pulled downwards by gravitation, and the other half wants to have wings and fly into the sky.

This is natural to the human existence. So by remaining human, nobody can go beyond tensions; at the most they can be managed in a little better way, or can be a little less. Those who can manage them in a better way are thought to be normal, sane people; those who cannot manage them are thought to be neurotic, mad. But the difference between the sane and the insane is only of degrees; there is no qualitative difference.

The real difference that makes the difference happens only when one transcends humanity. And that is the whole science of religion: how to go beyond this continuous conflict, how to transcend this polarity, how not to be identified with this or that, how to be neither this nor that, how to be just a witness.

In that very witnessing is transcendence, and in that witnessing, peace, silence, serenity, showers. One for the first time blooms.

Deva Agneya. Deva means divine, agneya means fire – divine fire. God is fire, and only those who are ready to be burned totally, who are ready to be consumed by the fire of god, only they can know him. Hence very few try.

Millions talk about god; talking about god is safe. Millions pay lip-service also; they go to the churches and the temples and the mosques, but it is all formal, a kind of social etiquette – something

that helps to lubricate relationships with people, but nothing intense, nothing fiery, not really a commitment. They are not involved; their relationship with existence is superficial, lukewarm.

Sannyas means a commitment, getting involved – getting involved to the point of being consumed, getting involved to the point where it is a question of life and death. Only then, when it is a question of life and death, when all is at stake, does one reach to the maximum energy of one’s being. At that moment, at that moment of one hundred degrees when one is at the optimum, is the transformation, the transmutation. The old simply disappears in the fire and the new is born: the resurrection. Then you have the body of a Buddha or the body of a Christ.

Jesus is gone in the fire: when Jesus is gone in the fire, Christ is born. Jesus goes into the fire and Christ comes out of it. The orange colour simply symbolises fire.

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