The family gives you ambition, and ambition is one of the hindrances for enlightenment. It gives you desires, it gives you a longing to be successful, and all these things create your tensions, your anxieties: how to be a celebrity?
Love says respect the other as an end unto himself or herself; never use the other as a means. Nobody is a means for you, everybody is an end. But then ambition will flop, and our whole educational system depends on ambitiousness, our politics depends on ambition, our religions depend on ambition.
Mind is politics, because mind is ambitious and ambition is the root of politics. If you are ambitious you are political. Your ambition may take the form of religion, but the politics is there. Then you are competing with other saints.
Only no-mind can be without any duality, because it is empty. The no-mind is choicelessness. The no-mind is pure awareness. It is just the empty sky.
The man of control lives in choice, and the man of understanding lives in choicelessness.
Consciousness means choicelessness, and to be choiceless is to be free from all desire, is to be free from all projection, is to be free from all imagination, is to be free from future.
Enlightenment is choicelessness. But don’t misunderstand me. Before that, you will have to move very cautiously, choosing the right against the wrong, choosing the truer so that you can reach to the ultimate truth.
Meditate, become more aware and then you will see: choices disappear, a choicelessness arises. And it is such a tremendous joy to have a choiceless spontaneity. It is such a freedom. Choice is such a burden.
Choicelessness brings you to the whole. Choice is always of the part, necessarily so. And then one person goes from one choice to another, becomes a driftwood – from this bank to another bank, from that bank to this bank. This is how you have been moving, down the ages, for so many lives.
Choicelessness is the alchemy of transformation, of inner mutation. A new being is born who has nothing to do with the past, who is absolutely discontinuous with the past. He has no desire. And when there is no desire, for the first time you live.
Meditation is the key to open the door, the door of absolute contentment. Mind is always discontented., hence meditation means creating a state of no-mind. That space is always contented.
Egolessness is contentment.
Be contented with whatsoever is; never ask for more. The moment you ask for more you have asked for hell. The moment you ask for more you have asked for misery. The desire for more creates misery.
If meditation is going rightly, deep, you will feel transformed throughout the whole day. A subtle contentment will be present every moment. With whatsoever you are doing, you will feel a cool center inside – contentment.
You cannot possess all and everything. Whatsoever you possess will not give you contentment. The mind, the ego, will always feel unfulfilled.
When a man is able to be alone he is also able to love. And his love has a totally different quality, a different beauty, a different fragrance to it. It is something divine, it is something of the beyond. It is deeply fulfilling. It brings great contentment.
Love can have the quality of the devil – that’s how it is there in the world, ninety-nine percent. Love can have the quality of God, and unless you make your love divine, it is not going to give you any contentment.
Creativity means loving whatsoever you do – enjoying, celebrating it, as a gift of God!
Let me insist and emphasise it because I would like all of my sannyasins to be creative in some way. To me, creativity is of tremendous import. An uncreative person is not a religious person at all.
Desire means the way to go out; desire is the path that leads you out. If your mind is still desiring, you cannot move within.