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SAT-CHIT-ANAND
Gyanesha, this amazement is pure love. A love unfettered by biological conditions. It is trust: a trust that has not been asked for, a trust that does not make you a slave, but gives you absolute freedom. This amazement is the whole secret that happens between the master and the disciple. Perhaps there is no other miracle in the world that can be compared to this. It is invisible, particularly to those who are unacquainted with anything like a master-disciple communion. It is something from being to being.TRUTH CONSCIOUSNESS BLISS by BHAGWAN SHREE RAJNEESH SESSION TWENTY-FOUR DECEMBER 3, 1987 EVENING THE ENERGY FIELD OF THE MASTER IS A WOMB And I say unto you, you can become enlightened this very moment - because my preparation is a totally new dimension. It is about being spontaneous, having a rejoicing heart, being in tune with love. It is more musical, harmonious, it is more relaxed. Beloved Bhagwan, The other day in discourse, Your being, Your beauty, struck me like a huge wave. I was again a child, looking with big eyes. It was like a window opening to something unknown, yet known. Beloved master, would you like to speak on this experience? What is this amazement? It will be good to have this comparison. Sex is from body to body. The ordinary so-called love is from heart to heart. And trust is the highest form of love from being to being. As you go deeper, things go on becoming more and more amazing, more and more unbelievable, but more and more and experience so definitive that you cannot doubt it. It is a transfer, a transmission between the being of the master and the disciple. Your description about it is very accurate: as if a window has opened. Suddenly where there was just darkness, a cool breeze comes and a window opens and the whole sky with all its stars becomes available to you. Certainly one is stunned. The mind stops. And because the mind stops one feels as if one has become a child again. You are also right in saying that it is something unknown, yet seems to be very much known. It is both. You have known it; it was your first experience as you were born and opened your eyes; your senses were immensely sensitive. Each day that has passed has been making them more and more insensitive. What people think of as the growth of a child is simply the death of the child. The child knew something which even the old people don't know. But his knowing was so simple that he could not formulate it into words. He could not say anything about it. He was seeing the rose flower in the garden and he was seeing the green, lush trees, but he had no idea what was a flower. He was seeing everything with better eyes than you have, because your eyes are too much covered with dust. Life is a continuous traveling in which your senses become tired, dust-covered, your mirror no longer reflects, but distorts. And sometimes it stops even distorting, it is no longer a mirror. A thick layer of experiences covers it so totally that it becomes impossible for it to reflect anything. The child's eyes are pure, clean; so are his ears and other senses. The first moment when he opens to the world, he is filled with amazement and wonder. But there is no way for him to convey it. He has lived for nine months in a dark tunnel. No light penetrated there. No roses bloomed there. He was almost a part of his mother's body. He was not an individual. He was not even breathing by himself. It was the mother's breath that he was getting his oxygen from. He was being nourished by the mother. He had not even dreamed...He was not yet a separate entity. He was just like the hand of the mother or the leg of the mother, just part and parcel. His life was dependent on the mother's life, he was sharing it. The moment of birth is a great trauma, because the child naturally feels afraid, worried. He cannot think that it is going to be a birth into a bigger world, into a vast universe, that miracles are waiting for him. He can only conceive birth as a death. Just think about the child coming out of the mother's womb. He cannot conceive that he is going into authentic, individual existence, that he is moving into a vaster universe. For nine months he has known a certain life and he is being taken away from it. He cannot conceive life as something that is going to happen. He can conceive it only as a death compared to what has been happening for nine months. He is freaking completely. He does not want to come out. That's why there is such a struggle and it takes the mother so much time. The child does not want to come out of the womb. He clings with absolute force. His life is being destroyed. He does not know what is happening, who is throwing him out of his home. It is the child who is creating all the pain for the mother because he is resisting coming out. But he had to come out. He cannot live forever in his mother's womb. Except for one exceptional story, in the whole of history there is no incidence where somebody has lived longer than ten months at the most in the mother's womb. Just one man lived there for eighty-four years. His name was Lao Tzu. He is a strange man. You cannot predict a man like Lao Tzu, what he will do. For eighty-four years he lived in his mother's womb. And when he was born he was already so old, all his hairs white, a long beard, and the strangest thing...he came out laughing. From the very start he behaved in a way that nobody has ever done. Nobody has even tried. This story about Lao Tzu cannot be historical, because you have to think about the mother too. Carrying a child for eighty-four years, the mother would have been dead long before. The scientific fact is that every human child is born incomplete. Many other animals are born complete. That's why they become immediately independent from the mother, from the father, and soon they have moved on their own way. They don't create a family. A family is the need of the helplessness of the child. The child is not complete. In fact a child needs at least four years in the mother's womb. But the mother cannot manage that long, a four-year-old child in the womb. Even nine months is too much. It is just the infinite compassion and love of a woman that there are children in the world. If it were the other way round, that the man was going to become pregnant, you could take it for granted that no child would be born in the world. The man is so impatient. Nine months! Carrying such a load which goes on growing inside you... you cannot eat, you cannot drink, you are throwing up because