---
section: Library
booktitle: "If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself"
booktype: "Diaries"
bookcode: "WITHME"
dategiven: "01 February 1980 pm"
place: " in Chuang Tzu Auditorium"
chapternum: "Chapter #1"
chaptertitle: "None"
acode: "8002015"
shorttitle: "WITHME01"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself: Chapter #1"
---

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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed.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


We have chosen the colour of the morning for sannyas to symbolize that each sannyasin is nothing but the birth of a new sun. This is only the beginning of a long long journey. If you allow, then much can happen, but it all depends on you, on how much you allow.


It is very difficult to allow because it needs trust, the same trust which is needed by a child to come out of the womb of the mother. The child has lived for nine months in the womb. It was absolutely comfortable, cosy and now suddenly he is being thrown out of his home. but he takes the risk. It appears to be death in the beginning. It is bound to appear as death because whatsoever the child has known as life is disappearing. He is moving from the known into the unknown. He does not know anything about where he is going and what is going to happen to him. all is in the dark, but still he takes the courageous jump.


That's what is needed by a sannyasin, because it is a new birth and you are moving in an unknown territory. To leave the ego aside is to leave all your strategies of self-defence, security. It is to leave your mind, your knowledge, your experience. It is to leave the shore on which you have lived for so long and to get into a small boat. The ocean is vast and there is every kind of danger and the other shore is invisible. There is more possibility that you will be drowned than reach the other shore.


But if one takes the risk then in that very moment the other shore is reached -- instantly, immediately. There is no time gap, because in the very taking of that risk the ego is dropped. and with the ego the old disappears totally, leaving no trace behind.


So be ready for this unknown journey, this pilgrimage to the ultimate. and rise like a sun, unafraid, fearless, in absolute trust.


The moon represents two things which are very significant for a sannyasin. One is coolness. A sannyasin has to become more and more cool -- not cold, mind you, but cool. Coldness is death. To be hot is one extreme, to be cold is another extreme. Passion is hot, death is cold. Exactly between the two, in the middle, is a point which can be called cool if you compare it with the coldness of death. It can be compared with the heat of passion, then it can be called warmth -- but it is the same point. From one side it will look warm from the other side it will look cool. At that point, in the middle, the opposites meet. Coolness and warmth are both there -- warmth because one is alive and cool because one is not mad. That is one of the qualities of the moon.


And the second quality is that it has light but not its own. It simply reflects the sun, it is just a mirror.


A sannyasin has to reflect God. He has just to be a mirror. His light is not his own because he has no ego. He lives as a vehicle for God. He is totally surrendered to God. God's will is his only will, he has no other will.


So these two qualities have to be remembered: coolness and a mirrorlike quality. Surrender so that you can reflect that which is. If these two things are achieved life is fulfilled, one has come back home.


Life is divine. In fact life and God are synonymous. There is no God except life, and there is no life except God;  they are two terms for the same mystery. But for centuries religious people have been against life. They were living with the idea that if you want to choose God you have to renounce life, you have to sacrifice life in order to be with God. That is utter nonsense, but because of that nonsense millions of people could not be religious because they could not renounce life. It is so unnatural to renounce it. It is your very being -- how can you renounce it? So only very few people, who were pathological, neurotic, became religious. The healthy person remained unreligious, he had to remain unreligious. The religious people created such barriers for the healthy that only the ill, the mentally perverted could get in. Health was something unspiritual.


My whole effort here is to destroy that whole nonsense and to help you to love life. Sannyas is not renunciation of life but a tremendous love affair with life. The deeper you live, the closer you come to God. The more passionately you live, the more divine you are. The intensity of your life, your liveliness is the only way to reach God.


Nothing has to be renounced. Everything has to be lived with deep awareness, with totality, with understanding, because escape is not a way of growth; hence all the so-called saints who have escaped from life remain psychologically immature.


Maturity is in life, in all its bitterness and sweetness, in all its misery and joy, in its nights and days. One has to learn through these polarities to move alert, conscious, so that one can remain balanced between the two, exactly in the middle.


That's what sannyas is. It is not renunciation. It is rejoicing in life, of course with a different quality than ordinary people live it. Ordinary people live unconsciously -- a sannyasin tries to live consciously. That's the only difference, otherwise both live the same life.

Denis has two meanings from two different languages; both are beautiful.


The first is from Assyrian. In the assyrian language it means wise, a buddha, one who is awakened, one who knows. but even better than that is the Greek meaning; in Greek it means God of wine... one who is utterly drunk, drunk with the divine. Both meanings become two aspects of the same phenomenon: the moment you become wise and awakened you also become drunk, you also become a God of wine, so drunk that there is no way to come back. Once gone into it one is gone forever. One is so drunk with the divine that there is no possibility of becoming sober again. and then life is a dance, a song, a celebration.


It is a beautiful name because it joins two aspects of spirituality together.


That's my whole effort here: to make you wise and yet drunk, to make you drunk, yet wise. I don't want to separate these two things.


Barbara literally means a stranger, an outsider. But symbolically it means coming with joy. On the surface the literal meaning and the symbolic meaning don't seem to be joined together, but deep down they are joined.


The world is in such misery that whenever somebody comes with joy he appears to be a stranger, an outsider. He does not belong to the world. He lives with people but the people are living in misery and he lives in joy. He looks exactly like the others but he is not like the others. A Jesus, a Buddha, a Zarathustra -- these are strangers, utter strangers. They speak a different language, they behave in a different way. They are a different kind of being: awakened, alert, blissful. Hence the symbolic meaning: coming with joy.


A sannyasin has to both a stranger in the world of misery and yet he has not to escape from it. Rather than escaping from the world of misery he brings joy to the world, he shares his joy.


