This Voyage

Be Ecstatic

One who knows how to be ecstatic being alone can be alone in the crowd. Who is going to find out that inside you are completely centered in your witnessing, and you are not at all bothered by the mind?

It takes just a little time but as you go on disidentifying with the mind, the mind loses control over you, and finally it starts disappearing.

That is the beginning of freedom, the birth of a new man, the birth of an authentic man. Now you will act out of your awareness not out of your mind. You will act moment-to-moment, seeing the situation clearly. There is no problem to worry about what is wrong and what is right.

Your clarity will decide what is right, your clarity will take you towards the right. It may not coincide with the right of your society. That’s why society is afraid and wants to put a mind in you.

There is a Sufi story…. A young seeker came to a great Sufi master. As he entered his room and saluted the master with great respect, the master said, “Good. That’s perfectly good. What do you want?”

He said, “I want to be initiated.”

The master said, “I can initiate you, but what about the crowd that is following you?”

He looked back; there was nobody. He said, “What crowd? I am alone.”

The master said, “You are not. Just close your eyes and see the crowd.”

The young man closed his eyes and he was surprised. There was the whole crowd that he had left behind: his mother weeping, his father telling him not to go, his wife in tears, his friends preventing him – every face, the whole crowd. The master said, “Now open your eyes. Can you say that people are not following you?”

He said, “I am sorry. You are right. The whole crowd I am carrying within myself.”

So the master said, “Your first work is to get rid of the crowd. This is your problem. And once you are finished with the crowd, things are very simple. The day you are finished with the crowd I will initiate you, because I can only initiate you; I cannot initiate this crowd.”

The story is meaningful. Even when you are alone you are not alone. And a man of meditation, even though in the crowd of thousands of people, is alone.

When you are alone, nobody can see the crowd, because it is within you. And when a meditative man is in the crowd and yet alone, nobody can see his aloneness, because that too is within him. To know your aloneness is to be acquainted with existence, nature, your reality. And it gives such blissfulness that there is no comparison with any joy that you have felt in the past.

Unless you can be blissful in your total aloneness, remember, anything that you think is happiness is only a deception.

Once the thing is clear, it is not difficult to do it. Find time – even for a few minutes, once in, a while – just to be alone.

In the beginning you will be miserable, because nobody is there to say how beautiful you are. Nobody is there to say, “What a great artist you are!” There is nobody, just silence around you. But a little patience, and a little alertness not to get identified with the mind, will bring the great revolution.