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‌CHAPTER 22

22 January 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, rito means the way – the way of love. There are two ways to reach to god: one is that of love, and the other is that of awareness. They are diametrically opposite to each other, but in the end they meet. In the beginning they are as far away from each other as possible, the distance is infinite in the beginning, but as one progresses, the distance becomes less and less. And the moment one has arrived, one is surprised: if one has followed the path of awareness, then at the moment of arrival, of fulfilment, love suddenly happens from nowhere. Or if one has followed the path of love, then in the final moment awareness arises from nowhere. In the world they are separate; in god they are one.

Love means completely forgetting yourself in the beloved. Its essence is forgetfulness, abandoning oneself, drowning oneself totally so that one is no more; only the beloved is. It is the path of annihilation, fana. The lover has to learn the art of dying, because only in death does the distance between the lover and the beloved disappear. When the ego is found no more, there is no separation left.

On the path of awareness just the opposite has to be followed: one has to become more and more mindful, aware; not to forget oneself but to remember oneself is the key. There is no question of the beloved. It is because of this that Buddhism and Jainism – two of the greatest religions which follow the path of awareness – have no idea of god. It looks very strange, religions without god, but it is not strange because their path is that of self remembering; the other is not needed.

So in the beginning both are polar opposites, but in the end the polar opposites meet. And in that meeting is great ecstasy, because all polarities disappear in that meeting; the world for the first time becomes one whole.

But you follow the path of love!

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Alvina means the friend of all. It is a Teutonic word, with tremendous beauty – because there is nothing higher than friendship in existence, it is the purest form of love. In love, some lust lurks; in love, something is expected, desired. Something remains mundane about love. Love crawls on the earth, it is gross; a part of it is of biology. But friendship is non-biological, friendship is not of the earth.

In friendship nothing is desired, expected; in friendship one simply gives for the sheer joy of giving.

Love is jealous, friendship is not. You cannot have more than one lover, otherwise you will be in difficulty; but you can have as many friends as possible. Unless love also rises higher and becomes friendship, the world will remain ugly. Unless man drops jealousy from love, love will not bring bliss. It brings, on the contrary, much more misery. It gives great hopes of joy, but because of that jealousy they cannot be fulfilled. The jealous part is always possessive; it is afraid. Out of fear, possessiveness arises; out of fear, clinging arises; out of fear, domination arises – and whenever we dominate someone, we reduce him to a thing. Whenever we dominate someone, he starts dominating us; it is a mutual phenomenon. You cannot make anyone a slave without becoming a slave yourself.

But friendship knows nothing of slavery, it knows nothing of possessiveness, it knows nothing of jealousy. It is the purest form of love. All that was ugly has been dropped, all that was gross has been dropped.

Love is like a flower; friendship, like fragrance. That is the meaning of your name.

Prem means love, john is a Hebrew word; it means a gracious gift of Jehovah, a gracious gift of god. Your full name will mean: love, the gracious gift of god.

Love is the most precious gift of god, because love contains the whole spectrum of life – from the lowest to the highest, from sex to prayer, from body to soul, from earth to heaven. Love is the ladder. It is resting on the earth in the lowest mud, but the other end of it is resting in god, in the very heart of god. If one goes on following love, purifying it, maturing it, integrating it, then no other religion is needed. Love is enough unto itself: it will take you to the farthest shore.

The only thing to be remembered is that love should not become entangled anywhere. You should not fall in love with a rung of the ladder. Be in love with the ladder but don’t fall in love with any rung, otherwise you will start clinging. And the moment you cling, growth stops. Then time passes but growth doesn’t happen.

To grow old is not to grow up. To grow old is simple; everything grows old, no intelligence is needed for that. Trees grow old and rocks grow old and animals grow old, and man too. But to grow up is a totally different phenomenon; only a few people grow up. And what is the difference? The difference is: if you cling somewhere, then you simply grow old; deep down you remain immature.

The mental age, the average mental age, of human beings is not more than twelve years. That is a very ugly situation – a man of eighty carrying the mind of a twelve-year-old. Since that age he has stopped growing – he must be clinging to some rung of the ladder, still childish in his approach towards life, still thinking of god as a father. He is still thinking of toys, of having this, having that

– maybe bigger toys, but toys are toys. He is still interested in an immature life. He is possessive, jealous; he has not grown up.