there is no space inside you: the child is growing and taking all the space. It is only because of the patience of a woman that humanity exists. But beyond nine months even the woman is not capable. Scientific understanding is that the child, every child, is a kind of abortion, even the natural birth. The child is born incomplete. That's why for four years at least he will need absolute support - and that is the minimum I am talking about. The actual fact is that a child often needs the support of the family for up to twenty-five years. Until he comes from the university with a Ph.D., he is dependent. He is still somehow part of the womb. But the first moment of every child's birth is a tremendous experience for the child. He is expecting to die. He is almost certain that it is going to happen. He is almost certain that it is going to happen. His life is being destroyed by unknown forces. Why is he being thrown out of his house? He had not known any other kind of life. The only life he knows is in the womb. He thinks he is going to die, but suddenly finds that instead of death, birth has happened. Instead of dying, for the first time he has become alive. The womb was only a preparation. It was not his life. It was just preparing him so that he could move into life. The womb was just like a nursery where plants are prepared and then they move into gardens the moment they are strong enough to face the sun, the wind, the rain, and all kinds of problems and responsibilities of existence. The moment the experience of death turns into its opposite, the experience of life, the child has his first amazement which is never transcended unless he is born again in a spiritual sense. The mother's womb was one preparation. The master's womb is another preparation. The energy field of the master is the womb. And you are being prepared to die to the past, to die to our personality that you have known as yourself and to enter into a new quality of life which you have not even dreamed of. So when you enter into this new life, it brings great amazement. You cannot believe it. But you are right: in a way you know it, in a way you don't know it. You know it because your first birth had something similar in it. This is the same phenomenon on a higher level. The master is your death and he is also your resurrection. Passing through the master you are going to enter into a life which is eternal. No mother can give you an eternal life. She can give you only a mortal life, the life of the body which is going to die sooner or later. In fact it starts dying from the very first moment. It takes it seventy, eighty or a hundred years to reach the grave, but it goes on moving towards the grave. You think that on each birthday you are celebrating life? You are wrong. Each birthday you are celebrating death. Each birthday means one year has slipped by. You are more dead than you have been, and you are coming closer to the grave. The queue is becoming smaller and smaller. The day my father died I counted how many persons are still in the queue in which I am standing. Two sisters of my father had died, two brothers of my father were alive, so they were the only two persons between me and the window. Just a few days ago one uncle died. Now there is only one uncle between me and the window. So I know how one gets closer and closer to the grave. Each moment you are moving, without your knowing, towards death. The mother cannot give you a birth which is eternal. The mother herself knows nothing about the eternal. The master is another womb, another energy field, another preparation for a new life. The old is going to be ending any moment and if you don't get acquainted with the new you have wasted your whole life in utter futility. Once is a while you will be very close to the master but this is going to be a zigzag way. Sometimes you will be very close and then you will have that amazement of a new life dancing very close by. You can hear the music. You go on coming closer but then you go farther away. Your coming to the master is not a straight line without looking back. There are a few people who have the guts not to look back, who never waver for a single moment, who don't go astray here and there, who go on coming closer and closer. Every step is towards the master's being. But not all are so fortunate, not all are so courageous. They come close and they see that it is going to be death - like the child who in a certain unconscious way would like to be free of this small space he has been imprisoned in for nine months, but is not conscious of it. He is coming closer to getting out of the womb, but then he steps back. Who knows? To go into the unknown...it may be worse than the known. It may be the very end of your existence. But what happens to the child is very unconscious, dark. What happens to the disciple is not that unconscious because by becoming a disciple he is making every effort to become more and more alert. Once in a while he comes very close when suddenly he sees through the master a glimpse of the new life. That is the amazement. That is the wonder. And that is going to be your guarantee that passing through the master is not going to be just a death. It is going to be the beginning of a new eternal life. Hence the joy. Hence the ecstasy. It has been a beautiful experience, Gyanesha. Now, don't move even a single inch backward. Much more is ahead. Just go on coming closer, be ready for a merger, for a melting, for disappearing as you are. Only then can you appear as you should be. And that life knows no end. You have transcended death, you have reached to the eternal source of life. This is the search. And the master is certainly a window. You have to pass through him. Any master who tries to stop you somewhere, who wants you to cling to him, not to pass through him and go ahead is not authentic, is pseudo. Take a jump from the window into the infinite, the eternal, the ultimate. If he is not a window to jump into Sat-Chit-Anand - into truth, into consciousness, into bliss - then he is not an authentic master. It he wants you to remain loyal to him, if he wants you only to believe in him, if he insists that you remain always a shadow of him, then he is your enemy, he is not your friend. And most of the so-called masters in the past have been your enemies. That's why you are still shadows, you are still not authentic beings. They did not allow you...they enjoyed the game which is a very pious game of ego: "I have so many disciples." The ego is so subtle, it can catch your neck in any place. It does not