Waking / Watching Fingers Pointing To The Moon #4

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.]

Sannyas is a decision to wake up, whatsoever the risk. And whatsoever the cost. Once you have become absolutely decisive. It is not difficult. But it all depends on you.

I can help. I can show the way. But you have to follow it. The Buddhas can only show the way.

Sannyas is a deep, profound art of acting in the world. The world is a great drama, it is a vast stage, and you are only playing a role. There is no need to be serious about it. The role may be that of a beggar or that of an emperor; a role is a role -- it makes no difference what role you are playing. One knows that this is just acting, one never becomes identified with it. One plays it as efficiently as possible, but it does not create any worry. There is no anxiety.

Sannyas is not renunciation of the world but only renunciation of getting identified with the world. Don't get identified with anything. Keep your distance. go on doing whatsoever is needful. Whatever role god has placed you in, do it beautifully, joyously, but remember always: it is only a stage, and the moment the curtain falls all roles disappear and only pure consciousness remains.
If one can do that one has really become a sannyasin.

Meditation is the only method for inner illumination. Meditation is the only bridge to move you from darkness to light. Meditation is the only process to transform your life from mechanicalness into real life. And by meditation I simply mean awareness.

Learn to be more and more aware: aware of your body, aware of your mind, aware of your heart, aware of action, thought and feeling. These are the three dimensions to which awareness has to be brought. And when you are aware of all the three you will become aware of the fourth -- that is awareness itself. The fourth is the transcendence. The fourth leads you to god.

No awareness has two functions: one, it cuts you off from that which you are not, and secondly, it connects you to that which you really are.

Our real being is never born and never dies. Birth and death are only episodes in the eternity of life. Life is not confined between these two episodes. The idea that life means the span between birth and death has created great anxiety in man, because then life seems to be so short and there are so many desires to be fulfilled. It seems impossible that one can manage them. Failure seems to be absolutely inevitable. Whatsoever you do you are going to fail, and death is always hanging just in front of you, like a naked sword hanging by a thin thread. Any moment it can happen: just a breeze is enough and the sword will fall on you.

Hence the great hurry and speed and the great worry that 'I have to do things and live fast. Who knows whether tomorrow comes or not?' So people are running with such speed that they cannot see anything, they cannot taste anything. They have no time. They cannot enjoy anything; the shadow of death is always over them. They cannot relax, they cannot just sit silently.

And the greatest experiences happen when you relax, when you simply sit doing nothing, when you absolutely disappear in your rest. Then bliss happens, truth happens, god happens. All these thing have become almost impossible.

Modern man is living in such a hurry that he cannot sit, he cannot rest. He has become incapable of rest. And once you are incapable of rest you are incapable of all that is valuable. And the reality is that we need not be so worried about anything. Life is eternal. We have always been here and we always will be here; we are immortals. The body is going to change, the mind is going to change, but we are neither; neither the body nor the mind.

It is only in deep meditation that one discovers this simple fact, that we are not the body and the mind; we are awareness, consciousness. We are the witness of the whole game. Once you have known that witness you have tasted something of the nectar. This is the nectar alchemists were in search of.

Peace is not something that can be cultivated from the outside. Many people cultivate it from the outside, then they have a peaceful outside, but it is only an appearance. Deep down they are just the opposite, they are sitting on a volcano. It can erupt at any moment.

So, I am not in favor of cultivating peace as a facade. Peace should be an inner worth, not an outer cultivation; only then it is true, only then it is liberating. And the inner peace comes only as a by-product of meditation. You cannot achieve it directly; it is a consequence of meditation. The more meditative you become, the more peaceful. When the meditation is absolute, peace is absolute.

And by meditation I mean a state of no-mind. Mind is always unpeaceful, it exists in conflict. Mind is a kind of insanity; there is no sane mind as such. The sane person is one who has gone beyond mind, one who had a taste of no-mind, one who lives in no-mind and uses the mind as a servant or as a mechanism.

To live in the mind is to be insane, to go beyond mind is to be sane. And to be sane is to be peaceful. They are the same.

Meditate more and more. Meditation has to become the very foundation of sannyas. Whatsoever you are doing, do it meditatively, watchfully, alert, aware. Watch your body, watch your mind, watch your heart. These three watchfulnesses make the whole of meditation.

Actions have to be watched, thoughts have to be watched, feelings have to be watched. Just by watching, slowly slowly mind evaporates. And the day that mind is not found within you, peace is found. That day is of great benediction.

You have to create a peaceful state within. This is the work that you have to do upon yourself.

Usually man's inside is a constant conflict. It is an ongoing civil war. We have to disperse the whole crowd from inside -- the crowd of thoughts and desires and memories and imaginations -- so that we can know who we really are.

We are lost in this crowd, and this crowd is constantly fighting. The fight makes so much noise that one cannot enter into one's own being. The crowd can be dispersed very easily, and with the crowd all conflict disappear. The fundamental work is of being watchful.

Make it a point to watch whatsoever goes on inside you. Watch as much as you can, without any judgement. It is a simple watchfulness, no evaluation is implied. Then one starts feeling a miracle happening: watchfulness is so magical that it simply helps the crowd to disperse without making any effort to disperse it. The crowd starts escaping from you of it s own accord.

When you are left alone there is peace. That peace is the bridge between you and god. That peace will allow you to know yourself and also the whole existence, because man is a miniature universe. To know man in his totality is to know the whole existence.

Man lives either in pain or pleasure. He goes on moving like a pendulum, between pleasure and pain. Each pleasure brings its own pain, and each pain brings its own pleasure. They are not opposites, they are two sides of the same coin. The moment one becomes capable of seeing this -- that they are complementaries, not opposites -- one stops choosing. When you choose pleasure you have already chosen pain. Choose one and the other comes with it automatically, they are inseparable.

Seeing this one stops choosing. One becomes a choiceless witness. Then whatsoever comes one simply watches. One neither hankers for pleasure nor does one try to avoid pain. If pain comes one is a witness, one is not in a hurry to get rid of it. If pleasure comes one is a witness, one is not greedy to prolong it. In that understanding peace happens.

Peace is the flowering of choiceless awareness. And unless one knows what peace is, one knows nothing.

(To a five-year old) Become more and more silent. And it is easy to be silent when you are young. The older you grow, the more the mind collects word, knowledge, noise.

Children can be silent easily. So this is the right time for sannyas. Ans sannyas is nothing but the science of silence. So just sit silently, dance, sing, but remember one thing: deep inside one has to be utterly silent.

Yes, sometimes thoughts come. Watch them and they will go. They come and go -- there is no need to be worried about them. Yes, sometimes there is inner noise; just remember to watch. It comes and goes like a breeze and one remains untouched.

Slowly slowly the knack is learned. It is a knack. Once you have learned the knack you can be silent anywhere. Sitting in the marketplace one can be silent. The whole world may be in a turmoil but one can be silent. And that is the beauty of meditation, that it gives you a centering, a grounding. And in that silence one comes face to face with god.

There is a beauty which is not of the body -- and that is the true beauty because it cannot be taken away, it cannot be eroded by time, it cannot be destroyed by old age, it is not even affected by death. It is abiding, it is forever.

My whole interest is in helping you to find that beauty. And it is everybody's potential, it is hidden in everybody's being -- we have to discover it.

