Forget the periphery (98-99)

98. IN ANY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE.

99. FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR.

Life without is a cyclone – a constant conflict, turmoil, struggle. But it is only so on the surface – just as on the surface of the ocean are waves, maddening noise, constant struggle. But this is not all of life. Deep down there is also a center – soundless, silent, no conflict, no struggle. In the center, life is a noiseless flow, relaxed, a river moving with no struggle, with no fight, no violence Towards that inner center is the search. You can get identified with the surface, with the outer. Then anxiety and anguish follows. This is what has happened to everyone: we are identified with the surface and with the struggle that goes on there.

Life without is a cyclone – a constant conflict, turmoil, struggle. But it is only so on the surface – just as on the surface of the ocean are waves, maddening noise, constant struggle. But this is not all of life. Deep down there is also a center – soundless, silent, no conflict, no struggle. In the center, life is a noiseless flow, relaxed, a river moving with no struggle, with no fight, no violence Towards that inner center is the search. You can get identified with the surface, with the outer. Then anxiety and anguish follows. This is what has happened to everyone: we are identified with the surface and with the struggle that goes on there.

The surface is bound to be disturbed, nothing is wrong in it. And if you can be rooted in the center, the disturbance on the surface will become beautiful it will have a beauty of its own. If you can be silent within, then all the sounds without become musical. Then nothing is wrong; it becomes a play.

But if you don’t know the inner core, the silent center, if you are totally identified with the surface, you will go mad. And everyone is almost mad.

All religious techniques, techniques of yoga, meditation, Zen, are basically to help you to be again in contact with the center; to move within; to forget the periphery; to leave the periphery for a time being and to relax into your own being so deeply that the outer disappears completely and only the inner remains. Once you know how to move backwards, how to step down into yourself, it is not difficult. It becomes as easy as anything. But if you don’t know, if you know only the mind clinging to the surface, it is very difficult. Relaxing into one’s self is not difficult: non-clinging to the surface is.

I have heard a Sufi story. Once it happened that a Sufi fakir was traveling. It was a dark night and he lost his way. It was so dark he couldn’t even see where he was moving – then suddenly he fell into an abyss. He was terrified. He didn’t know what was down there in the darkness or how deep the abyss was. So he caught hold of a branch and started praying. The night was cold. He cried but there was no one to listen, only his own voice echoed back. And the night was so cold that his hands were becoming frozen and he knew that sooner or later he would have to leave the branch – it was going to be difficult to keep on holding it. His hands were getting so frozen that they were already slipping from the branch. Death was absolutely near. Any moment he would fall and die. And then the last moment came. You can understand how terrified he was. Dying moment by moment, then the last moment came and he saw the branch slipping out of his hand. And his hands were so frozen that there was no way to hold on, so he had to fall.

But the moment he fell he started dancing – there was no abyss, he was on clear ground. And he had suffered all night….

This is the situation. You go on clinging to the surface, afraid that if you leave the surface you will be lost. Really, clinging to the surface you are lost. But deep down there is darkness and you cannot see any ground; you cannot see anything else than the surface. All these techniques are to make you courageous, strong, adventurous, so that you can stop the holding on and fall within yourself.

That which looks like an abyss, dark, bottomless, is the very ground of your being. Once you leave the surface, the periphery, you will be centered.

This centering is the aim. Once you are centered you can move to the periphery but you will be totally different. The quality of your consciousness will have changed altogether. Then you can move to the periphery but you will never be the periphery again – you will remain at the center. And remaining centered at the periphery is beautiful. Then you can enjoy it; it will become a beautiful play. Then there is no conflict; it is a game. Then it will not create tensions within you and there will be no anguish and no anxiety around you. And any moment that it becomes too much, too heavy on you, you can go back to the original source – you can have a dip. Then you will be refreshed, rejuvenated, and you can move to the periphery again. Once you know the way…. And the way is not long. You are not going anywhere else than into your own self, so it is not long. It is just near.

The only barrier is your holding on, holding to the periphery, afraid that if you leave it you will be lost.

The fear feels just as if you are going to die. Moving to the inner center is a death – death in the sense that your identity with the periphery will die, and a new image, a new feeling of your being will arise.

So if we want to say in a few words what Tantra techniques are, we can say that they are a deep relaxation into oneself, a total relaxation into oneself.

You are always tense, that is the holding, the clinging. You are never relaxed, never in a state of let-go. You are always doing something: that doing is the problem. You are never in a state of non- doing, when things are happening and you are just there not doing anything. Breath comes in and goes out, the blood circulates, the body is alive and throbbing, the breeze blows, the world goes on spinning around – and you are not doing anything. You are not a doer. You are simply relaxed and things are happening. When things are happening and you are not a doer, you are totally relaxed.

When you are a doer and things are not happening but are being manipulated by you, you are tense.

You relax partially while you are asleep, but it is not total. Even in your sleep you go on manipulating, even in your sleep you don’t allow everything to happen. Watch a man sleeping: you will see that he is very tense, his whole body will be tense. Watch a small child sleeping, he is very relaxed. Or watch an animal, a cat – a cat is always relaxed. You are not relaxed even while asleep; you are tense, struggling, moving, fighting with something. On your face there are tensions. In dreams you may be fighting, protecting – doing the same things as when you were awake, repeating them in an inner drama. You are not relaxed; you are not in a deep let-go. That’s why sleep is becoming more and more difficult. And psychologists say that if the same trend goes on, soon the day will come when no one will be able to sleep naturally. Sleep will have to be chemically produced because no one will be able to fall naturally into sleep. The day is not very far. You are already on the way towards it because even while asleep you are only partially asleep, partially relaxed.

Meditation is the deepest sleep. It is total relaxation plus something more; you are totally relaxed and yet alert. Awareness is there. Total sleep with awareness is meditation. Fully alert, things are happening but you are not resisting, not fighting, not doing. The doer is not there. The doer has gone into sleep. Only a witness is there a ‘non-doer alertness’ is there. Then nothing can disturb you.

If you know how to relax then nothing can disturb you. If you don’t know how to relax then everything will disturb you. I say everything. It is not really something else that disturbs you, everything else is just an excuse. You are almost always ready to be disturbed. If one thing doesn’t disturb you, then something else will; you will get disturbed. You are ready, you have a tendency to get disturbed. If all the causes are withdrawn from you even then you will get disturbed. You will find some cause, you will create some cause. If nothing comes from without, you will create something from within – some thought, some idea – and you will get disturbed. You need excuses. Once you know how to relax nothing can disturb you. Not that the world will change, not that things will be different. The world will be the same. But you don’t have the tendency, you don’t have the madness; you are not constantly ready to be disturbed. Then all that happens around you is soothing – even the traffic noise becomes soothing if you are relaxed. Even the market-place becomes soothing. It depends on you. It is an inner quality. The more you go towards the center the more the quality arises and the more you move towards the periphery the more you will be disturbed. If you are too disturbed or if you are prone to be disturbed that shows only one thing: that you are existing near the periphery – nothing else. It is an indication that you have made your abode near the surface. And this is a false abode because your real home is at the center, the very center of your being.

Now we will enter the techniques.

IN ANY EASY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE.

This is a very simple method but it works miraculously – try it. And anyone can try it, there is no danger. The first thing is to be in an easy relaxed position – relaxed in a position that is easy for you.

Don’t try a particular position or ASANA. Buddha sits in a particular posture. It is easy for him. It also can become easy for you if you practise it for a time being, but in the very beginning it will not be easy for you. And there is no need to practise it: start from any posture that comes easy to you right now. Don’t struggle with the posture. You can sit in an easy chair and relax. The only thing is your body must be in a relaxed state.

So just close your eyes and feel all over the body. Start from the legs – feel whether there is some tension or not. If you feel there is some tension, do one thing: make it more tense. If you feel there is some tension in the right leg, then make that tension as intense as possible. Bring it to a peak – then suddenly relax so that you can feel how the relaxation settles there. Then go all over the body just looking everywhere for some tension. Wherever you feel the tension make it more so, because it is easy to relax when it is intense. In just a mid-state it is very difficult because you cannot feel it. It is easy to move from one extreme to another, very easy, because the very extreme creates the situation to move to the other. So if you feel some tensions in the face then strain all the face muscles as much as possible, create tension and bring it to a peak. Bring it to a point where you feel that no more is possible – then suddenly relax. In this way see that all parts of the body, all the limbs are relaxed.

