At the end of a crazy moon night
the love of God rose.
I said, “It’s me Lalla.”
The beloved woke. We became That,
and the lake is crystal-clear.
~Lal Ded
Acharya Prashant: “At the end of a crazy moon night, the love of God rose.” There is nothing in nature which doesn’t take you closer to your centre. This must be understood. Why is it said and heard that the Rishis would go to jungles for meditation? Why is it so that the distressed mind moves towards nature for peace? At the center there is nothing except peace, and then there is the first layer; the layer of the physical universe. The layer of the trees, the animals, the moon, the rivers, the flesh and the blood. And then, man builds another layer over it which is the layer of abstractions, ideas, concepts, social formulations, language. Distressed by all that, man wants to return to his center. And when you return to your center, what is it that you find?
There is a center, and there is a circle of physicality, which is not manmade. And then there is all that is man-made. From the man-made when you would go to the center, what is it that you would first encounter?
Listener 1: Peace and security.
AP: Yes, but before you reach that center, what lies in between? Between society and the center, what is it that you would meet?
The nature, the natural layer.
When you are going to the natural layer, you are going towards the center. Do you see this? From the external social layer, when you go to nature, you are actually not going to nature, but going closer to your centre. That is why the company of nature provides all of us with the peaceful experiences. There is nothing special in nature; it’s just that nature is closer to that which gives peace. So you get peace by proxy. So you get peace in an indirect way.
The river reminds you of your origins; not in a conscious way, not by way of thought but in a very subliminal way. The forest, the moon. That is the reason why the moon makes all of us go crazy. We very well know that the word lunatic is related to ‘Luna,’ moon. Moon means that which will make you go crazy. It is impossible not to go crazy under the full moon. The moon activates a memory of our source, our center, our father. It is not a conscious memory. It is not a memory of the same quality as you have a memory of your email password! It is not a memory of that kind. It is some other memory. I would rather say, it is a non memory. When you look at the moon; you forget other things. So it is, in some sense, a loss of memory.
That is why the world calls it craziness!
You are forgetting everything including your roles, responsibilities, identities. The world will say that you have gone mad! But it is divine madness. May more be blessed with such madness.
So at the end of a full moon night, the love of God arose.
At the end of ‘Prakriti’ lies God Himself.
Go into the words again. At the end of that crazy full moon night, arose the love of God. Is that what Saint Lalleshwari saying?
At the end, comes God. At the end of nature, lies God.
Do you see this?
What does it mean to us? It means that those who are afraid of nature are actually being afraid of God. Because it is impossible to go close to God, while not being close to physical nature. Which means that those of us who are not at peace with their bodies will never ever be close to God. Do you what it means to be at peace with your body? It means to be at peace with your basic ‘I’-ness. It means that you are not looking at others’ at the society, at ideas to fulfill that which is physical. Remember, that the constituents of society are all natural, from ‘prakriti.’
What are the constituents of society?
L2: People.
AP: Now people are like animals; physical beings. But still, society is something more than people. What is it?
Rules, regulations, ideas, concepts, identifications, nationality, religion, good and badad, morality; which are not people or nature. These are abstract. To be afraid of the body means that I am shying away from flesh and blood and moving into mental activity. It means I am not prepared to move my body; I would rather move my thoughts or intellect.
Have you met people of this kind? They would usually be this fat!
Now, this fellow is not at all like a beast in the jungle. He is very much social. All intellect is social. God will elude this man.
The one who is not one with nature cannot be one with God.
In fact, that is the sign of the saint. Inside he is one with God, outside he is totally one with nature-naked, free. If you cannot roam free like a child, then rest assured, you can never find the peace of God. Nakedness both in the physical and mental sense should come very naturally.
You have cultures in which physical nakedness is a taboo, and you have cultures where mental nakedness is a taboo-there people might me totally nude but their minds are so armored and covered-they will expose their bodies but never expose their minds. Even in moments of physical union with their lovers; it is the bodies that will go naked; the mind will never be denuded. They will expose their bodies to each other but not the minds to each other-the minds must remain vaulted.
We know this story isn’t it?
It is our story.
How difficult it is to really expose the mind! It is far easier to disrobe yourself and expose the body. The man of God is first of all is prepared to expose the mind. And after that he is also no more afraid to expose the body. Because the fear of exposing the body is the fear of exposing the mind; they are one. Are we getting this?
L3: That is why at times, the saints get mind right, because people are not prepared for this exposure.
AP: Yes, one fellow who is living totally exposed shows us that it is possible to live fearlessly. He is exposing all this vulnerability. You can hurt him; and yet he is living the risk of getting hurt but is not prepared to give up the heart. He would rather get hurt but not hide the heart.
When you are prepared to get hurt, then that which gets hurt, is prepared to go! Do not forget that it is only your self concepts which get hurt. When you are prepared to get hurt-that small self is already gone! How can you get hurt now? There is always something within you which gets hurt, right? That thing itself is no more. It exists only with your patronage. You have withdrawn the patronage, now it’s gone. You will no more be hurt.
I repeat that I am talking of these things because none of us are novices.
Very few of us belong to this place. We have come from the various corners of this country or the various countries of this world. So, we do have an internal sense of the right. Yet, we are still lost in searching just because fear holds us back! My job is not hence to teach the scriptures. My job is not hence to teach you of the ‘spiritual jargon’; most of us already know enough of that. My job is to talk of that and take that down which makes our feet heavy. Now you do not need knowledge. Now you must let action happen. You have enough knowledge. Drop some of the rendredundant knowledge and let action happen now. When will action happen?
Or, do you want to live like theoreticians who know a lot but live nothing.
When would you live all this? Or, do you want God to live only in the head and not in your lives?
How can one embrace an armored tank? Can you see how weird it would look? Somebody is trying to hug a tank!