Just as the eighty-year-old person can remain clinging to a twelve-year-old mind, the vice versa is also true: a boy who is twelve years of age may have the maturity of an eighty-year-old person.

Somebody asked Emerson ‘How old are you?’ He said ‘Three hundred and sixty years.’ The man could not believe it. He could not believe that Emerson could lie, yet he could not believe that he was three hundred and sixty years old either; he looked sixty at the most.

He said ‘Pardon me. I couldn’t hear you.’ Emerson repeated loudly ‘Three hundred and sixty years, that’s what my age is.’ And the man said ‘But either you are joking with me or you have gone mad. You don’t look more than sixty.’

Emerson said ‘That is true – I look sixty, physically I am sixty. But I have lived so intensely, that it is six times more. That’s why I count my age as being three hundred and sixty – that’s my psychological age.’

That’s a possibility. Then what will the age of a Buddha be? It must be eternity; you cannot measure it.

The moment you cling to any rung of the ladder, you remain there. Your body will go on moving, but your mind will go on clinging there. This is a very ugly state of affairs, because then you remain backwards and life moves forwards. You go on looking in the rear-view mirror: the car is going ahead but you go on continuously looking in the rear-view mirror. Accidents are certain; if they don’t happen, that will be an accident. That’s why millions of people are living in such hell.

Look ahead, go on searching for the higher rung of the ladder, and never be satisfied with any rung. We have to transcend the whole ladder one day. We have to know all possibilities, all realms, all layers, all dimensions of love, and one day we have to transcend them.

Only when one has left the ladder of love behind does god become available. It is through love, and through going beyond love, that god is achieved.

Anand means bliss, nana is a Hebrew word; it means grace. Blissful grace – that will be the full meaning. Grace is a by-product of blissfulness. The blissful person necessarily becomes beautiful, and has a beauty not only of the body, but a beauty that is deeper than the body and higher than the body. It is a beauty that follows the blissful man like a shadow, that surrounds him like an aura, that radiates from his being to the outermost circumference of his body.

The blissful person lives like a lit candle. He is luminous, and that luminosity is felt by others as grace, as elegance. Only bliss gives beauty. You can find so-called beautiful people in the world, but they are only formally beautiful. Their form is proportionate, symmetrical, but behind the form you will find ugly creatures, all kinds of ugly creatures, hiding – snakes and scorpions and crocodiles and all kinds of people. The form can deceive only for the moment – but people can only see the form, they cannot see the spirit. Hence the misery, the tragedy of love. People fall in love with the form, hoping that the inside will also be beautiful. But that hope is rarely fulfilled. very rarely; it is such an exception that it simply proves the rule and nothing else.

The tragedy is that sooner or later you have to encounter the inner reality of the person – and when you face those crocodiles and those scorpions and those spiders and those snakes, love is shattered. You feel cheated, deceived, betrayed. But nobody has betrayed you, nobody has cheated you; it is just that you were not able to see beyond the form. You were not yet sensitive enough to see the real beauty, you were not capable of knowing what grace is.

The graceful person is one whose form and spirit are in a synchronicity, whose outer and inner are in a deep accord. That is the meaning of grace – one who is a melody. The inner and the outer are not split; they are dancing hand in hand, they are in a rhythm. That rhythm is grace.

I would like my sannyasins to be really beautiful, graceful, harmonious, rhythmic. To be rhythmic is to be ready for god, because he can descend only when you are ready to receive him in your inner harmony. He cannot come to you when you are noisy and in conflict, split, fragmentary. When you are whole, one, a silence pervades you and a deep joy permeates your being, when each act and each gesture is that of grace, then he has to come.

Whenever one is ready, immediately god starts happening.

Prem means love, manu means man – man of love. And this is some change, from Herman to man of love!

Love really makes you a man. Without love we only appear human but we are not; and the appearance is not of much significance. Up to now, humanity has lived in such a way that we talk about peace and we talk about love and we talk about brotherhood, and all we do is fight, kill, murder, destroy. We have not yet been able to create the real human being who will love, who will create, who will dance, who will celebrate.

