---
section: Library
booktitle: "Fingers Pointing to the Moon"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "POINT"
dategiven: "03 March 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #2"
chaptertitle: "Doing"
acode: "8003035"
shorttitle: "POINT02"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "Fingers Pointing to the Moon: Chapter #2"
---

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.sutra {
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> [!info]
> Note
>
[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.]
<p class="sutra">SANNYAS IS A CONCENTRATED EFFORT TO USE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO LIVE</p>


We are all strangers on this earth. Our real home is on the other shore. We are here only to be ready to grow, to experience, to mature, so that we can be accepted on the other shore. We come into this life just as children are sent to school. It is a learning place, it is not our home. Learn as much as you can, experience as deeply as possible. Let your life be multi-dimensional, but remember one thing, that this is not our home. So don't get attached, don't become possessive, don't start clinging, otherwise who will go to the other shore?


When the evening comes the child returns to his home. For the whole day he is in the school, in the evening he comes back. The school is a necessity. Our life is a necessity; without it we cannot grow. With all its pleasures and pains, with all its foolishnesses and wisdoms, with all the joys and miseries we slowly slowly learn balancing, centering. Passing through many many agonies and ecstasies, something inside us matures, integrates. And when we are ready the boat arrives from the other shore to take us back home, but only when we are ready. Otherwise we are sent again and again, until we learn the lesson.


I have heard a story about a great musician. He was singing a song, and the people who were listening to him were great lovers of music. He finished one song and the whole crowd said, 'Again, once more.'He sang it again, very happy that he had been received so well. When he finished it the whole crowd shouted even more loudly, 'Again! Once more!'He sang it again. When he finished for the third time the crowd shouted even louder. Then he said, 'But I have to sing other songs too.' Then one person in the crowd said, 'Until you sing it right, we are going to say "Again, again, again."


That's what happens in life: we are sent again, again and again. You can die, but you will be sent back until you have learned the lesson. And the lesson can be learned.


Sannyas is a concentrated effort to use this opportunity to be, so that this life can be the last life. And then you can live on the other shore, in eternity, in timelessness, where no birth, no death exists, where all is bliss, where all is truth, where all is love.
<p class="sutra">THE MASTER KEY TO THE DOORS OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD</p>


It is only through meditation that one becomes a king, that one becomes a master, master of oneself. But that is the only mastery. There is no other mastery in the world. If you are not a master of yourself you may possess the whole world but you are a slave, you are not a king.


Alexander the Great was not a king, although he conquered the whole world. Gautam Buddha was a king, although he renounced the world; even in his renunciation he was kingly. He possessed nothing, but he possessed himself  --  and that is the only true treasure, the only true kingdom. All else is momentary, all else is just a dream.


Wake up from your dreams and make every possible effort to get deeper into meditation, into awareness, into witnessing. Become more and more conscious and you will become a king.


Everybody has the potential to become a king. If we miss, we miss only because of our lethargy. We never make any effort, we never try to go inwards. Or if once in a while we try, within minutes we are tired and again we start running and rushing into the outside world.


A persistent effort is needed and perseverance is needed and patience is needed. Victory is bound to happen, but it happens only when you are really ready. That readiness comes through intense effort. Make every effort to be meditative  --  that is the key, the master key to the doors of the kingdom of god.
<p class="sutra">SANNYAS: A CONVERSION FROM THE OUTSIDE TO THE INSIDE</p>


Dipak means a small lamp. It is burning there within you, it has always been there; we just never look at it. We are keeping our back towards it, hence we live in darkness.


Darkness is our own creation. If we turn in all is light, if we look out all is dark. Darkness simply means that we have become focused on the outside and forgotten the inner world. Sannyas has to be a conversion from the outside to the inside.


And it is easy. Once you start making efforts it is not difficult. All that is needed is a little exercise of those limbs which because of non-use for so long have become paralyzed. The neck is so stiff it cannot move, the eyes cannot move inwards. Not that they don't have the capacity, it is just that the capacity has not been used for so long that it has gathered rust. A little effort, a little exercise  --  that's what we are doing here: just a little exercise so that limbs which have remained unused for a long time start moving again. And then things become easier.


Light is our very nature and light is the nature of the whole existence. Existence consists of light, it is made of light. That's why all the scriptures of the world say god is light. And now modern science also agrees that universe is made of electricity, electrons. Those are scientific terms; light is a more poetic term.


