Sannyas is The Apprenticeship in Bliss

[to a sannyasin returning to her husband in the West]

Just be there and be totally there. It is not a question of where you are; the question is always of being total or partial. Whenever you are partial, something goes on missing. But my feeling is that you will be partial there too - because you could not be total here, so how can you be total there?

Here you have been thinking of somebody who is there; there you will think of me and things that are here.

Partiality is the way of the mind. The mind can never be total in anything, because to be total means to commit suicide; as far as the mind is concerned, it is a suicide. The mind is very clever in creating new fragments. You are thinking that there you will be total, but you will be there - nobody else - and this mind will be there - no other mind. If it cannot be total here, how can it be total there? Just by changing places, nothing is changed; the mind remains unaffected by changing your place. The mind has to be changed. If you had been total here then there would have been a possibility: you could have hoped to be total there too. But try. Who knows? It may happen there.

And it is always so that whenever you are not with your lover great romantic ideas arise, and when you are with your lover then all simply falls flat.

When you are not with your lover your heart is simply longing to be together, and when you are together suddenly you find the whole stupidity of it. What is there? All those dreams look childish.

Then you want to be alone or you want to be somewhere else. This is the game people are playing; it is not simply your game. It is the general game, the game of life: whatsoever you have immediately loses meaning; whatsoever you have not becomes meaningful.

Just the other day I was reading a story, a Sufi story.... A Sufi is on a sea voyage and a king is also on the same boat; he has a servant. One day the sea is very dangerous and it seems that any moment the boat can sink. The servant is in a panic - crying, weeping, shouting 'Save me!' and praying to god and almost going mad. The king says to him 'Don't be afraid. I am also here and so many people are here - if we are all going to die, we are all going to die, not only you.' But he is not in a state to listen.

The Sufi mystic is listening to the whole thing, watching, and he says 'If you give me a chance I can put him right,' and the king says 'Do anything!'

So the Sufi and his two or three disciples take the man up and throw him into the sea! Of course he shouts more loudly in the sea:'Save me! Take me out of it!'

For a few minutes he is left there and then the Sufi and the disciples rescue him and carry him back into the ship; now he is very calm and quiet. He sits very silently, and he is very happy that he has been saved. The king is surprised but the mystic says 'This is a simple application of a general law:

People understand the beauty of something only when they have lost it.'

Your lover is there you understand the beauty of relationship; when you are gone from here you will understand the beauty of being here. This is the general rule. Beware of it!

So good. Keep to this - being total there. Don't think of me and don't think of Poona at all.

Just be totally there. If you can be totally there, next time you can be totally here. And it is not a question of where you are total; wherever you are total you are with me. To be total is to be with me.

To be partial is not to be with me.

So just go happily, with all my blessings, to be total there - try!

Para means'of the beyond, transcendental'; prem means love - love of the beyond, love for the transcendental.

Man is not confined to the body, neither is man confined to the mind. That's the beauty and the grandeur. In the innermost core, something exists in man which is transcendental, which is infinite, which has no beginning and no end, which is the eternal flow of life. To become too attached to the body, to the mind and to the things of the body and the mind, is to be lost in the mundane. To remember the transcendental - to remember 'I am in the body but not the body, I am in the mind but not the mind' - is the beginning of a great transformation. It takes you farther and farther away from things; and the farther away you are from things, the closer you are to the essence. The farther away you are from the mundane, the closer you are to the sacred; and only with the sacred does joy arise. It is a by-product, joy is a by-product.

When one remembers one's sacredness, one's infinity, joy wells up. When one thinks oneself limited by a thousand and one limitations, misery arises, because a limitation is a kind of confinement; it is a prison. How can one be happy in such a small body? How can one be happy in such a petty mind? It is impossible. They don't allow you space to dance, to sing, to celebrate. One is cluttered, one is like a junkyard. One needs the vast sky. In that vastness is freedom. In that freedom is joy.

Fall in love with the transcendental... search for it. And I call it'falling in love' because the search has to be through the heart and not through the mind. If you search through the mind, you will never go beyond the mind. The mind is very jealous - it won't allow you to surpass it; it is very possessive.

The mind is the gaoler, it guards the gate. It won't allow you to go beyond the limits. You can function within the limits - it gives you all freedom within the limits - but don't step outside; that is not allowed.

The heart is not a prison, it is an opening; it is a door, not a wall. Hence I say 'Fall in love with the beyond'... and only the search for the beyond makes a man truly a man.

Friedrich Nietzsche has said 'That day will be the most unfortunate when man stops surpassing himself.' When the arrow of human consciousness does not have anything like a target beyond itself, that day will be the most unfortunate. But that day will never come, it cannot come - the urge is built in. Man is man only because of the desire to surpass himself... that very desire is his humanness. Animals have no desire to transcend themselves. A dog is perfectly happy being a dog.

He does not want to become a god, he does not want to become anything else. A rose is perfectly happy being a rose.

It is the privilege, the prerogative, only of man - his agony and his ecstasy - that he wants to reach beyond, he wants to go above himself, he wants to do the impossible. That's his specific adventure.

That adventure makes him human. He has to live in this search, as this search.

A few things can be done only when the energy is ready. Then one can ride on the energy and can go higher and higher; now you can go on a psychedelic trip!

