Darshan 10 March 1978

Veet means beyond, ama means darkness - beyond darkness. And everybody is living in darkness.

Until god has happened to you, you are in darkness, because god is the only light there is. One can be rich in darkness, one can be poor, one can be educated, one can be uneducated; one can be famous and one can be absolutely unknown, anonymous; one can be successful, one can be a failure - that doesn't make much difference - but we all live in darkness till god happens. Remember that: success or failure are all alike; life and death are also alike. Unless god happens, nothing has happened. Unless that door has opened, no door has opened; we have been befooling ourselves; and man has created many things to befool himself with.

All the ways that we have invented to feel successful are the ways to somehow cover up our emptiness. Somebody becomes a president of a country and he feels very good, he feels he has arrived, and nothing has happened! A Jimmy Carter is a Jimmy Carter whether he is a president or not. The heart is in the same space; nothing has changed.

You may be poor and you can accumulate much money, but you remain the same; your money cannot make you rich. Your richness, your success, your victory, depends only on one thing - that god should happen to you. And god is ready to happen any moment but we are not looking for him. We are looking for ten thousand things except god. The day one is ready to look for him, he immediately happens. He has been waiting a long time for you... for everybody. He has been knocking on your door, but you are so full of noise that the still small voice is never heard. He comes in many ways but you go on missing him. Unless you are looking for him, you will not find him. We find only that for which we look, for which we look intensely; then our gestalt changes.

If you are not looking for flowers, you can go out of this garden without seeing single flower. When you look, only then are they there. They suddenly bloom in existence when you look for them;

otherwise they are there but not for you. They don't enter into your world; they remain part of the world outside but you remain unconnected with them.

God is everywhere but we are not looking for him. Start looking for him, start a a very deliberate search for him. Devote as much time as possible, as much energy as possible, to it. And one day suddenly it happens: whenever your thirst is really afire and you are aflame with desire for him, he happens. All that is needed is a thirst so deep that it touches your very being, hurts; the pain is felt in the heart. That pain is prayer, and that pain will take you beyond darkness.

Kavita means poetry. My approach towards reality is that of poetry, it is not of philosophy. Search for beauty and forget about truth. If you can find beauty you will find truth; if you cannot find beauty you will never find truth. When one starts searching for truth one becomes more and more hung up in the head, and the head is a barrier. The very word 'truth' is a dry word, desertlike. It has no juice in it; it is a logical concept. So a seeker after truth becomes more and more heady and more and more loses the qualities of the heart.

My emphasis is on the heart. It is through the feeling, not through the thinking, that we arrive. It is through emotions that we feel god for the first time, not through argumentation. One has never been able to arrive through philosophy. k gives a thousand and one conclusions but they don't satisfy; they are empty conclusions. The heart gives only one conclusion, but it is the conclusion; it quenches the thirst, it gives contentment.

Search for beauty, search for sensitivity. Think less, feel more. Put logic aside and follow love. Let tears flow from your eyes; they will cleanse you more than any austerity can do. No fast will cleanse you; only tears will. So that emphasis has to be remembered: be more and more poetic, feel the wonder of existence and the infinite mysteries that abound.

Everything is a mystery because everything remains unexplained. Five thousand years of philosophy and three hundred years of science have not given a single explanation; everything remains as unexplained as ever, as unknown as ever. Open those eyes of wonder, become a child again. That's what I mean by poetry. Each child is born a poet; we destroy him. Each child knows how to dance and how to sing and how to feel wonder, but we don't allow him.

Rather than feeling wonder, we initiate him into doubt, logic, reason, arithmetic. Sooner or later his heart closes, then he starts functioning only in the head; now he will miss his whole life. He will never know what joy is, he will never know what peace is. He will never come across anything which he can call a proof of god, because all those things happen only on the path of feeling, never on the path of reason.

[A new sannyasin, who is a business man, says that he gets a bad pain in his shoulder when he is in the marketplace. Doctors say it is psychosomatic and treat it with painkillers.]