Sannyas is initiation into that space where one starts belonging to God, where one no more thinks of oneself in egoistic terms, where one starts thinking in terms of the whole. When you start feeling yourself in harmony with the whole great joy arises in the heart. Harmony is joy and disharmony is misery. Whenever we are not in tune with the whole there is misery. Whenever we are attuned to the whole suddenly clouds disappear and it is all sunshine. Suddenly flowers start blooming in your heart, you are full of the fragrance of the unknown, of the beyond. But it happens only in those moments when you are in harmony.


And everybody knows those moments once in a while. Of course they happen accidentally. Just watching a sunset you may feel you are falling into a subtle harmony. Something inside you may become quiet, as the sun goes down your inner turmoil may settle for a moment. The tremendous beauty of the sunset may overwhelm you, may possess you so deeply and so totally that for a moment you forget that you are separate, the observer becomes the observed. And then you feel great joy and great beauty and great silence. This happens, but it happens only accidentally, once in a while.


To be a sannyasin means to learn the art of creating situations where it starts happening more and more and more, to learn the secret art of creating the right space for it so that one day it happens but never leaves you again. That is the day of enlightenment, one becomes a Buddha or a Christ. The day the harmony has become so engrained in you that now there is no more any possibility of separation, you cannot fall back. You have gone beyond the point of no-return.


Sannyas is a birthday, and it is the birthday of Christ in you. But remember, Christ has nothing to do with Christianity. Christ is synonymous with Buddha. It simply means the ultimate state of consciousness. The birth of Jesus is not the birth of Christ, they are two different phenomena. The birth of Jesus is one thing -- it is very ordinary, everybody is born like Jesus -- but the birth of Christ is something extraordinary.


The birth of Christ means that Jesus disappears, evaporates and allows God to take possession of his soul totally. The moment Jesus says 'Thy kingdom come, thy will be done,' Christ is born. The birth of Christ means the death of the ego. Here the ego dies and immediately, instantly, something is born in you which has been ready to be born for many many lives, but was hindered because of the ego.
Let sannyas be the death of the ego and the birth of Christ in you.


Real nobility arises through surrendering to God. Real nobility has nothing to do with birth, with heredity. It has nothing to do with blood. It has something to do with a deep surrender to the whole. That is true birth, you are reborn. As an ego you die. Ego is ignoble, egolessness is noble. The moment you die as an ego you are born as egolessness, and egolessness is tremendously beautiful. It has grace, it has something of the beyond in it. It reflects something divine, it becomes a mirror for God and in that very reflecting you attain to nobility.


Only a sannyasin can be noble, because only a sannyasin can be reborn. It is a spiritual birth. But before it can be a birth, it has to be a death. Birth is possible only through death. First crucifixion, then resurrection -- that's the whole process of sannyas.


The law of inner victory is very strange. In the outer world if you want to be victorious you have to be violent, aggressive, you have to be ready to fight. In the inner world just the opposite is the case: if you want to be victorious you have to forget fighting, you have to drop the very idea of fight. You are not to be violent, you have to be loving, non-violent, compassionate. In a single word, if one is capable of surrendering then only does one become victorious in the inward journey. Victory comes through surrender, through a deep let-go.


That's what sannyas is all about: a deep let-go, dropping all struggle, fight, aggression, ambition. And when you drop all these things suddenly you become aware that the ego has evaporated, because the ego needs all these things as supports, as nourishment.


The outer victory is nothing but an ego trip. The inner victory is the victory of egolessness.


Man appears to be a mortal -- he is not. Death is the most false phenomenon in existence, because nobody has ever died. Nobody can die in the very nature of things. Nothing ever dies, death is not possible at all. Life is eternal, beginningless, endless. But this can be known only through the grace of God. You cannot know it through your own efforts, your efforts will be small. You  cannot know it by your own mind, your mind's reach is small. But if God is gracious it can happen.


So what is needed on your part is to be worthy of receiving God's grace. And that's what my whole teaching is, to be receptive, to be grateful, to be open, to  be vulnerable, so that when God knocks on your door the doors are not closed, so that when he comes your eyes are not closed, so that when he comes in your heart he finds you waiting, expectant.


Man's efforts are small. They are good as far as the world is concerned, man can do many things in the world. But as far as the beyond is concerned, man's efforts are absolutely irrelevant.


We can only allow God to take possession of us, we can allow him to do whatsoever he wants to do. We can be in a let-go. That surrender is sannyas, that trust is sannyas, that infinite love is sannyas. One can surrender only and love only if there is infinite love.


I don't say to believe in God. I say experience. Any belief not rooted in your own experience is false. It is dangerous. It hinders your true experience; it prevents your search. It does not allow you to be open to the truth, because you are already carrying many conclusions.


So let this birth of sannyas in you be a discontinuation with the past. Unlearn all that you have learned up to now. Forget your past, disconnect yourself, don't look back. Look in the moment, in the present, and be in a totally relaxed state, available. That availability makes you worthy. God comes only to those who are available to him.


To be available is to be prayerful. To be open and receptive is to be really religious.


Praise is one of the most difficult things to do because it goes against the ego.


The ego wants to condemn, the ego is always negative, it always looks at the darker side of things. It counts the thorns in a rose bush, it ignores the roses -- and if you ignore them then they don't exist for you.


Praise is difficult because of this, the ego finds it almost impossible to praise. It can't look at the positive side of things.


Life has both, the negative and the positive. They can exist only in a togetherness, they are interdependent. Now, it is up to you what to choose. If you choose the negative you become irreligious. Then your life is a condemnation, a condemnation of everything, and that creates misery. You are surrounded by a condemned existence. And nobody else is responsible for it, it is your own doing. You could have chosen the positive, you could have counted the roses, you could have ignored the thorns. Then naturally praise arises. If you can see the beauty, the joy of existence, the sheer poetry of existence, the music of it all, it is impossible not to praise. But the first barrier has to be dropped.