And be particular about the face muscles, because they carry ninety per cent of the tensions – the rest of the body carries only ten per cent. All your tensions are in the mind so the face becomes the storage. So strain your face as much as possible, don’t be shy about it. Make it intensely anguished, anxious – and then suddenly relax. Do it for five minutes so that you can feel that every limb in the whole body is relaxed. This is an easy posture for you.

You can do it sitting, or lying in bed or howsoever you feel is easy for you. IN ANY EASY POSITION GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE.

The second thing: when you feel that the body has got to an easy posture, don’t make much fuss about it. Just feel that the body is relaxed, then forget the body. Because really, remembering the body is a sort of tension. That’s why I say don’t make much fuss about it. Relax it and forget it.

Forgetting is relaxation. Whenever you remember too much, that very remembering brings a tension to the body.

You may not have observed this, but there is a very easy experiment to try. Put your hand on your pulse and count it. Then close your eyes, bring your attention to your pulse for five minutes, and then count. The pulse will now be beating faster because the attention for five minutes gives tension to it. So really, whenever a doctor counts your pulse it is never the real count – it is always more than it was before the doctor started counting it. Whenever the doctor has taken your hand in his hand you have become alert. And if the doctor is a lady doctor you will be more alert, and it will go faster. So whenever a lady doctor counts your pulse reduce it by ten. Then that will be exactly your pulse count – otherwise there will be ten more counts per minute.

Whenever you bring your consciousness to any part of the body, that part becomes tense. You become tense when someone observes you; the whole body becomes tense. When you are alone you are different. When someone enters the room you are not the same. The whole body is going at a faster rate. You have become tense. So don’t make much fuss about relaxation or you will be obsessed with it. For five minutes simply relax easily and forget. Your forgetting will be helpful and it will bring a deeper relaxation to the body.

…. GRADUALLY PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE. Close your eyes and just feel the area between the two armpits: the heart area, your chest. First feel it just between the two armpits with your total attention, total awareness. Forget the whole body, remember just the heart area between the two armpits, the chest, and feel it filled with great peace.

The moment the body is relaxed, peace automatically happens in your heart. The heart becomes silent, relaxed, harmonious. And when you forget the whole body and bring your attention just to the chest and consciously feel it filled with peace, much peace will happen immediately.

There are areas in the body, particular centers, where particular feelings can be created consciously.

Between the two armpits is the heart center, and the heart center is the source of all the peace that happens to you, whenever it happens. Whenever you are peaceful, the peace is coming from the heart. The heart radiates peace. That is why people all over the world, every race, without any distinction of cat, religion, country, cultured or uncultured, have felt this: that love arises from somewhere near the heart. No scientific explanation exists. Whenever you think of love you think of the heart. Really, whenever you are in love you are relaxed, and because you are relaxed you are filled with a certain peace. That peace arises from the heart. So peace and love have become joined, associated. Whenever you are in love you are peaceful; whenever you are not in love you are disturbed. Because of peace the heart has become associated with love.

So you can do two things. You can search for love, then sometimes you will feel peace. But this path is dangerous, because the other person whom you love has become more important than you.

And the other is the other, and you are becoming in a way dependent. So love will give you peace sometimes but not always. There will be many disturbances, many moments of anguish and anxiety, because the other has entered. Whenever another enters there is bound to be some disturbance, because you can meet with the other only on your surface. The surface will be disturbed. Only sometimes when the two of you will be so deeply in love with no conflict, only then will you sometimes be relaxed and the heart will glow with peace.

So love can only give you glimpses of peace but nothing really established, rooted. No eternal peace is possible through it, only glimpses. And between two glimpses there will be deep valleys of conflict, violence, hatred and anger.

The other way is to find peace not through love, but directly. If you can find peace directly – and this is the method for it – your life will become filled with love. But now the quality of love will be different.

It will not be possessive; it will not be centered around one. It will not be dependent and it will not make any one dependent on you. Your love will become just a lovingness, a compassion, a deep empathy. And now no one, not even a lover, can disturb you, because your peace is already rooted and your love comes as a shadow of your inner peace. The whole thing has become reversed. So Buddha is also loving but his love is not an anguish. If you love you will suffer, if you don’t love you will suffer. If you don’t love you will suffer the absence of love; if you love you will suffer the presence of love. Because you are on the surface and whatsoever you do can only give you momentary satisfaction – then again the dark valley.

First be established in peace on your own, then you are independent, then love is not your need.

Then you will never feel imprisoned when you are in love; you will never feel that love has become a sort of dependence, a slavery, a bondage. Then love will be just a giving: you have too much peace so you want to share it. Then it will be just a giving with no idea of return; it will be unconditional.

And it is one of the secrets that the more you give, the more it happens to you. The more you give and share, the more it becomes your own. The deeper you enter into the treasury, which is infinite, the more you can go on giving to everybody. It is inexhaustible.

But love must happen to you as a shadow of inner peace. Ordinarily the reverse is the phenomenon:

peace happens to you just as a shadow of love. Love must happen to you as a shadow of peace, then love is beautiful. Otherwise love also creates ugliness, it becomes a disease, a fever.

…. PERVADE AN AREA BETWEEN THE ARMPITS INTO GREAT PEACE.

Become aware of the area between the armpits and feel that it is filled with great peace. Just feel peace there and you will feel it is filled. It is always filled but you have never been alert about it. This is only to increase your alertness, to bring you nearer home. And when you feel this peace you are farther away from the surface. Not that things will not be happening there – but when you try this experiment and when you are filled with peace you will feel a distance; the noise is coming from the street but there is a great distance now, a great space. It happens, but it brings no disturbance; rather, it brings you a deeper silence. This is the miracle. The children will be playing, someone will be listening to the radio, someone will be quarrelling and the whole world will be going around, but you feel that a great distance has come between you and everything. That distance comes because you have retreated from the periphery. Things are happening on the periphery and they will appear to you as if they are happening to someone else. You are not involved. Nothing disturbs you so you are not involved – you have transcended. This is the transcendence.

And the heart is naturally the source of peace. You are not creating anything. You are simply coming to a source which is always there. This imagining will help you become aware that the heart is filled with peace – it is not that the imagining will create the peace. This is the difference between the Tantra attitude and Western hypnosis. Hypnotists think that you are creating it by imagination but Tantra thinks that you are not creating it by imagination, you are simply becoming attuned to something that is already there. Because whatsoever you can create by imagination cannot be permanent: if it is not a reality then it is false, unreal, and you are creating a hallucination. So it is better to be disturbed and real than to be in a hallucination of peace, because that is not a growth, you are simply intoxicated by it. Sooner or later you will have to come out because sooner or later the reality will shatter the illusion. Reality has to shatter all illusions; only a greater reality cannot be shattered.

A greater reality will shatter the reality which is on the periphery, hence Shankara and others say that the world is illusion. Not that the world is illusion, but they have come to know a higher reality and from that altitude this world looks dreamy. It is so far away, the distance is so infinite that it cannot be felt as real. The noise on the street will be as if you are dreaming about it – it is not real.

It cannot do anything. It just happens and passes and you remain untouched. And when you are untouched by reality how can you feel that it is real? The reality is felt only when it penetrates you deeply. The deeper the penetration, the more you feel it as real.

Shankara says the whole world is unreal. He must have come to a point from where the distance is so vast, so tremendously vast, that all that happens there becomes just like a dream. It comes but no reality comes with it because it cannot penetrate. Penetration is the proportion of reality. If I throw a stone at you it hits you. The hit penetrates you and that penetration makes the stone real. If I throw a stone and it touches you but doesn’t penetrate you, deep down you will hear the thud of the falling stone on you, but there will be no disturbance. You will feel it as false, unreal, MAYA, illusory.