Put more energy into entering your own self. Whenever you have time just close your eyes and relax inside. Doing nothing, just slip inside, with no struggle, no conflict with the mind. Let the mind go on chattering -- remain unconcerned about it. It's okay, it has nothing to do with you. Don't fight with it, don't try first to make it silent, because that fight takes so much time and so much energy.

There is no need to waste that time and energy with the mind. Just tell the mind 'Please go on. Do whatsoever you want to do and let me do what I want to do, as if we are separate.' Start with that, that 'We are separate.' The mind is continuously chattering; let it chatter. It is traffic noise happening somewhere else. Then it is very easy to relax and rest in your being.

And as one starts quietening, as one becomes more and more still, one discovers the inner beauty. And to find it is to find all. To miss it is to miss all.

Man ordinarily lives like a robot. He goes on doing things but he is not there. He eats, he walks, he talks, he listens -- but he is not there. The mind is roaming all over the world: from the outside you may be sitting at the table taking your breakfast, but inside you may be on the moon... or any other stupid place. Not that one has to be on the moon -- there are so many stupid places in the world, one can be anywhere. But one thing is almost certain, that you are not at the table. It is just a routine, automatic; you go on stuffing.

You go for a walk; you don't look around, you don't see the green of the trees, the red of the trees, the gold of the trees. You don't see anything. You don't see the sun, you don't see the birds, you don't see the people passing by. What to say about others? There are people who may not have looked at their own wife for years or at their own husband or at their own children for years. Not that they don't live together; they live together, they sleep together, they make love, they go on producing children -- but all mechanically. Even while making love there are not two persons in bed, there may be many. The husband may be thinking of some other woman, the woman may be thinking of some other man -- so at least four are always there (laughter). And they are just going through empty movements.

People are saying hello to each other, "How are you?" and talking about the weather, but it is almost as if a kind of tape recording is inside them. They don't mean anything, they are not interested at all. It has to be said so it has to be said; it is just a mannerism, etiquette. And this is our life. There is no wonder if we go on missing the beauty of it.

To be a sannyasin means to start living in a totally different way. We have to de-automatize ourselves, we have to become a little more slowed down in every act. So you have to be aware. When you are walking, don't walk at the old pace, with the old speed; slow down, so much so that you have to be alert, otherwise you will gather your speed again. That is automatic.

Buddha insisted very much that his disciples walk very slowly, for the simple reason that if you walk very slowly you have to be constantly alert. The moment you lose track of alertness you start walking the old way, you go fast. The machine starts functioning again.

Buddha used to tell his disciples to breathe very slowly, for the simple reason that if you breathe very slowly you will have to be conscious about it.

So do everything very silently, very slowly, very peacefully, gracefully, so that each act becomes a deep meditation in awareness. If we can transform our acts into meditation, if meditation can be spread all over our lives, from morning to night... The moment you wake up, remember the first thing: get out of the bed, but be very alert.

You will forget many times in the beginning; remind yourself again and again. Slowly slowly one gets the knack of it. Once you have got the knack of how to be aware in your day-to-day life, you have the secret key. And that is the most important thing. There is nothing more valuable than that secret key.

Meditation brings fragrance because it helps your inner being to blossom. Meditation is like spring: thousands of flowers of your consciousness start blooming, all the buds open, your potential starts becoming actual. You are no more just a hope, you become a reality. You are no more just a dream, you become absolutely concrete. But it happens only through meditation -- and meditation means getting out of the mind.

Watch the mind so that you can start feeling you are separate from it. That's the whole secret: whenever you watch something you become separate from it. The watcher cannot be the watched. When you are the watcher and the mind is the watched, you have created the right distance. From that distance perspective happens. You can see things more clearly, you have a wider vision. All your prejudices and memories and thoughts and concepts are no more a hindrance. Then suddenly one starts feeling that one is opening up to one's ultimate flowering. Great fragrance happens to the man of a meditation, and great music and great poetry. His whole life is grace.

Remember two words: one is gravitation, the other is grace. Gravitation is the law of the earth, it pulls things down. Grace is the law of heaven, it pulls things up. Science discovered gravitation; religion discovered grace.

Ordinarily we are born and we live under the law of gravitation. Our whole life is a downward pull. We begin in birth and we end in death. We begin as fully alive and we end as a corpse. This is the downward flow.

Unless one starts moving inwards the grace, the second law, cannot function. If we remain identified with the body then the law of the earth prevails; the body is part of the earth. When we start moving inwards -- that's what meditation is all about -- we become aware of something which is not part of the body. It is in the body, it is not the body. The body is only a temple, it is not the deity.

Once you have become aware of the inner deity that resides in the body, the second law immediately starts functioning, you are pulled upwards. Life becomes more and more abundant, more and more rich, more and more infinite, more and more perfect. It moves towards the sky, it starts becoming as vast as the sky, even the sky is not the limit. But the secret is meditation.

Man is not only a man. He is a hidden god, a potential god. The god has to be discovered. It is not available there on the surface. One has to dig deep to find it. It is hiding in the deepest cave of your being, in your very heart. It is such a precious treasure that it has to be in the deepest cave. It can't be just available on the outside.

If you have a great treasure you will keep it in the most secret place of your house, in the innermost chamber. You may dig a hole in the earth and hide it there.

God is our treasure you will keep it in the most secret place of your house, in the innermost chamber. You may dig a hole in the earth and hide it there.

God is our treasure, it is our life, our love, our all and all. It can't be available on the surface. On the circumference we are only partially manifest; at the centre we are totally manifest. But people go on living at the circumference, worrying about money and power and prestige and all kinds of stupid things which don't really matter, which can't make you blissful.

The only possibility of being blissful is to discover your godhood, and the method is meditation. By meditation I mean watching your mind, simply watching your mind -- not doing anything, not interfering with the mind, not judging -- remaining absolutely silent and looking at the mind, whatsoever goes on: the traffic of thoughts, desires, memories -- aloof, cool, just looking at it unconcerned, detached. Slowly slowly that traffic disappears a window opens into god. You become aware of a godliness which was always there, within and without, but of which you were not aware. You were fast asleep.

Man can live in freedom only if he is meditative, otherwise not. Meditation is the source of all freedom. Without meditation you are a slave, a slave of your own instinct, a slave of your unconscious desires. You may think and believe that you are free, but you are not.

Somebody insults you and you become angry. Are you free to be angry or not to be angry? You are not free. He has simply pushed your button and you have behaved in a mechanical way. You are predictable. It was not within your capacity not to be angry. You see something and greed arises. You are not free, you can't do anything about this greed. Or lust arises and you are simply a victim of it.

It is only through meditation that slowly slowly more consciousness is created within you, more light is created; more watchfulness, witnessing, happens. And that is the miracle of awareness: if you become aware of anger you become a master of anger. Then it is up to you whether to be angry or not. You are absolutely free to be this way or that way.

To people who have not meditated may go on believing that they are free but they are deceiving nobody else except themselves. Be more meditative and you will know how to live in freedom. And of course, life is life only when you are able to live in freedom.

Nobody need be a failure. If we are failures it is for the simple reason that we go on looking for bliss and for truth in the outside world -- where they don't exist. Our search is right but the place where we are searching is wrong.We have to turn the same search inwards.

Religion is subjectivity. We have to get rid of the objective search, we have to become less concerned with objects and more concerned with our won interiority. Our fundamental question should be 'What is this that is within me? Who is this that lives within me, that I am? Who am I? Certainly I am not the body, certainly I am not the mind either because I can watch the mind, I can watch the body. The only thing I cannot watch is the watcher; hence only one thing is certain, that I must be the watcher, the witness, the awareness.'