So my message for you is: if you choose to be with me you will have to risk finding yourself, you must risk finding yourself. And the only way to find oneself is to risk the ego. It is painful, it hurts. You have lived with the ego for so long, you have become almost one with it. But being a sannyasin means that you are choosing the path of egolessness. You will have to drop all that is implied in the ego: all kinds of jealousies, possessiveness, hatred, anger, all that is negative and dark, all that creates hell in you. The ego is the source of all hell. Once ego disappears you are in paradise again.


And by being a sannyasin you are choosing me. So remember it, if you choose to be with me you must risk finding yourself.


But only in the beginning does it look as if you are risking something, because the ego is a false entity. The master asks only that the false should be surrendered so that the real can take possession of you. The moment you drop the false you become the real. The real is repressed by the false. The false is sitting on the chest of the real, almost killing it. The real is suffocated inside you, it needs to be released. The false has become the prison, the prison has to be broken, demolished. Howsoever painful the process is it is tremendously paying, ultimately.


A sannyasin should not look for the close, nearby result. He should have a longer vision, we should see things in the ultimate sense. Then life starts going through a radical transformation.


If you have a very short vision non-essential things seem to very essential. If you have longer vision, a deeper insight, then the case is just the opposite: the essential becomes important, the intrinsic becomes important. The non-essential and the accidental become almost so unimportant that they disappear, they wither away by themselves.
How long will you be here?


(The reply is audible only to Osho)
-- That's good, be here as long as possible... and risk as much as possible!

Curtis has two meanings. One is, fit for the court life.


The Sufis call the assembly of fellow travellers, a court. It is really a court. The courts of the kings are nothing compared to it, this is a court. The Sufi word for court is "darbar." And one needs to learn to be very gracious to be in the presence of a master. Where people are praising God, communing with God, one has to be very soft, vulnerable, feminine.


And the second meaning is one who is gracious. Both are connected. In the courts of the kings a formal grace is needed, mannerism, etiquette. But they are superficial. In the court of a master inner grace is needed, an inner silence, a prayerful heart. One has to become a temple. So sacred is the inner silence that it makes you a temple. One has to make a cave in one's heart for the master to dwell in.


Real grace is needed, authentic grace is needed. A sannyasin has to live the life of inner grace.


To be a disciple is something revolutionary, because it is getting out of the prison of your ego, it is surrender. It is a transformation because it is the ultimate in love.


You can surrender yourself only when there is total love. It is only through love that trust arises, and only when there is trust and the climate of trust, is surrender possible.


Sannyas is initiation into being a disciple. The word "disciple" means the capacity to learn. The egoist never learns; he cannot, he is closed. One learns only in egolessness. That's the whole secret of disciplehood.


Malcolm literally means a disciple of Saint Colomba, a sixteenth century saint. Malcolm was his closest disciple, but he never called himself Colomba's disciple, only a servant. He was happy just to serve the master, it was enough. He learned everything from the master just by being close to him, serving him, never asking a question, never needing any answer. He was absolutely blissful just to be allowed to be close, to serve.


Hence symbolically the name Malcolm has taken on a very significant meaning. Symbolically it means one who is capable of learning without being taught. That's exactly the definition of a real sannyasin, a real disciple: the capacity to learn without being taught.


If you are taught then you are a student. If you learn without being taught then you are a disciple. If somebody teaches you he is only a teacher, a professor. But if somebody's presence is a teaching then he is a master.


So become a Malcolm again. By entering into sannyas enter into that space where being close is enough. Just to be in the presence is enough. If there is no argument inside you, no doubt, if there is love and trust, then just serving the master, just following the instructions, whatsoever he says, just being obedient is enough. One becomes awakened by this simple process.


One day the disciple disappears and at the very core of your being you find the master, the master of all masters.


Man appears very small -- he is not. That is only an appearance. He is as vast as the sky itself, he contains the sky in him. But we have become too attached to the illusion of being small. We have become identified with the body. The body is perfectly good as far as it goes, but we are not it. We are in it as much as we are out of it.


The sky is not confined to your courtyard; it is in your courtyard certainly, but it is outside the courtyard too. In reality the sky is not in the courtyard but the courtyard is in the sky. And so is the case with man.


The soul is not within you, you are within the soul The body is in God, not vice versa. It appears so because we are not very aware, alert. We have not looked minutely enough.


Meditation simply means to watch your identification with the body and mind very closely. And as you watch you become aware. What I am saying is simply a fact, it is not a theory. I don't believe in theories. I have all respect for the facts but no respect for any hypothesis.


So watch, and come to realise on your own, not because I say that it is so. Experience that you are not in the body but that the body is in you, the mind is in you, and you are the whole sky. And not only is this body within you, but the stars and the sun and the moon are all within you. To experience this is liberation because one is liberated from all boundaries, all confinements, all prisons, all limits.


To be limited is to be miserable. Misery means limitation. Whenever we feel the limit misery arises. Bliss means feeling unlimited. No limits, that's the definition of bliss. And that is our true nature, so it is not difficult to attain it. All that is needed is a little awakening. We are asleep.


Sannyas means initiation into a certain path where awakening is possible, where methods and devices are used to wake you up, where other awakened people are trying to wake the sleeping ones. And remember, only one who is awakened can help you to wake up.


No sleeping person can wake another sleep person, that is impossible: he himself is asleep. Hence, unless you can find an awakened person there is no possibility of your being awakened. But there are always awakened people available. Just a little search, a little authentic thirst and you are bound to find one.


Now you are entering into a world, a totally different world. You are not acquainted with it. You are moving from the sleeping world to the world of awakening. That is initiation: your desire to wake up and the presence of somebody awakened who can fulfil your desire.


The whole process of sannyas is that of awakening. We are asleep, not in the ordinary sense but in a metaphysical sense. We don't know who we are, how can we be called awake? We don't know from where we are coming, how can we be called awake? We don't know where we are going, how can we be called awake? We don't know anything that is essential. We know much that is rubbish -- we know everything about the moon and the sun and the earth and we know history and geography -- but we know nothing about ourselves. We know nothing about the knower -- and that should be the primary concern of any real education.