So make it a decision that from now onwards you have to make all effort to turn in.
<p class="sutra">MEDITATION IS THE SEED OUT OF WHICH GROWS THE TREE OF BLISS</p>


Teresita... look at me. (She closes her eyes.)
What is the matter? Whenever I say to the Italians 'Look at me,' they all close their eyes! (laughter) That too is a way of looking. It may be the best way to look at me! But invariably it happens, so it cannot be just accidental.
Your name: Ma Anand Teresita. Anand means bliss. Teresita means a reaper.


Bliss is like farming. It is a crop. You have to work hard because the soil of the heart has to be prepared, the weeds have to be uprooted, the stones and the rocks have to be removed and only then can the seeds be sown.


Meditation is the seed out of which grows the tree of bliss. And in the right time when you are ripe, ready to receive the ultimate guest, only then does the flowering happen. Then your whole being is full of flowers, your whole life becomes fragrant.


Very few people have been able to reap the crop of bliss... only once in a while a Gautam Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Lao Tzu  --  people who can be counted on one's fingers. It is a tragedy that so few people have been able to attain to their ultimate potential while everybody is capable of it. But millions of people remain deserts. Nothing grows in them because they never make any effort to grow something in themselves. They never pay any attention to their inner space.


Become aware that you are containing an infinite universe within you. It is far more beautiful than the world outside. And your real contentment and fulfillment is going to happen within, not without.
<p class="sutra">THE WAY TO SEEK AND SEARCH FOR GOD IS MEDITATION</p>


Murad, come here. What is the meaning of your name? (Murad looks blank.)


This will be your name: Swami Deva Murad. Deva means god. And I suspect that Murad means 'ambition for,' desire for, search for, a deep longing.
So your name will mean a deep longing for god. (Murad rises to leave.)


Wait a minute! (laughter) A deep longing but not in such a hurry! If you are in such a hurry you will miss! You will have to learn a little patience.


There are people who are not concerned about god at all, they are indifferent to god; hence for them there is no possibility of finding him. There are people who are against god. They are a little better than the people who are indifferent, because those who are against can be converted. Those who are saying no, some day may say yes. Hence the real problem is not the atheist. He can start searching for god, maybe he is already searching in a negative way, in a wrong way. And there is a third kind of people, the positive seekers, who are constantly seeking and searching for god.


The more conscious your search is, the sooner it is going to be fulfilled. But the search has to be very conscious and alert. One should devote one's whole life to a single purpose: the search for god, the search for truth. You can go on doing everything that you are doing but you have to make everything only a means to the ultimate end, only then can the murad be fulfilled, can the deep longing be fulfilled. And without its fulfillment there is no meaning in life.


Unless god is experienced meaning is not experienced. God symbolizes meaning, significance. God symbolizes the fact that life is not accidental, that there is a great hidden force behind it, that it is moving, that it is growing towards a peak, a peak of bliss. It is not just an accidental phenomenon, it is not a chaos, it is a cosmos.


And the way to seek and search for god is meditation. So focus your energies on meditation, give more time and space to meditation.
<p class="sutra">THOSE THAT HAVE SEARCHED WITHIN HAVE ALWAYS FOUND THE REAL HOME</p>


God is our home and we should not depends on any other home. We make many homes and we never look at the real home. The homes that we make are all arbitrary, they are sandcastles, or palaces made of playing cards: just toys to play with. They are not real homes, because death destroys them all.


The definition of the real home is that which is eternal. Only god is eternal; everything else is temporary. The body is temporary, the mind is temporary; money, power, prestige  --  all are temporary. Don't make your home in these things. I am not against these things. Use them, but remember that they are just a caravanserai; they are good for an overnight stay, but in the morning we have to go.


Unless we find our real home we have to go on travelling, we have to go on journeying. And the most surprising thing is that the real home is not far away. We go on missing it because it is very close; it is not even close, it is within ourselves.


Search for it withinwards. Those that have gone in have always found it. And I say it on nobody else's authority, I say it because of my own experience. And I don't want my sannyasins to believe in it  --  I want to help them experience it.
<p class="sutra">TRUTH HAS TO BE DECIDED BY YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE</p>


The most divine experience of life is the search for truth. It is even more divine than attaining the truth itself. The journey is so beautiful. The very pilgrimage, each moment of it, is full of bliss. But very few people seek truth. People seek money, people seek power, people seek prestige, respectability and all kinds of rubbish, because the whole crowd is seeking these things and ordinarily people are imitative. You simply imitate the people you are surrounded by  --  unless you become aware that the crowd may be wrong, that numbers can't decide what is true and what is not true.