Just be here, and absorb me as much as you can. Become a drunkard!

[To a sannyasin who does not want to do groups and has fallen in love] If you don't want to do them, don't. But these men come and go (laughter) - they are just passing phases... and what the groups do will remain. So it is for you to choose, mm? One feels like being with a man; thats very natural, but it is not of much value really. The groups will make you capable of more love, more understanding. Then to be with your man will be of more value and more depth.

But still, you have to decide; if you feel like that, then don't do the groups.

The difference between a belief and trust is immense.

Belief is directed towards an object. You believe in A, you believe in B; A may be a person or a book or a concept or a philosophy. Belief is objective, there is an object to it. Trust has no object. You don't trust A, you don't trust B or C. Trust is a quality. It is subjectivity; it has nothing to do with any object. Beliefs are bound to be disturbed, will be disturbed, and it is good that they are disturbed; otherwise you will be caught in them, you will be imprisoned in them.

Unless you lose all belief in beliefs, trust will not arise, because it is a totally different dimension.

A belief is looking outwards to somebody else as a redeemer. Christians believe in Christ and Buddhists believe in Buddha. They are looking towards somebody as if he is responsible. Nobody is responsible for you except yourself. Trust is not directed outwards. Trust is simply an inner quality, like a fragrance of a flower, undirected; it is simply there. Nobody can take your trust away because in the first place you never put it in anybody.

The real master never creates a belief and the pseudo masters always create belief. In the name of trust they create belief. The real master destroys beliefs. That's why Zen people say 'If you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him.' They are saying to kill the belief in Buddha so your own trust is freed from all objects.

Trust is a quality of your heart as intelligence is the quality of your mind. And the less cluttered you are with beliefs, the more you will find trust arising. Who can take it away from you? Nobody can.

Nobody can shake it. You trust because you enjoy trusting. There is no motivation in it; it is trust for trust's sake. If somebody deceives you, that is his business; in fact he is giving you an opportunity to test your trust. The man of trust will laugh at the whole thing - he has passed one barrier more!

So forget all about that. And whenever people seek and search for truth, many pseudo gurus are bound to be there in the marketplace... and California is the super-marketplace for all kinds of gurus.

First they used to import them from India; now they have started manufacturing them themselves.

How long can one depend on imports? Those imported were false and the ones that you are creating there are copies of the imported ones.

But don't carry any grudge, don't carry any scar; he only did his thing. It was wrong from your side to believe in a person. You have just been proved wrong - not that he has been proved wrong. That is not your business at all; that is his business. Only one thing has been proved, that one shouldn't trust persons. Trust your own being... trust your own awareness, trust your own love. And that is the work of a real master: to throw you back to yourself.

Surrendering to a master is not really surrendering to a master; it is just taking the help of a master so that you can surrender to yourself. The master is just a mirror: he reflects you. But carrying any grudge, any scar in the mind, is bad, because that will affect your future. That means you are not yet free from that experience. Always remember: the past has to be dropped every day.

And sometimes it happens that even the wrong routes that you follow may bring you to the right route. Wrong persons whom you are with may help you to search for the right person; because to see the false as the false is a great step towards knowing the true as the true.

So ultimately, when one looks back and considers everything, all fits perfectly well. Those who cheated you and those who helped you - you have to be grateful to all of them. You may not have been here; if you had not been with F - your life would have been a totally different life. What he did is not the point.

Jesus says 'Judge ye not.' Never judge people. Whatsoever they can do, they are doing. Why should we expect more from them? Who are we? Whatsoever you can take, learn, experience, you should take, learn, experience, and move - unless you come to a place where you can really disappear and there is no need to move anywhere else. That door comes, but one has to knock on many doors before that door comes.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine false masters... and then one arrives at the true master. And sometimes it is a surprise when you arrive at the true master: he may have lived just by your side, he may have been your neighbour.

A Sufi story...

A man went to seek and search. He asked the first man outside the town, sitting under a tree 'How to find a master?' The man described him, saying 'These are the signs. he will be sitting under such- and-such-a tree, he will have certain eyes, such-and-such-a vibe'... and all that. The man was very happy - now he had a criterion - and for thirty years he searched. He came across many masters, many people, and he became tired, disillusioned and frustrated - so much so that he turned back home; he said 'It is all nonsense.'

He met that old man - noW he was very old - when he was entering the town. Suddenly he was surprised:'This is the tree that he described, this is the vibe.' He looked into the eyes of the old man and the old man started laughing. This was the laughter and these were the eyes! He said 'But why didn't you tell me before? Why did I have to go into such suffering and a nightmare for thirty years?'

The old man said 'I told you, I described everything, but you didn't even look at the tree! You were not ready. The tree was here, I was here. When I was describing the eyes, I was looking into your eyes, but you were not there.

When I was talking about the vibe, you were not ready to feel it; you were dead. These thirty years have not been a wastage; they have prepared you. Now you can see the tree, you can look into my eyes and you can feel the vibe. I am your master. You have come home! And don't be angry with all those people; they all have helped in their own ways. The good and the bad, the false and the true - they all help.'

This game of life is really a very paradoxical game. So whenever you can come, come back - you may find the tree here!