Sannyas is the beginning of a real education. The fundamental is that you have to become aware of yourself, of who you are. And only you can do that.


I indicate the way, I can call you forth. You must have heard the story... Lazarus died but his sisters, Mary and Martha, waited for Jesus to come. They had great trust that he would come and he would call Lazarus forth from death, back to life. The whole village was laughing at their stupidity: how can you revive a man who is dead? But they waited.


Jesus came... Lazarus' dead body was kept in a cave. Jesus went close to the cave and from outside he shouted loudly "Lazarus, come out!"  The story is beautiful. The whole village had gathered to see; they saw Lazarus coming out from the cave, almost dazed, as if he had been fast asleep for four days, as if he had been drunk. He was shaky, trembling, but he came out.


The most significant thing about the story is not that a dead man becomes alive. that is only a parable, not a fact. The significant thing is that Jesus calls forth "Lazarus, come out!" Lazarus has to come out, Jesus can only call forth. He can only shout, you have to listen.


My whole effort here is to call forth Lazaruses. Everybody is dead and asleep, and everybody is lying dead in a cave. The cave of your heart, that is where you are lying dead.


I can call you forth but you will have to come out, you will have to gather enough courage to come out of the darkness, out of centuries-old habits, out of a long long sleep.
And when you are awake, life is a dance, a song, a bliss, a benediction.


The ultimate goal of sannyas is to become a god of peace, to attain the kingdom of peace. Peace means transcending dualities.


Mind lives in dualities -- pain -pleasure, love-hate, success-failure, richness-poverty, birth-death, and so on, so forth. Mind lives in dualities. Mind exists only between two poles as a tension. Mind is a tension between two polarities.


When you see the point, that mind is a tension between two polarities, you stop choosing, because to choose one is to choose the other also; the other comes in the bargain, you cannot avoid it. Although everybody is trying to do that. Everybody wants to choose one out of the two polarities and avoid the other. That is impossible. It is like my choosing you and avoiding your shadow. That cannot be done. If I invite you, your shadow is automatically invited, it is bound to come with you.


When you invite pleasure you invite pain, when you invite success you invite failure. Whatsoever you invite the opposite comes. In fact they cannot exist separately. It is impossible to separate them, no divorce is possible. They are really married, and married in a very old-fashioned way, when divorce was not in existence anywhere. They don't know how to divorce.


Seeing this one stops inviting. One becomes choicelessly aware, one stops choosing. Still things will come, but one simply watches them. One is neither clinging to them nor pushing them away. One says nothing, neither yes nor no. One is neither a friend nor a foe. You simply look unconcerned, as if it has nothing to do with you. That cool awareness brings peace. Slowly slowly it deepens, it becomes so deep that even the Pacific is not so deep.


In those depths, unfathomable depths, God is found. God is not available on the surface. God is such a treasure, it can't be available on the surface. It is hidden in the deepest core of your being -- and only peace can lead you there. And the miracle is: when the seeker comes to know God, he becomes God. The knower becomes the known, the observer becomes the observed, the seer becomes the seen. The separation disappears. Then you and God are one. It is in such moments that the seers of Upanishads declared "Aham Brahmasmi" -- I am God. Al Hillaj Mansoor declared "Ana'l Haq" -- I am truth. Jesus says "I and my father in heaven are one."


All the mystics of all the countries and of all the ages have been saying the same thing, that in your profoundest depth you are a god. On the surface you are just a beggar, on the circumference you are a beggar; at the centre you are a god. but to go to the centre means you will have to learn the art of being aware, choicelessly aware. That's what meditation is all about, that's the essential core of sannyas.

Living in freedom -- that's exactly the definition of sannyas.


Now remember to break all the chains, destroy all the walls that surround you. Come out of the prison of your mind, come under the open sky of the heart.


Mind knows only slavery. It can't taste freedom. It is a prisoner, it loves dark holes, the darker the better, the smaller the better. It feels more protected, more safe. To the mind the dark black hole seems to be cosy.


It is the heart that is capable of knowing freedom. To be really free one has to move from the mind to the heart, from thought to feeling. There is one still higher plane, higher than feeling -- and that is the plane of being.


Mind knows slavery -- one lives in slavery. The heart knows freedom -- one lives in freedom. But going beyond the heart, the ultimate is not being free but being freedom That is totally different dimension. But one cannot take the jump from the mind to the being directly. One has to go through the heart. The heart functions as a bridge.


Living in the heart you start learning the ABC of freedom, you start enjoying freedom, you open your wings. You go a little beyond the boundaries and you will come back again and you go a little further. Slowly slowly you become accustomed to the beauty of freedom. Then the ultimate quantum leap can be taken. Then you simply become one with freedom. Then you are not free -- even that separation is no more there, then you are simply freedom. Buddha calls it nirvana, total freedom.
That is the goal of sannyas.


Sannyas is the beginning of freedom: freedom from politics, freedom from religion, freedom from all kind of bondages. It is entering into universality, it is dropping the local boundaries. A sannyasin is neither an Indian nor an American nor a Greek, he is simply human. He is neither white nor black because he is not the body, and he is not a christian or a Hindu because these ideologies exist only in the mind and sannyas means disidentification from the mind.


The moment you know "I am neither the body nor the mind," you have become free. And freedom brings peace, bliss and ultimately God.


Only the rebellious spirit comes to release its fragrance. The non-rebellious remains in bondage, and in bondage there is no fragrance. Bondage stinks, freedom has fragrance. Bondage is ugly, freedom has beauty. And only the rebellious spirit can be free.


All the social forces are against individual freedom. Society exists by destroying individuals So one who knows this strategy, this situation, has to find ways and means to escape from the prison that the society and the church and the state conspire to build for everyone.