You cannot go behind awareness. You can go behind the body, behind the mind, you can see the mind and its functioning. Anger comes and goes and thoughts pass and desires come and dreams pass -- and you can see the whole scene of the mind just as if you are watching a television screen. You can see your body: the stomach is hungry, your head has a headache, your legs have gone to sleep. You can watch all these things but you cannot watch the watcher. That is the only thing you cannot go behind. Everything else can become and object.

That which can become an object is not you. You can never be an object, you are always the subject, irreducibly the subject. Hence the real search is for this subjectivity. To know it is to be victorious, to know it is to know all that is worth knowing.

Man can exist in three ways: either like an animal or like a human being or like a god. Ordinarily people live like animals; there is not much difference. The only difference is that man is a worse animal than other animals, he can fall lower than any other animal. He is more cunning, more corrupt. He misuses his capacities. Rather than being creative he becomes destructive.

Adolf Hitler could have become a Buddha, he had the same potential. Judas could have been a Jesus, he had the same potential, the same energy. But energy is neutral; it depends on how you use it, how you decide and choose to use it. Life is your choice. You are free to choose, but you are not free not to choose; you will have to choose this way or that. Even choosing not to choose is a way of choosing. It is inevitable, you cannot avoid it.

The people who exist on the lowest level are the people who have not chosen... because choice means struggle, effort, it is an uphill task. It seems better not to choose and to remain as one is born. One is born as an animal. Very few become human beings. Humanity exists only in name, it has not yet arrived.

Only those people are human who have chosen, who have become decisive about their destiny, who have a sense of direction, who are creative, who are constantly discovering, exploring new ways of being and growth, who are not satisfied with the instinctive, who want to be intelligent in their lifestyles. They are human beings. And very few human beings rise to the ultimate, to be divine.

The only difference between the animal and the human is that the animal is absolutely unconscious, the human is a little bit conscious. And the only difference between the human and the divine is that the divine is absolutely conscious. Man exists between the two: the absolute unconsciousness of the animals and the absolute consciousness of the Buddhas, of the gods. One can either move downwards, fall back into darkness, or one can start climbing.

Sannyas means the decision, the ultimate decision and commitment, that 'Unless I achieve absolute awareness I am not going to rest.' Only in that ultimate awareness is true rest possible because true contentment is possible, true bliss is possible.

Ordinarily man is very cruel, more cruel than any other animal, more animalistic than any other animal. Man in his unconsciousness is far below the animal kingdom, because no animal kills its own species except man, no animal kills just for play. Amongst animals there are no hunters. They kill when they are hungry, otherwise not. Man kills just as a game. That seems to be the ultimate in cruelty; destroying life just to keep yourself occupied. But as you become more conscious of your cruelty, of your violence, gross and subtle, you start becoming more and more compassionate. Not that you cultivate compassion. Just by becoming aware of your cruelty, violence, ugliness... the very awareness brings new changes in you. And the energy that was involved in cruelty, in violence, starts changing. The same energy becomes purified, the same energy becomes compassion. No other animal is compassionate either. Hence man can fall below the animals and can rise above the gods. That is the beauty of man, his splendor, his glory; he has a vast spectrum, the whole universe is available to him. He can be the lowest and he can be the highest.

To be initiated into sannyas means becoming dedicated to the goal of the highest. It is a decision that "I will not rest content until I have reached the highest transformation."And if you decide totally, it starts happening. Nothing is missing except the decision, except decisiveness.

It is easy to rule the world, it is easy to rule others. The real problem is how to rule oneself. Others can be ruled through violence. Even a stupid, a very stupid person can do that. These people -- Genghis Khan, Tamerlane and Nadir Shah, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin -- are not very intelligent people. They are stupid people, the most stupid one can find in the whole of history. They could rule others because they were so stupid and insensitive that they could destroy easily, they could be violent and murderous very easily. But violence is not needed to rule oneself. Great love is needed, great intelligence is needed, understanding is needed, awareness is needed -- that's why it is difficult.

History is full of great kings and rulers, but history is not so full of great Buddhas, the awakened ones. The awakened ones can be counted on your fingers, for the simple reason that they moved in a direction where a radical transformation is needed: from unconsciousness to consciousness.

And that's the whole effort of sannyas: your unconsciousness has to be transformed into consciousness. When not a bit of unconsciousness remains inside, when you are full of light, you have become a master, a real master.

Atmo means the Self, the Self with a capital 'S' -- not a lower case 's' because the lower case 's' means the ego. With a capital 'S' I mean the supreme Self. It is another name of the god within you. And Dieter means a king, a ruler.

The moment you know your supreme Self you become an emperor. Before that one remains a beggar. Self-knowledge makes you aware of your kingdom for the first time. The kingdom is not of the outside. All outside kingdoms are false, they are sandcastles, or houses made of playing cards: at any moment they can disappear. Just a little breeze is enough to destroy them.

But there is another kingdom too, the kingdom of the within -- and that is the true kingdom, the true treasure. To know it is to possess it. The very knowing is its possession. It is ours, we have just forgotten about it. It is not lost, simply forgotten; hence religion is basically nothing but a remembrance. Meditation, prayer and all other techniques are just helpers to remember who you are.

The moment you have remembered, recognised your reality, you don't have any desires because all is fulfilled. All that you ever needed is already available. God has given it to you from the very beginning. God does not make beggars, he only makes emperors.

We have two words which are very different but which appear very similar. One is self-consciouses, the other is self-awareness. The meaning is exactly the same as far as language is concerned, but existentially there is a great difference. Self-consciousness is a disease. The emphasis is on the self. You become self-conscious only when you are nervous, afraid. If you suddenly have to go for an interview you become self-conscious, or if you are suddenly asked to deliver a lecture standing on a podium you become self-conscious. Facing so many people who are all focussing on you creates great trembling inside.

It is said that the mind starts functioning the moment the child is born till one day you stand on a podium to speak, then it stops. Then suddenly you don't know what is what. Suddenly all thoughts disappear. Those are the only moments you know of no-thought. But you miss them because you are so afraid and trembling and perspiring. That is self-consciousness.

Consciousness is not important, ego is important -- that's why you are trembling. You want to have a certain image; now you are afraid whether you will be able to manage it. Facing so many people you are afraid that if something goes wrong you will be exposed, that you are not so intelligent, that you are not the person that you pretend to be, that you are standing almost naked before eyes which are looking at you like -rays. You become very concerned about the ego, how to protect your ego. That is a kind of dis-ease.

Self-awareness is totally different. It has nothing to do with the ego. You have two selves. One is the false, the ego, which is only a belief. If you look deeply into it you will not find it anywhere. The other is your real self, your original face, your essential nature. To be aware of it is to be aware of the tremendous mystery that life is.

And the only door goes through you. You cannot approach that mystery from anywhere else because the closest thing to that mystery is your own being, your own heart. You have to enter from there.

Once you have known the mystery of life through your own being you will know it everywhere. Once you have known it within you will know it without too. But the first work has to be done in your inner world. A sannyasin has to become a lab, a great experiment. He is the experiment, he is the instrument of the experiment, he is the lab, he is everything because inside you there is nobody else, nothing else. You are all: the experimenter and the experimented upon and the experiment.

