Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm; not till then.
One of the most basic laws of life has to be understood. Life is based on polarity, everything exists with its polar opposite – and otherwise is not possible. Mind exists because of matter, matter is the polar opposite. Consciousness exists because of unconsciousness, the day exists because of the night, life exists because of death, happiness exists because of unhappiness, and so on and so forth. Everything exists with its polar opposite. You cannot experience happiness unless you have deeply experienced unhappiness, and you cannot come to the ultimate ecstasy if you have not been thrown into the ultimate agony. Hence the meaning of the world, hence this whole suffering: it is not meaningless.
People come to me and ask, “Why did God create this suffering world? Why is there so much suffering if God is compassion?” Yes, God is compassion, therefore there is so much suffering. Unless you pass through suffering, you will not reach the ultimate ecstasy. It is a basic training. Unhappiness is a basic training for the ultimate flowering of happiness.
How can you reach ecstasy if you have not known agony? Even if you were to reach the world of ecstasy without knowing what agony is, you would not be able to recognize it. The recognition would be impossible. Only through darkness can light be recognized. You may be living in light, but if you don’t know darkness you cannot know that you are living in light.
A fish in the sea cannot know that the sea exists. Only if the fish is thrown out of the sea does it come to know, come to recognize the sea. If it is thrown back into the sea, the fish will be totally different and the sea will be totally different: now she will be able to recognize it. Sansar, the world, is just a training ground. You must be thrown deeply into matter, only then can you come back to the other pole, to the peak of consciousness.
This sutra says: Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm: not till then. The real, authentic silence happens only after you have passed through a storm. Only when the storm is over can the silence explode within you, never before. You can create a false silence before the storm, but then you are deluded. You can create stillness – artificial, cultivated, forced from without – but it is not spontaneous, it is not of your inner being.
There are many tricks to still the mind. You can use a mantra. You can sit silently in a Buddha posture and go on repeating, “Aum, aum, aum.” Go on repeating it. If you go on and on and on repeating it, you will get bored, and that boredom will look like stillness. When you get bored, the mantra will drop. A sort of sleep will be created within. Hypnos, hypnosis, a sort of sleep, will be created within. You will feel good, but that sleep is not dhyana, that sleep is not silence. That sleep is simply negative. You have become dull because of the repetition. Every repetition creates dullness: you have simply become dull. Through dullness you cannot experience misery, you cannot experience suffering. The dullness is an anesthetic – it has made you unconscious.
This is negative. Now you will be less tense, but not more alive. A silence, to be real, must be more alive and more sensitive. It must not be a sort of dullness. Through mantras you can create a facade of silence on the periphery, and you can live in that facade for lives, but you are living a false silence. A real silence comes only after the storm. Don’t force the storm to disappear.
Rather, live it, allow it to happen. Act it out, throw it out. Allow the storm to disappear from you, evaporate from you. Don’t suppress it. Suppressed, it will remain with you. Suppressed in the unconscious, it will persist and it will wait for the right moment to explode. You will always be afraid of it exploding; you will have to continuously fight it. And you can never be victorious, because that which is suppressed has to be fought again and again, has to be suppressed again and again. Your stillness will be on top of a volcano, and that volcano can erupt at any moment.
Then you will always be afraid of life, because life can create situations in which the volcano can erupt. You will negate life, you will try to escape from life. You will want to go to the Himalayas, because there, there is no one to provide an opportunity for your volcano to erupt. But the volcano is still there, and the Himalayas cannot help unless the volcano is thrown out.
And it is good to throw it out. You are missing the basic experience of completely throwing out the volcano, of totally releasing the madness, of acting out whatsoever is there: the storm within. Allow it to move without and don’t resist, don’t suppress. Allow it to move out totally. Then a moment will come when the storm has gone.
In that moment, real silence happens to you – real in the sense that now it is not cultivated, it is spontaneous. The stream is flowing. It is not anything that you have created; it is not anything that is happening because of your effort. Rather, on the contrary, you are not there, only the silence is. And this silence is fearless. Nothing can disturb it because that which could be a disturbance has been thrown out. The storm has disappeared.
Hence my insistence – so much insistence – on throwing out your madness. Within, it is dangerous. Thrown out, it disappears. Your heart becomes empty, a certain space is created. Only in that space can silence happen. Then you have room for it, you’re ready for it, open to it.
Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm: not till then. What is that flower? The flowering of your being will happen only when real silence has happened to you, never before. You cannot force the flower to open, it opens by itself. You cannot force your being to open; there is no possibility of it. You cannot rape it, you cannot be violent toward it. It will simply be destroyed.