Truth cannot be decided by voting, otherwise a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra, would all be defeated. They would be proved to be untrue. They wouldn't get many votes. Truth has to be decided by your own experience, not by the approval of the crowd. And the crowd never approves the truth because it is very shattering to the lies in which the crowd lives. Lies are cheap. There is no need to seek them, you can invent them, that's why they are so simple and easy. Any stupid person can do that  --  to lie does not need much intelligence. But to be truthful not only needs intelligence, it needs guts too. It requires courage. It requires tremendous courage to risk all.


By becoming a sannyasin now you are really becoming a seeker of truth. Now your name will be not only a name, it will become your reality too.
<p class="sutra">TO BE REBELLIOUS IS TO BE RELIGIOUS</p>


Sannyas is essentially rebellion  --  rebellion against the mob psychology, rebellion against the past, rebellion against history and time, rebellion against tradition and scripture. Because it is only through getting rid of all these that one becomes free to be oneself. And unless one is oneself one never grows, one remains childish.


Maturity comes only through freedom. Freedom is an absolute necessity for growth, and life is an opportunity to grow. So don't be afraid to rebel. To be rebellious is to be religious. That is the only way to find god.
<p class="sutra">ONLY THROUGH FIRE YOUR INNER GOLD IS PURIFIED</p>


Donal is a form of Daniel, an Old Testament prophet. He was thrown into a den of lions because he refused to betray his faith, but he emerged unharmed.


It is a beautiful name because it symbolizes the whole history of seekers and how the crowd has behaved with seekers. The crowd has always been against true religion. It is not against Christianity; it is against Christ. It is not against Buddhism; it is against Buddha.


Christianity is a distortion, so is Buddhism. Christ is crucified and the pope is worshipped. The people who crucified Christ did not harm his truth much, because if you destroy the body that does not mean that you destroy the spirit. But the real destruction has been done by the Christian priests for these two thousand years. They have really been the murderers.


The Jews and the Romans succeeded in destroying the body of the Christ, but only the body. And that is not much, because the body is going to die one day sooner or later; it makes no difference how long one lives. Buddha lived eighty years and Jesus lived only thirty-three years, but Jesus said in three years what Buddha said in forty years missionary work. Because truth is so simple, you can say it in a single sentence or you can go on saying it for your whole life. It is so simple that it can be contained on a postcard, yet also it cannot be contained even in the whole of the Bible or the Vedas.


But the crowd has always been against the person who has realized truth. It is good that the people threw Daniel into a den of lions. If he had been thrown into a den of human beings he would have been killed. Lions are more compassionate. They must have felt for the man, they must have seen his simplicity; they may have fallen in love with the man.


But man is more cruel than lions  --  that is the meaning of the story. Whether it happened or not, that is not the point. I can't see it actually happening, but the meaning is that lions are more civilized than human beings. Human beings are far more cruel, particularly to people who attain to truth. Why? For the simple reason that humanity lives in lies, and anybody who attains to truth becomes a danger to all your investments, to the whole edifice you have made.


You are living in sandcastles, you have been making houses of playing cards. And the moment there is a person like Daniel or Buddha or Mohammed, his very presence makes you aware of your stupidity, of your whole life's futility and meaninglessness. And that hurts, hurts deeply. Rather than changing your life you would like to destroy the man, you would like to remove the man so that you can be at ease again with your lies.


Remember that. That is going to happen again and again. That is going to happen forever. The crowd will remain the same. It has not changed in five thousand years time and I don't see any hope of the crowd changing. The crowd psychology will continue to be the same; hence anybody who is interested in god, in freedom, in truth, has to accept it as a matter of course.


So if you have to suffer as a sannyasin, don't blame me! (laughter) It's natural. Accept it with no complaint, no grudge, with deep thankfulness, because that is how the crowd recognizes you: it says, 'Yes, now we recognize you, that you are on the right path.' The moment that the crowd starts torturing you, starts going against you... That's its way of declaring that, 'Now this man is coming closer to the truth,'  --  very close to the truth that they don't want to see.