This is such a precious life, and the whole thing seems to be pathological – just to use it to destroy! We could have made this earth paradise, gods would have become jealous of this earth; but what we have done has made even people in hell afraid to be born on earth. We are doing his work so efficiently here that the Devil always seems to be out of date. We always go on inventing more tortures, we go on becoming more murderous.

Now something decisive has to be done about it. Up to now it was possible to go on fighting because only a part of humanity used to die in it; now we are coming closer to a total war. If we have to survive at all. war has to disappear from the earth. Otherwise this war will be the last war– not the third but the last – because there will be no humanity left to fight again. We have really become very sophisticated in committing suicide and murder. Our technology has released such dangerous powers and we have not yet become conscious enough to use this great technology in the right way, in the right direction. Our technology is proving to be almost like a sword in the hand of a child: either he is going to hurt somebody else or himself. It will be just an impossible chance that he does not hurt anybody or himself. This is the situation: we are sitting on a volcano.

To become a sannyasin means to change the direction from violence to love, from war to peace. To be a sannyasin means that now we declare that the earth is one, that humanity is one, that all barriers are false and arbitrary, that neither colour nor church nor nation has any value. Life has value, music has value, poetry has value, but not weapons, atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, not

politics but poetry. We have to create a new kind of human being who is in tremendous love with life and creativity. That’s what sannyas is all about.

[A sannyasin, who is leaving, says: What more have I got to do?]

You have not done anything. More is not the question: you have not even begun. You are under the wrong impression that you have done much; you are still outside the gate. It depends on you: the gate is open, but you don’t come in.

You have to learn a little love, a little trust, a little surrender, then things start happening. You believe in yourself too much, that’s your problem. You believe in your intellect too much, that’s the problem. Your doubts are killing you, but you don’t see the point, that they are poisonous.

If they are giving you some joy then keep them, but if they are not giving you any joy then why go on carrying them? Then try trust too, just for a change. Who knows? You have tried doubting, you have tried intellect, you have tried thinking, and it has not helped. It cannot help; in the very nature of things it cannot help.

If you want to become a scientist it can be of much help, but that is a totally different life. That will not change you; that will not make you more blissful, more loving, more alive. But if you want to be more loving, more alive, if you want to dive deep into the mysteries of life, then doubts won’t help.

You will have to drop those doubts, and you have not yet done that. Even your question ‘What more have I to do?’ is coming out of your doubts and your so-called intellect; it is not out of your heart, it is not out of your helplessness.

It does not have the taste of your tears in it, but something of your anger – and that will never help you. So you have to reconsider your whole programme; only then can you drop it.

I cannot snatch it away from you, because I never interfere in anybody’s freedom. If you want to carry it, carry it, by all means. I am not saying to drop it: I am simply stating a fact, that it will not make you a happy being, it will not make you a silent being, it will not make you available to the mysteries of existence. It will keep you close – but if you choose to remain closed, that’s your choice, and with all my blessings follow your own way. I will not interfere; that is not my approach. I never interfere. I simply make things plain to you, then it is your choice.

I don’t expect you to choose according to me, either. There is no expectation, that’s why nobody can frustrate mc. If somebody takes sannyas I am happy. If somebody grows I am happy, and if somebody remains stuck I am happy. I don’t become miserable. If I become miserable about each sannyasin it will be difficult to live even for a single moment. I simply go on making things clear to you; at the most I give you clarity, but no directions to be followed. I don’t give you any orders and commandments.

So this is the clarity that I would like to share with you. If you decide that your intellect is so precious that you cannot drop it, then follow it! Go the whole way with it. Who knows? Only by going the whole way will you turn back one day. But right now your efforts are very half-hearted; you go on doing things and still somewhere deep down you go on doubting me. This is creating a contradiction

in your being, and a kind of tension is arising. Either trust or doubt. Don’t mix trust and doubt, otherwise you will become a mess – and you are already one, so there is no need to become more.

So ponder over it. There is not much to be done: a single step in trust, and things will start happening. But a single step of trust is the greatest and the most arduous journey; the single step, from doubt to trust, is so big. But one day or other, one has to take it, because doubt can promise but it never delivers the goods. It only promises, and it is very very clever in promising. Trust never promises, but once you enter into it, all that you have always desired and dreamt starts being fulfilled.

