Chapter #27 Even Bein Gawd Ain T A Bed Of Roses #27

(To Hanny): Existence goes on pouring out its abundance -- not that we deserve it, but because it has to much and it has to shower it. It is just as a rain cloud has to shower -- whether the land needs it or not, that is not the question. The rain cloud is heavy, it has to unburden itself. So it is with God: he has aboundant energy, infinite love, grace. He has to shower. He is a rain cloud, and he has showered on everyone. It is he who breathes in us, it is he who lives in us.

To become aware of it is to be prayerful. Then there is no difference between prayer and meditation; then they are only two names for the same phenomenon. Let this kind of prayer happen to you, allow it to happen. Don't prevent it -- that's all that you can do. When it wants to become a flood, go with it, be drowned in it; don't resist.

Jesus says: Resist not evil... not even evil. But people are such that they resist even God! People exist through resistance. Their very lifestyle is of resistance, and prayer happens only to those who have learned the art of non-resistance. Don't fight -- let things happen and accept whatsoever happens joyfully, cheerfully, gratefully.

(TO MASSIMO): God is great -- not you, not me. Our minds think just the opposite: deep down everybody thinks himself to be great. One may say so, one may not. but it is written all over: in the eyes, on the face, the way people walk and sit. You cannot hide the ego; it goes on pulsating around you.

There are only two ways to live: either you live with this idea that"I am great" or you live with the idea that "God is great." To live with the idea that "I am great" is to live in misery, in conflict with others, because they also think the same about themselves. It is to live in struggle, in violence, in war. That's how man lives. That is the secret of creating hell on earth.

There is an Arabian parable that whenever God makes anybody and sends him on the earth, he whispers in his ears: "You are the greatest -- MASSIMO." He has been doing that to everybody -- it is a joke played on humanity. It is good that God has a sense of humor (LAUGHTER).. but people are foolish: they go on believing in it for the whole of their lives.

To be initiated into sannyas means that you drop that idea. From this moment God is great -- you are nobody, a nothingness. Efface yourself totally, be utterly absent, because that is the condition to make God present in you.

(To Hildegard): Rejoice, because God protects you. We are not unprotected, we are not insecure, we are rooted in the ultimate; God is our security, eternity is our home. Yes, we can lose things: we can lose money, we can lose power, we can lose prestige, because they are all worthless. But whatsoever is of worth -- love, prayer, meditation, compassion -- we cannot lose. Nobody can steal them, you cannot be robbed of them: God is always protecting us!

In fact this should be the definition: whatsoever can be lost is useless, is meaningless, because God does not protect it, does not think it worth protecting. What can never be lost is meaningful, significant, because God protects it.

Remember this and only pour your energies in the direction where significant things are, where real roses are blooming. They are protected by God. Only the unneccessary is not protected, only the rubbish is not protected; and because we go on gathering rubbish we are always feeling insecure, afraid. Even people like Alexander and Napeleon are very insecure, constantly afraid that they may lose. They have robbed others; now they are afraid that any day somebody is going to rob them.

But a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathrustra, do not in any way suffer from anxiety. It is impossible for them to be anxious, a tremendous trust has arisen in them. Existence itself is guarding them because whatsoever they have gained is something of the inner. It is impossible to destroy it; even death is impotent, even death cannot destroy it. Hence I say "Rejoice," because God is our protector, always and always. Each and every moment whatsoever is precious and worth protecting is protected, whatsoever is not worth protecting is not protected.

Don't become attached to the worthless otherwise you will be in misery. Live in the world of the eternal and then there is no misery, there is only joy!

(To Sumbanthan): There have been many saints but very few of them have been blissful. Almost ninety-nine point nine percent have been sad, serious people. Their sadness, their seriousness came from their wrong approach towards life. They were good people, they tried to be good, they tried to do good to others too, but they were not men of understanding. Their virtue was borrowed; it was not their own experience. They lived according to the dictates of others. They were imitators, and imitators always become sad because to be an imitator means not to be your own self-that creates sadness. You are always false: you do what you don't want to do and you don't do what you want to do. You are living somebody else's life; you are not living your own life. How can you be blissful? How can you feel joy? You are pseudo, phony. Joy belongs to the authentic.