But it is beautiful to suffer on the way towards god, far more beautiful than to be happy in the world of lies. It is better to suffer and sacrifice on the way towards god because each suffering will create integrity in you, each suffering will bring a blessing in disguise. It is passing through fire  --  and it is only through such fires that your inner gold is purified.
<p class="sutra">DON'T LEAVE ANY STONES UNTURNED TO CREATE YOUR SOUL</p>


Pleasure is momentary, bliss is eternal. To live in pleasure is to waste one's life. It comes and goes. You don't gain anything out of it, at the most it keeps you occupied. It kills time, but that is stupid because time is the most precious thing. It is not to be killed, it has to be used  --  once gone it is gone forever. Very few people use it rightly. Those who use it rightly become Buddhas, and those who go on killing it in unnecessary occupations live as fools and die as fools. And the world is full of fools.


To be initiated into sannyas means to make a decision that now you will get out of the mob psychology of foolishness, that now you will start striving for something eternal, something that is going to abide, something that cannot be destroyed even by death. A man has lived rightly only if he has something which death cannot snatch away. Then he has lived truly, he has loved truly. He has attained a soul.


Many people are just hollow, there is nothing inside them. They somehow manage to go on dragging themselves up to their grave. But their whole life is a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.


Create something significant, create some meaning in your life. Create some beauty, some love  -- something that is not of time, that belongs to eternity. That is bliss.


It is possible, it has been attained by a few people but to achieve it is everybody's birthright. If we miss, we miss because of our own irresponsibility.


Be responsible. And when I say to be responsible I don't mean be responsible to somebody else. Be responsible to your own being.


You have to create a soul, you have to become integrated. Unless that happens don't leave any stones unturned. Make every possible effort, make every sacrifice needed. Risk all! But if you can gain your soul then you have used the great opportunity of life. Then great gratitude arises because only then does one know how much god has given to us of which we were unaware, how much which we never discovered has been waiting for us inside our own being.


Being here with me means moving into a new world of exploration, the inner world. It is the greatest adventure of life.
<p class="sutra">BLISS IS THE GOD OF ALL</p>


Bliss is the god of all. A few people knowingly seek it and many unknowingly seek it. But everybody seeks it. It is the god. The theist seeks it, the atheist seeks it, the agnostic seeks, the Catholic, the communist  --  everybody seeks it. Human beings, animals, trees  --  everybody seeks bliss. Bliss is the god of all.


But there are two kinds of seekers. Very few people seek it deliberately, consciously. Very rarely will you find a person who is a conscious seeker of bliss. Everybody is seeking bliss, but unconsciously  --  and that makes all the difference. If you seek it unconsciously you will never find it. It can be found only through being more conscious.


If one can become totally conscious there is no need to go anywhere, one will find it here and now. Suddenly it explodes. It depends on the intensity of your consciousness. Just as at a certain temperature water evaporates, at one hundred degrees, there is a certain intensity of awareness at which you find bliss. Suddenly the ego evaporates, and with the ego evaporate all its miseries and all its pathological obsessions, its whole hell. Suddenly you are out of the prison, under the starry night, unbounded. Suddenly you are on the wing and the whole sky is yours.


But the miracle happens only through consciousness. A sannyasin has to become a conscious seeker of bliss. Everybody is a seeker of bliss  --  all that we have to add is consciousness.
<p class="sutra">LET YOUR SANNYAS BE A TOTAL JUMP INTO THE SEARCH</p>


Unless one achieves bliss one's life is a failure. It may be a poor failure, the failure of a poor man, it may be a rich failure, the failure of a rich man, but failure is failure all the same.


And bliss is possible at any moment. One need not postpone it for tomorrow. We just have to be totally, passionately interested in discovering it. It should not be just a so-so search, it should not be lukewarm. It should be passionate, intense, total. It should be a commitment. That's what sannyas is, it is a commitment. One takes a decisive step that 'I am going to find,' that 'I am determined to find,' that 'I will not leave this life unless I have found it.'


It is said about Buddha that before he became enlightened, he sat for seven days under the same tree with the determination that 'I will not rise again, I will not move from this tree, I will not change my posture unless I attain it.' Such totality! For seven days he didn't move; he sat and sat and sat. And just by sitting there it happened. That's why in Japan they have a beautiful word for meditation, 'zazen.' It means just sitting. It comes from that story of Buddha. If one can just sit with totality, that's enough.


So let your sannyas be a total jump into the search, into the enquiry, the enquiry of 'Who am I?' And it is possible. It can happen any moment. Whenever your totality becomes really total, it happens immediately. It is always a sudden, enlightening experience. It comes out of nowhere but it transforms you forever. It transports you to a totally different plane.
<p class="sutra">JUST A SMALL CANDLE INSIDE IS ENOUGH</p>


Just a small candle of love inside is enough to transform you. More is not needed. That small flame will burn all that is false, ugly. That small flame will soon become a fire and it will burn all that is gross. Only the pure gold will be left behind. That is our truth  --  and to know the truth is to be liberated.


