15

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‌CHAPTER 15

15 March 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Etyan: strong and stable.]

Veet Etyan. Veet means going beyond, transcending – transcending the desire to be strong and stable. Man has always desired to be strong because he feels weak; the desire simply proves that man feels weak. Man is weak, because the part can never be strong; only the whole is strong.

God is strong. God means the whole. How can the part be strong? The very desire simply proves the opposite. Man wants to be stable, and life is a flux; everything is changing, nothing is stable. Because we desire stability, we are disappointed, disillusioned, at each step.

Look at people’s faces: such disappointment. such utter hopelessness. And why is it there? – in the first place they asked for the impossible. Nobody is at fault except themselves. Had they looked at reality, had they accepted it as it is, there would have been no disappointment, no disillusionment. Disillusionment follows only when you create an illusion; then disillusionment is natural, inevitable. But you are the creator of it. Everything is moving like a river and everything is fragile, like a rose. Only the total is strong and stable.

And the paradox is: till you leave the desire to be strong and stable you will never be one with the total. The desire to be strong and stable keeps you separate, creates a boundary around you, gives you an ego, which is false.

Be fragile and accept the changing flow of life. Know perfectly well that nothing is safe and nothing is secure. This is how it is, and nothing is wrong in it; this is the way existence exists. When we start accepting it, slowly slowly the ego dies of its own accord. Because its demands are not fulfilled, it is not fed; and when there is no ego, one is one with the whole. Then when you are not, there is

strength, but that is not yours. And when you are not, there is stability, but that is not yours. The waves are fragile, the ocean is strong. The waves are changing, the ocean is stable.

So go beyond the desire of the ego to be separate, to be strong, to be somebody, to be stable, to be forever. All those are wrong beginnings and they lead you into more and more disillusionments and make your life nothing but a long series of misery.

Life is bliss if one accepts things as they are. And that’s what sannyas is all about: a tremendous acceptance of things as they are, with no desire for something else, for things to be otherwise. In that acceptance something starts blooming in your being, a fragrance arises.…

[Satoshi: It means heading home.] That’s really what is happening!

Heading home? Mm! That’s a beautiful name!

I loved your name! It is really beautiful, and tremendously significant too. That’s what man is: a search for the home. Somewhere we have lost paradise. It has to be regained. Deep down in our hearts there is a nostalgia, some vague memories of the home, of the true land, to which we belong. So everybody is searching in his own way, everybody is a seeker. One may be seeking wrongly, one may be seeking in a wrong direction – that’s another matter – but as far as seeking is concerned, everybody is seeking.

Meditation puts your direction towards god. It helps you to move towards the right centre of existence. Meditation helps you only to drop that which is wrong. It does not teach you to renounce; it simply helps you to see, and once you have seen the false as the false, it drops of its own accord. To see the false as the false is the beginning of seeing the truth as truth.

So this will remain your name: Swami Deva Satoshi. Deva means god – headed towards the home called god.

Deva Soumei. Deva means divine, soumei means intelligence. Intellect is human; intelligence is divine. To be an intellectual is just rubbish, but to be intelligent is tremendously beautiful. Intellectuality is a false coin, it is a pretender. It deceives because it looks like intelligence. It is just the opposite; not only different but opposite. The so-called intellectuals are really very unintelligent people because all that they have is borrowed, all that they have is not their own experience. It is certainly knowledge but not wisdom. It may have happened to others, it has not happened to them; and truth cannot be borrowed, it cannot be purchased, it cannot be sold. It is absolutely untransferrable. It cannot even be expressed, so whatsoever one gathers remains just arbitrary guesswork. One can gather great information and one can start having great knowledge, but all that knowledgability will be only a cover-up of one’s inner ignorance.

Then what is intelligence? Intelligence is dropping the borrowed and searching for your own treasure. Even a small quantity of intelligence is far more meaningful than the whole Himalayas of intellect, because intelligence transforms you. It kindles a light in your heart, it makes you luminous. It gives you a taste of god, and that taste is transformation. It is only possible to be intelligent through meditation.

Deva means divine, ralph means wolf – divine wolf, divine animal. That’s what is special in man: all animals are simply animals; man has a deep yearning to reach beyond himself. He is the divine animal. He is discontented with himself. He wants to surpass, transcend. He wants to be infinite, eternal. Those are the qualities of god. Man is a desire to be god.

The animal has not to be killed; that’s what has been done in the past. The religious people have been killing and destroying the animal, thinking that by killing the animal they will attain to god. The whole logic is based on a fallacy, because the animal is our energy. If you destroy it you destroy all possibility of your ever being divine. The animal has to be transformed, not destroyed. The animal has to be loved, respected. The animal has to be understood. It has many secrets to reveal and many mysteries to open to you, but those mysteries and secrets can be opened only when the animal is respected, loved, when you befriend it.

That’s my whole process: befriend the animal. There is no need to fight with it, because it is you. It has to be transformed, certainly, because it has the potential of being more and more and more. The poison can become nectar; one only needs a little wisdom to transform it. One needs to know the art of alchemy – of changing the animal into the divine.

Religion in the past has functioned in a very artless way, except of course for a few people – a Jesus here, a Buddha there. Otherwise millions of people who have tried to search for god have fallen into the trap of destroying the animal, and once the animal is destroyed or crippled it becomes impossible to transcend. The animal has to be kept healthy and whole, then it can take you, you can ride on it. It can take you to the beyond.

Prem means love, jule means young, youthful. Love is always young, it never grows old. Love is always young because love always lives in the present; it carries no past. Unburdened by the past, it remains young, fresh. Love is young because it has no idea of the future – the present is enough unto itself – and when there is no future, there is no anxiety. It is anxiety that makes a person old.

I am not talking about the oldness of the body; that is natural. The body will be young, the body will be old, the body will die one day – that is all natural – but the spirit is neither born nor ever dies. But only the person who knows what love is comes to know this reality, that the spirit is never born and never dies, because only love opens the door of eternity, because it is only love that creates soul in you.

Without love a man is just a body, an empty temple without the deity. With love the deity arrives, the temple is no more empty. That’s why love gives such fullness, such deep contentment, such tremendously overflowing joy. Remain in love and let love be the door to the divine.

Prem means love, mieko means beautiful and lucky. Love gives you both: it brings beauty to the soul and a great benediction to your life. It is the greatest blessing that can happen to anyone. The person who is capable of love is the luckiest person in the world, because he has the key of the kingdom of god.

Jesus says: God is love. I even say: Love is god. Love is far more important than god himself, because without love there is no god, without love there is no possibility of any connection with god. Without love there is no bridge. It is only love that becomes the proof of the existence of god. It certainly gives you beauty. it certainly is the greatest fortune possible.

[A sannyasin, arriving, says: I want to have deeper relationships with people.]

The very expectation creates trouble. If you want deeper relationships you will never be natural. The hankering for the deeper will disturb your spontaneity. You will be trying and making every effort to make it deep. and it cannot be made deep by effort; efforts keep everything shallow.

You have to drop the very desire for deepening it. Enjoy it as it is, and then it deepens – not by desiring but by enjoying. So whatsoever is available in the moment, enjoy it! Even though it is not deeper, what is wrong in a shallow relationship?

It has its own beauty, it has its own freedom. A deeper relationship has its own problems, remember. One becomes more entangled, and to escape becomes more and more difficult; with a shallow relationship you can always escape!

So enjoy – when it is shallow, swim; and when it is deep, dive!

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