There are loopholes and the function of the master is to show you the loopholes from which you can escape. There are a few doors which you have not seen, which are unguarded. There are a few guards who can be bribed, there are a few guards who are absolutely drunk, and if you escape they will not even be able to see you. There are means and methods to cross over the wall. There are people outside the prison -- those people are the masters, the Buddhas -- and one can contact them.


Being initiated into sannyas means that you are trying to communicate with someone who is outside the prison, because only somebody who is outside the prison can help you to come out. He may supply a rope and a ladder, he may show you the way he has escaped. But one has to learn the language of rebellion.


Revolution is social, rebellion is individual. Revolution is political, rebellion is spiritual. Revolution  intends to change the social structures on the outside; it is extrovert. Rebellion changes your consciousness, it changes your subjectivity, your way of looking at things. It changes you in your very fundamentals, at your very roots. And when you are free, you start blooming -- the spring has come! And the fragrance that has always been there within you is released.


That is the contribution of an enlightened person to existence: the fragrance that he releases into the world.

Andreas means courageous.


This is the first disciple of Jesus, Andreas. He called Andreas his first disciple. And this is significant, because only a courageous person can follow a man like Jesus. Great courage is needed to follow an enlightened man. It is moving into danger, insecurity. It is moving beyond the boundaries created by the society, the church, the state. It is a transcendence of all limits.


Within limits one can function easily, without any danger, because one is familiar with it, one has been educated for it, conditioned for it, trained for it. When you move into the new you are again a child and you have to learn from ABC. Only very courageous people, who are ready to learn and who are always ready to learn, can be initiates.


Sannyas is initiation into the beyond... which is not visible, which is not tangible, which cannot be proved, which can only be felt by a loving heart. It cannot be argued about, no proofs can be proposed for it because it is not a question of mind at all. It is a question of going beyond mind. Mind creates limits -- and it is going beyond all the limits created by the mind.


Mind is part of the society. Mind is an agent of the society within you. It functions for the society. It is like an electrode which has been implanted in you.


One scientist, Delgado, has done many experiments with electrodes, very dangerous experiments. Sooner or later they are going to be used on human beings. In fact society has been using these ideas for thousands of years in a different way -- not so crude, very subtle, but they have been used. Delgado brought it to a very clear-cut focus and now some decision has to be taken. It is far more dangerous than what Albert Einstein and Rutherford and others did in creating the atom bomb. What Delgado has done is far more dangerous, but we recognise dangers only when they have done their wrong.


Albert Einstein was very unhappy and repentant when he died. He had not thought that he would become the cause of such murder as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But once a certain truth is known it is bound to be exploited by the politicians: they immediately jump upon it. It becomes their possession.


Delgado has done an experiment... the mind has different centres for different things. You put an electrode in a particular centre and the mind immediately functions from that centre. For example if he touched your brain centre at a certain point you may start remembering your childhood immediately. The moment the electrode is taken out the memory stops. Put the electrodes on the same point again and the same memory starts up again from the beginning, as if it were just a gramophone record -- with only one difference, that it has an automatic mechanism to go back to the beginning. You take the electrode out, the memory immediately goes back to the beginning. Put the electrode on again; the memory doesn't start from where you stopped it, it starts again from ABC, from the very beginning.


Now these electrodes can be put in the mind without your knowing it. Each child in the hospital can be operated on -- a small operation -- and an electrode can be put there. That electrode can be manipulated from far away, through radio waves. Now the whole army could be ordered to do anything It would follow immediately; everybody would think that he was choosing to do it but it would be just the order given to the electrode through radio waves.


Delgado showed his experiment in a public exhibition. In Spain he fixed the electrode inside the head of a bull and then he showed a red flag to the bull. The bull rushed towards him, mad. Thousands of people had gathered to see the experiment, and he was standing there without any arms or anything, just a small mechanism in his hand, nobody could even see it, there were just two or three buttons on it. Just as the bull was reaching him, he was just one foot away, Delgado pushed the button and the bull stopped there, almost frozen. Now this is something tremendously significant for the future of humanity. In Soviet Russia, in China, in communist countries they may have already started fixing electrodes inside small children's heads. You will grow with those electrodes, you will never know that you are carrying them, and from the Kremlin they can be manipulated by remote control.


But this has been done for centuries. society calls it conscience. It is a long process that the society has been involved in, because it was not aware that short-cuts could be found through the brain centres. Children have to be conditioned for years, then they become Jews and Hindus and Mohammedans and Communists.


The mind is nothing but an agent of the society inside you. One has to go beyond the mind, then only does one become oneself and is no more part of the crowd, one goes beyond the mob psychology. The only possibility is of getting out of the mind, moving deeper into s state of no-mind, into meditation.


Yes, great courage is needed. And is significant that Jesus called Andreas to be his first disciple. That means that courage is being called. So prove yourself true to the name!


Allen is a beautiful name. It has three meanings. The most fundamental meaning is the harmonious one. That's the whole definition of god, existence, love, meditation. All that is valuable has harmony in it as its very core. Without harmony there is no god. The harmony in existence proves that something keeps it together, something invisible. Without harmony there is no love. But it is an invisible thread, nobody can see it.


Everybody can feel it. Love makes one aware of the fact that all that is seen may not be all, there may be more than you can see. Reality is not finished with seeing. There is a different plane of feeling too which is far deeper, far more basic.


Without harmony there is no joy; hence the other two meanings. One is cheerful; that is a by-product of the harmonious being. when you are in harmony cheerfulness radiates from you naturally, spontaneously. It becomes your vibe.


And the second meaning is handsome, beautiful. A harmonious person is bond to be cheerful and bound to be beautiful. That is inevitable, because there is nothing more  beautiful than cheerfulness, there is nothing more graceful than harmony.