Jesus says: Truth liberates. It certainly liberates, but a borrowed truth cannot liberate because in the first place a borrowed truth is not a truth at all. The moment you borrow it from somebody it is a lie. You have to experience it on your own, you have to discover it on your own. Unless it is your own discovery it is of no use, it is unnecessary burden.


My effort here is to help you to discover your own truth. I am not going to give any truth to you or any theory about the truth. I am here only to give you a few hints, just fingers pointing to the moon. You are not to cling to the fingers. You have to look at the moon and forget the fingers.
<p class="sutra">THE MATHEMATICS OF THE INNER WORLD: ALL OR NOTHING</p>


Courage is the most fundamental quality required to create religious consciousness. God is not for the cowards, and it is very ironical that only cowards go to the churches and the temples and the mosques. The courageous avoid them. In fact only the courageous go into the real adventure for the search of god.


To be a sannyasin means to use all your courage for the search for god, to use all your energies, to risk everything that you have, that you are.


Unless one risks all, nothing is achieved. The mathematics of the inner world is: All or nothing. It does not believe in half-hearted measures. And only a very courageous person can put all at stake, only a gambler, not a businessman, never a businessman. Hence god is not for the businessman, it is only for the gambler.


Sannyas is for gamblers, gamblers and drunkards, all kinds of dangerous people, because the very effort to know god is the most dangerous pilgrimage one can go on. It is going into the unknown, into the beyond.
<p class="sutra">PRAYER IS THE FRAGRANCE OF MEDITATION</p>


Life has many beautiful things but nothing can be compared to the beauty of meditation. There are many beautiful flowers and beautiful stars and sunrises and sunsets and beautiful people, but the flower of meditation, the star of meditation, the sunrise of meditation, is incomparable because it leads you into the world of god. It takes you beyond your mind projections. And once you have known what meditation is, once you have tasted the silent nectar of it, then whatsoever you see is transformed through your seeing. The same trees, the same birds, the same people, are no more the same. Everyone seems so luminous, so full of juice, so full of eternal life; one is surrounded by gods and goddesses.


Then life is really worth living. Then each moment is such a joy and such a gift that one is constantly thanking god, is constantly grateful. That gratefulness is prayer. Prayer is the fragrance of meditation. One cannot really pray if one has not meditated.
<p class="sutra">ONLY IN TREMENDOUS DANGER THE SOUL IS BORN</p>


Life is for the courageous. The coward only vegetates. The coward goes on hesitating, and by the time he decides, the moment is lost. The coward only thinks to live but never lives, thinks to love but never loves. And the world is full of cowards.


The coward has a basic fear, the fear of the unknown. He keeps himself within the boundaries of the known, of the familiar. Courage begins when you step beyond the boundaries of the known. It is risking  -- it is dangerous. But the more you risk, the more you are. The more you accept the challenge of the unknown, the more integrated you become. It is only in tremendous danger that the soul is born, otherwise a person remains just a body.


For millions of people the soul is only a possibility, not a reality. Only a very few, courageous ones have been soul-full.
<p class="sutra">THE COURAGE TO GO BEYOND THE KNOWN</p>


There is only one courage  --  the fundamental courage, the courage in which all other courage is rooted  --  and that is the courage to go beyond the known, to go beyond the familiar, to go into the uncharted. That's what sannyas is.


No map of the other shore exists; no definition of god exists; no proof exists that god even is. Still, the courageous one goes on seeking and searching the unknown, even the unknowable.


The coward lives in a cosy, dark hole  -- familiar, safe, secure, but for how long? Death comes and destroys everything. Seeing this  --  that death is going to destroy everything  --  why not inquire into the deathless? Why not risk all? When death is going to take it away anyway, why not risk all? When death is going to take it away anyway, why be so cowardly?


All those who have risked everything have witnessed that the other shore exists, although it is impossible to communicate anything about it. All those who have gone beyond the known have come with great tidings, with good news. That is the meaning of 'gospel.' But it is only for those who are courageous. Others will hear it, but they will not listen to it. Their fear is far greater than their search for truth.


The inquiry into truth needs only one quality, and that is courage. Nobody can prevent the one who has courage from knowing the ultimate bliss, the ultimate peak of life, of love and awareness. One day the courageous one becomes the awakened one  --  only the courageous one.