Once you start moving into the subjectivity of your inner world, of your interiority, you slowly slowly become acquainted with the miraculous. And to be acquainted with the miraculous is to know that which is worth knowing; otherwise one can go on accumulating knowledge which is worthless, which is simply junk.

Meditation is the process of achieving immortality. Meditation is the only alchemical secret. It transforms mortal beings into immortal beings. It transforms dust into the divine. Meditation is a bridge between the earth and the heaven.

And by meditation I don't means concentration. That has to be remembered. Concentration is a misunderstanding about meditation. Concentration is of the mind. It is tense, it is a strain. It needs great effort. It is violent, and I am against all violence, even violence against yourself.

By meditation I mean a relaxed awareness, a very restful awareness; no effort, no straining. Meditation does not mean focusing your mind, because whenever you try to focus the mind, tension is bound to arise because the mind naturally wants to flow. It is unnatural for the mind to force it to stay stuck somewhere. It does not want to be dormant, stagnant, it wants to move. It is movement, and nothing is wrong in its movement. Of course it is a little monkey-ish; it moves too much from one branch to another, from one tree to another -- and that is tiring.

But concentration is like when you force a child to sit in the corner of a room and be silent. Tell him to be silent, 'Be quiet, don't move,' and see what happens to him. He will force himself, he will close his eyes, his eyes will be clenched shut and he will be boiling within. He will be restless and he will want to jump out of himself. And that's what happens to people who try to concentrate.

Meditation is a non-focussed awareness. Meditation is more like a mirror: you simply watch whatsoever goes on happening in the mind. A thought comes, a thought arises, stays there for a time being, then moves, goes out, comes in from this door, goes out from another door; even another thought arises. There is a constant procession, a traffic of thoughts, desires, memories, imagination. And you are just a watcher, cool, unconcerned, indifferent.

That watchfulness is meditation. You are neither for any thought nor against any thought. You are not choosing anything, you are just in a state of choicelessness. You cannot be distracted. A man who concentrates can be distracted, will be distracted, by anything. The phone starts ringing and he is distracted; the neighbours put their radio on a higher volume and he is distracted. Everything is distracting.

But a man of awareness, a meditative person, is never distracted because he watches everything. He will watch the phone ringing, he will watch the child crying, he will watch the neighbours and their radio getting louder and louder. He has nothing to do with it. He is cool and calm and open from all sides. So whatsoever happens -- the train whistles, the aeroplane passes by or there is a distant call of the cuckoo -- everything is included.

Concentration means only one thing is included, everything else is excluded. Meditation means all is included, nothing is excluded; you are simply resting within yourself.

It is a knack. If you go on doing it, slowly slowly the knack is learned. And the moment you have learned the knack of meditation you are a new being. It is a new birth, the real birth, because in that very moment you know you are neither the body nor the mind, you are pure consciousness. In that very moment you know that this pure consciousness was before birth and is going to remain after death. It is immortal.

This is the discovery of immortality. And to discover immortality is to discover god, to discover immortality is to discover eternity. Otherwise everything is momentary, everything is passing by. We go on clinging to things but they will go out of our hands and then there is misery. When you know that you are eternal you don't cling to anything. And you understand; a great understanding arises that life is only like acting, playing a role in a drama. And that's what sannyas is all about.

Nothing has to be renounced, everything has to be understood. And the very understanding transforms you, helps you to transcend all that is ugly, miserable, dark.

Bodhicharya means the life of the awakened one, the behaviour of the awakened one, the character which comes when your consciousness is released.

That's the difference between morality and religion: morality tries to change your character without bothering about your consciousness; hence morality creates hypocrites. It only gives you a beautiful painted facade, but behind the facade you are the same ugly person.

Morality creates a kind of split in you. You remain unconscious within but on the surface you start acting as if you are conscious; that creates schizophrenia. Hence in a certain sense the whole humanity is schizophrenic. That's what morality has done to humanity.

Religion is totally different. Religion tries to transform your consciousness first. It makes you more and more alert, more and more aware, more and more silent, more and more watchful. And out of that watchfulness a new character starts emerging. Then there is a unity between the inner and outer, a great symphony. You are one, one piece. And that harmony between the within and the without is felt as bliss, as joy, as peace, and ultimately it is through that harmony that one experiences god.

Bodhicharya means character arising out of consciousness. I am against cultivating character. My whole effort here is to help you to be more conscious and then your consciousness will decide what you have to do, how you have to act.

I don't give you ten commandments, I give you only one commandment: Be aware -- and all else follows of its own accord.

When morality comes following you like a shadow, it has a beauty, tremendous beauty of its own.

Peace is possible in two ways. One is to cultivate it from the outside. But that is a false peace, it is only a mask. Deep down you go on boiling. You have repressed all your discontent, but it is there, it can explode any day. You have a painted face. You look sane but only on the surface, deep inside there is insanity. This is not the peace I teach, this is the peace that is being taught by the so-called organised religions.

They teach you to repress, they teach you to cultivate, they teach you to create a certain character through will. But anything that is achieved through will is achieved through the ego. It can't go very deep -- the ego itself is a very superficial phenomenon. It can give you a beautiful facade, that's all. People will think you are a saint, very holy, and because people think you are a saint you will also think that you are a saint; how can so many people be wrong about you? That is a mutual game people go on playing with each other, and it satisfied only your ego: you start feeling holier-than-thou. It feels good, but only on the surface; deep down you know you are sitting on a volcano.

But you can't talk about it, you can't say anything to anybody about it. That will expose you. So you live a double life, one on the surface, one inside. Every night in your dreams the inside erupts, that's why your dreams are all nightmares.

That's why psychologists enquire about your dreams, not about your waking hours: because your waking hours are false, pseudo. Your dreams are still truer because your priests have not been able to change them, they are far more authentic. This is very ironical, that dreams are far more authentic than your waking life. In fact it should be the other way round but it is not so.

The second way to attain peace is meditation: not cultivation of peace but awareness of your thoughts, awareness of what you are doing, thinking, feeling -- a three-dimensional awareness. One dimension is action, the second dimension is thought, the third dimension is feeling. All these three dimensions have to be watched silently, with no judgement. Slowly slowly a miracle starts happening: the more you watch, the less there is to watch. When your watchfulness becomes perfect, your mind stops completely, ceases completely. And in that cessation of the mind is peace.

Peace comes as a by-product of meditation; then it is true, then it is a bridge between you and god.

It is possible to cultivate a certain purity. That's what so-called religious people do: they cultivate character. Without becoming conscious they impose certain rules and regulations on their behaviour. They are behaviouristic. Pavlov and Skinner and company have discovered behaviourism just recently, but the saints have been behaviouristic for centuries. They just go on changing their behaviour: do this, don't do that. Rather than transforming the being they only cultivate the outside, they create a facade.

Georges Gurdjieff used to say to some people sometimes 'You have a beautiful facade.' That's what is respected by the society. People call someone a religious person, saintly, a mahatma, if he has a beautiful facade. The society is not concerned with more than that. You should have a beautiful facade, that's all. Who cares about your inner world? -- that is nobody's business. Your behaviour is good, that's all. Don't do anything wrong. If you are wrong in your inner world that is for you to worry about.

My whole concern here is to change you, not your behaviour... because the behaviour can easily be changed, very easily. That's what behaviourists are saying.