But you are so near the periphery that if I throw a stone at you, you will be hurt. Not the body – the body will be hurt in either case. If I throw a stone at a Buddha the body will be hurt as your body will be hurt, but Buddha is not on the periphery, he is rooted in the center. And the distance is so great that he will hear the thud of the stone without being hurt. The being will remain untouched, unscarred. This unscarred being will feel the stone as if it is something thrown in a dream. It is illusory. So Buddha says that nothing has substance to it, everything is ‘substanceless’, without any substance. The world is empty of substance – which is the same thing as Shankara saying that the world is illusory.

Try this. Whenever you are able to feel the peace between your two armpits filling you, pervading your heart center, the world will look illusory. This is a sign that you have entered meditation – when the world feels and appears to be illusory. Don’t think that the world is illusory, there is no need to think it – you will feel it. It will suddenly occur to your mind, “What has happened to the world?” The world has suddenly gone dreamy. It is there, a dreamlike existence, without any substance. It looks so real, just like a film on the screen. It can even be three dimensional. It looks like something, but it is a projected thing. Not that the world is a projected thing, not that it is really unreal – no. The world is real but you create the distance, and the distance gets more and more. And you can understand whether the distance is getting more and more or not by knowing how you are feeling about the world. That’s the criterion. That is a meditative criterion. It is not a truth that the world is unreal – if the world has become unreal, you have become centered in the being. Now the surface and you are so far away that you can look at the surface as being something objective, something other than you. You are not identified.

This technique is very easy and will not take much time if you try it. With this technique it sometimes even happens that with the very first effort you will feel the beauty and the miracle of it. So try it. But if you don’t feel anything with the first effort, don’t be disappointed. Wait. And go on doing it. And it is so easy that you can go on doing it any time. Just lying on your bed at night you can do it; just in the morning when you feel that you are now awake you can do it. Do first and then get up. Even ten minutes will be enough. Ten minutes at night just before falling asleep, do it. Make the world unreal, and your sleep will be so deep that you may not have slept like that before. If the world becomes unreal just before falling asleep, dreaming will be less. Because if the world has become a dream then dreams cannot continue. And if the world is unreal, you are totally relaxed because the reality of the world will not impinge itself upon you, hammer on you.

I have suggested this technique to people who suffer from insomnia. It helps deeply. If the world is unreal, tensions dissolve. And if you can move from the periphery, you have already moved to a deep state of sleep – before the sleep comes you are already deep into it. And then in the morning it is beautiful because you are so fresh, so young; your whole energy is vibrating. It is because you are coming back to the periphery from the center.

And the moment you become alert that now sleep is no more, don’t open your eyes. First do this experiment for ten minutes, then open the eyes. The body is relaxed after the whole night and is feeling fresh and alive. You are already relaxed; so it will not take much time. Just relax. Bring your consciousness to the heart just between the two armpits: feel it filled with deep peace. For ten minutes remain in that peace, then open the eyes. The world will look totally different because that peace will also be radiated from your eyes. And the whole day you will feel different – not only will you feel different but you will feel that people are behaving differently with you. To every relationship you contribute something. If your contribution is not there, people behave differently because they feel you are a different person. They may not be aware of it. But when you are filled with peace everyone will behave differently towards you. They will be more loving and more kind, less resistant, more open, closer. A magnet is there. Peace is the magnet. When you are peaceful people come nearer to you; when you are disturbed everyone is repelled. And this is so physical a phenomenon that you can observe it easily. Whenever you are peaceful you will feel everyone wants to be closer to you because that peace radiates, it becomes a vibration around you. Circles of peace move around you and whosoever comes near wants to be nearer to you – like you want to move under the shadow of a tree and to relax there.

A person who is peaceful within has a shadow around him. Wherever he goes everyone would like to be closer to him, open, trusting. A person who has inner turmoil, conflict, anguish, anxiety, tensions, repels persons. Whosoever come near becomes afraid. You are dangerous. To be near you is dangerous. Because you will give whatsoever you have, you are constantly giving it. So you may want to love someone but if you are very disturbed within, even your lover will be repelled and he will want to escape from you because you will drain his energy and he will not feel happy with you. And whenever you leave him, you will leave him tired, exhausted, because you don;t have a life-giving source, you have a destructive energy within you.

So not only will you feel you are different, others will also feel that you are different.

Your whole life-style can change if you move a little closer to the center – and the whole outlook and the whole outcome. If you are peaceful the whole world becomes peaceful to you. It is just a reflection. Whatsoever you are is reflected all over. Everyone becomes a mirror.

The second technique:

FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR.

Tantra and yoga both think that your narrowness is the problem. Because you have made yourself so narrow, so tightly narrow, you feel always in bondage. The bondage is not coming from anywhere else: the bondage is coming from your narrow mind. And it goes on being narrower and narrower and you are very confined. That confinement gives you the feeling of bondage. You have an infinite soul and an infinite being but that infinite being feels imprisoned. So whatsoever you do, you feel limitations everywhere. Wherever you move, a point of cul de sac comes. You cannot move beyond it. Everywhere there is a boundary. There is no open sky to fly. But that boundary is created by you – that boundary is your own creation. You have created it for certain reasons: for security, safety.

You have created a boundary. And the narrower the boundary, the more you feel secure. If you have a very large boundary you cannot watch over all of it, you cannot be alert and watchful everywhere.

It becomes vulnerable. Narrow the boundary and you can watch it, you can remain closed, you are not vulnerable, you feel safe. The safety, the security has created the boundary. But then you feel a bondage.

This is how the mind is paradoxical. You go on asking for more safety and you go on asking for more freedom. Both cannot be together. If you want freedom you will have to lose safety, security – in any case the safety is just illusory, it is not really there. Because death is going to happen – whatsoever you do, you are going to die. All your safety, security, is just a facade, nothing will help. But afraid of insecurity you create boundaries, you create big walls around you and then the open sky is closed.

And then you suffer! And then you say, “Where is the open sky?” and “I want freedom and I want to move!” But you have created these boundaries.

So this is the first thing to remember before you do this technique otherwise it will not be possible to do it. With your boundaries intact you cannot do it. Unless you stop creating boundaries you will not be able to feel or do it.

…. PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. No boundaries, becoming infinite, becoming one with infinite space…. This will be impossible with your mind. How can you feel it? How can you do it? First you will have to stop doing certain things.

The first thing is that if you are too concerned about security and safety then remain in bondage.

Really, prison is the most secure place. No one can harm you there. No one out of prison is as secure, as guarded, as the prisoners. You cannot kill, you cannot murder a prisoner. It is difficult.

He is more guarded than a king. You can murder a president or a king, it is not so difficult. Every day they go on killing them. But you cannot kill a prisoner. He is so safe that those who want to be safe, really, must be in prisons, they must not live outside. To live out of a prison is dangerous, it is full of hazards. Anything can happen. So we have created mental prisons around us, psychological prisons around us, and we carry those prisons with us, they are portable. You need not remain with them, they move with you. Wherever you go, your prison goes with you.

You are always behind a wall. Only sometimes, rarely, do you stretch your hand out of it to touch someone. But only a hand – you never come out of your prison. So whenever we meet, it is simply meeting hands out of prisons. Out of windows we stretch a hand, afraid, scared, and ready any moment to withdraw the hand. Both the parties are doing the same – only hands touch. And now psychologists say that even that is just an appearance, because hands have their own armor around them. No hand is ungloved. Not only Queen Elizabeth uses gloves, you also have gloves so that no one can touch you. Or even if someone touches, there is only a hand, dead. You are already withdrawn, afraid. Because the other creates fear. As Sartre says, “The other is the enemy.” The other will look like an enemy if you are so armored. With an armored person there can be no friendship. Friendship is impossible, love is impossible, communion is impossible. You are afraid.

Someone may make you a possession, someone may overpower you, someone may make you a slave… afraid of this, you have created a prison, a safety wall around you. Cautiously you move, cautiously you take every step. Life becomes a drudgery, life becomes a boredom. If you are too cautious, life cannot be an adventure. If you are protecting yourself too much, hankering after security too much, you are already dead.

So remember one basic law: life is insecurity. And if you are ready to live in insecurity, only then will you be alive. Insecurity is freedom. If you are ready to be insecure, constantly insecure, you will be free. And freedom is the door to the Divine.

