Chapter #29 Scriptures In Silence And Sermons In Stones #29

[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been scanned and clearned up. It is for reference purposes only.]

Love is a song, because basically it is an uprising in the heart, it is an explosion of feeling, it is sensitivity to beauty. And to be sensitive to beauty is to be available to joy. That's the only window through which joy comes in.

Joy cannot enter into a being without love. Many have tried -- millions in fact, down the ages. All the monasteries have been full of such people. They have tried to be joyful without love. It was a great experiment but it failed. It was bound to fail: their joy was phony, a pretension, their smile remained just a painted smile, there was no soul in it because the window was closed. They were not available to existence, they were closed, they were living a closed life. And when you are closed you are sad, sad deep down.

Bliss happens only when you are open, multitdimensionally, on all planes of being, on all levels. When you are open to all the possibilities then life is a constant surprise, a constant jubilation.

My sannyas is a totally new experiment in the world of religion. It is against the old experiment. They tried to be blissful without love, and they failed. Now the only hope is to try to be blissful with love, through love. It is not going to fail, it can't fail: it is a natural process. They were trying something unnatural.

Religion has not succeeded in the world because it was not in tune with nature, not in tune with tao, dhamma.

Love is divine. Lust is animal, love is divine -- and man hangs between the two. Whatsoever he knows as love is a mixture of lust and love: something of the animal and something of the divine. Hence man remains very confused about love, about what exactly it is. If you want to condemn it you can condemn it; then you can magnify the animal part -- that's what the priests have been doing down the ages. If you want to glorify it you can; you can magnify the divine part -- that's what the poets have been doing down the ages. The poets and the priests have been enemies. They have never agreed on anything. Priests have always been afraid of the poets. They have always thought them dangerous because while they condemn love as lust, as sexuality, poets praise love as divine, as godly, as all that is beautiful, all that is uplifting, transforming. The conflict has persisted. Both are partly right; and a partial truth is more dangerous than an absolute lie.

My effort here is to make you aware that love can manifest in both ways: as lust, as animal desire -- then it is possessiveness, jealousy, then it is a subtle effort to dominate the other, exploit the other; or it can express itself as divine -- then it is pure fragrance, prayer. One has to be very aware not to get these two things mixed. And one has to constantly move onwards so that the animal is left behind.

Slowly slowly a point comes, a point of no-return, from where the animal disappears, it does not follow you any more. That is the moment of samadhi, satori, enlightenment. Then all that you are is purely divine, godly. But love is the door, love is the enorgy to be transformed. Love is the only energy available to man. Through it you can fall, through it you can rise. It is like a staircase: you can go downwards, you can go upwards. The same staircase can be used in both possible ways; it depends on you how you use it. Love is a great art. The art consists in dropping the animal more and more and evolving divine consciousness in your being.

Oriana is a beautiful word, with three meanings. The first meaning is risen. Bliss has risen. That's what initiation is: the beginning of a great pilgrimage, the sunrise. The second meaning is golden. Of coursewhen bliss rises everything turns into gold, the whole existence becomes golden. All matter as such disappears, only god remains. And the third meaning is sunrise, dawn, just those few moments before the dawn when the birds start singing and the flowers start opening and the earth prepares itself to receive the sun and the east becomes orange. There is great joy because the sun is rising again: another beautiful day, another opportunity to live, to breathe, to be.

Sannyas is exactly all these three things: it is a rising bliss, it is a dawn, a dawn of light, and it is golden. It is the art of transforming baser metals into gold, it is alchemy.

Life can be understood in two ways: either through mathematics or through music.

Through mathematics you will know only the periphery of it because mathematics can know only that which can be measured, calculated. It can know only the quantitative part of life. The quality cannot be caught hold of by mathematics. It is only through music that you come to know the quality -- the unweighable, the immeasurable, the inexpressible.

Music is meditation; and my path is that of music. It has nothing to do with calculation. It is the way of the gambler, not of the businessman. It is the way of risking totally, risking that which you have for that which may be, may not be. Hence it attracts only the adventurous, it is only for those chosen few. But they are the salt of the earth!

The cloud symbolises freedom, absolute freedom. It is not tethered to anything, it simply floats. It has no destiny either, because that too is a subtle slavery. It is not in any hurry to reach anywhere; there is nowhere to reach. So wherever it is it is totally there -- no future, no achieving mind, no desire, no ambition, just being here and now -- that's its absolute freedom.

