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Chintana, everybody finds it hard, because to receive joy, to receive light, love, goes against your ego. The ego wants to be the donor, not the receiver; the ego always wants to give, not to receive. It is easier to give love; it is very difficult to receive it. To be at the receiving end ego feels very much hurt.

It is always difficult, and it is going to be still more difficult if you are with a Buddha or a Christ or a Krishna, because you have nothing to give to them. You have to take from them and have nothing to give them in return. Your ego feels annihilated. If you can give me something in return, it will not feel so bad, but what can you give? And whatsoever you can give will be just a token and nothing else, because whatsoever you have is nothing.

Just the other night a sannyasin gave me a seashell, must have found it on some beach. I loved the gesture. It is nothing, but shows great love for me. Not only love, something else too. You receive so much from me, you would like to give something in return so it remains balanced. And all that you can give, all, I say, can’t be more than seashells.

So Chintana, fear arises in everybody. You have to drop that fear; when you are receiving from me, you are not really receiving anything from me, because I am not there. I am just a passage. If you are receiving anything from me, you are receiving from God, not from me. Forget all about me! You need not even say a thank you. Whenever a sannyasin comes to me and says, “Thank you, Bhagwan, for all that you have done for me” I feel a little uneasy, because what is he saying? There is nobody to receive this thankfulness.

Remember Jesus: he was passing through a crowd and a poor woman, an ill woman, rushed behind him and touched his garments. And she was healed –immediately, instantly, so deep was her trust. She had come from a great distance in much agony and pain and suffering. But such was her trust that she believed if she could even touch the garments of Jesus all would be cured – and all was cured. Jesus looked back and the woman said, “How should I thank you, Lord? You have healed me! I had come ill and I am now healthy and whole.” Jesus said, “Your faith has healed you.” And he said not to thank him, but to thank God.

Never be worried. Don’t feel that you are becoming grateful toward me. I am just a vehicle, a passage, a window. And if the sun has penetrated through the window to you, feel thankful to the sun, forget about the frame of the window. I am just the frame and nothing else. You can receive from me as much as you want, as much as you can dare, as much as you need.

Remember always, you are receiving from God. From wherever we receive, we always receive from God. He is the only giver; there is no other.

You ask me:
[‘I am life, love, joy. Here I give you life, love, joy.’ Bhagwan, when I heard you say this two mornings ago, my body trembled with awe and also a deathlike fear of getting lost in you or of missing out completely. Why am I finding it so hard to receive this life, love, joy, from you?]

Feel fortunate that you are standing on that verge from where, if you receive, you will be transformed. If you don’t receive, you will suffer all your life. The memory will haunt you. If you have come to me, and you don’t dissolve, the memory will haunt you. You will never be at ease with life again. You have tasted something of the beyond; now life will feel almost tasteless. Going back, hiding, back into your old caves of the mind, is dangerous. And the mind tends to do that. Beware of it. Take the jump! When I give you the call, take the jump.

Remember always that it is not from me as a person that you are taking anything, because the person no longer exists. It is only a presence. It looks like a person to you, because you cannot yet see the presence. Once you accept this love, this joy, this life, that is happening here, you will forget about me as a person, you will start feeling me as a presence. You will forget my boundaries – they are arbitrary – and you will start seeing the unbounded, which is true, which is truth. The person is just a wave in the ocean; presence is the ocean itself. Let me be just a door, an opening. And that’s exactly what I am, and that’s exactly what a master is supposed to be.

Put your ego aside, and open up. Receive it! A disciple has to be feminine to receive God; a disciple has to be just a womb, become a womb. That’s why it happens almost always that women are the best disciples in the world. Buddha had fifty thousand disciples, and forty thousand were women. This was also true with Mahavira. Why? Why does a woman easily become a disciple, very easily, naturally? She knows how to receive.

For a man it is a little more difficult. For a man it takes a little longer because he has no physical womb; he does not know how to receive. He also has a spiritual womb, but that is unconscious. The woman has a spiritual womb and a physical womb too, so she is conscious of being a womb. She receives, and gives birth to a child. She knows that she can receive with great joy, in exhilaration, in ecstasy. But man ordinarily is a donor, biologically a donor. His ego is hard; he never thinks in terms of receiving, in terms of surrendering and trusting.

That’s why it is difficult for man to surrender; it takes him a little longer. And whenever a man surrenders to a master, you will see in the man disciple some feminine grace arising. Many women have reported to me again and again, “What is happening to your men disciples? They are turning feminine.” That is true. Whenever somebody becomes a disciple, naturally a feminine grace arises. He becomes less aggressive; his aggression slows down. His ego is no longer so prominent. And, slowly, slowly, spiritually he comes to recognize his womb. Only when you have recognized your womb can you connect with a master – that’s what sannyas is all about.

When I say to some new person, “You are ready for sannyas,” and he hesitates, and he says, “But I have not thought about it.” Just the other night it was happening. You must remember Mark – I had told him that I never miss a Mark. Last night he came to see me, and he tried, but I didn’t miss him. He was so perfectly womblike, but he was not aware of his own womb. It is hidden deep in the recesses of the unconscious. And the moment he surrendered, a great grace arose in him. His face changed, became luminous.

The problem with you, Chintana, is you are a woman but you have fallen into wrong company. She has been a Catholic nun, and that is the difficulty. She has forgotten about her biological womb also. A nun has to forget; a nun has to forget her biological receptivity. A nun has to become a non-woman. So Chintana has almost turned into a man, as all nuns do. She has lived in wrong company. Those people have enforced a certain structure upon her being. She is a soft woman deep inside, but on the outer side the character of a nun, the armor of a nun, has made her hard. It is fortunate that she has come here. Slowly, slowly that hardness is disappearing; her woman is arising, her womb is taking possession of her again. The nun is going away. But when you have practiced a certain thing for years, it takes time, it lingers.

That Catholic nun, the shadow of that Catholic nun, is around Chintana yet. That is what is making her so hesitant about taking the ultimate jump. In fact, she must have had a great religious desire, otherwise why should she have become a nun? She must have been a seeker for many lives, otherwise nobody becomes a monk or a nun. It is out of people’s search. And the search was such that she was not contented there; naturally, she moved to the opposite polarity.

My sannyasins are a totally opposite polarity from being a Catholic nun or monk. Now, here, she can relax. But the conditioning is there and it will go, slowly, slowly. Don’t cooperate with that conditioning. It is on the way, it is dying. Let it die. Once the nun has disappeared from Chintana’s consciousness, she will bloom into a beautiful flower. And the day is not far off.