Sannyas is nothing but an effort to bring harmony to your being. The society has divided it into many parts, it has cut you  into fragments. But cutting you into fragments it destroys your integrity, it makes you impotent so that it can rule over you. That is the basic political strategy. It has been followed by society for centuries: cut every individual into segments. When he is not whole he cannot stand on his own, he cannot be rebellious, he cannot have any individuality. He is reduced to a slave. He becomes dependent, always fearful. He forgets all about freedom, he forgets all about truth, he forgets all about himself. His whole life becomes just a part of the blind crowd. the politicians and the priests can easily exploit you when you are in fragments.


Integrate a person and he becomes a free individual, nobody can exploit him. Neither nation nor race, nor church -- nobody can dominate him. He starts living from his own inner centre, his life starts functioning in freedom. That's what sannyas is, it is synonymous with freedom.


Sannyas needs courage. Courage is the most fundamental quality for religious enquiry. It is easy to be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. You need not be courageous, in fact you only need to be a coward. But to be religious you will need courage, great courage -- courage to destroy all the prisons that we have become accustomed to living in, courage to drop all the beliefs, because every belief is a bondage.


If you don't know yet you believe, you are deceiving yourself. Belief is irrelevant from both sides: if you don't know, belief is irrelevant; if you know it is irrelevant. If you don't know, how can you believe? And if you know, there is no need to believe, you know it already. Belief is a very cunning device, but because the whole of humanity suffers from great cowardice, priests have been successful in exploiting.


My effort here is to make you aware that your intrinsic nature is courage. Express it, live it, risk everything for it, and you will not be a loser. Even if life has to be lost, be ready to lose it -- you will gain God. That's the only way to gain God. One has to lose everything. God demands total commitment.


Unless you disappear like a river in the ocean you will not become the ocean.


Courage means only one thing basically. It means trusting the unknown against the known, trusting no-mind against the mind. The mind is known. Ald that is known becomes your mind and all that remains unknown is your heart. The heart never becomes a known phenomenon. It remains mysterious, it remains vague. You cannot define it, it remains definable.


The mind is definable. The mind consists of the past and the memories of the past. It is like dust gathering on a mirror. If you want to use the mirror you have to remove the dust. But the dust seems to be very valuable, it seems golden, because it is your experience, your knowledge, all that you have learned.


Courage means going beyond that which you know. Courage means to be a child again and again, to be innocent again and again, to cross the boundary of knowledge -- which is a safe place to be because you know it, you are familiar with it. Always dying to the past, every moment dying to the past and being born into the new, into the present -- that is courage.


Buddha says; When a man becomes a sannyasin, that is a lion's roar. He means exactly what I am saying, It is a quantum leap, a jump from the familiar into the unfamiliar. Get ready for it!


Sannyas is only a device to push you beyond the boundaries, beyond that which you have always believed to be safe: It is pushing you into the insecure, because life is insecurity. Death is secure, safe; life by its very nature, is intrinsically insecure.


So only those who are courageous enough can know life. Others only vegetate, they don't live.


Courage can be of two types. The first type is the most prevalent one. The first type is cultivated. You repress your fear and you go on repressing your fear, so much so that it disappears from your consciousness and becomes part of your unconscious. You are no more aware of it and you start thinking that there is no fear in you.


In ordinary situations it will work, but in any extraordinary situation in which real courage is needed you will have a breakdown. The fear will surface again. It was only on the surface that you were courageous. It had not become your soul.


The second type, the second category of courage is spontaneous, natural, uncultivated. It does not come by repressing fear. It comes by understanding fear, by seeing deeply into your fear. And the moment you start looking into fear, the fear starts evaporating because suddenly you become aware that you are not it. It is just an idea in the mind and you are the witness of it. One thing becomes absolutely certain, that you are beyond it, that it does not constitute you or your being. In that very moment courage springs up, wells up. And that is a totally different thing. In no situation will it leave you. Even death cannot destroy it.


I teach the second type of courage. The first type is needed by all kinds of soldiers all around the world. The second type is needed by the sannyasin. The sannyasin has to live an uncultivated life, natural, spontaneous, alert, aware, but absolutely non-repressive. Neither fear has to be repressed nor greed, nor sex -- nothing has to be repressed. Everything has to be understood. And the miracle is that through understanding comes transcendence, through understanding comes transformation.


Sannyas is a death and a birth: the death of the old, of the past, of all that you have been up to now, and the beginning of something absolutely new. Sannyas means that you are becoming discontinuous from your own past, you are dropping the old identity, you are entering into an uncharted territory with no map.


The master can only give you hints. Maps are not possible because the territory is constantly changing. By the time a map is made it is already out of date; hence all the scriptures are out of date. No map can ever be in tune with reality, because to make a map of the unknown takes time. In the first place it is very difficult to bring the unknown into the language of the known.


It is as if you reach an island where people have never seen any flowers and you want to convey to them the beauty of roses, marigolds, lotuses. How are you going to convey it? Whatsoever you do will not be enough, they will not understand. You will have to find a few metaphors. For example, on the sea beach of the island there may be coloured stones. You can show those coloured stones and you can say "The flowers have such colours," but you will be misunderstood because those people will think that flowers are like stones.


It is next to impossible to convey accurately. That is the first difficulty, how to make a map of the unknown.


The second difficulty is that if you try and you succeed somehow in making something approximate, by the time it is ready the territory has changed, it will not fit it, and the people who follow that map will never reach. But they will worship the map. That's what people are doing, worshipping the Bible, the Vedas, the Gita, the Koran. These are all old maps. They are beautiful efforts, the people who made those maps did it out of great compassion and love, but humanity only worships them.


And remember, the map is not the territory. You can hang the map of India on your wall -- it is not India. On the map everything is shown, the Himalayas, the Ganges... but seeing the Himalayas on the map is one thing, you are not seeing the Himalayas at all. To go to the Himalayas and to see the Himalayas is totally different.


