Question:
BELOVED MASTER,UPON RETURNING TO HOLLAND LAST YEAR I STARTED COMMUNICATING ABOUT YOU WITH AN OVERWHELMING SENSE OF URGENCY. I FELT YOU IMPARTED THIS URGENCY TO ME, BUT IT SEEMED ALSO TO BE A PART OF MY NATURE.THIS FEELING OF NOT HAVING A SECOND TO LOSE, THE WISH TO GET MORE DUTCH PEOPLE TO BECOME SANNYASINS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, MADE ME FAR FROM PLAYFUL. THE SERIOUSNESS LED TO MUCH ANGUISH BECAUSE I WAS CONFRONTED WITH INDIFFERENCE, RIDICULE AND CONTEMPT, ESPECIALLY FROM THE JOURNALISTS. OBJECTIVELY I DID NOT FAIL -- FAR FROM IT -- BUT IN TERMS OF BEING, MY TRIP WAS NOT EXACTLY wu-wei. I SIMPLY COULD NOT COMBINE THIS URGENCY WITH JOY AND RELAXATION.WILL YOU SAY A FEW WORDS ON THIS URGENCY, EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE GIVEN ME SO MUCH ALREADY?
Deva Amrito, the playfulness that I talk about comes very slowly. You cannot just jump out of your seriousness which you have accumulated for lives. Now it has a force of its own.
It is not a simple matter to relax; it is one of the most complex phenomena possible, because all that we are taught is tension, anxiety, anguish. Seriousness is the very core the society is built around. Playfulness is for small children, not for grown-up people. And I am teaching you to be children again, to be playful again. It is a quantum leap, a jump...but it takes time to understand.
And as far as I am concerned, you have been immensely successful: objectively, certainly, but subjectively too. Unexpectedly you have been successful. Anybody else in your place would have been in a madhouse.
You were excited, and it is natural to be excited. When somebody understands me, feels me, he immediately starts feeling an urgency -- not a single moment to lose. And the word has to be spread. A kind of tremendous immediacy overwhelms. It is natural! It is true that there is not a single moment to lose. And if you love me, you would like all those people to come to me, because they may not get the opportunity again -- for centuries, for lives together!
When you love, and you have found a treasure, you would like to share it. And if the treasure is such that it can disappear any moment, how can you avoid the feeling of immense urgency? You will have to shout from the tops of the houses.
And the response that you will get is absolutely certain and fixed. The more you would like people to come to me, the more they will escape -- from you, from the very idea of coming to me. And the only way to escape is to ridicule you, to laugh at you, to call you mad. That is their way of defending themselves. If they listen to you understandingly, if they allow you to overwhelm their being, to overflow into their being, to flood their being, then they will also find themselves in the same grip. And it will be very difficult for them to avoid.
Hence, from the very beginning they will ridicule you, criticize you, oppose you, laugh at you. They will do everything possible to create the feeling in you that you are wrong. But they failed. They could not create that feeling in you. The more they ridiculed you, the more they laughed, the more they criticized, the more you tried to convince them.
And you have been objectively successful -- you have convinced thousands of people. Since your going to Holland, many many Dutch people have arrived, and more are arriving, and more will go on arriving. You have created a great stir. You have touched many people's hearts. And it has been a great experience for your inner growth too.
The impact that you created has not got into your head yet; it has not made you more of an egoist. In fact, it has made you more humble. It may not have been exactly wu-wei, but it was very close. And I was not expecting it to be absolutely wu-wei, but it has been more than I was expecting.
I was a little bit afraid, Amrito, that you might go mad. The urgency was such, your ecstasy was such, you were so passionately in love with me, that I was afraid deep down. I was sending you with all kinds of apprehensions. But you survived the test. You have come back. The turmoil that was created around you because of your talking about me -- in the newspapers, on the radio, the TV -- the way you talked, it gave the sense of your immense love, it gave the sense that you have found the home.
