The Rock Bottom of Yes & No

Question 1

THAT'S why I said very much 'Zen-like'. Not actually Zen, but very much Zen- like. Existentialism is almost on the verge where it can become Zen. It can go on sticking where it stands now and it will not be a Zen, but it can take the jump and become Zen. Sartre is standing where Buddha was also standing before he became enlightened, but Buddha was open towards the future. He was still searching: he was still on the journey. Sartre has become fixed in his negativity.

The negative is necessary but not enough. That's why I go on saying unless you are capable of saying 'no' to God you will never become capable of saying 'yes'. But just to say 'no' is not enough. It is necessary, but one has to move on -- from 'no' to 'yes', from negative to positive.

Sartre is still clinging to the negative, to the 'no'. Good that he has come up to that, but not good enough. One step more, where negativity also disappears, where negativity is also negated. The negation of the negation becomes absolute positive. The negation of the negation is the total 'yes'. Let me explain it to you.

You are sad. You can become settled in your sadness, you can accept it as if "this is the end" -- journey stops, no searching, no inquiry anymore -- you have settled, you have made your home in the 'no'. Now you are not a process; you have become stagnant. The 'no' has become your life-style. Never make anything your life-style. If you have attained to 'no', don't stop there. The search is endless. Go on, go on... one day when you have reached to the very rock bottom of 'no' you start moving upwards towards the surface. Dive deep into the 'no'. You will reach to the rock bottom. From there the turning point then you move in the opposite direction. Then comes the world of 'yes'. Atheist, then you become a theist. Then you say 'yes' to the whole existence. Then sadness turns into a bliss, 'no' becomes 'yes'. But this too is not the end. Go on and on. As 'no' has been left, 'yes' also will disappear.

That is the point of Zen, where 'yes' and 'no' both disappear, and you are left without any attitude. You are left without any idea -- naked, nude -- just with a clarity, nothing to hinder it -- not even a 'yes'. No philosophy, no dogma, no theology, no doctrine -- nothing to hinder you, nothing to cloud you. This is what Patanjali calls nirbeej samadhi, seedless samadhi, because in the 'yes' the seed can be carried still?

This is the point of transcendence. This is the point where you disappear completely and, at the same time, you become total. This is why Buddha will not say 'yes' to God, will not say 'no' to God. If you ask him, "Is there God?" he will smile at the most. That smile shows his transcendence. He will not say 'yes', he will not say 'no', because he knows both are stages on the path but not the goal -- and both are childish. In fact anything becomes childish when you cling to it.

Only a child clings. A grown-up man leaves all clinging: real maturity is unclinging -- not even to 'yes'.

Buddha is so godlike, and yet, so godless. All people who have really attained go beyond 'yes' and 'no'.

Remember this. Sartre is hanging somewhere at the very border of 'no'. That's why he goes on talking about sadness, depression, anxiety, anguish. All negatives. He has written a great book, his magnum opus, BEING AND NOTHINGNESS. In that book he tries to prove that being is nothingness -- the total negation. But he clings to it.

But he is an authentic man. His 'no' is true. He has earned it. It is not just a denial of God he has lived that denial. He has suffered for it; he has sacrificed for it. It is an authentic 'no'.

So there are two types of atheists -- as there are always two types in every direction the authentic and the inauthentic. You can become an atheist for wrong reasons. A communist is an atheist but he is not authentic. His reasons are false: his reasons are superficial. He has not lived his 'no'.

To live the 'no' is to sacrifice oneself at the altar of negativity, to suffer tremendously, to move in the world of desperation, to move in the darkness, to move in the hopeless state of mind where darkness prevails ultimately, endlessly, and there is no hope for any morning -- to move into the meaningless and to not in any way create any illusion; because the temptation is great. When you are in a dark night the temptation is great at least to dream about the morning, to think about the morning, to create an illusion around you, to hope for it. And whenever you start hoping you start trying to believe in it, because you cannot hope without belief. You can hope if you believe. Belief is inauthentic: disbelief is also inauthentic.