So it is good to be a saint, but with the condition that you be blissful. Otherwise it is better to be a sinner and to be blissful. If sadness is a necessary condition for being a saint then I will say to forget all about sainthood; then it is pathological. Then it is better to be a sinner but to be blissfull -- because God loves the blissful. He is not sitting there and counting what you are doing and what you are not doing; your individual acts mean nothing.

Your TOTAl being means something -- who you are, not what you are doing. You may be chanting and worshipping God, but with sadness: your prayer is never going to reach him.

Unless your prayer has the wings of bliss it cannot fly to the unknown. It will remain crawling on the earth in the mud. The moment you are blissfull-you may not be praying; you may be simply cleaning the floor or watering the plants in the garden, but with a song in your being, joyfully, with a dance in your feet, a gratefulness surrounding you- your prayer is reaching God. Although you have not said it, it will be heard. Unsaid prayers are also heard and so many sad prayers are never heard. The question is not whether you say it or not; the question is how you live, who you are: sad, serious, a long face, or like a child, bouncing with joy.

My whole effort here is to create saint with a difference, a new kind of saint who can dance, sing, love, and live totally, who is not against life, who is all for life, for whom life is synonymous with God.

(TO HARVEY): We are fed with lies since the first day of our birth; with our mother's milk we are poisoned with lies. They become our second nature. That's why when one starts seeking and searching for truth a great struggle arises in one's being. One is going against the tradition, one is going against the society, against the conditioning, against all that one has believed in.

The search for truth means going against all your beliefs; only then can you search, seek. If you remain with your beliefs there is no possibility of ever discovering truth. And when truth starts happening the first taste is bound to be bitter -- not because truth in itself is bitter but because we are not accustomed to it, we are not familiar with it. Our whole mind is nourished on lies: political, religious, philosophical. Lies and lies and lies -- that's how we are made.

The coming of truth is shattering; it is like thunder, it is like lightning. And it is so new in the beginning, such a shock, that it feels bitter. But as one starts becoming acquainted with it one feels it is the sweetest thing in the world; it is nectar itself. But this is the irony: lies appear sweet and truth appears bitter.

Harvey is also the name of a blind poet of France. He was not only a poet but a mystic too. Sometimes it happens that what people with eyes miss, blind people find more easily... because our eyes are extrovert and our eyes take us outwards. Eighty percent of our energy goes out through our eyes. So it has happened many times in the past that a blind man has become awakened sooner, more easily awakened, than the people with eyes because eighty percent energy remains inside him and because he cannot look out he starts looking in. Hence blind people are very sensitive to sound. Because they cannot see their ears become their eyes.

There is a difference between the ears and the eyes: eyes are male, aggressive; ears are female, non-aggressive, passive. Ears simply receive. Eyes go on attacking; aggressiveness is their very role. Hence a blind man sometimes finds it easier to be feminine, to be earlike; and because his whole energy moves inwards he can come upon himself easily.

To be a meditator really means to be blind to the outside world for at least a few hours every day. To be a meditator means to become feminine for at least a few hours every day.

(To Dharmendra): To be a king of the ultimate law one has to learn the secret of surrender. One has to learn the art of meeting and merging with the whole: one has to lose one's identity.

We are brought up with the idea that we are separate, separate from the whole. Our whole education is centered on that point. It creates the ego, and the greater the ego is, the farther away we are from the ultimate law, the universal law. The more we become persons, personalities, the less is the possibility of being with the universal law. The universal law is what religious people call God. God is only a personified name for something impersonal.

One has to unlearn the art which we have been taught: to create the ego. One has to go in just the reverse gear, slowly slowly dropping the ego, the idea that "I am." One day it happens that you find yourself absolutely empty, and that is the moment when suddenly the revelation comes to you that "God is."

While you continue with the idea of I, God remains only a belief, a superstition -- that kind of God has no meaning. But when you come to inner emptiness and you see "I am not".... On one hand you see "I am not"... and immediately, instantly there is the revelation that "God is." Now God is mo more a belief, it is an experience.

By dropping your ego you become divine. It is through surrender that one conquers. That is the religious paradox: conquering through surrendering, gaining ultimate life by dying to the individual ego.