So contemplate over it, meditate over it, and next time you come, come with a decision, mm? Keep it (a box) with you. Help my people there. Good.

[A sannyasin says she would like to come down from her head.] Would you like to do a few groups?...

First take body work, individual sessions, Postural Integration. Then do these groups: first, Let-go, second, Urja, and third, Leela.

And after Leela, if you still have your head, remind me!

[A sannyasin said he had arranged to live here permanently, but is unsure whether to go with a new girlfriend who is leaving and does not want to stay here with him.]

In fact she wrote me that she feels that the relationship with you is a hell; she is very much afraid of you. So don’t follow her – that will be a torture. If she does not want to stay with you here, then it is better to forget all about it. And if you forget all about it she may decide to stay.

You are after her too much; that is frightening. She is afraid of you, and it is not good to make somebody who loves you so frightened of you. Fear is poison, it kills love. And it seems that you are too possessive; it seems that you are more interested in possessing her than in loving her. To be possessive is murderous; it is not only murderous towards her, it is suicidal towards yourself.

Give her freedom and don’t make a prison around her. If she starts feeling free, if she is not afraid of you, she may decide to stay with you. Or even if she goes, let her think to come to you; that will be far better. If she goes and she invites you to come with her, that too is beautiful; then you can go. But right now she wants to escape from you.I received the letter two days before. So, that

doesn’t matter – after two days she may feel the same again. If she is feeling good, that’s very good. Relax, give her freedom, don’t haunt her, don’t go on like a spy, don’t suffocate her; then whatsoever happens is good. If she feels to stay here, she can stay with you; or if she invites you, only then should you go. But if she wants to escape and you follow her, that is ugly and it is not going to help.

[The sannyasin answers: She wants me to go with her.]

So please go! I don’t want anybody here who is half-hearted; I am not interested. Please go: be kind to me and go. When it is finished, you can come back. If it is not finished, remain there.

I don’t want to create any conflict in your mind, and I don’t want to become an alternative to you – this way or that. If you are to be totally here with me, then only is it meaningful. Otherwise if some girl is more important, just go, mm? and within a few weeks it will be finished.

These are accidental affairs, nothing of love. You meet a girl in a group and something starts going on. She will meet somebody else there in a group, and that’s what you are afraid of. You are afraid that she will go back... and she will meet somebody, because she will not just sit there and wait for you; in some other group she will meet somebody else. So the fear is there that she may escape from your hands. So follow her. But that is a sure way to destroy any relationship.

These are my suggestions: give her full freedom, don’t be very possessive. And if you feel divided, then go. Even if you want to be ninety percent here and ten percent there, go. Even that is not good. I would not like you to suffer unnecessarily, because I am not here to make you suffer. I am not an ascetic and I don’t want anybody to be an ascetic. I don’t enjoy any kind of masochism or sadism. Why should I want you to suffer? Go – this is very simple. Be with her there for as long as it continues; it is good. If you meet somebody else, very good. When you are finished with all these games, then I am here. But the game that you play with me has to be the ultimate game; it is not in competition with your other games.

So... simply go, and with no worry, because I am always here, mm? If the girl goes, who knows? – you can trust me but you cannot trust the girl. So go with her! You are always welcome back; whenever you come, you are welcome.

When is she leaving – soon?

[The sannyasin says: I was thinking about staying one or two months longer here alone.] But then what is the guarantee she will be waiting for you there? There is no guarantee.

Whatsoever feels good, do; there is no problem. All that I say is, don’t create problems. If you feel good staying two months more, stay two months more, do a few groups. Then whatsoever you feel or whatsoever situation arises, act accordingly.

[A sannyasin says she is concerned that she wants to do her own thing instead of looking after her two-year-old daughter, who is at present staying with friends near the ashram.]

Good. Don’t be worried. Two and a half is... she is perfectly grown up. There is no need to be [protective]. Our sannyasin kids are so strong that even their parents need protection against them! Don’t be worried – just by being with sannyasin kids, she will become strong. Soon you will need protection! Good!

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