In Soviet russia they are trying and they have been successful... For example somebody wants to drop smoking -- it is so easy. There is no need to go on sermonising against smoking and writing on each packet that smoking is harmful to your health. All nonsense! Who reads it?

Simple methods can be used. A device can be used: the moment you smoke you get an electric shock, every time you smoke you get an electric shock. Within three days you will be finished with it; you will not smoke again. The same can be done with your sex; everybody can be made celibate. Then the moment you make love you get an electric shock. So all kinds of foolish things that have been done for years -- practising yoga and standing on your head -- are nothing but primitive methods of conditioning.

In a developed world with new technology these things can be done very easily. Just by giving electric shocks everybody can be made so afraid of sex that even to think about it will be enough to give them a shiver in the spine. That's what your so-called saints have been doing down the ages, making people afraid. Their methods were crude, ugly: creating fear because of hell and hell-fire. We can use quicker methods, speedier methods. But the person is not changed, the person remains as dark as ever.

I am not concerned much about what you do, my whole concern is what you are. My effort here is to change your interiority, your vision. And that happens only through meditation, that happens only through being more aware, more alert. When you are more alert, more conscious, a purity starts happening to you, and innocence starts flawing through you which is uncultivated, unconditioned, which is natural and spontaneous. That I call divine purity.

One does not become holy by cultivating a certain character. That is bogus holiness, that is only superficial, on the surface; deep down you remain the same. You will get respect, you will become very respectable. You will be known as a saint, a mahatma, but you will know that all that is only a pretension, a hypocrisy, because you have not changed even an inch.

One can cultivate a beautiful facade, but that does not make any inner revolution. The inner being changes only through meditation -- not by cultivating a character but by creating more consciousness.

So it is not a question of doing good and not doing bad; it is a question of becoming aware of whatsoever you are doing, good or bad. The emphasis is on awareness, not on goodness, because if you are aware you cannot do bad. It is impossible. To be aware and to be a sinner is impossible, just as it is impossible to be unaware and to be a saint; one can only pretend.

My sannyasin has to drop all pretensions, all hypocrisies, all facades, all masks. I am not giving you any ten commandments: Do this and don't do that. A single commandment is enough, the eleventh commandment -- that is, be aware. And then do whatsoever you want to do. Remain aware, and you will become holy, because you will become whole. Awareness heals, makes one whole. And to be whole is to be holy.

The real virtue arises out of meditation. The unreal virtue is a cultivated phenomenon and the unreal virtue is a conditioning of the society, of the parents, of the teachers, of the priests. The real virtue arises out of your own insight. So the most important thing is not to be virtuous, the most important thing is to be insightful so that you can see what is what, so that you can see what is right and what is wrong on your own, so that you have the capacity of discriminate. And that is possible only when your mind is completely silent, when there is no noise within.

Out of that silence arises clarity, and that clarity brings virtue. One need not bring it; it comes of its own accord. And when it comes of its own accord it has a beauty of its own.

Wisdom is a by-product of meditation. It does not come in any other way. It does not come through accumulating information. It comes only through the transformation that meditation brings to you. And meditation means a state of no-mind, a consciousness without content.

That's the goal of sannyas. We have to become more and more aware of thoughts, desires, imagination, memory, because this is the secret, that if you watch your mind, slowly slowly it evaporates -- just by watching. One day it happens that there is no mind; you are left absolutely alone, in solitude. There is nothing surrounding you, infinite nothingness.

You are fully aware, absolutely aware, but there is nothing to be aware of. You are pure light, but the light is not falling on any object; there is no object left. That is meditation or a state of no-mind. And wisdom is a by-product of it.

Bliss is possible only through the heart, through a generous heart, through a great heart. The head is very small. The head cannot contain bliss, it is too small for that big a phenomenon. It can contain misery perfectly well; misery is also a small thing -- but for bliss to happen you need something more spacious.

The heart knows no bounds. But very few people are aware of their heart, very rarely are people aware of the heart. They think that the blood-pumping system is their heart. Medical science has been a great blessing in many ways, but as far as the concept of the heart is concerned it has been a curse. The heart has disappeared. The heart that Buddha talked about, the heart that Jesus talked about, the heart that people like Lao Tzu and Zarathustra lived through, has disappeared. Instead there is just something physiological, just a blood-purifying system, a mechanism which can be changed, substituted by something plastic, by something synthetic.

This is not the heart of Jesus, of Buddha, of Kabir. They are talking of something else. By heart they don't mean lungs, they don't mean the breathing system. They mean something totally different. The heart is symbolic for them. It is a metaphor.

It is coming down from the world of thoughts into the world of no-thought, from mind to no-mind. It is a transformation from content to consciousness. It is a total change of gestalt. We are focussed on the contents. We go on being worried about thoughts, designs, memories -- these are contents.

Once we start looking not at the contents but at the one who is the watcher, once we start watching the watcher, once we start becoming aware of one who is aware within us, then we know what the heart is. Then we have moved beyond body-mind complex. Then we have something so vast that bliss can descend in it and dance in it. Then we can become a host to the ultimate guest, to god himself.

Discontentment is human, contentment is divine. Animals know neither contentment nor discontentment; they simply go on living mechanically, unconsciously. It is the great privilege of human being to be aware of discontent. To be aware of discontent means there is a possibility to grow towards contentment. But very few people make any effort towards inner growth. Their whole life is rooted in a misunderstanding.

They think that if they have a bigger house or more money or more power or more prestige they will be contented; that if they become famous, if their name is known all over the world, then they will be contented. That is sheer nonsense.

How can a bigger house make you contented? You will remain the same. The house can be small or big, it may be more comfortable; you will be comfortably discontented, that's all. In fact when you are in much discomfort you don't feel much discontent, because your whole energy is involved in fighting with discomforts. That's why poor people don't feel so much discontent. rich people feel discontent. richer countries are very restless, because they have all the comforts. Sitting on their comfortable sofas, what else do they have to do? They start thinking about their life situation -- what they are doing, where they are going, what is happening to them. And nothing is happening and they are going nowhere. A great discontent arises in them.

I am not against riches, not at all. I am all for riches because they help you to be aware of discontent. I am all for comfort so that you can think about the real problems of life. A man who is hungry thinks of bread. A man who is naked thinks of clothes, but a man who is well-fed, in fact perfectly fed up, starts thinking 'What is this life all about. What am I doing here? Why am I here at all?' He starts thinking about the meaning of life, and then a turning point is possible.

Nothing on the outside can ever make you contented. contentment is possible only through inner growth.

Inner growth can be helped in many ways. Down the ages meditation has been found to be the most essential part of inner growth because it helps you to cool down, it helps you to become more alert. It helps you to be more loving, it helps you to be more detached. It helps you to become clear about things. It gives you clarity, transparency. Slowly slowly you become a mirror and you start reflecting things as they are.

And the moment you start reflecting things as they are growth has started, you are no more the same person. Your consciousness is becoming richer, more intense, more alive. And it is only through that growth that one day you start touching the world of the divine. That is our ultimate goal, that's what we are all seeking. And unless it is achieved there is no bliss, no benediction, no meaning in life.

Meaning happens in life only when god enters you. When you become pregnant with god, only then is there meaning -- and great meaning and eternal meaning.