Sartre's 'no' is really true. He has lived it; he has suffered for it. He won't cling to any belief. Whatsoever the temptation, he will not dream. Whatsoever the allurement and the fascination of hope and future, of God and heaven -- no -- he will not be tempted. He will stick, He will remain fixed with the fact. The fact is that there is no meaning. The fact is that there seems to be no God, the sky seems to be empty. The fact is there seems to be no justice. The fact is the whole existence seems to be accidental -- not a cosmos but a chaos.

It is difficult to live with this chaos. It is almost impossible -- inhuman or superhuman -- to live with this chaos and not to start dreaming about it, because one feels as if he is going mad. That's where Nietzsche became mad -- the same situation as Sartre is in. He became mad. He was the first of this new mind, the first pioneer man who tried an authentic 'no'. He went mad. Too many people will go mad if they try 'no' -- because then there is no love, then there is no hope, then there is no meaning. Your existence is arbitrary, accidental. Inside emptiness, outside emptiness... no goal anywhere. Nothing to cling to, nowhere to go -- no reason to be.

Seems difficult, almost impossible.

Sartre has earned it; he has lived it. He is a true man, a true Adam. He has disobeyed. He has said 'no'. He has been thrown out of the garden -- the garden of hopes, the garden of dreams, the garden of your wish fulfillments. Naked, nude, into the cold world he has lived.

He is a beautiful man, but one step more is needed. A little more courage. He has not yet touched the rock bottom of nothingness.

Why has he not been able to touch the rock bottom of nothingness? Because he has made a philosophy out of nothingness. Now that philosophy itself gives him a meaning. He talks about sadness. Have you watched anybody talking about his sadness? His very talk helps the sadness to disappear. That's why people talk about sadness, people talk about their miserable lives. They talk because just the talk, and they forget about it.

He has been talking, arguing, that nothing is meaningful, that the whole life is meaningless. Now this has become his meaning -- to argue for it, to fight for it.

That is where he has missed the point. A little deeper and the rock bottom is close by. He will be thrown back towards a deep 'yes'.

Out of 'no', 'yes' is born. If out of 'no', 'yes' is not born, then something has gone wrong. It has to be so. Out of the night the morning is born. If the morning is not born then something has gone wrong. Maybe the morning is there but the man has made it a point not to open his eyes. He has become addicted to darkness, or the man has gone blind, or the man has lived in darkness so long that light dazzles him and blinds him.

One step more in this life or in another and Sartre will become a real man of Zen.

He will be able to say 'yes' out of 'no', but remember, out of an authentic 'no'.

Have you watched sometimes the phenomenon of false pregnancy? A woman believes that she is pregnant, and just by the belief, just by the idea, she becomes autohypnotized that she is pregnant. She starts feeling her belly is growing -- and the belly really starts growing. Maybe there is nothing but air. And every month the belly goes on getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Just her mind helping the belly to accumulate air, just the very idea. And there is nothing -- no pregnancy, no child inside. This is false pregnancy; there is not going to be any birth.

When somebody says 'no' without earning it, without having lived for it.... For example, now in [USSR] Russia 'no' has become the official philosophy. Everybody is a communist and everybody is an atheist. Now the 'no' is bogus -- as bogus as the 'yes' of Indians. It is a false pregnancy now. Now it is the official religion; now it is government propagated. In every school and college and university, now the no is being worshipped. Atheism has become the religion; now everybody is taught about it. The pregnancy is going to be false, conditioned by others; just as in a religious home -- Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan -- you are born and then you are taught something and by and by you start believing.

A small child seeing his father praying starts praying because children are imitative. The father going to the church... the child goes to the church. Seeing that everybody believes, he also starts pretending. Now a false pregnancy is born. The belly will go on growing and no child will come out of it, no life will be born out of it. Only, the person will become ugly because of the belly.

The 'yes' can be false, the 'no' can be false; then nothing comes out of it. A tree is known by the fruit, and a cause is known by the effect. Whether you are authentic or not will be known by your rebirth. This is one thing.

The second thing to remember is: you may be really pregnant, but if the mother resists the very idea to give birth to a child, she may kill the child. The child was real, but the mother has to cooperate. When the child wants to come out of the womb after nine months of growth, the mother needs to cooperate.