Afraid, you create a prison – you become dead, more and more dead. And then you call, “Where is God?” And then you question, “Where is life? What does life mean? Where is bliss?” Life is there waiting for you, but you have to meet it on its own terms. You cannot have your own terms, life has its own terms. And the basic term is: remain insecure. Nothing can be done about it. You can only create an illusion and in that illusion you can waste your life. Nothing can be done about it.

Whatsoever you do is just a deception.

If you fall in love you become afraid that this woman can leave you or this man can leave you. Fear enters immediately. You were never afraid when you were not in love. Now you are in love: life has entered and insecurity has entered with it. One who never loves anybody is never afraid that anyone will leave him. The whole world can leave him, he is not afraid. You cannot harm him. He is secure.

The moment you love someone, insecurity has entered because life has entered. And with life, death has entered. The moment you love you have become afraid: this person can die, this person can leave, this person can love somebody else! Now to make things secure, you must do something – you must get married. So a legal bondage is made so that it is now difficult for this person to leave you. society will protect you, the law will protect you, the policeman, the judge, will all protect you. Now if this person wants to leave, you can drag him to the court, and if he wants a divorce he will have to prove something against you. Even then it will take three or five years. Now you have created safety around you. But the moment you are married you are dead. The relationship is not alive. Now it has become a law, not a relationship. Now it is a legal phenomenon, not an alive thing.

The court cannot protect life; the law can only protect laws. Now marriage is something which is dead. It can be defined. Love cannot be defined. Marriage is definable, love is indefinable. Now you have come under the world of definitions.

But the phenomenon is already dead. The moment you wanted it to be secure, the moment you wanted to enclose it so that no new thing happens to it, you are imprisoned in it. Then you will suffer.

Then you will say that this wife has become a bondage to you. The husband will say this wife has become a bondage to him. And then you fight because you have each become an imprisonment for the other. Now you fight. Now love has disappeared, there is only conflict. That is what happens because of the hankering for security.

And this has happened in everything. Remember it as something basic: life is insecure. This is the very nature of it. So when there is love, suffer the fear that the beloved can leave you, but don;t create security. Then love will grow. The beloved can die and you cannot do anything, but that will not kill love. Security can kill. Love will grow more.

Really, if man were immortal, I say love would be impossible. If man were immortal it would be difficult to love anybody. It would be so dangerous to fall in love. Death is there and life is just like a dew drop on a trembling leaf. Any moment the breeze will come and the dew drop will fall and disappear. Life is just a wavering. Because of that wavering, because of that movement, death is always there. It gives intensity to love. Love is possible only because there is death. Love becomes intense because there is death. Think… if you know your beloved is going to die the next moment, all meanness will go, all conflict will go. And this one moment will become eternity. And there will be so much love that your whole being will be poured into it. But if you know the beloved is going to live, there is no hurry. You can fight and you can postpone the loving for later on. If life is eternal, if the body is immortal, you cannot love.

Hindus have a beautiful myth. They say in heaven where Indra rules – Indra is the king of heaven – there is no love. There are beautiful girls, more beautiful than on the earth, and deities. They have sex but there is no love because they are immortal.

So it is recorded in one of the Indian stories that Urvashi, the chief of the heavenly girls, asked permission of Indra to move to earth for a few days to love a man. “What nonsense!: Indra said.

“You can love here! And you will not find such beautiful persons on the earth.” Urvashi said, “They are beautiful but they are immortal, so there is no charm. They are really dead.”

They are really dead because there is no death to make them alive. They will always be there. They cannot die, so how can they be alive? That aliveness exists against death. A man is alive because death is there constantly, fighting. Against the background of death life exists.

So Urvashi said, “Give me permission to move to the earth. I want to love someone.” Permission was given so she came down to earth and fell in love with Pururuwa, a young man.

But there was a condition from Indra. Indra made the condition that she could go to the earth, she could love someone, but she must tell the man who loved her not to ask anything about who she was. This is difficult for love because love is curious. Love wants to know everything about the beloved, everything. The whole unknown has to be made known. The whole mystery has to be entered and penetrated. So Indra cunningly made a condition which Urvashi didn’t understand the craftiness of. So she said, “Okay. I will tell my lover not to be curious about me, not to ask who I am.

And if he asks, immediately I will leave him, I will come back.” And she said to Pururuwa, “Don’t ever ask anything about me, who I am. The moment you ask I will have to leave earth.”

But love is curious. Because of this Pururuwa must have become more curious about who she was.

He could not sleep. He would go on looking at Urvashi. Who is she? Such a beautiful woman, made of dreamy stuff, doesn’t look earthly, doesn’t look substantial. Perhaps she comes from somewhere else, some unknown dimension. He became more and more curious. But he also became more and more afraid, because she might leave. He became so afraid that in the night when he went to sleep he would take a fragment of her saree in his hand because he was not confident about himself. Any moment he could ask, the question was always there. Even in his sleep he could ask. And Urvashi said that even in sleep he could not ask about her. So he slept with a part of her saree in his hand.

But one night he couldn’t contain himself – and he thought that now she loved him so much that she would not leave. So he asked. And Urvashi had to disappear – only a fragment of her saree remained in Pururuwa’s hand. And it is said that he is still searching for her.

In heaven there cannot be love because there is no life really. Life exists here on earth, where death exists. Whenever you make anything secure, life disappears. Remain insecure, that is the very quality of life itself. Nothing can be done about it. And it is beautiful!

Just think if your body was immortal – it would be ugly. You will start finding ways and means of committing suicide. And if it is impossible, against the law, you will suffer so much you cannot even imagine. Immortality is a very long thing. Now in the West they go on thinking about euthanasia because people are now living longer. So a person who reaches the age of a hundred wants the right to kill himself. And really, the right will have to be given. We made it a law not to commit suicide when life was very short. Really in Buddha’s age to be forty or fifty was much. The average life was just about twenty. In India, just two decades ago the average life was twenty-three. Now in Sweden the average life is eighty-three. So people can very easily live to be a hundred and fifty. In Soviet Russia there are fifteen hundred people who have reached the mark of a hundred and fifty. Now if they say they have the right to kill themselves, because now it is too much, we will have to give them the right. It cannot be denied them. Sooner or later suicide will be one of the birth rights. You cannot deny it if a person wants to die – not for any reason, just because now life has no meaning. It has been too long already. A person living at a hundred doesn’t feel like living. Not that he is frustrated, not that there is no food. Everything is there, but life has no meaning.

So think of immortality. Life will be totally meaningless. The meaning comes with death. Love has meaning because love can be lost. Then it throbs, vibrates, pulsates. It can be lost! You cannot be certain about it! You cannot think anything about it for tomorrow because it may not be there. You have to love the lover and the beloved with the view that tomorrow may never be there at all. Then love becomes intense.

So first, withdraw your efforts to create a secure life. Just by withdrawing, your walls around you will fall. For the first time you will feel rains coming to you directly, the wind blowing at you directly, the sun rising to you directly. You will be under the open sky. It is beautiful. And if it looks horrible to you it is only because you have become accustomed to living in a prison. You will have to get accustomed to this new freedom. This freedom will make you more alive, more flowing, more open, more rich, more radiant. But the more radiant you are, the higher the peak of your aliveness, the deeper will be the death near you. Just near. You can rise only against death, the valley of death.

The peak of life and the valley of death are always near and in proportion.

That’s why I always say that Nietzsche’s dictum is to be followed. It is a very religious dictum.

Nietzsche says, “Live dangerously.” Not that you have to seek danger positively, there is no need to seek danger positively. Don’t create protections. Don’t create walls around you. Live naturally, and that will be dangerous, dangerous enough. There is no need to seek any danger.

Then you can do this technique. FEEL YOURSELF AS PERVADING ALL DIRECTIONS, FAR, NEAR. Then it is very easy. If walls are not there, you will already be feeling yourself pervading everywhere. Then there is no point at where you end. You simply begin in the heart and end nowhere. You have a center and no periphery. The periphery goes on expanding – on and on. The whole space is surrounded by it. Stars move in it. Earths are born and dissolve. Planets arise and set. The whole cosmos becomes your periphery. In this vastness where will your ego be? In this vastness where will your suffering be? In this vastness where will your mean mind be? The mediocre mind, where will it be? It cannot be there in such vastness, it simply disappears. It can exist only in a narrow field. It can exist only when it is walled, enclosed, encapsulated. The encapsulation is the problem. Live dangerously and be ready to live in insecurity.