Many have been convinced. And many who have not been convinced have also started thinking about it. And even those who have ridiculed you and have opposed you are impressed; otherwise who cares? Why should you oppose somebody if you are not impressed? Why should you ridicule and laugh if you are simply alert that he is mad? Nobody laughs at a madman, nobody ridicules a madman. It is enough to know that he is mad and everything is finished!
You have created a chain which will go on. And I would like many of my sannyasins to be so excited, to feel the urgency, to go to their countries and spread the word. And you will have to shout from the tops of the houses.
And whenever you are in love you look mad -- you are mad. Love is madness...but far higher than the so-called, mediocre, mundane sanity. And love is blindness, but a blindness that is capable of seeing the invisible.
Love is not part of the ordinary world that we have created. We have expelled love from it. So whenever you are in love -- and to be in love with a master, to be in love
with a buddha, is the ultimate love -- it drives you crazy. It makes you part of the beyond. Nobody can believe it.
How can your friends, Amrito, believe it, that it has happened to you and it has not happened to them? It is so much against their egos that you have found and they have not found yet, and still they are struggling. No, the easier way for them is to deny, to say that you have not found, that you are in an illusion, that you have been hypnotized, that you are hallucinating, that you have been drugged. That gives them a consolation, that gives them a kind of at-easeness. If you have really found, then they will feel very very uneasy -- then their lives are failures.
It has been a beautiful experience. I know you could not be very playful. It was difficult. Next time when I send you, you will be more playful. Now don't get afraid! I know that you don't want to go back again. Enough is enough...but one more time. Next time the whole project is to be playful. Then people will laugh more and they will think that you have gone even more mad. But laugh...dance, sing. This time you were arguing. Next time no arguing -- singing, dancing, hugging people.
But I am absolutely happy. Whatsoever has happened has been good objectively, has been good for others, has been good for you. It is a device: to send you for a particular purpose is a device for your inner growth. And you have been successful.
There was every possibility of being a failure.
I am reminded:
Once George Gurdjieff asked P.D. Ouspensky, his chief disciple of those days, to come from London to a faraway place somewhere in the Caucasus. It was very difficult. Financially Ouspensky was bankrupt. He had no money, no house to live in, nobody to support him. And such a long journey! And the times were very dangerous. In those parts of the world it was dangerous to move, because the Russian revolution was happening. People were being massacred, killed, murdered. There was no peace. Even Gurdjieff had to leave Russia, and he was hiding in the mountains of the Caucasus.
It was not a right time to go there; it was very dangerous. The journey was not easy: all the trains were unsettled, roads were cut, bridges were broken. It was chaos! But when the master calls, the disciple has to follow. Whatever belongings he had, he sold. He borrowed money from people, and traveled thousands of miles. It took him almost thirty days to reach Gurdjieff. Tired, tattered, thinking many times, "What am I doing? People are escaping from Russia, and I am going there!" And he was on the blacklist of the communists, because he was a well-known figure -- chief disciple of George Gurdjieff, a well-known, world-famous mathematician, a great author, one of the greatest the world has ever known. His books were translated into almost all the languages of the world. Going back to Russia was dangerous. He could be caught, imprisoned, killed. He was anticommunist! -- no sensible person can be a communist, because the whole idea is nonsense. But he traveled...and when he reached Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff looked at him and the first thing that he said was, "Go back to London and start work again."
Now that was too much. Ouspensky failed. He could not trust this man. Now what kind of a joke is this? Playing with somebody's life in such a way...and immediately he said, "Go back right now! I have nothing else to say."
Ouspensky went back -- turned against Gurdjieff, became an enemy. That was a great device of a great master. If he had trusted, he would have become enlightened. He missed the opportunity. He died an unenlightened person.
When things are going smooth and easy, trust is easy -- but it is worthless. When things become difficult, arduous, impossible, and you can still trust, when it becomes absolutely illogical to trust and you can still trust, only such a trust becomes a transforming force.
Amrito, I am going to send you one more time. And remember, I am not a very consistent man: it may be twice, thrice...it depends. But for the moment, one time I am going to send you -- that much is certain.
And this time the project is being playful.