A sannyasin has to be like a cloud: tethered to nothing, going nowhere, having no projected future, living in the moment for the moment, enjoying the moment in its totality as if this were the last, living it in utter intensity. Then god is so closely felt, so deeply experienced that one need not have any proof for god, one's own experience becomes the proof.

And all other proofs are just childish. No proof is of any significance except your own experience.

Be a cloud and you will be able to know god and you will be able to know all that is worth knowing. And the moment you are not trying to achieve anything, you will achieve all. That's the ultimate paradox of existence: it is available to those who are not desirous of it.

Surrender yourself to existence. Don't fight it. All fighting is futile and ultimately frustrating. If you want to win, donlt fight; if you want to lose then fighting is the sure way. All tho fighters are losers. The winners are those who are ready to surrender.

Surrender to existence. We are not separate from it. How can we fight the whole? -- we are part of it, an intrinsic part of it. We are just like drops in the ocean. The very idea of fighting the ocean is so utterly stupid. But man lives in that stupid way. We are brought up in that stupid way: we are taught, educated, in such a way that the idea that we are separate egos becomes deeply engrained in us. And the ego is the greatest myth there is.

Sannyas does not mean renouncing the world but it certainly means renouncing the myth of the ego. The moment the ego is renounced godis yours. In fact it has always been yours, but because of the ego you were not able to recognise the reality of it.

Peace is something on the circumference and silence is something at the centre. A man can be very peaceful but may not be silent. And vice versa: a man may be silent but may not be peaceful. But the person who is peaceful and is not silent is not a total personality, he is only half-grown. He has a beautiful circumference but the centre is in turmoil. And the person who is silent at the centre but not peaceful on the periphery is also half, he is not whole. He has a beautiful interior but the outer expression of his being does not correspond with it.

A sannyasin has to be whole, because to be whole is to be holy. He has to be peaceful on the circumference and silent at the centre. When silence and poace both meet, great bliss arises, and in that meeting you become one, integrated, bridged, all split disappears. That disappearance of divisions, splits, fragments, that becoming one, one piece, is the greatest achievement in life, because everything significant can happen only after it.

George Gurdjieff used to call it crystallization; that's exactly the right word. When your centre and your circumference become crystallized, when they function as one unity in deep harmony and accord, your life has joy, grace, beauty. And these are the qualities which are needed before one can attempt to know god.

Everyone is a manifestation of god. In the tree god has become the tree, in the rock god has become the rock. All that is, is god. This has to be remembered. me mind does not want to remember it becauseto remember it means that the mind cannot play its games any more. Then with whom to fight? Of whom to be jealous? With whom to be angry? With whom to be inimical? If all is god, if all forms are god's, then the mind simply has to disappear; it can't function, it can't go on in the old way. Hence the mind tries to create a fog around you so that you can't see that which is.

We have to dispel the fog and to go on remembering as deeply as possible that all is divine. In the beginning one tends to forget again and again. But slowly slowly the remembrance becomes deeper, and one day there is no need to remember: it i9 simply there, you know it. That day is a day of great celebration. One is born anew.

So this is going to be the key for you to work upon, this is your work: remember that all forms are god's forms.

Premdeva means god is love or, love is god.

The second is far better than the first. When we say god is love it is possible that he may be many more things too. But when we say love is god, then god is only love, there is nothing else. Then there is only one quality which becomes supreme. Then love is not one of the attributes of god but his very soul.

And that's my message: love is the very soul of god. If you can understand love you will be able to understand god; if you can live love you will be able to live god.

Being a sannyasin means taking a jump into the world of love, a quantum leap from the world of mundane things: money, power, prestige. Jumpirg into the world of love means a tremendous change, a radical change, because love has no concern with the mundane things, with ordinary things, with trivia. Love is certainly concerned with the highest values of life: with poetry, with beauty, with music, with painting, with life, with death. Love's concerns are of the ultimate. It is love that opens the door for the ultimate. And if one allows oneself to be possessed by love then nothing else is needed. Love does the work for you: it consumes all that is meaningless in you. It is a fire that purifies, and out of it comes pure gold.