And the beauty is that even if you decide not to live in insecurity, you will! You cannot do anything!

I have heard about a king. He was very afraid of death….

Kings are more afraid. They are more afraid because they have exploited so many people; they have pushed, crushed; they have played many political games on so many people. They have made many enemies. A real king has no friend. He cannot have. Because the closest friend is also an enemy, just waiting for an opportunity to kill him, to be in his place. A man in power cannot have any friends. A Hitler, a Stalin, a Nixon, they cannot have friends. They just have enemies who are parading around them as friends and just waiting for the right chance to push them aside from the throne. Whenever they get the chance they do everything. Just a moment ago they were friendly, but their friendliness is a strategy. Their friendliness is a tactic. A man who is in power cannot have friends. So Lao Tzu says, “If you want friends, don’t be in power.” Then the whole world will be friendly to you. If you are in power, then you are your only friend, everyone is your enemy.

…. So the king was very afraid. He was very scared of death, it was all around. He was haunted by the idea that everyone around him was going to kill him. He couldn’t sleep. So he asked his wise men, his counsellors, what to do. They told him to make a palace with only one door. At the door he should put seven rings of military men: the first watching the palace, the second watching the first, the third ring watching the second. With only one door no one could enter and the king would be safe.

The king built the palace with only one door and with seven rings of soldiers watching each other.

The news spread all over and another king from a nearby state came to see it. He was also afraid.

News had reached him that his neighbor had built such a secure palace that it was impossible to kill him. He came to visit his neighbor and together they appreciated very much the idea of only one door and every safety; no danger.

While they were looking at the door a beggar just sitting at the corner of the street started laughing.

So the king, the owner of the palace, asked the beggar, “Why are you laughing?” The beggar replied, “I am laughing because you have made one error. You should go inside and close, seal this door also. This door is dangerous, someone can enter it. A door means that somebody can enter. So you do one thing: go inside and let this door be also closed. Then you will be really safe because death cannot enter.” But the king said, “That means I would be already dead if I closed this door also.” The beggar said, “You are already ninety-nine per cent dead – you are only as much alive as this door. That is the danger, this much alive. Leave this aliveness also.”

Everyone in his own way is creating a palace around him where nothing can enter and he can remain in peace. But then you are already dead. And peace happens only to those who are alive; peace is not a dead thing. Remain alive, live dangerously, live a vulnerable life, open, so that everything can happen to you. And let everything happen to you. The more that happens to you the richer you will be.

Then you can practise this technique. This technique is then very easy, you will not even need to practise it. Just think, and you will be pervading the whole space.

Falling in love with an enlightened person

The first question:

Question 1:

YOU SAID THAT LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY WITH DEATH.
THEN WILL YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN BUDDHA’S LOVE.

For an ignorant person love is always part of hate, it always goes with hate. For the ignorant mind hate and love are just two aspects of the same coin. For the ignorant mind love is never pure.

And that is the misery of love – because the hate becomes a poison. You love a person and you hate the same person also. But you may not be doing both simultaneously so you are not aware of it.

When you love a person you forget about the hatred part, it goes below, it goes into the unconscious and it waits there. Then when your love is tired, it falls into the unconscious and the hate part comes up. Then you hate the same person.

And when you hate you are not aware that you also love – now the love has gone deep down into the unconscious. This goes on, just like night and day. It goes on moving in a circle. It becomes a misery.

But for a Buddha, for one who is enlightened, the dichotomy, the dualism, disappears. Everywhere – not only as far as love is concerned – the whole life becomes a oneness. Then there is no dichotomy, the opposite doesn’t exist.

So really, to call Buddha’s love ‘love’ is not good, but we have no other term. Buddha himself never used the word ‘love’. He used the word ‘compassion’. But that too is not very good. Because your compassion is always mixed with your cruelty, your non-violence is always mixed with your violence – whatsoever you do will have its opposite just nearby. You exist between contradictions; hence the tension, the anguish, the anxiety. You are not one; you are always two. You are a crowd, divided into many fragments, and those fragments are opposing each other. Your being is a tension; Buddha’s being is a deep relaxation. Remember, tension exists between two opposite poles, and relaxation is just in the middle, where two opposing poles are no longer opposing. They negate each other – and there is a transcendence. So Buddha’s love is basically different from what you know as love.

Your love is a dis-ease; Buddha’s love is total relaxation. There is no head part to it, so the quality of it changes completely. Many things will be in Buddha’s love which cannot be in ordinary love. First, it cannot be hot. The hotness comes from hate. It is not passion, rather it is compassion. It is not hot, it is cool. To us, a cool love means something which has gone wrong. Buddha’s love is cool, there is no heat to it. It is not like the sun, it is like the moon. It will not create passion in you, it will create a deep coolness.

Secondly, Buddha’s love is not really a relationship – your love is a relationship. Buddha’s love is his state of being. Really, he does not love you, he IS love. This distinction must be understood clearly.

If you love a person, your love is an act, you do something, you behave in a certain way, you create a relationship, a bridge. Buddha’s love is just his being, it is just how he is. He is not loving towards you, he is just love. He is just like a flower there in the garden – you pass by and the perfume comes to you. It is not that the flower is sending its perfume to you especially – when there was no one passing by, the perfume was there. And if no one ever passes by, the perfume will still be there.

When your lover is not with you, when your beloved is not with you, the love disappears, the perfume is not there. It is an effort on your part, it is not simply your being. You have to do something to bring it out. When no one is there and Buddha is sitting alone under his Bodhi tree, then too he is a lover. It looks absurd that then too he is a lover. There is no one to be loved but still he is a lover.

This being a lover is his state. And because it is his state, it is never a tension. Buddha cannot get tired of his love. You will get tired, because it is something you are doing. So lovers get tired of each other if there is too much love. They get tired, they need gaps, intervals, to recuperate. If you are with your lover for twenty-four hours he will get fed up because it is too much attention. Twenty-four hours of doing something is too much.

Buddha is not doing something, he is not tired of his love. It is his very being, it is just as if he is breathing. As you are never tired of breathing, you are never tired of being, so he is not tired of his love.

And then the third thing follows: you will be aware that you love, Buddha will not be at all aware.

Because awareness needs the contrary. Buddha is so filled with love that he will not be aware. If you ask him he will say, “I love you.” But he is not aware of it. It is flowing so silently from him, it has become so intrinsic a part, that he cannot be aware of it. You will become aware that he loves, and if you are open and receptive you will become more aware that he loves you more. It depends on your capacity, on how much you can receive. But to him it is not a gift. He is not giving anything to you – he is this way, he happens to be this way. Whenever you become aware of your total being, enlightened, liberated, the dichotomy from your life drops. Then there is no duality. Then life becomes a harmony – nothing is against anything.

Because of this harmony, much peace happens. There is no disturbance. Disturbance is not created from without, it is within you. The contradiction goes on creating the disturbance although you may find excuses without. For example, watch what happens with your lover, or a friend, a deep friend, very intimate, close. Live with him, and just watch what is happening to you. When you meet you are very elated, ecstatic, dancing. But how much can you dance? And how ecstatic can you feel?

Minutes later you are down, the elation has gone, and after a few hours you are bored, you are thinking of escaping to somewhere else. And after a few days you will be fighting. Just watch what is happening. This is all coming from within, but you will find excuses outside. You will say that now this man is not as loving as he was when he came; now this man is disturbing me, he is making me angry. And you will always find that he is doing something to you, you will never be aware that your dichotomy, your duality of mind, the opposites within, are doing something. We are never aware of our own workings of the mind.

I have heard that a very famous, glamorous, Hollywood actress went to a studio for her photograph.