The flower opens by itself. The only soil needed is authentic, real spontaneous silence. With a cultivated silence, the flower will never open. With a cultivated silence, you will simply become dull. Your being will be less alive, that’s all. With less life you will be in less trouble. That’s okay, but remember: that trouble is a training. You should not try to have fewer troubles. Be with your troubles, be in your troubles and move through them. Don’t leave them, don’t escape from them. A moment will come when you have gone beyond them, but that moment always comes from passing through them. Pass through the storm and allow a real silence to come. Then your being will flower, not till then.
It shall grow, it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted… Not until the whole nature has yielded and has become subject unto its higher self can the bloom open.
Don’t think that the storm is your enemy. It is not. That storm is your greatest friend, because without it – no silence; without it – no flowering; without it – no liberation. So never think in terms of enmity. Nothing is an enemy to you: the whole of existence is friendly. Even that which appears to be against you, even that is not your enemy. Jesus says: “Love your enemies.” These arethe real enemies that you have to love – not your neighbor nor the enemy of your country, they are not your real enemies. These are your real enemies: the storm, evil, the world, sexuality, anger, passion, hatred. These are the real enemies.
Jesus says: “Love thy enemies as thyself.” Why? Christianity could never understand it. Jesus’ teaching has been completely lost; whatsoever exists in the name of Christianity doesn’t belong to Jesus Christ. It belongs to St. Paul. He is the real founder of the so-called Christianity that exists on earth.
Jesus is very esoteric. When he says “Love thy enemies as thyself,” he means that you will pass through the polar opposite, through the enemy. Experience it in its totality so that you can transcend it. Any experience that is total becomes transcendental. Any experience, I say. Experience with your totality and you have gone beyond it. It will never cling to you; you have moved away, above it. You have passed through it, you have learned everything about it.
Knowing is revolutionary. It creates a mutation, it transforms you.
While the storm lasts… Don’t think that the storm is your enemy, because meanwhile, underground, hidden in darkness, the flower will grow.
…it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. But not till the whole personality of the man is dissolved and melted… Not until the whole nature has yielded and become subject unto its higher self, can the bloom open.
When the storm has gone, the bloom will open. But it was getting ready while the storm was there. Through the storm, it was getting ready to bloom. It was gathering energy, life, vitality. It was getting ready to burst forth. The storm is the soil, without it the flower cannot bloom.
Then will come a calm such as comes in a tropical country after the heavy rain. And in the deep silence the mysterious event will occur which will prove that the way has been found.
Only by passing through the storm will you come to a spot within you which comes …in a tropical country after the heavy rain. Remember this deeply. It will be of much help to you.
With every suffering, you are creating the possibility of ecstasy. Ecstasy will follow right after it. But if you are too engaged with the suffering, you may miss it. If you are ill, after the illness a moment of health, a moment of well-being, will come to you. But you can be too concerned with the illness, so that when the moment comes you are so engrossed, involved in the past illness – which is no longer there – you may miss that moment. And the moment is momentary; you can miss it very easily. It is atomic.
After every pain, the moment comes and visits you. After every suffering, ecstasy comes to your door and knocks, but you go on missing it because the past is so heavy. You are still ill even after the illness has gone. It continues in your memory, it clouds your mind, and you miss that atomic moment.
Remember this: whenever you are depressed, wait for the moment that the depression goes. Nothing lasts forever: the depression will go. When the depression leaves you, wait – be aware and alert – because after the depression, after this night, there will be a dawn, the sun will rise. If you can be alert in that moment, you will be happy that you were depressed. You will be grateful that you were depressed because only through that depression, this possibility; only through that depression, this moment of happiness.
But what do we do? – we move in an infinite regression. We get depressed, and then we get depressed because of the depression: a second depression follows. If you are depressed, that’s okay, nothing is wrong in it. It is beautiful because through it you will learn and mature. But then you feel badly: “Why do I get depressed? I should not get depressed.” Then you start fighting with the depression. The real depression is good, but the second depression is unreal – and this unreal depression will cloud your mind. You will miss the moment that would have followed the real depression.
When depressed, be depressed. Simply be depressed. Don’t get depressed about your depression. When depressed, simply be depressed. Don’t fight it, don’t create any diversion; don’t force it to go. Just allow it to happen, it will go by itself. Life is a flux, nothing remains. You are not needed: the river moves by itself, you are not to push it. If you are trying to push it, you are simply foolish. The river flows by itself – allow it to flow.
When there is depression, allow it to be. Don’t get depressed about it. If you want to remove it sooner, you will get depressed. If you fight it, you will create a secondary depression, which is dangerous. The first depression is beautiful, God-given. The second depression is your own. It is not God-given, it is mental. Then you will move in mental grooves – they are infinite.
If you get depressed, be happy that you are depressed and allow the depression to be. Then, suddenly the depression will disappear and there will be a breakthrough. There will be no clouds and the sky will be clear. For a single moment, heaven opens for you. If you are not depressed about your depression you can contact, you can commune, you can enter this heavenly gate. And once you know it, you have learned one of the ultimate laws of life: life uses the opposite as a teacher, as a background.
