Volume 4 -
Life is there only as a potentiality. You have to work it out, you have to bring it to an actual, existential state. Nobody is born alive, only with the possibility of being alive. Nobody is born with eyes, only with the possibility of seeing.
Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, 'If you have ears, listen; if you have eyes, see.'
Those disciples were as you are: they had eyes, they had ears. They were not blind or deaf. Why did Jesus go on saying that if they had eyes they would see?
He was talking about the capacity to see a Christ; he was talking about the capacity to hear a Christ. How can you hear a Christ if you have not heard your own inner voice? -- impossible. Because Christ is nothing but your inner voice.
How can you see a Christ if you have not been able to see yourself? Christ is nothing but your self in its absolute glory, in its final flowering.
You live as a seed. There are a few reasons why one goes on living like a seed, and ninety nine per cent of people live like seeds. There must be something in it.
To live like a seed feels comfortable. Life seems to be dangerous. Remaining like a seed, one feels more secure. It has a security around it. A seed is not vulnerable.
Once it sprouts, it becomes vulnerable: it can be attacked, it can be killed -- animals are there, children are there, people are there. Once a seed sprouts into a
plant, it becomes vulnerable, insecure; hazards start.
Life is a great adventure. In the seed, hidden in the seed you are secure, protected. Nobody is going to kill you.
How can you be killed if you are not alive? -- impossible. Only when you are alive can you be killed. The more alive you become, the more vulnerable. The more alive you become, the more dangers are around you. A perfectly alive man lives in the greatest of dangers.
Hence, people like to live like seeds -- protected, secure.
Remember, life, the very nature of life is insecurity. You cannot have a secure life, you can only have a secure death.
All insurances are for death. There can be no life insurance. All insuring is to protect,to secure, to remain closed. Life is dangerous, millions of dangers are around.
That's why ninety nine percent of people decide in favor of remaining seeds. But what are you protecting? -- there is nothing to protect. What are you securing? -- there is nothing yet to secure.
A seed is as dead as a pebble on the path. And if it remains like a seed, there is bound to be misery. There is bound to be misery because it was not meant to be
like that. It was not its destiny to be a seed, but to come out of it.
The bird has to leave the egg-shell for the vast, dangerous sky where everything is possible. And with all those possibilities, death is also there.
Life takes the risk of death. Death is not against life, death is the very background in which life flowers. Death is not the opposite of life. It is just like a blackboard on which you write with white chalk. You can write on a white wall but then the words will not show.
On a blackboard, whatsoever you write with white shows. Death is like a blackboard: the white lines of life show upon it. It is not against; it is the very background. Those who want to be alive have to decide one thing: they have to decide to accept death. Not only must they accept death, they have to welcome it.
Every moment they have to be ready for it. If you don't accept death, you will remain dead from the very beginning. That is the only way to protect -- you will
remain a seed. The bird will die in the egg... many birds die in the egg.
You are here. If you want any help from me, let me break your egg: your securities, your bank balances, your life insurances -- let me make you vulnerable. Invulnerable, you will remain in the egg, and soon you will be a
rotten thing. Come out of it. The egg is to protect you, not to kill you. It is not meant that you should always remain in the egg. It is good -- it protects in the
beginning, when you are too soft to come out. But when you are ready, then the egg has to be broken. How, soever comfortable and secure you are, a single
minute more in the egg and you will lose the possibility, you will lose the opportunity to be alive and fly in the sky.
Of course, dangers are there, but dangers are beautiful. A world without dangers would be ugly, and a life
without dangers cannot be very alive.
Hence, deep down in every man and in every woman, there is an urge to live dangerously. That is the urge for life. That's why you go to the mountains, that's why you go for an unknown journey, that's why man tries to go to the moon, that's why somebody tries to reach Everest, and somebody starts on a voyage at sea in a small handmade boat. There is a deep urge for danger; that urge is for life.
Don't kill that urge, otherwise you will be here and not alive. If you understand me well, when I make you a sannyasin, when I initiate you into sannyas I initiate you into a life of insecurity, vulnerability.
Sannyas is the jump out of the egg, and the egg is the ego. Ego is a protection. Ego is like a subtle wall around you. That's why ego is so very touchy. Somebody says
something or somebody just smiles at you, and by the way he smiles you are hurt. You start protecting yourself; you are ready to fight. Ego is a readiness to
fight with whatsoever appears to be dangerous. Ego is a constant fight against life, because life is dangerous.
From wherever life tries to reach you, the ego is there like a rock protecting you. Step over this rock, break this egg of the ego, come out of it.
The sky is dangerous. I don't say that there is no danger. I cannot say that; there is danger. There are dangers upon dangers.But life thrives on danger, danger is the food. Danger is not against life; danger is the very food, the very blood, the very oxygen for life to be there.
Live in danger: that is the meaning of sannyas. The past protects you -- the known, the familiar. You feel at home with the past. The future is unfamiliar, unknown. With the future you feel alien, strange. The future is always a stranger knocking at the door. You always open the door for the future. In fact, you would like your future to be just like your past, a repetition. This is fear.
And remember, you always think that you are afraid of death, but I tell you, you are not afraid of death, you are afraid of life.
The fear of death is basically fear of life, because only life can die. If you are afraid of death, you will be afraid of life. If you are afraid of falling down, you will be afraid of rising up, because only a wave that rises falls back.
If you are afraid of being rejected you will become afraid, afraid to approach any body. If you are afraid of being rejected, you will become incapable of love. Afraid of
death, you become incapable of life. Then you live just for the name's sake, and only miseries, darkness, and night surround you.
Just being born is not enough; necessary, but not enough. You have to be born twice. Hindus have a word for it: they call it dwij, the twice-born.
One birth, the first birth from your parents is just a possibility, a potential phenomenon, not actual yet. A second birth is needed. It is what Jesus calls resurrection: a second birth in which you break all the shells, all the eggs, all the egos, all the past, the
familiar, the known, and you move into the unknown, the strange, the existence full of dangers.
Every moment there is the possibility of death. And with the possibility of death, every moment you become more and more alive.
In fact, life never dies, but that is an experience of one who knows what life is. You have never gathered courage enough to come out of the egg shell. How can
you know what life is, and how can you know that life is deathless?
You will die; life never dies. You will live in misery because you are the negation of life ego is the negation of life. Negate the ego and life will happen to you. Hence the insistence of all great ones -- Jesus,Buddha, Mohammed, Mahavir, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu -- they all insist on only one thing: negate the ego and life will happen to you in abundance.
But you cling to the ego. Clinging to the ego is clinging to darkness, to misery. These sutras are very beautiful; try to understand them.