The photograph had been taken the day before. The photographer presented the photograph to her, but she was annoyed, furious. She said, “What have you done? You have taken my photographs before and they were heavenly!” The photographer said to the actress, “Yes, but you have forgotten that I was twelve years younger when I took your photographs. I was twelve years younger, you forget that.”

We never look within at what is happening. If the photograph is not okay to you, something is wrong with the photographer. It is not that twelve years have passed and you are older – it is an inner process, the photographer is not concerned at all. But the photographer must have been a very wise man! He said, “You forget that I was twelve years younger then.”

Buddha’s love is totally different, but we don’t have any other word for it. The best that we have is ‘love’. But, if you can remember this, then the quality changes completely.

And note one thing, think about it deeply. If Buddha is your lover, will you be satisfied? You will not be. Because you will feel that it is cold, that there is no passion in it. You will feel that he loves you as he loves everyone – you are nothing special. You will feel that his love is not a gift – he is this way, that is why he is loving.

You will feel his love to be so natural that you will not be satisfied with it. Think inside. You cannot be satisfied with a love which is without hate. And you cannot be satisfied with a love which is with hate.

This is the problem. Either way you will be unsatisfied. If love is with hate, you will be unsatisfied, always ill, because the hate part will disturb you. If love is without hate, you will feel that it is cold.

And it is happening to Buddha so naturally that even if you were not there it would be happening – so it is nothing special for you. So your ego will feel unsatisfied. And it is my feeling that if you have a Buddha or a non-Buddha to choose as your lover, you will choose the non-Buddha… because you can understand his language. The non-Buddha is at least just like you. You will be fighting, you will be quarrelling, the whole thing will be just a mess, a mad mess, but still you will choose a non-Buddha. Because Buddha will be so high that you cannot understand the way that Buddha loves unless you rise.

With a non-Buddha, with an ignorant person, you need not transform yourself. You can remain the same. He is not a challenge. Really just the contrary happens to lovers. When two lovers meet and fall in love, they both try to convince each other that they are very high. They bring out the best that is within them. They appear to be on the peak. But it takes much arduous effort! You cannot remain on this peak. So when you start settling down you come back down to the earth.

So lovers are always frustrated with each other because they thought the other was just divine, and when they settle, when everything becomes just mundane, just ordinary, they think the other was deceiving. No, he was not deceiving, he was just presenting himself in his best colors. That is all. He was not deceiving anybody, he was not consciously doing anything. He was just presenting himself in his best colors. And the same was done by the other. But you cannot go on presenting yourself like that for long because it becomes arduous, difficult, heavy. So you come down.

When two lovers settle, when they start to take each other for granted, then they appear very mean, very mediocre, very ordinary – just the opposite to what they appeared to be before. Then they were angels; now they appear to be just disciples of the devil. You fall down, you come to your ordinary level.

Ordinary love is not a challenge, but it is rare to fall in love with someone who is enlightened. Only very fortunate ones fall in such a love. It is rare. It happens only when you have been searching for an enlightened person for lives together. Only if this has happened do you fall in love with an enlightened person. Fall in love with an enlightened person is in itself a great achievement – but then there is a problem. The problem is that the enlightened person is a challenge. He cannot come down to your level, that is not possible, that is impossible. You have to go to his peak; you have to travel, you have to be transformed.

So love becomes a SADHANA if you fall in love with a Buddha. It becomes a SADHANA, the greatest SADHANA that is possible. Because of this, whenever there is a Buddha or a Jesus, or a Lao Tzu, many around them are able to reach to peaks in one life that they could not have reached in many lives. But the secret is if they can fall in love. It is not unimaginable, it is imaginable. You may have been there in the time of Buddha, you must have been somewhere around. Buddha might have passed through your village or town and you may not have even heard him, you may not have seen him. Because even to hear a Buddha or to see a Buddha or to come near to him, a certain love is needed, a certain search is needed on your part.

When someone falls in love with an enlightened person it is meaningful, very meaningful. But arduous will be the path. It is easy to fall in love with an ordinary person, there is no challenge, but with an enlightened person the challenge will be much, and the path will be difficult, because you will have to travel all above. And those things will be disturbing. His love will be cold, his love will look as if it is for everyone, his love will not have the hatred part.

This has been my experience. Many people fall in love with me, and then they start to play the game – the ordinary game. Knowingly or unknowingly, they start to play it. In a way it is natural. They start expecting things from me, ordinary expectations, and their mind works in the duality. For example, if you love me you will feel happy if you can make me happy. This is how love feels, it wants to make the other happy. If you can make me happy, you will feel happy – but you cannot make me happy, I am already.

If you fall in love with me, you will feel dejected, you will feel very disappointed because you cannot make me happy, you cannot make me more happy, there is nothing more. If you cannot make me happy you will feel unhappy, and so you will try to make me unhappy! Because at least if you can do that, that too will be a satisfaction. You will try to make me unhappy – unknowingly, you are not alert, you are not aware of it. If you are aware you will not do it. But you will try – your unconscious mind will try to make me unhappy. If you can make me unhappy then you can be certain that you can make me happy also. But if you cannot make me unhappy you are totally disappointed. Then you will feel that you are not related to me at all, because this is what relationship means to you.

Ordinary love is a disease because the duality goes on persisting. And to understand the love of an enlightened person is difficult. Intellectually there is no way to understand it. You have to fall in love.

And then you have to be alert about your own mind because that mind will go on disturbing.

Buddha became enlightened, then he came back to his home – he came back after twelve years.

His wife, whom he had loved very much, was very angry, furious. All these twelve years she had been waiting and waiting – someday this man will come back. And she had much revenge in her mind because this man had done an injustice to her, he was unfair. Suddenly one night he had disappeared. At least he could have said something, then it would have been fair, but without saying anything he simply disappeared, leaving her and their small child. For twelve years she waited, and then Buddha came. She was furious, she was mad.

Buddha’s nearest, closest disciple was Anand. Anand had always followed him like a shadow. When Buddha was entering the palace he said to Anand, “Please don’t come with me.” Anand asked why, because he had an ordinary mind, he was not enlightened. He became enlightened only when Buddha died. He said, “Why? Are you still thinking in terms of wife and husband? That you are going to meet your wife? Are you still thinking in terms of wife and husband?” He was shocked. How can a Buddha, an enlightened person, say, “Don’t come with me. I am going to meet my wife?”

Buddha said, “That is not the point. She will get more furious seeing that I have come with someone.

She has been waiting for twelve years. Let her be mad alone. She belongs to a very ancient family, very cultured So she will not be angry before you, she will not express anything – and she has been waiting for twelve years. So let her explode, don’t come with me. I am not a husband to her now, but she is still a wife. I have changed, bust she has not changed.”

Buddha went alone. Of course she was furious, she started crying and weeping and screaming and saying things. And Buddha listened. She asked again and again, “If you loved me at all, why did you leave? Why did you go away? And without telling me. If you loved me at all, tell me this.” And Buddha said, “If I didn’t love you, why should I have come back?”

But these are two different things, totally different. She was not ready to hear what he would say.

She went on insisting, “Why did you leave me alone? You tell me that you never loved me, then everything is settled.” And Buddha said, “I did love you. I still love you. That is why I have come back after twelve years.” But this love is different: she was angry and Buddha was not angry. If he had also been angry because she was screaming and weeping and crying, she could have understood.

If he had also been angry and had beaten her, she could have understood. Then everything would have been okay. He was the old man. The twelve years would have disappeared completely and they would have loved again. There was no problem. But he was standing silently and she was mad. Only she was mad, he was smiling. This was too much! What type of love is this? It must have been very hard for her to understand.

Just to taunt Buddha she told her son, who was not twelve years old, “This is your father, look at him, an escapist. You were just one day old when he escaped. This is your father. He is a beggar, and he gave birth to you. Now ask about the heritage. Spread your hands before him, he is your father. Ask him what he has to give to you.” She was taunting Buddha, she was angry, naturally.

And Buddha called Anand who was standing outside and said, “Anand, come and bring my begging bowl.” When the begging bowl was given to Buddha, he gave it to his son, Rahul, and said, “This is my heritage. I initiate you into SANNYAS.” This was his love. But Yashodhara got more mad. She said, “What are you doing? If you love your son, you will not make him a beggar, a SANNYASIN.”

