Chapter 6

[A sannyasin says:

Mm mm, it is natural, and nothing to worry about.

Mind goes on changing from negative to positive, from positive to negative. Those two polarities are as basic to the mind as negative and positive poles to electricity. With one pole, electricity cannot exist - and mind also cannot exist.

In fact deep down, mind is subtle electricity; it is electrical. That's why the computer can do its work, and sometimes will do it better than the human mind. Mind is just a bio-computer. It has those two polarities and goes on moving.

So the problem is not that sometimes you feel magic moments and sometimes you feel dark moments. The darkness of the dark moments will be proportionate to the magicalness of the magical moments. If you reach to a higher peak in positivity, then the lowest you will touch in your negativity.

The higher the reach of the positive, the lower will be the depth of the negative. So the higher you will reach, the deeper abyss you will have to touch.

This has to be understood: if you try not to touch the lower rungs, then higher peaks will disappear.

Then you move on plain ground. That's what many people have managed to do; afraid of the depth, they have missed the peaks. One has to take risks. You have to pay for the peak and the price is to be paid by your depth, your low moments. But it is worth it. Even one moment at the peak, the magic moment, is worth a whole life in the darkest depths. If you can touch heaven for one moment, you can be ready to live for the whole of eternity in hell. And it is always proportionate, half/half,

fifty/fifty. But if you become afraid of the lower depths, then by and by, indirectly you will become afraid of the peaks too - because they bring the lower.

Only a rich man knows what poverty is. A poor man cannot know because poverty has to be known in contrast - and he has no contrast, he cannot relate. A beggar does not know what it is to be a beggar, mm? This looks paradoxical. Because he is a beggar, we think he must know what it is to be a beggar, but he does not know at all. Only when an emperor becomes a beggar does he know.

A contrast gives you clarity.

Many people, many - almost ninety percent - have decided to live on the plain ground, safe, not taking any risks. They never fall to the depth, they never rise to any heights. Their life is a dull affair, a drab thing, monotonous - with no peaks, no valleys, no nights, no days. They just live in a grey world, without colours... the rainbow doesn't exist for them. They live a grey life, and by and by they also become grey and mediocre.

Never settle for any mediocrity because that is a sin against life. Never ask that life should be without risk, and never ask for security, because that is asking for death. Live dangerously - because that is the only way to live.

The greatest danger is to reach to the greatest peaks of God, and to fall to the greatest depths of hell. Become a traveller between these two, unafraid. By and by you will come to understand that there is a transcendence. By and by you will come to know that you are neither the peak nor the depth, neither the peak nor the valley. By and by you will come to know that you are the watcher, the witness. Something in your mind goes to the peak, something in your mind goes to the valley, but something beyond is always there - just watching, just taking note of it - and that is you. Mind has polarity, you don't have any polarity - you are a transcendence.

Remember this word transcendence. You are transcendental: you go beyond both the polarities.

Both the polarities are in you but you are neither - you tower higher than both. Once you become in tune with this transcendence then you walk, not on the plain ground, but between the valleys and the peaks, remaining so balanced that no plain ground can remain as plain as this; This is something inner; it has nothing to do with the ground. The ground is very high and low, both heaven and hell are there, but you are somewhere far, far away from both. You simply watch the whole game of it, the whole play of consciousness.

Homesickness will arise. It is part of our security, part of our mediocre life. But there is no home.

These are just conveniences, just consolations that we create around us to give us a false feeling of security - because every moment death is coming closer and closer. Every moment the grave is calling, and sooner or later everybody is going to be in the grave. The home is not going to remain a home forever. At the most it is a caravanserai - you stay for the night, an overnight stay, and by the morning you go.

Life is an eternal journey... there is no home. To understand this homelessness is to understand life. To ask for home is to ask for death... to ask for home is to ask for no change... to ask for home is to ask for mediocre comforts, an easy-going life, moving on the plain ground. But where are you moving? Even if you are moving comfortably, the grave is approaching closer every moment so

sooner or later you fall into it. Before you fall into it you have to realise the deathless in you. If that deathlessness is not realised you have missed the whole point of life, you have missed your whole life. One has to start from ABC again.