Nothing is wrong, everything is good and for the good. This is what I call a religious attitude. You may not believe in God – that makes no difference. Buddha never believed in God, Mahavira never believed in God, but they were religious. There is no need to believe in an afterlife – no need. You can still be religious. There is no need even to believe in a soul; you can be religious without believing in it.
Then what is religion? Religion means this trust: that everything is for the good. This trust that everything is for the good is a religious mind. This is religiousness. And if you trust that everything is for the good, you will come to realize the divine. The divine can be realized through such a trust.
Even the storm is for silence. Evil is for the good; death is for more life. And suffering and agony are just situations in which ecstasy can happen.
Look at life in this way, and the moment will not be far away when suffering will disappear completely, when pain will disappear completely, when death will disappear completely for you. Because one who thinks – and knows – that agony is for ecstasy, cannot be agonized. One who knows and feels and realizes that suffering is for happiness, cannot be made to suffer – impossible. He is using suffering itself to be happier, and he is using agony itself as a step toward ecstasy. He has gone beyond the clutches of the world. He has gone beyond; he has taken a jump out of the wheel of sansar.
The opening of the bloom is the glorious moment when perception awakes: with it comes confidence, knowledge, certainty….

When the disciple is ready to learn, then he is accepted, acknowledged, recognized. It must be so, for he has lit his lamp, and it cannot be hidden.

These written above are the first of the rules which are written on the walls of the hall of learning. Those that ask shall have. Those that desire to read shall read. Those who desire to learn shall learn.

Peace be with you.
Two more things to be understood: The opening of the bloom is the glorious moment when perception awakes: with it comes confidence, knowledge, certainty. Unless you experience you cannot be certain. Unless you experience, you have not known. Unless you experience, there cannot be faith. Before you have experienced, all belief is false; before it all certainty is just a facade; before it all knowledge is just information and nothing else. Remember: before your own experience don’t be too certain, because too much certainty is just a trick of the mind to hide the uncertainty within. Before your own experience, don’t say that you know, because your knowledge is just a trick to hide your ignorance.
You may have read the Gita, you may have read the Koran, you may have read the Bible. Then you know “about,” but you don’t know. You can know much about God; it doesn’t mean anything unless you know godliness. “About” is not knowledge. You can know what Jesus says, but it is borrowed, secondary, useless. You can repeat what Krishna says but it’s just mechanical. You can memorize it, you can know it by heart, but it is never in the heart; it remains in the memory. Memory is mechanical, memory is not knowledge. Knowledge comes only through experience – your own.
Insist on your own experience. If you insist, you will gain it. Those that ask shall have. But you never ask; you become contented with borrowed knowledge. You never say, “I must be allowed to know myself.” If you ask, existence is ready to give. But you are contented with books, with scriptures – with borrowed information. You never ask for the real.
Ask for the real. And the real means your experience, your own. Buddhas are of no help. They can just show the way, but you have to travel by your own feet. Insist on your own knowledge, your own experience. Never be content before that.
Those that desire to read shall read. If you are very insistent on reading the ultimate laws, they will be opened unto you. The real Bible is not in the Bible, the real Gita is not in the Gita. The real Bible or the Koran or the Gita is written in existence, in life itself. If you don’t believe in the scriptures, the real scripture will be opened unto you.
Insist that “I want to read in existence,” and the moment will be given to you. But if you don’t insist, if you carry a dead book and are content, then existence is not going to force you. Existence is absolutely nonviolent, it will not force you. You can remain with your scriptures, and if you are happy it is okay. But you are living in a false world, you are living in words.
Open the book of existence! Throw out all scriptures so that the real scripture can be encountered.
Those who desire to learn shall learn. Learning is difficult because learning means yielding, learning means surrendering, learning means becoming like a womb, becoming feminine, allowing existence to enter you. But: Those who desire to learn shall learn.
We also desire, but not to learn. We desire to collect more information. That’s not learning. Many people come to me and they say “We come to the meditation camps because many new things become known to us here.” They collect information, they collect some words, and then they go away happy. They are stupid, and their happiness is suicidal because whatsoever I say is of no use unless you experience it.
You can carry my words – then you are carrying a dead weight. You will be burdened by it, you will not be freed. My words cannot free you. They may even imprison you, they may become fetters for you. If they only become part of your memory, it would have been better if you had not come. Whatsoever I am saying is not to be remembered, it is to be experienced. And if you experience it, then it becomes your own. Then those words don’t belong to me anymore. Now, that experience has become your own. Now, you know something through your own eyes; now, you feel something through your own heart. This is knowledge, and this gives certainty and this gives faith.
Peace be with you – because only in peace does the divine become possible.
Now get ready for our meditation.

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