I think that a few things can be of very great help. One is Rolfing and the second is acupuncture.

First try Rolfing; take all the ten session. It is available there so you can do it. If it doesn't work...

ninety percent chances are that it will work. If it is psychosomatic it is going to work, and it must be psychosomatic.

You try that. And if it doesn't work then try acupuncture next. You could have tried it here but...

It will go - nothing to be worried about. Just remember a few things. One is: a Canadian psychoanalyst, Doctor Hans Sehye, has been working his whole life on only one problem - that is stress. And he has come to certain very profound conclusions. One is that stress is not always wrong; it can be used in beautiful ways. k is not necessarily negative, but if we think that it is negative, that it is not good, then we create problems. Stress in itself can be used as a stepping stone, it can become a creative force. But ordinarily we have been taught down the ages that stress is bad, that when you are in any kind of stress you become afraid. And your fear makes it even more stressful; the situation is not helped by it.

For example, there is some situation in the market and that is creating a stress. The moment you feel that there is some tension, some stress, you become afraid that this should not be so: 'I have to relax.' Now, trying to relax will not help, because you cannot relax; in fact, trying to relax will create a new kind of stress. The stress is there and you are trying to relax and you cannot, so you are complicating the problem.

When stress is there use it as creative energy. First, accept it; there is no need to fight with it. Accept it, it is perfectly okay. It simply says, 'The market is not going well, something is going wrong,' mm?

- 'You may be a loser'... or something. Stress is simply an indication that the body is getting ready to fight with it. Now you try to relax or you take pain-killers or you take tranquillisers; you are going against the body. The body is getting ready to fight a certain situation, a certain challenge that is there: enjoy the challenge!

Even if sometimes you can't sleep in the night there is no need to be worried. Work it out, use that energy that is coming up: walk up and down, go for a run, go for a long walk, plan what you want to do, what the mind wants to do. Rather than trying to go to sleep, which is not possible, use the situation in a creative way. It simply says that the body is ready to fight with the problem; this is no time to relax. Relaxation can be done later on.

In fact if you have lived your stress totally you will come to a relaxation automatically; you can go on only so far, then the body automatically relaxes. If you want to relax in the middle you create trouble; the body cannot relax in the middle. k is almost as if an Olympic runner is getting ready, just waiting for the whistle, the signal, and he will be off, he will go like the wind. He is full of stress; now that is no time to relax. If he takes a tranquilliser he will never be of any use in the race. Or if he relaxes there and tries to do TM he will lose all. He has to use his stress: the stress is boiling, it is gathering energy. He is becoming more and more vital and potential. Now he has to sit on this stress and use it as energy, as fuel.

Sehye has given a new name for this kind of stress: he calls it 'eustress', like euphoria; it is a positive stress. When the runner has run he will fall into deep sleep; the problem is solved. Now there is no problem, the stress disappears of its own accord.

So try this too: when there is a stressful situation don't freak out, don't become afraid of it. Go into it, use it to fight with. A man has tremendous energy and the more you use it, the more you have of it.

Rolfing will be helpful. It is not going to help you relax; it will simply change your musculature, it will make you more vital. So this will go with Rolfing.

When it comes and there is a situation, fight, do all that you can do, really go madly into it. Allow it, accept it and welcome it. It is good, it prepares you to fight. And when you have worked it out, you will be surprised: great relaxation comes, and that relaxation is not created by you. Maybe for two, three days you cannot sleep and then for forty-eight hours you can't wake up, and that is okay!

We go on carrying many wrong notions - for example, that every person has to sleep eight hours every day. It depends what the situation is. There are situations when no sleep is needed: your house is on fire, and you are trying to sleep. Now that is not possible and that should not be possible, otherwise who is going to put that fire out? And when the house is on fire, all other things are put aside; suddenly your body is ready to fight the fire. You will not feel sleepy. When the fire is gone and everything settled you may fall asleep for a long period, and that will do.

Everybody does not need the same length of sleep either. A few people can do with three hours, two hours, four hours, five hours, six, eight, ten, twelve. People differ, there is no norm. And about stress also people differ.