So there is nothing to be worried about. I am not saying repress those thoughts of homesickness, no. Just take note of them, that they are there. It is natural, don't be worried about them. I can send you back home. When you have understood the homelessness of life, you can go back - but then there is no home where you can go back to!

The family, the friends, the son, they are all just conveniences, conventions, make-believes - because everybody is a stranger. Your son is a stranger to you. Just by being a son the strangeness is not lost. If you look into his eyes you will find a stranger you have never known before. We are all strangers. Wherever you move, you are moving with strangers - there is no homeland. Wherever you are, you are a foreigner; everybody everywhere is unfamiliar, unknown.

You don't know yourself - how can you know others? You are not even familiar with yourself - how can you create a family? A family means those who are familiar - but nobody is familiar. We just go on believing that because it is easy. To create doubt, to enquire, to ask questions, creates difficulties.

So we simply go on believing: somebody is a mother, somebody is a father, somebody is a son, somebody is a wife, and we believe that everything is okay, everything is in its place. We have not only placed relations, things in the world, in categories, in pigeon-holes, we have even placed God somewhere there. (looking ceiling-wards) He is there and everything is okay. This is how we create a mental world - which exists nowhere except in your mind.

Destroy all these projections, because reality has to be encountered. Reality is beautiful and projections are just foolish. Reality has a tremendous beauty in it, and projections are only dreams - but they are working like screens.

My whole effort with you, and with everybody here, is to make you more and more aware so that you can live with reality as it is. You don't demand that it should be like this or like that - you simply accept it as it is. You simply live in a let-go. You allow it and move with it - not thinking of the morrow, not thinking of the future, but living in this moment.

I will send you, but wait a little. When you are ripe and you understand the homelessness, the basic homelessness of man.... Man is a homeless animal. Jesus says, 'Even foxes have holes to hide their head. The son of man has nowhere to put his head.' Man is homelessness. Trees have their roots in the earth, birds have their nests, animals have their fixed way of life, a style, a character.

Only man is characterless, styleless, homeless. Only man is a stranger - but that is the beauty and the glory.

Nothing is wrong in it. It gives you a real life of challenge; a life of rebellion, a life which is mutating every moment. Every moment one dies, and every moment one is born again.

Just wait and relax, and watch these moments in the mind; don't be concerned too much. Yes, memories will come: mind will have nostalgia and think of the past, will create golden auras around the past, and will think of the future. But these are the traps - that's how the present is lost. Just this moment is true. The past is no more, the future is yet to be. Don't move in these dead and unborn

things. Be here, so one day wherever you are, you can be there. If you go right now... and you can go, because I never force anybody to do anything. If you feel like going, you go. But then you will start thinking of Poona, because this mind which keeps thinking of the past is bound to think of Poona. Then there you will feel uncomfortable, and you will start thinking of coming back.

I will send you when you have learned how to be wherever you are: in Poona, Italy, it doesn't matter.

But one has to know the knack of being in the present. And wherever you are, I am there, so there is no need to be physically close. Then a new door opens, a new dimension which knows no space and no time, and you can be as much present to me there, and I to you, as I am here. Then we have an inner tuning... but first you have to be tuned with the present.

So just watch and be a witness. Just take note, that's all. Don't get involved with the mind, don't get identified; remain aloof, a watcher.

And I can see that things are happening.... Much more is possible if this being too much in the mind stops - because this is wasting energy, this distracts your energy.

So just watch, and after a few more days, and when I feel that you are ready, that you have forgotten the home completely, suddenly one day I will send you.

[A sannyasin says:

Right, that too is true... because it is always something deeper that you cannot say, so whatsoever you say will always look like an evasion. If you don't say anything, you will wonder why you didn't. If you do say something, you will feel that what you said was not the point, that there was something else you wanted to say.

Keep quiet - there is nothing wrong in it. Just remain silent... and that which you want to share, I can hear without you even saying it. So don't be worried about it, mm? But whenever you feel that now words are coming, say them. Or if sometimes you want to enjoy an evasion, that too - nothing wrong in it. But do it consciously....