Man can exist on two levels, either on the level of passion or the level of compassion. Passion means a state of unconsciousness. Man is almost like an animal, just at the mercy of unconscious instincts, a victim of natural forces, not his own master. And when one lives in passion one has to live in jealousy, possessiveness, anger, hatred, greed; these are all part of passion. Passion exploits others, it sucks others; it is like a parasite. On the second plane, as you start rising into meditation, into awareness, into consciousness, the energy that is involved in passion starts changing into compassion. Just bring consciousness to all your passions and a miracle starts happening within you, a great alchemical change. That which was dust starts becoming divine, that which was useless, just rubbish, starts becoming golden. The night itself turns into day.

The whole secret is consciousness. Become more conscious of your anger, of your lust, of your greed, of your jealousy, of your possessiveness, of your violence and cruelty. Become aware of all that you are. Don't avoid anything, don't hide anything from yourself. Be utterly naked before yourself, because in that very nakedness the first glimpse of transformation happens.If one goes on avoiding something inside then the transformation is not possible. It is just like heating water, at one hundred degrees it evaporates, not before that. So unless you are totally naked before yourself transformation is not possible. That total nakedness creates a one-hundred-degree temperature and a quantum leap and a jump from the lowest to the highest, a sudden transformation from passion to compassion.

Compassion gives, shares. It is a giver. It gives for the sheer joy of giving, for no other reason. With compassion, anger, greed, jealousy, possessiveness, all disappear and different qualities appear: grace, love, prayer, intelligence, understanding.

The secret of transforming your energy from passion to compassion is hidden in the art of meditation. Become more aware, alert, watchful. Become less sleepy, more awake, and then the miracle happens.

We are carrying many poisons within ourselves. It is unconscious, because nobody can carry them consciously. If we become conscious we will immediately drop them. The moment you become aware that you are carrying something poisonous, you will not wait even for a single moment. You will not ask even how to drop it, you will drop it. There is no question of how, you will simply jump out of it.

It is as if a snake crosses the path -- you don't ask what to do, what not to do, because there is no time. You act immediately -- you jump out of the way. It is so dangerous that you cannot just sit there and philosophize that out of one hundred snakes ninety-seven are non-poisonous; so there are ninety-seven chances that this snake is non-poisonous -- why be afraid? Only three per cent of snakes -- which are very rare -- are poisonous.

People die not because the snake was poisonous but because it was a snake! That is enough to kill them. The fear kills, the idea kills. They become hypnotized by the very idea: "A snake -- I am gone!"You don't sit there and philosophize, because snakes are not philosophizers and they don't know what per cent is dangerous and what per cent is not dangerous. And they will not wait for you thinking, "Just wait. Let this man first decide what he wants." You act immediately.

We are full of jealousy, full of possessiveness, full of hatred, full of greed. These are all poisons, poisonous snakes. These are the snakes I am talking about -- the three per cent. When you see them clearly, you jump out of all this nonsense; in a single blow one cuts them out. It is not a question of deciding what to do, not a question of willpower -- "I will conquer my possessiveness." That is not the way. Your willpower is not going to function at all. It is simply a question of understanding, of awareness.

I don't teach willpower here. Willpower is a bogus thing. All these people -- Dale Carnegies and Napoleon Hills and these American philosophers who go on talking about how to grow rich through willpower, positive thinking, and how to win friends and influence people... are all talking nonsense. The only thing that man needs is awareness.
I teach awareness.

So here your whole work is to be more aware of all that is within you, that's all. As you become aware changes will happen automatically, naturally, spontaneously. And whenever a change happens spontaneously it has a beauty of its own.
-- How long will you be here?
-- Two weeks.
-- Come back again for a longer period. This is too American!

The greatest warrior has nothing to do with war. He has nothing to do with fighting others. He has something to do inside himself. And it is not a fight, although it brings victory; it is not a war, not a conflict. But one has to be a warrior because one has to be very alert just like a warrior. One has to be very watchful, very meditative, because if one is moving in the darkest continent in existence... Ultimately there is light, infinite light, but first one has to pass through a great dark night of the soul. There are all kinds of pitfalls, all possibilities of going astray and there are all kinds of inner enemies. They have not to be killed or destroyed; they have to be transformed, they have to be converted into friends. Anger has to be transformed into compassion, lust has to be transformed into love, and so on, so forth. So it is not a war, but certainly one needs to be a warrior.

That's how, in Japan, the whole world of the samurai, the warrior, came out of meditation and all kinds of martial arts became paths towards inner peace. Swordsmanship became one of the most meditative things in Japan. One has to be very alert because a single moment of unconsciousness, and you are finished.

The real swordsman becomes so alert that before the other person attacks him he knows. Before the thought of attack has even crossed the other's mind, he has prepared himself. He is ready. His watchfulness becomes so deep that he starts reading the thoughts of the other.

It is said that if two real samurais fight nobody can win. The fight can continue but nobody can win because both will be reading the other's mind. And before you can attack, the other is already there to defend.

Swordsmanship became one of the greatest sources of enlightenment. It seems strange, but Japan has done many really strange things. From tea drinking to swordsmanship, everything has been changed into meditation. In fact the whole of life can be transformed into meditation, because meditation simply means becoming more aware.

So go inwards and be more aware. One day victory is yours -- that is absolutely certain. You just have to fulfil the requirement: you have to be totally aware.

God cannot be proved. No argument is possible either for or against. But if one grows in consciousness one starts feeling god. As you grow in consciousness more and more, you become aware that things are disappearing; matter is disappearing, and instead of matter the universe starts appearing to be divine, to be consciousness.

It is a simple law: the world appears to be matter because you think of yourself as the body. Whatsoever you are, you will think the world is. If you think you are the body, the world is matter; there is no god. If you think you are a soul, if you experience yourself as consciousness, immediately the world is experienced as consciousness. The world is a mirror; whatsoever you are it reflects back. So you get only that which you deserve.

Become more conscious and the world becomes conscious with you. When you are at the peak of your consciousness the world disappears as matter, it is transformed into godliness. That is the ultimate experience of truth, of love, of bliss.

The sleeping person cannot be blissful. The unconscious person cannot be blissful. A great awakening is needed. And we are asleep. We are snoring. As far as our souls are concerned we are almost in a coma. We have to be shaken to the very roots. We have to be awakened. We are as if dead, we only appear to live. That is only an appearance. Deep down there is no life flowing, deep down there is nothing; hence everybody in some saner moments feels the meaninglessness of life. It is not the meaninglessness of life; it is because of our sleep that the life seems meaningless, otherwise life is meaning, life is significance, life is poetry, great poetry.

Hidden behind life is the great poet -- call him god or the universal soul or the supreme self -- but there is certainly a great artist behind. So much creativity is there and we don't feel any meaning. We are somehow cut off from the main current of life, as if we have become small islands and we are no more part of the vast continent. We have become dead weights.

Meditation is an effort to wake up. It is a process of alarm. So this has to become your central, your most important thing in life from now onwards. Nothing else is more important than meditation because that is the only way that you can be awakened. Nobody else can do it for you, only you can do it for yourself. So you have to learn how to be silent, how to be peaceful, how to be still, how to relax, how to disappear for few moments into nothingness.

Slowly slowly one becomes capable of going into nothingness and coming out, going in and coming out, just as you go into your house and come out of your house. That day when you can go into nothingness easily and can come out again into the ordinary world-work, do your things, earn your livelihood and whenever there is time close your eyes and disappear into nothingness, you have really become a sannyasin.

My sannyasin is not to renounce life. My sannyasin has to create a great synthesis between the sacred and the ordinary, between the inner and the outer. And where both these meet god is found. At the meeting point god is found the meeting point is god.