The master can only give you hints, not even guidelines, just hints, subtle indications, fingers pointing to the moon. But the moon is rushing, changing every moment, so only a master who is still alive in the body can be of any help, because he can go on changing his finger as the moon changes. Once the master is dead you make a statue of him; now the finger is still pointing somewhere but it is a stone finger. One thing is certain, it is not pointing towards the moon at all.


Once Jesus is gone Christianity is of no use. While he is alive it its of tremendous value. Once Buddha is gone Buddhism is futile. But people are so stupid. For centuries they go on talking about Buddhism and Christianity arguing for and against.


Sannyas means to be with a living master. It needs guts because it is going to change you. It is not child's play. It is risky, it is not a game. But I can trust you -- I always trust Germans. (laughter) I love Germans! they have guts. They can do some things which others hesitate to do.


Sannyas is the process of always remaining new, never gathering the old, never accumulating, never accumulating the past. We go on accumulating memories. The more memories we have, the older we are. Consciousness becomes burdened with memories. Then we go on dragging. We lose the lightness of childhood, the innocence of childhood, the beauty of childhood.


The child is beautiful for the simple reason that he has no past, no burden; hence he is so light, he is not heavy. And because he has no past he has no knowledge -- past becomes knowledge -- hence he is always full of wonder. Knowledge prevents wondering. It makes you feel that you already know -- what is there to wonder about? The child never feels that he knows; hence he is always questioning, enquiring.


To be a sannyasin means to be child again but on a higher plane, in a different way, not physically, but psychologically. and the way to be a child again psychologically is to get out of the past, to disconnect from the past. Each moment die to the past so that you can be born anew.


Be new. Don't gather any dust on the mirror of your consciousness and you will be able to see that which is. God is another name for that which is. God is available to those who are mirrorlike, clean, without any dust. And we have so much that the mirrors have been completely lost. We don't remember where we have put them. There is dust and dust, layer upon layer.


Meditation is discovering your lost mirror. It is digging deep into the mud that you have accumulated around yourself in the hope that it is gold. It is nothing, it is simply mud. All memories are worthless. And when I say that I don't mean to forget your phone number (laughter)... or to forget who your husband is and who your child is and who is who. I don't mean that. I don't mean the ordinary, factual memories, I mean the psychological garbage.


Somebody insulted you twenty years before and the memory is still there; when you see the person it is revived again. I mean that kind of memory. You cannot see the person: that memory comes up and covers your mirror, you become enraged. He may have changed, everything is changing; he may no longer be an enemy to you. But because twenty years back he insulted..and nobody knows whether he insulted you or not, that may have been just your idea. You may have felt hurt, he may not have meant it at all. He may not even remember, he not even be aware that he has done any wrong to you. But you go on carrying the wound. Whenever you see the person the wound starts hurting and again there is a cloud around you and you cannot see the person as he is. You see him as he was twenty years before. He may not have been like that but a least in your memory you carry that picture.


Psychological memory has to be dropped. Factual memory is okay, it is not a problem, it does not create any dust. If one can drop the psychological memory and can be new every moment, every day, then life becomes a joy. It becomes an incredible experience. Each moment brings new surprises. Each moment flowers go on showering on you from the beyond.


Sannyas is a sunrise; hence the orange colour. It is the colour of the sky in the East just before the sun rises. It is the colour of the dawn, the night is over and the new day beings. A new chapter opens.


Sannyasin is not a continuity with your past, it is discontinuous. Put a full stop on your past and start from ABC, fresh. Be a child again. Unlearn all the tricks that you have learned before. They are nothing but tricks, tricks to avoid the truth, tricks to escape from reality, tricks to deceive others and to deceive oneself. Unlearn all that.


From this moment die to the past and be reborn. A new life begins, and it has to begin from the very beginning. Don't carry the past as a load hanging around your neck like a rock; drop it. And don't try to drop it piece by piece; that is unnecessary postponement. Drop the whole lot in a single blow. That is courage.


There are people who drop it but chunk by chunk. They take so long a time that the whole thing becomes tedious, wearisome, boring. They miss the joy of becoming free in a single moment.


Initiation simply means that you are ready to cut off from the past in one blow. don't look back. And the moment you are not more concerned with the past, the future disappears of its own accord because the future is nothing but a projection of the past. It is nothing but the desire to live the past again and again... of course in a little modified way, a little richer, a little better. it is dropping all that was miserable in the past and choosing all that was pleasurable. That's what future is. When the past is dropped the future disappears, and only present is left.


To be present in the present creates meditative energy. To be present to the present is the very essence of meditation and the very foundation of sannyas.


The past is the only problem. We are confined by our past. it hangs around us, around our neck like a rock. It keeps us tethered to that which is no more. It keeps us confined to the dead, it does not allow us to move into life.


Life is always present. It is never past, it is never future either, it is always herenow. And we are living in the past, which is no more, or sometimes in the future, which is not yet. Both are non-existential. That's why we don't taste the joy of being alive. We go on chewing stones. We cannot get any juice out of them.


The past is like a stone, something utterly dead, it cannot nourish you. And so is the future. It is not yet born, it is just in your imagination and you cannot live on imaginary food. Only the present gives nourishment to the soul, it makes you more and more alive.


So the whole process of sannyas is dropping the past, dropping the future, and getting more and more attuned to the present moment.


Sannyas is a marriage: marriage to the divine, marriage to the whole, the part deciding to disappear in the whole. It is a love affair. And it asks for much, because it asks for your totality. Less than that won't do. You cannot be partially related to god, remember. Either you are totally unrelated or you are totally related; there is no in-between. God does not believe in half-hearted measures.


Sannyas has to become a total commitment, a total involvement -- only then can life go through a radical change. Small efforts can at the most renovate the old house, patch up things here and there. But the old, the rotten remains the same, it can't become new.