Buddha said, “I make him a beggar because I love him. I know what real heritage is, and that I am giving to him. My father was not so wise, but I know what is worth giving and I am giving it.”

These are two different dimensions, two different languages, never meeting anywhere. He is loving.

He must have loved his wife; that is why he came back. He must have loved his son; that is why he initiated him. But no father can understand this.

When Buddha’s father heard about this – he was an old man, ill – he came running out and he said, “What have you done? Are you bent on destroying my whole family? You escaped from the house, you were my only son. Now my hopes are on Rahul, he is your only son. And you have initiated him into SANNYAS. So my family is cut. Now there is no possibility for the future. What are you doing?

Are you an enemy?”

And Buddha said, “Because I love my son, I give him what is worth giving. Neither your kingdom nor your family and its tree is significant. It will make no difference to the world whether this tree goes on growing further or not. But the phenomenon of SANNYAS that Rahul is initiated into is something significant. I also love my son.”

Two fathers talking…. Buddha’s father was again pleading to him, “You come back. I am your father.

I am old. I am angry. You have disappointed me. But still I have a father’s heart and I will forgive you. Come, my doors are open. Come back. Throw this sannyas, come back, my doors are open.

This kingdom is yours, I am waiting. I am very old but I have a deep love for you and I can forgive.”

This is love.

Then there is the other father, Gautam Buddha himself, giving initiation to his son to leave the world.

That too is love.

But both loves are so different that it is not good to call them by one name, one word – but we don’t have any other.

The second question:

Question 2:

LAST NIGHT YOU SAID THAT LOVE IS ALIVE BECAUSE IT IS INSECURE,
AND MARRIAGE IS DEAD BECAUSE IT IS SECURE.BUT ISN’T IT TRUE THAT LOVE IN THE SPIRITUAL DEPTH BECOMES MARRIAGE?

No! It never becomes marriage. The deeper it goes the more love it becomes, but never a marriage.

By marriage I mean an outer bond, a legal sanction, social approval. And I say that love never becomes a marriage because it is never secure. It remains love. It becomes more love, more and more, but the more it is, the more insecure it is. There is no security. But if you love, you don’t care about security at all. When you don’t love, only then you care about security. When you love, the very moment is so much that you don’t care about the next moment, you don’t care about the future.

What happens tomorrow is not your concern – because what is happening right now is so much. It is too much. It is unbearably much. You don’t care. Why does security come to the mind? It comes because of the future. Really, you are not rooted in the present. You are not living in the present.

You are not enjoying it. It is not a bliss. The present is not a bliss. Then you hope for the future, then you plan for the future, then you want to make every security for the future.

Love never wants to make any security, it is secure in itself. That is the point. It is so secure in itself that it never thinks about any security; what will happen in the future is not a concern at all – because the future is going to grow out of the present, and if the present is so alive, so blissful, the future will grow out of it. Why worry about it?

When the present is not a bliss, when it is a misery, then you are worried about the future. Then you want to make it secure, safe. But remember, no one can make anything secure. That is not in the nature of things. The future will remain insecure. You can do only one thing: live the present more deeply. That is all you can do. If any security happens through that, that is the only security. And if it is not happening, it is not happening – nothing can be done.

But our mind works in a completely suicidal way. The more miserable the present is, the more you think about the future and want to make it secure. And the more you move into the future, the more the present will be miserable. Then you are moving in a vicious circle. This circle can be broken, but the only way to break it is to live the present moment so deeply that this moment becomes the eternity in its depth. The future is going to be born out of it – it will take its own course, you need not worry about it.

So I say that love never thinks of security because love is so secure in itself. Love is never afraid of insecurity. If it is there at all, if love is there at all, it is not afraid of insecurity. Life is insecure, but love is not afraid of insecurity. Rather, love enjoys insecurity because it gives color to life, changing seasons and moods. It gives tone. It is beautiful. The changing life is beautiful because there is always something to discover, there is always something to encounter which is new.

Really, two lovers move in a constant discovery of each other. And the landscape is infinite. A loving heart is an infinite landscape. You can never finish it. There is no end to it. It goes on and on. It is as spacious as space itself. Love is not worried about insecurity, love can enjoy it. It gives a thrill.

Only those who cannot love are afraid of insecurity, because they are not rooted in life. Those who cannot love are always secure in life. They waste their life just making it secure – and it is never secure. It cannot be.

Security is the quality of death; safety is the quality of death. Life is insecure, and love is not afraid of it. Love is not afraid of life, insecurity, because it is so grounded. If you are not grounded and you feel a cyclone coming, you will be afraid. But if you are grounded you will welcome the cyclone, it will become an adventure. If you are rooted, the passing cyclone will become a challenge. You will be shaken to the very roots by it; every fibre will become alive. Then when the cyclone has gone you will not think that it was bad, a misfortune. You will say it was fortunate, a blessing, because all the deadness has been taken away by the cyclone. All that was dead has moved with it and all that was alive has become more alive.

Look at the trees after the cyclone has gone. They are vibrating with life, pulsating with life, radiant, vital; energy is filling them. Because the cyclone gave then an opportunity to feel their roots, to feel their ‘groundedness.’ It was an opportunity to feel themselves.

So one who is rooted in love is never afraid of anything. Whatsoever comes is beautiful, a change – insecurity. Whatsoever happens is beautiful. But it never becomes a marriage. When I say it never becomes a marriage I don’t mean that lovers should not marry, but that marriage should not become a substitute for love. It should only be the outer garb, it should not be the substitute. And it will never become a marriage because lovers never take each other for granted. What I mean is that it is deeply psychological – lovers never take each other for granted. Once you start taking the other for granted, the other has become a thing. Now he is not a person. So marriage reduces the partners into things. A husband is a thing, a wife is a thing – predictable, very predictable.

I have been staying in many families all over this country and I have come to know many wives and many husbands. They are not persons at all. They are predictable. If the husband asserts a sentence it can even be said what the wife will say. How the wife will react is predictable. And if the wife says something mechanically the husband will reply to it mechanically. It is certain. They are playing the same role again and again. Their life is just like a gramophone record when something goes wrong, when the needle sticks at a point and it goes on repeating. It is as predictable as that. You can tell what is going to happen again and again – the husband and wife are stuck somewhere, they have become phonograph records. Then they go on repeating. That repetition creates boredom.

I was staying with a family. The husband said to me, “I have become afraid to be alone with my wife. Only when someone else is there are we both happy. We cannot even go for a holiday without taking someone with us because that someone gives something new. Otherwise we know what is going to happen. It is so predictable that it is not worth anything. We know it already.”

It is just as if you are reading the same book, again and again and again…. Lovers are not predictable. That is the insecurity. You don’t know what is going to happen – and that is the beauty.

You can be fresh and young and alive. But we want to make a thing of each other because a thing can be manipulated easily. And you need not be afraid of a thing. You know its whereabouts, its behavior. You can plan beforehand what to do and what not to do. By marriage I mean an arrangement in which two persons fall to the level of things. Love is not an arrangement: it is a moment to moment encounter, alive. Full of danger of course, but life is so. Marriage is safe, there is no danger; love is unsafe. You never know what is going to happen, the next moment is unknown, remains unknown.

So love is entering every moment into the unknown – that is what Jesus means when he says, “God is love.” God is as unknown as love. And if you are not ready to be alive and in love and insecure, you cannot move into God, because that is a greater insecurity, a greater unknownness. So love prepares you for prayer. If you can love, and remain with an unknown person without reducing him to a thing, without becoming predictable, encountering moment to moment, you are getting ready for prayer.

Prayer is nothing but love – love for the whole existence. You are living with existence as you are living with your lover: you don’t know the mood, you don’t know the season, you don’t know what is coming. Nothing is known. You go on uncovering it – it is an endless journey.

The third question:

Question 3:

CAN ONE WHO IS NOT ENLIGHTENED LIVE IN TOTAL INSECURITY
AND NOT BE ANXIOUS, DEPRESSED AND MISERABLE?