(To Svarupo)

Bliss is not an achievement, hence one cannot be ambitious for it. One cannot even desire it. To desire it is to miss it. It is already the case. We have it but we are oblivious of the fact. It is like a king who has fallen asleep and is dreaming that he has become a beggar and now is very worried about how to regain the kingdom, what to do, where to find the army, how to plan... there is no money, it seems almost impossible... and he does not want to remain a beggar either. He tosses and turns in his sleep but in the morning he wakes up and laughs at the whole dream. While he was dreaming that he was a beggar he was still the kind.

The dream cannot destroy the real. It can cover it, it can create a kind of fog around it, but it cannot destroy it.

That is our situation. Our nature is bliss, but we have fallen asleep, we are unconscious. We are dreaming a thousand and one things and we are desiring, planning how to attain things, how to be happy, how to be blissful. There is no question of how; no how is needed. You are already it. All that is needed is a little tossing and turning in your sleep so that you can wake up. A little effort to wake up is needed. Just remember it. Even remembrance takes one a long way.

You may have experiments or you may not have, but thousands of people have experimented and found it correct, that if you want to get up at five o'clock in the morning, just as you are falling asleep, repeat your own name three times and tell yourself 'Svarupo, you have to wake up at five. don't forget -- remember.' Say it three times and fall asleep. You will be surprised: at five o'clock exactly, your eyes open up. A certain undercurrent remained, it worked.

That's the whole function of a master: to create a certain undercurrent in you which can help you to wake up. So all kinds of devices are used. To give you a name is also a device. To give it a meaning is a device so that it becomes an undercurrent in you. Whenever anybody calls you Svarupo, something inside you will stir the memory that 'Bliss is my nature,' that 'I have not to seek it anywhere else,' that 'I have not to seek it at all,' that 'I have only to wake up.'

And this constant hammering can break the fog that surrounds us. It is only a fog. It is not very solid, it is not very substantial -- a very shadowy phenomenon. If one really intends to wake up, pulls oneself together, and gives a good shout, one will wake up.

Buddha used to call it the lion's roar. He said that nothing else is needed. Just pull yourself together and give a good shout, so piercing that it goes down your spine, reaches to the lowest chakra and stirs your whole being.

and the moment we are awake all miseries and all sufferings look so absurd, so foolish, so ridiculous that one wonders 'How did I suffer? And what was suffering? For how long I suffered -- and all was false. There was no substance in it; it was just an idea, a dream.'

Hence the mystics call our world an illusion, maya. Suffering is illusory, bliss is our true nature; remember it. And remember it again and again and again.

What else can a messenger from god bring to the world except bliss? Bliss is the only message. It is bliss that everybody is seeking -- knowingly, unknowingly, consciously, unconsciously, rightly, wrongly. But bliss is the only goal of all life.

But one can seek where it cannot be found. For example one can seek it outside oneself. That is an exercise in futility; nobody has ever found it there. All those who have found, have found it within themselves. One can seek it in money, in power, in prestige. One is seeking the right thing but in the wrong place.

One has to turn inwards. It has to be found not in money but in meditation, no in power but in peace, not in prestige but in becoming more and more aware, alert, watchful.

Sannyas has to be a turning point in your life. It is the beginning of a new chapter. Let this be the first lesson: turn in, make every effort to turn in, don't miss any opportunity. And we have made all possible opportunities available here. They are all devices to help you wake up. Wake up to your own being and then the greatest revolution in life happens. When your inner light burns bright you have arrived.

We are born as kings and queens. Because we are part of god we can't be otherwise. If we have become beggars, that is our own responsibility. We have forgotten our real nature, we have forgotten the very language to understand it; hence the whole misery, the poverty, the spiritual emptiness, meaninglessness. One can go on stuffing oneself with things -- that is not going to help. The more one feels stuffed with things, the more one feels empty, because no thing from the outside can fulfil your inner need, your interiority remains hollow. And that is where the wound is which hurts.

It can be changed, it can be healed. And the only way to heal it is meditation, because meditation is the language with which to commune with yourself. Meditation means silence. Meditation means a thoughtless awareness. Meditation means just absolute stillness, so that there is no distraction and you can settle into your own being, you can relax into your own being. The moment you relax into your own being, the first taste of richness, of immense richness, the first taste of your kingdom, the first taste of something that is beyond time, happens. And that is the point from which no return is possible. Then the whole past becomes meaningless, futile, a nightmare. But one is finished with it, one is fully awake and all those dreams are gone.
To be a sannyasin means to be committed to this goal of awakening.

The only misery in life is to be ignorant of one's own being. The moment you know who you ar all misery disappears -- just as the moment you bring light in, darkness disappears. Suddenly you are a king. Not only that, you come to know that you have always been a king. Even when you were thinking that you were not, you were a king. You had forgotten the treasure, the kingdom, but it still belonged to you; you were carrying it within yourself.

That's the whole purpose of all the Buddhas: to remind you that the kingdom of god is within you.

We are temples of truth. We are unaware, unconscious, but that makes no difference; truth is still there. We have fallen asleep but the truth is there. Any moment that you decide to wake up it is yours.

Truth is something that cannot be lost, there is no way to lose it. It is intrinsic to your being, it is not accidental. It is not a property that you can lose, purchase, borrow, or give to somebody else. It is your very existence, hence it cannot be borrowed and it cannot be given.

But that's what people go on doing: they think that by reading scriptures they will know the truth. You cannot borrow it from Jesus or Buddha or Krishna. They think 'Somebody will have compassion on us and he will liberate us,' so millions of people go on waiting for the saviour, for the messiah.

Nobody can liberate you, except yourself. And it is good that nobody can liberate you, because a liberation that comes from somebody else will not be much of a liberation. It will be a new kind of bondage.

This is something very basic to my approach, that one has to go into oneself, not into the scriptures, to know the truth. The real Bible is within you. It does not consist of words, it consists of wordless silence. You have to go very alertly because the deeper you go, the more is the temptation to fall asleep, because our consciousness is only on the surface. The deeper we go, the thicker are the layers of unconsciousness.

All the methods, all the devices called meditations, are nothing but strategies to keep you alert when there is every temptation to fall asleep. If one can go alertly to the very core of one's own being, one discovers the temple of god. And then one laughs at the whole joke that 'I was searching and searching everywhere for millions of lives, and god was hiding within me!'

We are part of the ultimate truth. We have not lost it - there is no way to lose it. That which can be lost is not truth. Even if you want to lose it you cannot lose it. But you can forget all about it.

So there are only two possibilities: either you forget or you remember. Sannyas means the beginning of remembrance. All the methods and meditations and therapies here are nothing but different ways to shake you up, to wake you up, to make a little alert so that you can remember who you are. The moment one knows 'Who am I?' life is a blessing, a benediction, a celebration.

The truth is not somewhere else. The truth is not there or then, the truth is now and here. The truth is within you, you are it. Hence the journey of sannyas is not of achievement but only of remembering. That for which we are searching we never lost in the first place, we have just forgotten it. Hence all that is needed is a little more alertness, awareness. That's what I call meditation.

It is through meditation that one recognises the truth of one's own being, and that is the truth of all. Lies are private, truth is universal. Your lie is yours, but your truth is not yours. Lies are many, truth is one. So the moment you recognise your truth, you have come home. You have recognized the very truth of the whole -- and that liberates.