Sannyas means demolishing the whole structure, clearing the ground completely so that a new temple can be built. Sannyas is very destructive in the beginning and very creative in the end. The destructive part is very essential. It has to destroy your ego, it has to destroy your mind, it has to destroy your ideologies, belief systems -- Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, communism. It has to destroy all that you have been up to now. It has to shatter the whole identity, it has to create an identity crisis. Only then can you move into the new -- when you are completely free from the old.


To be free from the old is the beginning of the new. And then one can create. One can really be creative and a multi-dimensional creativity can explode. Then life is a joy, then life is a splendor. Then life is a celebration.


Wisdom is not information, it is a light. It is not knowledge, it is knowing. It is the capacity to see clearly, it is clarity. It is like a mirror, absolutely clean, without any dust, so that it can reflect that which is.


Knowledge accumulates theories, philosophies, ideologies -- and all those things are nothing but layers of dust on the mirror. To be wise one needs to clean the mirror completely.


Everyone is born with a small flame of wisdom inside, but that flame is surrounded by so much smoke of knowledge, information, memory, experience, that we don't feel it, we don't see it. All this smoke has to be dispersed.


That's exactly the process of sannyas: making you utterly nude, making your heart absolutely exposed to the wind, to the rain, to the sun. And then you start reflecting that which is.


God is another name for that which is -- or truth, or enlightenment, they all mean the same thing.


Life is a god-given opportunity. We have not earned it. He gives it not because we are worthy but because he has too much and he has to give it. It is like a cloud full of rainwater, so full that it has to rain, it has to shower somewhere; it may even be on the rocks, but it has to shower. It is like a flower that has to release its fragrance. god means abundance. He is so much that he has to share his being in infinite ways.


Always remember that you are a gift of god. Respect it use the opportunity. don't waste it.


Millions of people go on wasting such precious time -- each moment can become tremendous joy. They go on wasting it in unnecessary worries, anxieties, miseries.


Becoming a sannyasin means that now you will remain alert that no time, no energy is wasted in the non-essential, that you are going to make something out of this god-given opportunity, that you are going to grow, that you are going to mature, that you are going to realise who you are.
Sannyas is a process of self-actualisation.


The seeker of truth is religious. The seeker of good is moral. And the seeker of beauty is the poet, the musician, the artist. But my sannyasin has to be a synthesis; he has to be all three together. If you are one then something is missing. Then you are one-dimensional; then you will not have depth, you will be flat.


That's why religious people are so flat. They don't have depth, they are one-dimensional people. And moral people are also very flat. To have depth one needs three dimensions.


My effort here is to create a new kind of man, a three-dimensional man. And when you are three-dimensional a miracle happens: the fourth arises out of the synthesis of the three. And the fourth is the centre of all the three. all three are three expressions of the fourth. The fourth is really god, nirvana, absolute truth. In the East we have simply called it the fourth -- turiya. We have not given it any name. To three we give names because it is possible to express them through words. The fourth we simply call the fourth.


Gurdjieff used to call his way the fourth way.... He could not develop it and could not systematise it. The situation was not ripe and he was working against hazards. The West was absolutely unacquainted with the idea of the fourth. The West can understand three dimensions -- at least intellectually -- bu the fourth is absolutely beyond the Western mind.


Gurdjieff tried hard but could not manage it. First he was working in the West: no right space, no right soil, no right people available. Hence he was working in the right direction but could not complete the work. He died without completing something tremendous that he had started.


I have particularly chosen not to go to the West but to call the West to the East. Now something strange has to be managed. I am avoiding Indians as much as possible. I am debarring them as much as possible because they think they already know -- that is their trouble. They know nothing, they have lost all track, but they know words -- and I don't want to waste my time with verbal people.


The West can understand because it has not egoism of knowing. But it has not background, so I have chosen to be in the East so that the East can function as a backdrop. I am working in the West, remaining in the East, calling forth the West here so that this combination becomes possible: the eastern background with the western openness. And my feeling is that I am not going to fail where Gurfjieff failed. Things have started happening. We will be able to create the fourth way, and that will become the source of a new humanity. Something immensely valuable is transpiring. All of you becoming sannyasins is not just an ordinary phenomenon. But only later on will people become aware, people always become aware only later on. Even you who are participating in this great work are not clearly alert and aware of what is happening. But something is pulling you and you are becoming participants, not knowing that you are participating in something tremendously vast and tremendously significant for the whole future of humanity.


God is our victory, in god is our victory. Without god we are failures. We may have all the possessions and the wealth of the world, we may be great kings and queens and emperors, but still we are failures. Without god nobody is ever a success. It  can't happen in the nature of things. It is only with god that victory is possible.


When you become one with god, when you exist in harmony with god, your life has the taste of victory. You may not have anything, you may not have much money -- that does not matter: you will sit like a king and you will walk like a king and you will live like a king. You will be a god, a goddess.


The moment that one becomes harmonious with god one has become a god. Jesus says: I and my father in heaven are one. He is crucified because of this great statement. The small minds cannot tolerate it; it looks sacrilegious to claim "I am god." But what can Jesus do? What can poor Jesus do? The moment that you are in harmony with god you are  god. If Jesus says anything else it will be lying.


Mansoor Al Hillaj declares "Ana'l Haq" -- I am the truth -- and he is killed for that. Truth has suffered so much for the simple reason that people are so mediocre, so mean that they can only understand lies. They cannot rise a little higher to see the truth.


Before one can understand truth one needs to go through a radical change, one needs a new vision. But this much is an absolute certainty, that with god we are victorious because we become gods. Without god we are failures, because without god we are very tiny, very small, struggling against such a huge universe. Our failure is absolutely certain, it is inevitable.


Sannyas means deciding: "Now I will not try to remain separate, aloof, I will not try to be an island. I will dissolve, melt and merge into the ocean and become one with it."
			

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