matter whether you are trying to be spiritual, the ego can still manage to live with you. I have heard about a master who used to live alone deep in the forest. One day a seeker came who was searching for a master. He had been to many masters, but had found nothing but ego trips in the name of spirituality. He had just left another master who was continuously bragging about how many disciples he had. He never forgot to tell any stranger who came to him how many disciples he had. The seeker watching the whole scene that seemed to be a circus, felt it was not a place for spiritual growth because the man in the center was himself still not out of the game of children, the ego games. So he went in search into the forest. Perhaps somewhere in the deeper forest he might find a master. And he found an old master, very silent, very serene and he felt that perhaps this was the right man. And he told him, "I have been searching. I have been to many masters, but I was not satisfied?" He said, "They were all playing a political game, the politics of numbers. They were all comparing with each other who had more disciples, who had the king as a disciple, who had the prime minister as a disciple, who had the richest man as a disciple. It seemed they were much more influenced by the king, by the prime minister, by the richest man than they were influencing those people." The old man said, "Then you have found the right man. I don't have a single disciple. Now you need not go anywhere. I am the only one who has no disciples." Such are the ways, so subtle and so cunning...Now he is enjoying the idea that he has no disciples, he is the only one. But that young seeker said, "Once you accept me as a disciple, you will not be able to claim what you are claiming now. I will not disturb your ego, I am going in search of an authentic master." The man said, "But what more do you want? I don't have any disciples, I am the only one!" He said, "That is the problem, they are all trying to prove this, that they are the only one - the only one who has ten thousand disciples, the only one who has twenty thousand disciples. You are the only one who has no disciples. But the idea that 'I am the only one, unique,' continues to haunt you. And that is preventing your own spiritual explosion." And such masters are bound to have a mutual conspiracy. They will pretend that they are the saviors and they will enjoy the idea that they are not only saviors, but the only savior. And the disciples who will follow them will enjoy the ego, that they are the disciples of the only real savior: all others are following fools, idiots, all kinds of stupid people. "We are following the right person." This is a mutual conspiracy. They are both fulfilling each other's egos. I don't want you to be a shadow, I don't want you to believe in me, I don't want you in any way to be in a certain bondage or commitment. I want you simply to use me as a window so that you can go beyond. Beyond the window is the real, is the true, is the beautiful. You have used a very beautiful word, 'window'. I am certainly nothing but a window. And if you can pass through me I will be, more than you can conceive, grateful to you because my only concern is that I should not become a bondage to you, I should not become an imprisonment, a slavery - to anyone. My love cannot allow any kind of bondage forced upon you, any belief, any discipline. I want you to be individuals in your own right, unique, growing to your own potential. At the most I can only be a window to the beyond, to the starry night. And it is something that you have known before on a small scale when you were born. Now you have to know it on a bigger scale, on a higher scale, so that you can be reborn. These were exactly the words Jesus used to the professor who had come to see him in the middle of the night. When everybody was asleep he came, very silently, and woke up Jesus. In the dark Jesus said, "What do you want?" He said, "I have heard so much about you and once in a while in the crowd, standing behind the crowd, I have listened to you. I am a professor and I have been afraid to come to you because people think I know already. What is the need for me to go to a carpenter's son who is uneducated, who knows nothing? So I could not come in the daytime. But your words have such authority. They haunt me day and night. I have come in the night so nobody knows. I have a few questions to ask." Jesus said, "Such a coward who doesn't even have the courage to meet me in front of others, will not be able to understand what my answers are going to be. So first, be reborn and then come to me." What does he mean by "be reborn"? He is saying, "Drop all this rubbish knowledge, this personality, this respectability, this prestige of being a professor. Be reborn. Be a child again and then come to me, because only innocence can understand another heart. Only a silent being can understand another silent being." Remember this experience, Gyanesha, and much more is going to happen. But don't expect it, just let it happen on its own. Even our expectation can become a block. This happened spontaneously. Remember it: everything that is going to happen is only going to happen spontaneously, not according to your expectations. So just be here, enjoy this relaxed communion of seekers, this silence that is resounding in so many hearts, this music that joins everybody who is here with invisible threads. Out of this rejoicing and singing and dancing, you will become more and more spontaneous and more and more available to me. You will be coming closer and closer to the window. And the unknown will start becoming more and more familiar and cozy. The coldness of the unknown will disappear. And remember that the unknown is not enough. You have to move still further, you have to reach to the unknowable. Only then will you have entered into the mystery of existence. But it is going to happen. Just get ready. And I am not asking much for you to be ready. Every religion has been asking too much. In India there have been three religions who have asked so much from the disciples that one life was not enough. Many, many lives were needed for preparation. After many, many lives you may become enlightened. And I say unto you, you can become enlightened this very moment - because my preparation is a totally new dimension. It is about being spontaneous, having a rejoicing heart, being in tune with love. It is more musical, harmonious, it is more relaxed. My whole approach can be condensed into two words - let go. Colveyco Reading Room |