Hassidism, The True Sage Chapter 10: True wisdom, Question 3

Question 3

DO YOU EVER DESPAIR OF US AND YOUR WORK?

You do your level best, but I do not despair because I cannot. Despair exists with expectation. Nothing can despair meI am not expecting anything from you. If it happens, it is beautiful. If it doesn't happen, that too is beautiful. To me, it is not a desire for you to become enlightened. If it is a desire and you go on missing, then I will be in despair. But it is not a desire at all.

It is my happiness to share whatsoever I have attained. I share it because I have it. If you take it, good. If you don't take it, that too is good. Because basically enlightenment cannot be anything else than YOUR freedom. This is part of your freedom: if you want to take, you take; if you don't want to take, you don't take. Whatsoever I say, if you do it, that's your freedom. If you don't do it, that's your freedom. And I am here to free you. So how can I have any expectation? -- because any sort of expectation becomes a sort of slavery, a bondage.

If I expect you to become enlightened and you are not becoming, then there will be despair. And a man who is in despair himself -- how can he help you to become enlightened? No, that's not possible. I can help you only because you cannot force me into any sort of despair. I will remain happy whether you are in heaven or hell. I will remain happy whether you remain ignorant or whether you become enlightened. To me, your misery is your choice. It exists nowhere except in your choice. If you chose, good! If you love it, good! Who am I to distract you? It is your choice.

What am I doing here then? -- I am simply sharing my understanding. That is my happiness: to share it. It is your happiness whether you take it or not -- that is irrelevant to me. Even if you are not here, even if nobody is here, even if I am sitting alone, I will be still sharing my happiness with the trees and the rocks. In fact, to say that I am sharing it is not right. It IS BEING shared. To say that I am sharing it, makes it wrong -- as if I am doing something to share it. No, it is being shared.

A flower has bloomed and the perfume is spreading. Not that the flower is sharing it; the flower cannot help but share. The fragrance is on the wings, moving, going far away. Whether somebody will be able to fill his being with that fragrance or not is not a question for the flower. It has flowered, and that's all. The flower is happy that it has bloomed. The flower is happy because it is fulfilled, and fulfillment spreads a fragrance all around.

It is just like when you kindle a lamp and the light spreads. Not that the lamp is trying to share its light -- what else can it do? It has to be so. Not that the light is waiting for somebody to come and enjoy it. If nobody comes, it is all the same. If many come, that too is the same.

I am not sharing, in a way; rather, I am being shared.

Ordinarily you think you breathe. When you become awake someday, you will see: you are breathed, you are not breathing. Ordinarily, you think that you are. When you become aware, you will say: 'God is.'

And don't call it work. I'm not doing anything. At the most, you can call it play, but don't call it work. Playing.

If it is a work it will be serious. If it is a work there will be a desire to attain to certain results. If it is a work it will have a burdensome quality of a duty to be performed. If it is work there will be a reluctance. And if you don't follow me, there will be frustration.

It is just a play. I don't even call it a game, because a game starts moving in the direction of work. It is just like children playing. There is no end to it. It itself is the end.

I love to tell stories to you, I am a storyteller. And the result is not anywhere there in my consciousness. If I have told you a beautiful story -- finished. It was beautiful. I loved it. I enjoyed;t. Whether you enjoyed it or not is for you to decide.

One of my teachers was a very rare being. He was a little eccentric as philosophers tend to be. He was one of the greatest philosophers of this century in India. Very rare, not much known -- a real philosopher, not simply a professor of philosophy. He was very much eccentric.

Students had long dropped coming to his classes when I came across him. For many years nobody had entered into his class because sometimes he would talk continuously for three, four, five, six hours. And he used to say: 'The university can decide when the period starts, but the university cannot decide when it stops, because that depends on my flow. If something is incomplete, I cannot leave it. I have to complete it.'

So it was very disturbing. He would take the whole time sometimes. And sometimes he would not say a single thing for weeks. He would say: 'Nothing is coming. You go home.'

When I entered his class, he looked at me and he said: 'Yes. You may fit with me. You also look a little eccentric. But remember: when I start talking, whenever it stops, it stops. I never manipulate. Sometimes I will not be talking for weeks; you will have to come and go. Sometimes I will talk for hours. Then if you feel uneasy, if you want to go to the bathroom or something, you can go -- but don't disturb me. I will continue. You can come back. Silently, you can sit again. I will continue because I cannot break it in between.'

It was a rare experience to listen to him. He was completely oblivious of me, the only student. Rarely would he look at me. Sometimes he would look at the walls and talk. And he was saying profound things with such a deep heart that it was not a question of addressing someone; he was enjoying. Sometimes he would chuckle and enjoy, his own thing he would enjoy. And many times I would go out and talk to people. After minutes, after even hours sometimes, he was there. And he had been talking.

A play -- not even a game.

I am talking to you; it is not a work. It may be work for you; it is not work for me. That day will be a blissful day when it is not a work even for you, when it has become a play, when you delight with me, when whatsoever I have to share, you delight in, you participate in. In those rare moments of participation you become one with me. And the work is done. That is the way to do it.

Gurdjieff's people called their discipline 'the work'. I call my discipline 'the play'. Gurdjieff's disciples are very serious, doing great work. Please, don't be serious here around me. Seriousness is a disease, more dangerous than cancer. Someday cancer will be curable, but seriousness is incurable.

Be light, weightless, happy in this moment to be here with me. Participate. Enjoy. The work will take its own care. The work happens by the side; you play and the work happens by the side. My whole emphasis is to, be playful. If you can be playful, everything will come on its own accord.

So it is not a work to me. I love you. I enjoy you. I am simply delighted in your being. I am happy that you are here.

This moment is the end. In this moment everything is fulfilled.

I don't look beyond it, because to me, this moment is eternal; it always remains there, No other moment;s coming. This is the moment. It is eternity.

When you understand how to play, how to be playful with me, around me, you have opened the door. That door opens automatically -- you never open it. You simply play, and it opens. That is the secret formula to open it. Life's door, love's door, God's door -- they all open when you are playful. They all become closed when you become serious, when you become work-oriented. Then you miss God.

God is a love, a song, a dance. God is not a commodity; He is absolutely useless. What can you use? What use can you put God to? He is non-utilitarian.

I am here -- absolutely useless. To what use can you put me? You can enjoy me -- just like you enjoy flowers in the morning, or you enjoy clouds in the sky, or you enjoy the songs of the birds. These things cannot be sold in the market, they are not commodities, but they have a tremendous beauty in them.

Anything that you transform into a commodity becomes profane. Anything that you love for its own sake immediately becomes holy, sacred.

This is from Somendra. RECENTLY, SITTING BEFORE YOU, I HAVE BECOME BATHED IN SWEAT. WHAT IS HAPPENING?

By jove, Somendra, love is happening! And whenever love happens, you feel very nervous because you are moving in the unknown. You are moving into something which you cannot manipulate, something which is beyond you, in which you can be lost -- lost forever. It may be a point of no-return and you never come back. That's what is happening.

The whole personality: shivering, afraid, sweating, nervous. A death is happening. That's what I mean when I say love is happening.

Love and death are two names of the same phenomenon. On the edge of love one feels so scared that one can be absorbed into it and there may be no possibility to come back. It is death, dawning before you. Love is death, and;f you have known love as death you have opened a secret chamber of life. Then you will know death also as love. Then death becomes God.

Hassidism

THE TRUE SAGE

Chapter-10

True wisdom