There are two kinds of people in the world: One can be called the race-horse type and the other is the turtle type. If the race-horse type is not allowed to go fast, to go into things with speed, there will be stress; he has to be given his pace. And you are a race-horse! So forget about relaxation and things like that; they are not for you. Those are for turtles like me! Mm? So just be a race-horse, that is natural to you, and don't think of the joys that turtles are enjoying; that is not for you. You have a different kind of joy. If a turtle starts becoming a race-horse he will be in the same trouble!

You can get out of the market. It is so easy; the mind will say, 'Get out of the market, forget about it.

Just come and be here in the ashram.' But you will not feel good. You will feel more stress arising because you will not feel your energy is engaged, and I will have to make you a race-horse again in something else. You can ask [the sannyasins who work in the ashram office]: I go on putting them into things!

So accept your nature. You are a fighter, a warrior; you have to be that way, and that's your joy.

Now, no need to be afraid; go into it whole-heartedly. Fight with the market, compete in the market, do all that you really want to do. Don't be afraid of the consequences, accept the stress. Next time you come you will be in a totally different kind of space. Once you accept the stress it will disappear.

And not only that, you will feel very happy because you have started using it; it is a kind of energy.

Don't listen to people who say to relax; that is not for you. Your relaxation will come only after you have earned it by hard labour. One has to understand one's type. Once the type is understood there is no problem; then one can follow a clean-cut line. Stress is going to be your way of life.

So do this and take Rolfing.

[A sannyasin couple ask about their relationship. They both say they enjoy fighting, but the woman feels stuck between jumping right in or jumping out of the relationship.]

Jump in, not out! If you both enjoy fighting then you are made for each other! That is the best relationship possible, mm?

Just do a few things. One is: whatsoever he says you should be like, that is his problem; that is none of your business to be worried about. He is simply stating his mind; don't take it personally. When he says, 'You should be like this, what he is actually saying is that this is how he would like you; but that is his problem! If he likes you that way and you are not that way he is free to leave. Persist in being yourself: you need not change just because he says to change, because that will be phony.

If you feel like changing - not because he says but because of your feeling, then change. Then it will be authentic. Otherwise don't pay much attention to what he says; that is his problem. He is worried so he shouts at you. Remain yourself and fight for your own being.

Love is just an intimate fight and nothing else. It is a very cultured fight, sophisticated, but it is a fight. Lovers are fighters. In fact be with anybody and immediately the fight starts, because you are different, the other is different, mm? You are a woman and he is a man, first. Then he has been brought up in one way, you have been brought up in a different way. You have different ideas, he has different ideas.

Nobody is wrong, just differences are there.

To attain to that maturity when you start respecting the other's differences takes time. It will come but it takes time. It comes only when one has lived through many many fights and has burned oneself, wounded oneself and the other. Then slowly slowly, the wisdom arises. Wisdom is through experience; it is not knowledge. So anybody can give you the knowledge but it won't work; you will have to attain to your own wisdom.

It will come slowly. It is costly; one has to pay for it through one's life. Then one day one arrives at the point of seeing that it is just futile to ask the other to be somebody else other than who he or she is, and one has to accept that. In that acceptance love takes on a new colour, a new face, a new intimacy; love is no more a struggle.

The first phase is struggle, the second phase is totally different. But to reach to the second, the first has to be passed. And that's what is happening in the modern world: people never pass the first.

If a fight arises, you drop him, he drops you, you change partners; again fight arises, you change partners; again fight arises, you go on changing. You never arrive at the second point, and the second is possible only when you remain intimate long enough. This fight is a fire. It will make you more ripe; go into it. Don't jump out, jump in.

And let him say what he wants to. Maybe that is his way of creating a fight. Insist on being yourself.

But that needn't make any difference: you go on loving, he goes on loving, fighting continues by the side; they can go parallel.

So I don't think that you should separate; you should go deeper into it. It is going to give you something valuable - enjoy it!