The love that has the power to transform the whole world isn’t the one
that you feel for one, but the one that you feel for everyone
The question posed was: In Plato’s ‘the symposium’ Socrates says
that, “A man who practises the mysteries of love will be in contact not
with a reflection, but with truth itself. To know this blessing of human
nature, one can find no better helper than love.”
I have been
commenting my whole life on love, in thousands of different ways. But
the message is the same. Just one most fundamental thing has to be
remembered, that is: it is not the love that you think is love. Neither
Socrates is speaking about it, nor I am speaking about it.
The
love you know is nothing but a biological urge—it depends on your
chemistry and your hormones. It can be changed easily, by a small change
in your chemistry—and the love that you thought is the ultimate truth
will simply disappear.
You have been calling lust, love. This
distinction should be remembered. Socrates says, “a man who practises
the mysteries of love….” Lust has no mysteries, it is a plain biological
game. Every animal, every bird, every tree knows about it.
Certainly, the love which has mysteries is going to be totally different
from the love with which you are ordinarily acquainted. “A man who
practises the mysteries of love will be in contact not with the
reflection, but with truth itself.”
This love that can become a
contact with truth itself arises only out of your consciousness; not out
of your body, but out of your innermost being.
Lust arises out of
your body. Love arises out of your consciousness. But people don’t know
their consciousness, and the misunderstanding goes on and on—their
bodily lust is taken for love.
Very few people in the world have
known love. Those are the people who have become so silent, so peaceful…
and out of that silence and peace they come in contact with their
innermost being, their soul.
Once you are in contact with your
soul, your love becomes not a relationship, but simply a shadow to you.
Wherever you move, with whomsoever you move, you are loving.
Right
now, what you call love is addressed to someone, and confined to
someone. But love is not a phenomenon that can be confined.
You
can have it in your open hands, but you cannot have it in your fist. The
moment your hands are closed—they are empty. The moment they are
open—the whole of existence is available to you.
The false can
disappear if you sit silently, whenever you have time, and just watch
your thoughts. No need to argue, no need to fight, no need to push them
out, just watch—as if you are seeing something on the TV-screen.
In
a single step—from mind to no-mind—all the treasures, all the mysteries
of love, life, truth, blissfulness, open their doors. There is no need
to argue against the false.
My contention is: even to argue
against the false is to give some credit to the false, and that has been
the eastern contention for thousands of years.
You don’t argue
with your shadow: Don’t come with me today, I don’t like you, when I
don’t want you, why do you go on following me? You don’t run away from
your shadow—because the shadow will run too.
The East has never
fought with the mind; it has found a totally different method. Its
method is just to be a watcher on the hills. Let everything pass. Don’t
judge, don’t condemn, don’t evaluate.
You are only a mirror; these
are not your functions. You simply reflect—and they will all pass. If
you don’t take any note of them, if you can ignore them, they will stop
coming to you; they don’t want to be uninvited guests.
Perhaps
because of the old habit, for a few days they may continue; but you will
be able to see that the traffic is becoming less and less; otherwise it
is twenty-four-hour rush hour.
Once the mind is silent, empty,
spacious, you have found the golden key, the master key, which opens all
the mysteries of love, of truth, of eternal life.
Just close your
eyes and be silent, and relax. But the conclusion is right: “A man who
practises the mysteries of love will be in contact, not with a
reflection, but with truth itself. To know this blessing of human
nature, one can find no better helper than love.”
Either you can
start by increasing your love, expanding your love… but where will you
expand it? Your mind is standing like a China wall all around you. First
that China wall has to disappear— and that is the function of
meditation.
Socrates could have been for the West their Gautam
Buddha, and the whole history of the West would have been totally
different. He has created the basic path for the western mind: argument.
And argument by and by, rather than discovering love, has discovered atom bombs, nuclear weapons, science, technology.
The
East has not been able to discover these things because it has never
given any credit to argumentation, to reason. Its whole concentration
has been on expanding consciousness—and to give it space, it has to get
rid of the mind.
Once the mind is not there you don’t have
boundaries, even the sky is not the boundary. You are all over the
place. This feeling of being all over the place is love; and knowing it,
that it is arising from the very centre of your being, is truth.
But,
Socrates is not talking in a certain city. He is not talking to
so-called lovers all over the world. He is talking to a few disciples
who have come in search of truth. He helped a few people; he could not
help many, for the simple reason that with everybody the process was so
long.
But the East has been fortunate to discover a single-step pilgrimage: from mind to no-mind—and you have arrived home.
You
have always been there. You have never left it for a single moment!
Just, your mind has been wandering all over the world, but you have
never been anywhere else; you are exactly where you should be. If the
wandering of the mind stops, suddenly—the revelation.
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