Cowards go on worshipping in the temples and the synagogues and the churches. These people are worshipping their own imagination. They don't know anything about god, they believe. They believe in order not to inquire, they believe because they are afraid to inquire. They believe so that there is no need to inquire.


But one knows only by inquiring, and inquiry means gambling, risking. But it is worth taking a risk  -- the adventure is tremendously beautiful.
<p class="sutra">YOU HAVE TO BE THE LAB, THE SCIENTIST, AND THE EXPERIMENT</p>


Sannyas is the science of bliss. It is less a religion and more a science. Religions depend more on belief, science depends more on experiments. And my emphasis is also on experiments. You have to experiment. You are not to believe in me, you are not to believe in my words. Accept them only as hypothetical, so that you can experiment.


A hypothesis is not a belief. It is simply knowingly accepting that it may be true, it may not be true. The experiment will prove whether it is true or it is untrue. A belief means that we have accepted that it is true before experimenting. Once you have accepted something as true you cannot experiment, you are already prejudiced. Your experiment is going to be that of a prejudiced mind and you will only try to prove what you have accepted. You will not look at facts which go against your belief and you will collect only those facts which support your belief. Then anything can be proved.


In fact believers never experiment out of the fear that  --  who knows?  --  if you experiment your belief may be proved wrong. Believers believe; that is their way of avoiding experimentation. And belief has dominated humanity for centuries. Even very intelligent people have lived superstitiously.


For example Aristotle, the father of Western logic and philosophy: he writes that women have less teeth than men. That was the belief in Greece in those days. He had two wives, not only one, he could have counted their teeth any time. It would have been a simple experiment, no sophisticated instruments would have been needed. But he never counted them, it never occurred to him. He simply wrote whatsoever was prevalent. And it seems that nobody had ever counted them, otherwise how could the belief exist? It is so stupid! Men and women both have the same number of teeth.


You can ask our Devageet (the ashram dentist)... if he has ever counted or not! But that's how people have lived, very superstitiously.


My effort here is to create a science of inner experimentation. You have to become the lab for your own experiment. You have to be the scientist, you have to be the lab, you have to be the experiment, because in the inner world only you are there, nothing else. You have to be all.


It yields great treasures. Once you start going in at each step there is a discovery. It is far more valuable than discovering America. In fact the world would have been far better if America had not been discovered! (much laughter)
<p class="sutra">TRUTH IS EVERYBODY'S BIRTHRIGHT</p>


Meditation opens the door to the world of truth. To live in the mind is to live in lies. To live in the mind is to live in opinions, beliefs  --  which are all lies. Because unless you have experienced something it remains a lie. Only your experience makes anything true, otherwise not. Truth has to be experienced, only then is it true.


Meditation is the only way to experience truth. And when you have experienced truth it is possible to commune truth to others. It cannot be communicated  -- that is true. There is no verbal way to communicate it, but one can radiate it. One can create a certain vibe in which people start growing towards it. That's what has been done down the ages by all the awakened ones: they have created a certain energyfield, a buddhafield, in which people start growing towards truth.
Truth is everybody's birthright.
<p class="sutra">FIRST JUMP  --  THEN THINK TO YOUR HEART'S CONTENT</p>


Man is a bridge between the animal world and the world of the gods. Man is just in between, he is a passage. Hence man is not really a being. A dog has a certain being, a lion has a certain being, a rosebush has a certain being, a rock also has a certain being. Man has none. Man is a becoming, not a being. Man is the only being who is not a being but a becoming. Man becomes a being only when he has transcended humanity, when he has become a Buddha, a Christ. Then he attains to being, but then he is no more man. He has passed over the bridge.


Pass over the bridge, remember  --  don't make your house on the bridge. It is something to be passed over, something to be transcended. And that is the beauty of man. No dog can be anything else than a dog; no rock can be anything else than a rock. They have a fixed being; there is no possibility of growth. Only man grows. Only man has the possibility of adventure, of journeying into the unknown. The greatest beauty of man, the greatest grandeur, is that he can surpass himself.


And that is what sannyas is: an effort to transcend yourself. It looks almost impossible. If you think about it, it is impossible. If you take the jump it is possible. So for those who go on thinking about it, it becomes more and more impossible. The more you think, the more impossible it appears. It is for the courageous ones to take the jump.


It is said, 'Think twice before you jump.' And I say, 'First jump, and then think as much as you want!'  --  twice or thrice, as much as you want, be at ease, think to your heart's content  --  but take the jump first!
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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