The Night is over

Prem means love, devayan means divine vehicle - love, the divine vehicle. Love takes you to the ultimate and love also brings the ultimate to you; it is a double-edged sword. It is like a ladder: you can go up and down by the same ladder. And the meeting happens somewhere in the middle. Man starts moving in love, god starts moving in response to man's love, and just exactly in the middle, somewhere half-way, the meeting happens. Man disappears into god and god disappears into man.

Then there is no 'I' and no'thou'; then there is only one.

And the search is for that oneness... the longing is to be one with the whole again. The suffering is that we cannot find the way; the suffering is that whatsoever we do fails. But love has never failed. Very few people try love. They try everything else but nothing else can succeed. With love everything is possible; without love nothing is possible.

Prem means love, shaila means the peak of the mountain. Prem shaila will mean the peak of the mountain of love. And love makes available the highest peak possible - what Abraham Maslow calls'the peak experience'. It is possible only through love. All other experiences are mundane, ordinary; only love takes one into the beyond. All other experiences are earthly, earthbound. Only love has wings... it can take you above the clouds. And that is not only a metaphor - literally it is so.

Man is an ambiguous being - half earth, half sky, half matter, half mind, half animal, half god. That is the agony of man and also the ecstasy. The agony is that man is always divided - to be this or to be that, to be or not to be. The animal pulls him backwards, and the god in him goes on calling him forth, to come out: Surpass yourself! Just a little more and you will have arrived.

The animal seems simple, comfortable, convenient, because it is our past. But it is boring, familiar, and familiarity breeds contempt. Easy, but not worth much; we have known it. To know it again and again is going to be just a repetition, and all repetition dulls the consciousness. All repetition reduces you to a mechanism, and to be reduced to a mechanism is to be in utter bondage.

So man is pulled backwards, towards convenience, security, familiarity, but repulsed also because it is boring and it has already been known; there is no adventure any more.

The body wants to fall back, the spirit wants to go ahead. And the call of god, the call of the beyond, or whatever you wish to call it - truth, beauty or any name will do - the call of the beyond is very alluring, enchanting. It gives a thrill, one feels alive again. It is a challenge, and challenge provokes the spirit, it is a provocation. Sleep disappears and dullness disappears - one becomes more alert and conscious. But then there are dangers; with the new there are always dangers... the unknown territory. Who knows what is going to happen? It is dark and there is no map. No map exists - no map can exist in the very nature of things - no footprints. Buddhas have walked but they have not left a single footprint. It is just like a bird flying in the sky leaves no footprints. It is uncharted, unmapped, dark, but the call creates great desire, longing, hope - hope for meaning, hope that you can also live a life of thrill.

This is the dichotomy that man lives in. Hence I say that man is an ambiguous being... Like Janus.

The first month, January, is named after Janus because the first day of January looks both ways - at the past, at the last year that has gone, and at the year that is to come. Janus is a Roman god with two faces, facing in both directions. Man is a Janus; his whole life is a January. And both directions have something appealing and something that creates fear. One has to decide. If one decides to faH back, one disappears as an alive being; one has committed suicide. If one decides to go ahead in spite of all the fear that arises with the new, one is born spiritually.

Remember it. Listen to the call of the unknown - and it is always there. Whatsoever becomes known has to be dropped.

Once you have lived it, it is finished; to repeat it is a sheer wastage of life. Let the search continue.

Only then can one become a peak that goes beyond the clouds. Otherwise one becomes a flat land, lives a flat life. That's what people are living - flat lives with no peaks. Nothing extraordinary ever happens to them because they never allow it to happen.

Love is the magic word. If you love, you are getting ready for the extraordinary to happen to you.

If you love, you have accepted the invitation of the unknown. If you love; you live. They are synonymous: to love is to live; not to love is not to live. Love can become such a peak, like an Everest. And there is no end to it, it goes on growing.

If your life becomes suffused with love, immersed in love... not that only a few moments of love are there but there is a continuous flow of love, whatsoever you are doing love is there. You are cleaning the floor but love is there, as if you are cleaning the floor of a temple.

Taking a bath and the love is there for your own body, because your body is god's gift. Or just breathing and doing nothing, but the love is there, because to be able to breathe is such a miracle.

We cannot pay for it, there is no way to pay; it is such a valuable gift. All else becomes possible through it. Just seeing a rose flower with deep love, god is revealed.

Whenever your heart is full of love and your eyes are showering love, god is revealed. It is love that gives you the vision of god. To me, love is religion, love is meditation.

This single word contains all that is beautiful.

Deva means divine, manso means mind - divine mind. And the divine mind is not your mind, it is not the mind that we know about. The divine mind is exactly the absence of our mind. As far as our mind is concerned, it is a barrier to the divine mind; it has to go. From our side we have to become no-minds, utterly empty, and then the divine mind descends in us. We have to become a vacuum; that vacuum is immediately filled.

The mind that we have is nothing but memory. It is the garbage of the past, the dust that our mirrors have gathered. This dust has to be washed away. And when the mirror is pure and without any dust, it is not yours, it is nobody's - it is god's. The mirror is god's, the dust is ours. And by'dust' I mean the thoughts, the memories, the desires, the imagination, the dreams and all that. When I say'when we are utterly empty', I mean when all these things have disappeared and there is nothing left - or only nothing is left, a pure silence; nothing stirs it.