Total insecurity and the capacity to live in it are synonymous with enlightenment. So one who is not enlightened cannot live in total insecurity, and one who cannot live in total insecurity cannot become enlightened. These are not two things, they are just two ways of saying the same thing. So don’t wait until you have become enlightened to live in insecurity, no! Because then you will never become enlightened.

Start living in insecurity – that is the way towards enlightenment. And don’t think about total insecurity. Start from where you are. As you are you cannot be total in anything, but one has to make a start. In the beginning it will create anxiety, in the beginning you will feel miserable – but only in the beginning. If you can pass the beginning, if you can tolerate the beginning, the misery will disappear, the anxiety will disappear.

The mechanism has to be understood. Why do you feel anxiety when you feel insecure? It is not because of insecurity, but because of the demand for security. When you feel insecure you feel anxious, anxiety arises. It is not arising because of insecurity, it is arising because of the demand to make life a security. If you start living insecurely and don’t demand security, the anxiety will disappear when the demand goes. The demand is creating the anxiety.

Insecurity is the very nature of life. It is an insecure world for a Buddha; for a Jesus it is also insecure.

But they are not anxious because they have accepted the fact. They have become mature enough to accept a reality.

This is my definition of maturity and immaturity. A person I call immature is one who goes on fighting against reality for fictions and dreams. This man is immature. Maturity means coming to terms with reality, throwing away dreams, and accepting the reality as it is. Buddha is mature. He accepts. It is so. For example, although there is death, an immature person goes on thinking that everyone may die but he is not going to die. An immature person goes on thinking that by the time he dies something will be discovered, some medical elixir, which means he will not die. An immature person goes on thinking that it is not the rule to die. Of course, many have died, but in everything there are exceptions, and he goes on thinking that he is an exception.

Whenever someone dies you feel sympathetic, you feel, “Poor man, he has died.” But it never comes to your mind that his death is your death also. No, you by-=pass it. You just don’t touch such delicate matters. You go on thinking that something or other will save you – some mantra, some miracle- maker guru. Something will happen and you will be saved. You are living in stories, children’s stories.

A mature person is one who looks at the fact and accepts that life and death are together. Death is not the end, it is the very peak of life. It is not something like an accident which happens to life, it is something which grows in the very heart of life. It grows and comes to a peak. So he accepts and then there is no fear of death. He accepts that security is not possible. You can create a facade, you can have a bank balance, you can donate much money to have some security in heaven, you can do everything, but deep down you know nothing is really secure. The bank can cheat you, and no one knows that the priest is not a cheat, the greatest cheat. No one knows. They write letters….

In India, there is a Mohammedan sect, the head priest of which writes letters to God. You donate a particular amount of money and he will write a letter. The letter will be put with you in your tomb, in your grave. It will be put with you so you can produce the letter. The money goes to the priest, the letter goes with you. But nothing is secure.

A mature person comes to terms with reality, he accepts it as it is. he doesn’t demand. He is not a demander. He doesn’t say, “It should be so.” He looks at the fact and says, “Yes, it is so.” This coming to terms with reality will make it impossible for you to be miserable – because misery comes when you demand. Really, misery is nothing else than an indication that you are moving against reality. And reality cannot be changed by you, you will have to be changed by reality. You will have to come to terms. You will have to yield.

This is what the meaning of surrender is: you will have to yield. The reality cannot yield, the reality is as it is. Unless you yield, you will suffer. The misery is created by you because you go on fighting.

It is just as if the current of a river is flowing towards the sea and you are trying to swim upcurrent.

You feel the river is against you. The river is not against you. It has not even heard about you. It doesn’t know you at all. The river is simply flowing to the sea. It is a river’s nature to flow to the sea, to move to the sea and to fall into it. You are trying to move upstream.

And there may be some foolish fellows sitting or standing on the bank who go on inspiring you, “You are doing well. You shouldn’t be worried because sooner or later the river will have to yield. You are simply great, go on doing it! Those who are great, they have won over the river.” There are always foolish people who go on giving you inspiration, giving you more enthusiasm. But no Alexander, no Napoleon, no great man, no one has ever been able to go upstream. Sooner or later the stream takes over. But when you are dead, you cannot enjoy the bliss that was possible while you were alive; the bliss of surrendering, of accepting, of becoming so one with the stream that there is no conflict.

But those foolish people on the bank will say, “You have yielded, you are defeated, you are a failure.”

Don’t listen to them, just enjoy the inner freedom that comes with yielding. Don’t listen to them.

When Buddha stopped trying to flow upstream, all those that knew him said, “You are an escapist.

You are a failure. You have accepted defeat.” Don’t listen to what others say. Feel the inner feeling.

Feel what is happening to you. If you feel good flowing with the stream, this is the way. This is Tao for you. Don’t listen to anybody, just listen to your own heart. Maturity accepts, whatsoever there is.

I have heard an anecdote. A Mohammedan, a Christian and a Jew were asked a question. The question was the same. Someone asked all three, “What would you do if a tidal wave forces the ocean onto the land and you are drowned in it?” The Christian said, “I will make the sign of the cross on my heart, and pray to God to allow me into heaven, to open the doors.” The Mohammedan said, “I will take the name of Allah, and will say that this is KISMAT, this is fate – and drown.” The Jew said, “I will thank God and accept his will and learn to live under water.”

This has to be done. One has to accept the will of existence, the will of the universe, and learn how to live in it. This is the whole art. A mature person accepts whatsoever is here, doesn’t demand, doesn’t talk about any heaven. The Christian was doing, he was asking, he was saying, “Open the doors of heaven.” But he was also not a pessimist who simply accepts and is drowned. The Mohammedan was doing that. The Jew accepted, welcomed rather, and said, “This is the will, now I must learn how to live under water. This is God’s will.”

Accept the reality as it is and learn how to live in it with a yielding heart, with a surrendered ego.

The last question:

Question 4:

YOU SAID YESTERDAY THAT LIFE EXISTS WITH DEATH.
THEN PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT IS THE NEED OF TRANSCENDENCE.
This is the need. There is the need. Life exists with death… if you can understand this, you have transcended.

You accept life, you don’t accept death. Or do you? You accept life but you reject death, and because of that you are always in trouble. You are in trouble because death is part of life. When you accept life, death is going to be there, but you reject death. When you reject death you have rejected life also because they are not two. So you will be in trouble. Either accept the whole, or reject the whole.

That is transcendence.

And there are two ways of transcending. Either accept both, life and death together, or reject both, life and death together – then you have transcended. These are the two ways, the negative and the positive. The negative says, “Reject both.” The positive says, “Accept both” but the emphasis is that BOTH should be there, whether accepted or rejected. When both are there they negate each other, just like minus and plus. They negate each other, and when they are not, you have transcended. You are either attached to life or attached – sometimes – to death, but you never accept both. I have come across many people who are so dejected about life that they have started to think about committing suicide. First they are attached to life, then life frustrates – not that life frustrates, attachment frustrates, but they think life is frustrating – so they become attached to death.

Now they start thinking about how to destroy themselves, how to commit suicide, how to die. But the attachment is there. Previously it was to life, now it is to death. So a person who is attached to life and a person who is attached to death are not different. Attachment is there and that attachment is the problem. Accept both.

Just think. What will happen if you accept both, life and death? Immediately a silence will come to the mind, because they negate each other. Life and death both disappear when you accept them – then you have transcended, you have gone beyond. Or reject both – it is the same thing.

Transcendence means going beyond duality. Attachment means remaining within duality, attached to one against the other. When you accept both or reject both, attachment falls. Your tie is unlocked.

Suddenly you float into a third dimension of being, where neither life is nor death. That is nirvana, that is moksha – where both the dualities are not, but oneness, isness, is. And unless you transcend, you will always be in misery.

You can change your attachment from this to that, but you will be in misery. Attachment creates misery. Rejection also creates misery. Whatsoever you choose, it is up to you. You can choose a positive path, like Krishna. He says “Accept. Accept both.” Or you can choose a path like Buddha, who says, “Reject both.” But do something with both together, then transcendence follows immediately. Even if you THINK of both, there will be transcendence. And if you can do it in real life, a new being is born. That being doesn’t belong to the earth of duality, that being belongs to an unknown realm – the realm of nirvana.