Do it consciously next time. Be conscious that you are evading, but that you have to evade, and let us see what comes up, mm? Or this time you will try?

[The sannyasin answers:

That's good, mm? that's good. The one who feels phoney is not phoney, and the part that feels untrue is not untrue. So find more and more shelter in that part, nourish that part.

When you want something to grow, nourish it, be attentive to it, care about it. When you want something not to grow, just keep your back towards it - and it dies of its own accord. Just like a plant that is neglected not watered, it withers away and dies by itself.

So don't be worried about the phoney part. Just look at the part that says not to be phoney, and nourish that part. Rejoice in it, bring it more and more to the light - and watch. Whenever you see something that is phoney, just put it aside. For example, you were just going to smile, then suddenly

you realise that it was phoney. Stop, even in the middle of the smile; relax your lips, and ask the person to excuse you. Tell them it was a phoney smile, and you are sorry. If a real smile comes then it is okay; if it doesn't then that is also okay. What can you do? - if it comes it comes; if it doesn't come it doesn't. One cannot force it.

The whole phoniness arises in life because we have been taught to do things which cannot be done.

You understand? This is the whole mechanism of phoniness. You were a child and your mother said, 'Love me, I am your mother.' How can a child love? If love arises, it arises; if not, not - what can the child do? The child feels helpless. How to love this mother? She is a mother, and a mother has to be loved; it is a role to be fulfilled, a duty to be carried. What can the child do? He can pretend, at the most he can pretend - and by and by he learns the trick of pretensions. Then he smiles when he looks at the mother. She is a mother, one has to smile. By and by he completely forgets what to be natural is. The whole society expects you to do this and that - respect this man because he is your teacher, respect that man because he is your boss.

I'm not saying to just get out of the social formalities. I am saying be watchful, and if you have to be false, be it consciously. Knowing that this is your boss and you have to smile, smile consciously, knowing well that it is phoney. Let the boss be deceived; you should not be deceived by your smile - that's the point. If you smile unconsciously, the boss may not be deceived, because it is difficult to deceive bosses - but you may be deceived. You may think how respectful you were. You will pat yourself on the back and think you were perfectly good, such a good boy - but there you are missing.

So if sometimes you think it is necessary - because it may be necessary: life is complex and you are not alone; there are many things that you have to do, because the whole society exists on phoniness - then be phoney consciously. But in your relationships where you can be true, don't allow phoniness. With Sheela (his wife, who was sitting beside him) there is no need to be phoney, because that is not a social relationship. But there too it enters, and then you don't have any world where you can be true - not even in love. Even there you have to watch and see and do things.

So if it is possible in your love relationship, in your friendships, be true. I am not saying to hurt people. I am simply saying don't deceive yourself. If you see that being true will hurt somebody, then don't be true. Because your truth is yours - you need not hurt anybody. If a phoney smile can become a lubricant, let it be so. But when you are in an authentic relationship then be true. And even if that is not possible, then at least when you are sitting alone in your room, don't be phoney.

I know people who are phoney there too; they sit in their drawing rooms as if somebody else is present, and they behave in a correct manner. Even in their bathrooms many people are afraid to be true. The mannerism has gone so deep that you cannot put it aside. Mannerisms should be like clothing: you undress, so unmanner also; become uncivil, become wild again. At least for a few moments when you are alone be true.

Then by and by the boundaries will go on becoming wider and wider and wider - and a day comes when a person is simply true.

[A sannyasin says:

Just wait a little, and don't be in a hurry, mm?

Be thankful that even in Poona you are it, at the centre. Don't complain that you are not centred outside Poona. By and by you will become capable, mm?

It happens in the beginning. When you are close to me you start moving with me. When you go away, you again take your reins in your hands - and your reins are shaky, you cannot depend on them yet. Soon you will be able to. It is just like when a small child starts walking, mm? When the father or mother is holding his hands he walks perfectly well and with confidence - so he doesn't fall.

Then he wants to let go of the hand because he feels that now he doesn't need to be dependent - and then he immediately falls over because he is on his own, and he wavers. That is natural, mm?

Don't be in a hurry to leave go of my hand. When you are ready I will leave myself, mm? Mm, good.