That's what meditation is all about, and once that nothingness is attained, one is surprised:

something from the beyond descends and fills one. And that is fulfilment; then one is satiated forever. There is contentment, and a contentment that is eternal, not a momentary phenomenon - that one moment it is there, another moment it is gone again and the thirst and the longing come back.

So divine mind means: the mind of the whole, the mind of the total, the cosmic mind. You have to disappear into it, like a dewdrop falling into the ocean. Your mind is like the dewdrop and the divine mind is like the ocean. The dewdrop becomes very afraid, naturally so, because it can see 'I am going to disappear, I am going to lose my identity; I will be no more.' The fear is logical but still unfounded, because once the drop has disappeared into the ocean it becomes the ocean. It has not been a loser; it has gained. It has lost only a small definition and it has become vast. With god we lose nothing because we don't have anything and we gain all. Or, we only lose our chains, our bondages, our prisons; and our so-called mind is just a prison.

The divine mind is absolute freedom - it is a liberation from all limitations.

Remember one thing always - that there is no cause to be anxious in life, and all causes are just excuses. If you decide not to be anxious, then nothing will make you anxious; there is nothing worth it. Life is such a fleeting phenomenon that is going to disappear one day. Why be bothered too much about it? We are only here for so few days. Just play the game and remain aloof. If one can remain a witness, aloof, distant from things, then anxiety is not possible. Anxiety comes into existence only when we become identified with small things. And they all pass.

There is a famous Sufi story: A great king wanted a special ring to be made for him. The ring was made...

The message of the story is: this too will pass. This was engraved on the ring, because the king had asked his goldsmith 'Engrave such a message that will be helpful to me in all kinds of situations - good and bad, failure or success, life or death.' The message had to be one single message, but it had to work in all kinds of situations.

The goldsmith was very worried:'Where to find such a message which can work when you are in pain and which can work when you are in pleasure? There is advice which will work when you are suffering and, naturally, there is advice which will work only when you are happy; but happiness and unhappiness are contraries, so how can one message work for both?'

The goldsmith was driving himself crazy - the time was coming closer and closer and the king was asking for the ring.

Then he went to a Sufi master and told him the situation and asked 'What should I do?' The master said 'Just engrave the ring with this small sentence on it "This too will pass away." And tell the king that whenever he is in any need to read this, to meditate over it.'

And that's what I would like to say to you. Situations arise when one feels anxious. Silently repeat inside 'This too will pass away.' And just see: immediately you will feel a kind of relaxation, a calmness, a quietude; in fact it has already passed away.

All these are just on the surface, all these situations; your depth remains untouched. Remain the centre of the cyclone....

Just sitting silently is enough, and that will never become a habit. Sitting silently can be done any time. And you are not doing anything in particular, so it can't become a habit. Just sit... enjoy just sitting. It is neither a ritual nor a prayer nor a mantra. It is for the sheer enjoyment of being - just enjoying the sounds around you, the trees, the birds, the people, the noise, all that makes this world.

And you are not doing anything special, sacred, religious - nothing - you are simply enjoying.

There is a very famous Zen story: A man was standing on a hilltop. Three persons saw him; they started arguing about him, about what he was doing there. One said 'He must have lost his cow - I know that man - and he must be looking for his cow from the hilltop.' And the second said 'I cannot agree, because when one is looking for something one does not stand like a statue, unmoving; one moves, looks this way and that. But he is just standing like a Buddha-statue He is not looking for something - he is waiting. Maybe a friend has come with him for a morning walk and is left behind and he is waiting for him to come.'

The third said 'I disagree, because when somebody waits for somebody who has been left behind, once in a while he looks back to see whether he has come or not. But that man is not looking back at all; he is not even moving. He is not waiting. My feeling is that he is meditating.'

They could not agree on what that man was doing so they decided to go to the man and enquire. The first man said 'Are you looking for your cow?' The man said 'No, I am not looking for anything.' The second said 'Then I must be right: you must be waiting for your friend who has been left behind?'

The man said 'No, I am not waiting for anybody.' The third said 'Then I have to be right - now there is no other alternative left - you must be meditating.' And the man said 'No, I am not meditating either.' Then all three asked 'Then what are you doing?' He said 'I am just standing.'

But Zen people say that this is real meditation: just standing, not even doing meditation! See the beauty of it: the man said 'I am just standing. Is there any need to do anything? Can't I just stand?

Won't you allow me this freedom, just to stand? Have I to look for something, wait for something or do something? Can't I just be?'

So just sit - no meditation, nothing - and you will feel a great joy welling up inside. You can continue Kundalini but this is a separate thing. In the morning, afternoon, whenever you feel any tension arising in the head, just sit silently and keep in mind that you are not supposed to do anything. Don't start repeating a mantra, otherwise you will never be out of that habit. And one should not fall a victim to any habit whatsoever - good or bad; habits are habits. All habits are bad, because habits make you a robot; then you have to function only like a machine. You don't function like a man, you don't function like pure consciousness - and that's how one should function.

So just sit, and soon the tension will disappear and something very positive will start welling up and will fill you with such joy that you have not known before. And when it comes without any effort on your part, it is tremendous. Because through your own effort you can create only small things; man's efforts are limited. And when something comes while you are only waiting and doing nothing, then it is a grace - it comes from the beyond. It has a purity of its own....