Darshan 16 September 1979
[Dhyan Andrea: great courage is needed for meditation]
In fact the greatest courage, because it is the journey into the unknown, the uncharted, and one has to go without any map and one has to go without any guide. One has to go utterly alone, because it is an inner journey: you cannot take any companion with you. Even the Master can only indicate the way, but you have to go alone.
The deeper you go inside, the more alone you are; and when you reach the very core of your being you are utterly alone. But that aloneness is not loneliness, remember. It is not negative; you don't miss anybody. It is a fulfillment - you have come home. From one side it is emptiness. If you think about the mind it is empty of all mind: no past, no future, no memory, no desire; all have been left behind. But in another sense it is a plenitude, an overflowing energy. The mind is absent, God is present. The ego is absent, being is present... being which has no name, no adjective, no definition.
Naturally it needs guts to go on such a journey. People need to cling, to cling to others, in the name of love, family, religion, nation. They go on creating bigger and bigger collectivities, because they are afraid of being alone. Aloneness seems to be like a great death. Hence they go on clinging to everybody and anybody. If they cannot find anything beautiful to cling to, they will cling to the ugly. If they cannot find happiness to cling to, they will cling to misery, but they will cling. Anything is better than nothing; they are utterly afraid of falling into a nothingness. And dhyana, meditation, is a dive into nothingness.
Meditation does not mean concentration, it does not mean contemplation: it means getting beyond the mind. Concentration, contemplation, are both of the mind. Meditation means getting unidentified with the mind, seeing the mind as separate, knowing the mind as separate, witnessing the mind but not getting identified with it. Slowly slowly as witnessing grows, the distance grows between you and
the mind. Soon the mind is a faraway echo, and finally you cannot even hear the echo; then you are left utterly alone.
That needs courage, hence very few people have been able to know their own selves, and very few people have been able to become Buddhas. Before one can become a Buddha, one has to pass through a death - of the mind, of the ego, of all that we think we are. We have to lose all that we think we possess, then only can we possess the eternal.
[The witnessing self.]
To know it is to know God. To know it is to be available to God's gifts.
Not to know it is to be closed to God. Then your doors are closed; you live in a darkness created by yourself because you don't open the windows and the doors to the sun, to the rain, to the wind. You don't allow God to enter you.
God is always ready to pour his gifts on you and his first gift is immortality, nectar. He rains as nectar.
He starts a revolution in you: he changes you from a being of time into a being of eternity. He uplifts you from time to eternity; that is his first gift, and then many gifts follow. There is no end to his gifts, but one has to be ready to receive them, and the only way to be ready to receive them is to become unidentified with all that is mortal: body, mind, ego, the whole personality. Just be a watcher, a distant watcher, and the greater the distance, the better, because the greater the distance, the more the clarity. Clouds disperse and you can see things clearly as they are, and then you know that you are just a visitor in this body.
The body is a caravanserai: today you are in it, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, you may be gone, but one thing is certain, that one day we enter the body and one day we leave the body: we are not it. Take care of the body - even though it is a temporary house. Clean it, respect it, love it; it is a temple! But don't get identified with it, don't become it. The moment you become it, you are closed to God. The moment you are not identified with it you are open: open to all that is beyond the mind. That beyond is called God by religious people; God is another name for the beyond. If you don't like the word "God", you can simply call it the beyond; that will do. "Beyond" is a neutral word, neither religious nor irreligious. It has a beauty. Be open to the beyond...
Man has destroyed all his potential. That is the original sin - not that he disobeyed God; he has disobeyed his own potential, he has gone astray from his own being. He is no more in touch with his reality.
He has become an uprooted tree, and of course an uprooted tree cannot blossom, cannot even be green - what to say about flowers? It cannot even have foliage. It only dies... a slow death. Very few people live. The multitude only dies every day, more and more. The life of the so-called human being is nothing but a slow death. Only once in a while does a man live and know what life is.
Before you can live you have to know what it is all about. Before you can live it at all you have to be absolutely clear about your being, from where you come and to where you are going and who you are If these questions remain unanswered you cannot really live; you can only pretend to live, you can only make empty gestures. Your love will be shallow, your life will be futile, your existence will be a burden to you and to others too.
But this is not our destiny, this is our own fault And man can commit this fault because he has been given freedom, he is the only animal in existence who has the freedom to choose. Choice is a dangerous phenomenon, you can always choose the wrong. The freedom to choose means that you are allowed to choose the wrong too, and the wrong is easier because the wrong is downhill, and the right is difficult because the right is uphill.
The wrong is easier, because everybody around you is living the wrong. The right is difficult because where can you find a Jesus or a Buddha? - it is so rare And even if you find a Jesus or a Buddha you will be annoyed by their presence rather than enchanted, because their presence will make you feel guilty. Their presence will make you feel that you are missing something. Their presence will make you feel that you have betrayed your soul, betrayed your life; you will be angry, annoyed. Hence a Jesus is crucified This crucifixion of Jesus is not a simple matte of politicians and priests only, it is a very complete phenomenon. It indicates the mind of the so-called humanity. The priests and the politicians are simply representatives of the ordinary man, of the ordinary consciousness. They are doing what the ordinary man wants them to do. They are simply following the crowd. They are following the crowd so that they can remain the leaders of the crowd. But the crucifixion of Jesus or the poisoning of Socrates are things to be contemplated upon. Why could people not tolerate the existence of such beautiful persons?
And the story is still the same, man has not changed; again and again the same thing is repeated They say that history repeats itself; it may not repeat itself in other matters, but as far as Buddhas are concerned, it certainly repeats itself.
Man remains a slave of misery because he has chosen it, finding it easier to be miserable, finding it cheaper and finding the whole crowd around miserable. It feels more comfortable to be with the crowd than to be alone. To be blissful means to be alone To be blissful means to seek and search for something inside you and not to imitate the crowd, to seek the authentic soul and not be an imitator.
That will make you a lord of bliss. And that's what sannyas is for: the alchemy that can transform you from a slave of misery into a lord of bliss. Things can be put right. Just a little intelligence, a little courage, a little rebelliousness, a little dignity - that's all that is needed.