Because mothers don't cooperate, that's why there is so much pain. Childbirth is such a natural thing, there need not be any pain. In fact, those who know, they say that childbirth will become one of the most ecstatic moments of a woman's life if she cooperates, nothing like it. No sexual ogasm can go so deep as when the woman participates with the process of the childbirth. Her whole existence vibrates with a new life; a new being is born. She becomes a vehicle of the divine.

She becomes a creator. Every fibre of her being vibrates with a new tune; a new song is heard in the deepest depth of her being. She will be ecstatic.

No sexual ogasm can be so deep as the ogasm that can be attained by a woman when she becomes a mother, but just the opposite is happening. Rather than being ecstatic a woman passes through tremendous suffering -- because she fights. The child is going outward, the child is leaving the womb, he is ready -- he is ready to go out into the big world, the wide world -- and the mother clings.

She is closed, she is not helping, she is not open. If she is really closed she can kill the child.

That is what is happening to Sartre: The child is ready, and he has carried a real pregnancy, but now he is afraid. Now the 'no' itself has become his aim of life, as if pregnancy itself has become the aim, not the child. As if a woman feels so good just carrying a weight in the womb that now she is afraid if the child is born she will lose something. Pregnancy should not become a style of life. It is a process; it begins and it ends. One should not cling to it. Sartre is clinging; that's where he is missing.

There are many atheists in the world with false pregnancies, very few atheists with real pregnancies. But you can miss even when you have a real pregnancy.

Never make any point of view your philosophy, because once it becomes your philosophy your ego is involved, and then you go on and on protecting it, arguing for it, searching for proofs to help it.

Amitabh has given a small story. That will be good to understand:

One Jewish sage in Brooklyn asks another Jewish sage.

"What is green, hangs on a wall, and whistles?"

A riddle what is green, hangs on a wall, and whistles?

The second Jewish sage, contemplating, said, "I do not know.

First sage: "A red herring."

Second sage "But you said it was green."

First sage "You can paint one green."

Red herring, but you can paint it.

Second sage "But you said it hangs on the wall."

First sage, "Of course, you can hang it on the wall."

Second sage "But you said it whistles!" First sage "So, it does not whistle."

But one goes on and on. Now nothing is left of the original proposition, but one goes on clinging to it. It becomes an ego trip.

Sartre is an authentic man, but the whole thing has become an ego trip. He needs a little more courage.

Yes. I say to you to say 'no' needs courage: to say 'yes' needs more courage.

Because to say 'no', ego can be helpful. In every 'no', ego can be helpful. It feels good to say 'no'; ego feels nourished, strengthened. But to say 'yes' is a surrender; it needs more courage.

Sartre needs a conversion, where the 'no' becomes 'yes', then he will be not Zen- like, he will be Zen.

And beyond Zen is Buddha. Beyond Zen is Buddha, the ultimate enlightenment, the nirbeej samadhi of Patanjali -- seedless samadhi -- where 'yes' is also dropped, because 'yes' is carried against a 'no'. When the 'no' is really dropped there is no need to carry 'yes'.

Why do you say God is? Because you are still afraid he may not be. Nobody says this is day. Nobody says this is the sun rising, because everybody knows it is so.

Whenever you insist, that this is so, somewhere deep in your unconscious there is fear. You are afraid it may not be so. Because of that fear you go on insisting, saying yes, People become fanatics, dogmatists. They are ready to be killed or to kill for their ideas.

Why is there so much dogmatism in the world? Because people have not attained really. They are afraid. They are afraid -- anybody who says 'no' creates a temptation for themselves. They also carry their 'no' within, still. If somebody says 'no', their 'no' starts being alive, and they are afraid of themselves. They live a closed life so that nobody disturbs their ideology.

But a man who has really attained to 'yes', what is the need to say 'yes'? Buddha does not say anything about God. He simply smiles at the whole stupidity of 'yes' and 'no'. Life is there without any interpretation, It is complete -- utterly complete and perfect. No ideology is needed to say anything about it. You have to be silent and still to listen to it. You have to be in it to feel it and live it. Always remember people who are obsessed too much with 'yes' must be suppressing some 'no' within their being.

 

 

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