Meditation is the only divine phenomenon. Meditation means getting out of the mind. One can use any device to get out of the mind. There are two basic devices: one is love, the other is awareness. And all other devices are part of these main alternatives.

But the essential thing is to get out of the mind so that you can know that 'I am neither the body nor the mind.' The moment it is known, all misery, all suffering, disappears like a dream -- one is awakened.
Asleep we are in the world, awakened we are in god.

Your name: Swami Buddha Hagen. Buddha means the awakened one. It has nothing to do especially with Gautam Siddharth; he is only one of the awakened ones. It is just like Christ, it is exactly equivalent to Christ. It has nothing to do with Jesus. Anybody can be a Christ and anybody can be a Buddha. The essence of both is the same: one has to become awakened.

Ordinarily man is unconscious. Just a very small part has become conscious, a very tiny part, very flickering. Any moment if there is any small incident you are unconscious. Somebody treads on your toes and you are unconscious; somebody hits you and you are unconscious; somebody insults you, looks at you with anger and you are unconscious; a beautiful woman passes by and you are unconscious. Your consciousness is not much, it is just a very peripheral phenomenon. Within, you are carrying a vast continent of unconsciousness. That has to be transformed.

When your whole being becomes conscious, when nothing can make you unconscious, when even in deep sleep the consciousness remains as a subtle background, as a back-drop, then one has come home. That is the meaning of Hagen; Hagen means home. If one is awakened one has come home. If one is not awakened one goes on wandering everywhere except towards home. Sannyas is a return journey home.

Hagen also means refuge and that too is beautiful: take refuge in awareness, take shelter in awareness. Let awareness become your home. Then there is no death, no misery, then one lives life in a totally different dimension; in the dimension of eternity. Then life is bliss, freedom, love, god.

We have the potential to be fully awakened. We may not actualise it -- that is responsibility. We have the seed and the soil and the climate and everything that is needed, but still you may not drop the seed into the soil. You may keep the seed, you may treasure it behind locked doors, in an iron safe. Then the potential will remain only a potential -- your life will remain only an opportunity unfulfilled.

That's why millions of people are in suffering. There is only one suffering I know of, and that is not to be that which you are capable of being. That is the only suffering in the world; all else is very minor, insignificant. The real suffering is to go on missing the opportunity to transform your potential into a reality.

Your name will remind you again and again that this is your potential. Unless you become a Buddha, an awakened one, life is going to remain a hell. Life is hell for everybody except the Buddhas. Only a few people know the paradise of life. Others are absolutely unaware of the splendour and the great blessings and the benediction that existence is.

We have forgotten who we are. All that is needed is remembering. We are not to search and seek, we have just to remember, because whatsoever we are, we are. Even if we have forgotten it, it is not destroyed. Even if we have forgotten, it is there.

The whole religious process is that of remembering. Buddha calls it right-mindfulness; Gurdjieff calls it self-remembering; Krishnamurti calls it awareness -- these are different names for the same thing. It is something we have known and have forgotten. It is just on the tip of the tongue; a little effort and it will become a reality, just a little effort.

Sannyas means that now you will make your life an effort to remember the reality of your being. In knowing it one becomes blissful, in knowing it one transcends death, in knowing it one knows god.

Let blindness be your past. It need not be continued. Everybody is born blind and everybody has the capacity not to be blind. Everybody is born blind because at birth we are bound to be unconscious, unaware. It is only through life and its experiences, good and bad, painful and blissful, that one slowly slowly wakes up. It is only through a rich life -- and by rich I mean a lived life... One who has been in the thick of life one day becomes capable of opening his eyes.

In that very moment one passes through a radical transformation. Then life is no more the same again. When you are with closed eyes all is dark. When you are with open eyes life is all colour, all light. God is the experience of existence with open eyes. Those who deny god are simply saying that they are blind. Not only are they blind, they are stubborn too. They are insisting that they are not blind but that there is no god.

Friedrich Nietzsche says god is dead. The reality is that Nietzsche is mad, that he is blind. If one keeps one's eyes closed, the sun may be there in the sky showering light but you live in darkness. Just a small curtain over your eyes is enough to prevent you from seeing the truth.

Sannyas is a deliberate effort to open your eyes. And it is time; you are ripe enough, mature enough. you have lived all kinds of games. It is easy now to get rid of them, it is very easy to slip out of them. As one grows old, if one is a little intelligent, a little alert, it becomes easier and easier to stop playing foolish games.

Life is the greatest teacher. It prepares everybody to take the ultimate jump from darkness into light. let sannyas be that ultimate jump.

We are made of light, the whole existence is made of light, and yet the very puzzling phenomenon is that we live in darkness. It is really unbelievable how we manage to live in darkness. It is a feat! It is almost as great a miracle as Jesus walking on water. We are all doing a great miracle, one even greater than that: we are made of light and yet we are living in darkness.

The reason is that we never watch ourselves. We watch everybody else, we go on looking here and there. Our eyes are constantly running from one object to another object, but they never become still and silent to have a little glimpse of our own being.

and just that little glimpse transforms, wakes you up. Sannyas is a deliberate effort to awaken, to come to know that 'I am light.' Then there is no death, then there is no limitation to you. Then you are unlimited, then you are freedom -- and the joy of freedom is infinite.

The lotus is the symbol of the ultimate unfolding of consciousness. It is the most beautiful flower in the East, the most fragrant, and it has become the symbol of ultimate awakening, ultimate awareness.

It has become the symbol for certain reasons. One is that it grows out of dirty mud. It is such a revolution -- to see the mud, and the lotus growing out of it -- it is unbelievable, it is a miracle. One cannot believe that such dirty mud can create such a beautiful flower.

Man in his unconsciousness is nothing but dirty mud. Seeing man, one cannot believe that Jesus or Buddha or Lao Tzu could have been possible. That's why so many people doubt the very existence, the historical existence of Jesus and Buddha and Lao Tzu and people like that. They doubt for the simple reason that all around they see a humanity which is nothing but dirty mud, and they see people throwing dirt on each other, enjoying mud-slinging. How can they believe that a man like Buddha really did happen? It seems improbable, it seems impossible, it seems only a myth -- maybe a wish-fulfillment, maybe a fictitious story to keep man's hopes alive. Their doubt has a reason in it, it is logical. These people seem to be so exceptional and they happen so rarely, only once in a while, but you come across dirty mud every day.

The experience of ordinary humanity is so bitter that one cannot believe that there was a man like Jesus who loved for no reason at all, whose love was just unmotivated, who loved for the sheer joy of loving, who died because he loved too much, who was ready to die for his love.

But it happens. That's why the lotus has become a symbol. If the dirty mud can produce a lotus, the dirty humanity can also produce a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra. And it is everybody's potential.

The second important thing about the lotus is that it grows out of dirty mud and floats in water. It is a water flower, but the miracle is that the water never touches its petals. Even if it rains there will be drops of water on the petals but they will be separate. You can see them resting like pearls. The lotus is so velvety that they don't touch it, it remains untouched; hence it has become the symbol of sannyas.

A sannyasin is a man who lives in the world but remains untouched by it, who remains with all kinds of unconscious people -- one has to remain with these people, there are no other kind -- but who remains untouched, unaffected. One remains absolutely still, restful, cool, as if nothing is happening anywhere. One remains in time and yet beyond time, in the world yet not of the world.