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Man's evolution is from innocence to innocence. The first innocence is ignorant, the second innocence is luminous. The first innocence is a kind of sleep, the second innocence is an awakening The first innocence is a gift of God, the second innocence is man's own effort, his earning, his work upon himself. The first can be lost, the second cannot be lost. The first has to go — in the very nature of it, it cannot be eternal; but the second, once it comes, remains forever — it is eternal.

Remember, whatsoever you attain consciously, only that can you possess, only that. Whatsoever is given to you, and you receive it unconsciously, will be taken away. Only that really happens to you for which you work hard. Only that belongs to you which you create in your being. You become Master of it.

The first innocence in Christian terms is called Adam. And the second innocence is called Christ. And Jesus is just in between the two. Jesus is the bridge between the first innocence and the second innocence. Hindus call the second innocence 'rebirth': one becomes twice-born, dwija. And that's what Jesus also said to one of the famous professors and theologians of his time, Nicodemus: 'Unless you are born again, you will not attain to the kingdom of God.'

Unless you are born again...

The first birth has happened, the second birth has to happen. The first has happened without your cooperation, the second cannot happen without your cooperation. The first birth was almost like an accident — it happened to you unawares. The second birth can only be in immense consciousness; it cannot happen unawares, it can happen only in deep meditation.

Jesus is a bridge between Adam and Christ. That's why the story of virgin birth has a metaphoric meaning. Jesus is born innocent. Everybody is born innocent — there is no other way to be born. Every child is born in innocence. But then that innocence is lost sooner or later, and the more intelligent the child, the sooner it will be lost. If the child is stupid, imbecilic, idiotic, then it may go on lingering for a long time; it may not be lost. If you are intelligent, you will start moving away from it. You will start exploring the world. You will start adventuring into the world, into the unknown; you will become a wanderer.

And the more intelligent you are, the more is the possibility that you will not follow the crowd, you will find your own way — you would like to do your 'own thing'. You will not move on the superhighway, you will move on small footpaths into the jungle. Because intelligence wants to take risks. Intelligence wants to dare, intelligence wants to go into the unknown and the dangerous, because it is only in danger that intelligence comes to its peak. It is only when you dare that your intelligence becomes a crystallisation. It is only when you risk, that you are. The more you risk, the more you are. Risk brings being. A man who never risks remains without a being.

George Gurdjieff used to say that not everybody has got a soul. Because you have never dared, how can you get a soul? The soul comes only through daring. The only right way to attain a soul is to go into dangers, to risk all, to be a gambler, to go into the dark unknown.

The first innocence is going to go, has to go. And it is good that it goes. If it continues, you will not really be a man; you will be a vegetable or a cow or a buffalo, but you will not be a man. That is where man is different from the whole of nature. Nature lives in the first innocence, only man is capable of losing it. It is great dignity, it is glory — only man is capable of sin, no other animal can commit sin. You cannot call a dog a sinner, you cannot call a lion a sinner and you cannot call a tree a sinner. Only man can sin, and because man can sin, only man can go beyond sin. Only man can go astray — that means only man can come back home.

Except for man, all the animals, birds and trees still exist in the Garden of Eden — they never left it. That's why nature has such beauty, such peace, such silence. The Himalayas still exist in the Garden of Eden. So exists the rose bush of your garden, so exist the birds that come in the morning and sing songs around you. Nature is still there; it never left home, it never went astray, it never committed anything against God, it never disobeyed. It never dared; it is completely satisfied with the first birth.

To be satisfied with the first birth is to remain unconscious. It is only through sin that you become conscious. It is only by going wrong that consciousness arises. This has to be understood. So going wrong is not really going wrong, because only through it does the consciousness arise. All has to be lost. One has to come to the point where all is lost, God is lost, heaven is lost — one cannot believe in paradise, and one cannot believe that innocence is possible. Only from that peak of frustration, anguish, anxiety is there a possibility of a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn. Adam is perfectly at ease, so is Christ. The problem is with Jesus. Jesus is troubled.

Zen people are right when they say for a man who has never heard of meditation mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.' He is happy, he is in a kind of natural state. He has no anxiety, because God has not yet become a challenge to him. He has no future goals, he has no destination. He eats, drinks and is happy — the first hedonism I was talking about the other day: 'Eat, drink and be merry.' He lives in the body, he is the body; he knows nothing more than that. With the body there is a kind of peace and health that surrounds him. You can always see that happiness around a child. The child is the first kind of hedonist. He believes only in eating, drinking and being merry. He simply lives the moment. He is completely abandoned in the moment — no anxiety, no clouds yet — his sky is clear.

The people who have not heard of meditation and enlightenment and nirvana and God, who have never pondered over these great problems — for them things are clear; they are not confused. 'Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.' But once a man has become interested in meditation, in growth, in spirituality, in the other shore, in the other reality — problems bubble up in thousands. Problems crowd. Mountains are no more mountains now, and rivers are no more rivers; everything becomes confused, everything becomes topsy-turvy. Man goes into a chaos. The old cosmos, the old innocence, simply falls into pieces; not even a trace is left.

This is the meaning of the Christian parable of Adam's expulsion from the Garden of Eden. He became interested in higher things, he became interested in knowing things. He ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he started becoming more conscious. He started trying to understand what this reality is. He moves into knowing, and suddenly the doors of the Garden are closed for him. Suddenly he finds himself outside the Garden, and he does not know where the way back is. He has to go farther and farther away. This is what Zen people say: Mountains are no more mountains, rivers are no more rivers.

Then one has to go on a long journey. Tedious is the journey, full of miseries and nightmares. It is a wandering in a desert where oases are only dreams; they exist not. And then after a long long journey — it may continue for many many lives — one can come back. This time, coming back has a totally different meaning. Now one comes as a knowing consciousness. One is again innocent, but this innocence is no more ignorant, it is luminous, it is full of light.

This is Jesus turning into Christ. Adam finds himself outside the Garden. Jesus wanders in the world. Christ suddenly finds himself back in the Garden one day. Adam,Jesus, and Christ — these are the three stages of human consciousness. Adam is absolutely unconscious. Jesus is half-conscious, half-unconscious — hence the conflict, the confusion, the division. the tension. And Christ is absolute consciousness.

Before we enter into the sutras, this has to be understood because these sutras belong to the last night of Jesus' earthly life — the departing message to his disciples. He is leaving them. He is going out of the world into God. He is going to die to the world, and will be reborn into God. He is going to become twice-born: the resurrection after the crucifixion. And the resurrection can only be after the crucifixion.

Adam dies to God and is born to the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again. And Jesus remains in the limbo — half-half, divided, split. Something he knows and something he does not know; something he understands and something he does not understand. It is kind of cloudy there in the Jesus-consciousness. Adam is clear but fast asleep. Jesus is half awake; his eyes are full of dreams. Yes, he can see a little bit because he is half awake.

Just like in the morning when you are half awake and half asleep, and you can hear the milkman knocking on the door, and you can hear children getting ready for their school, and you can hear the neighbour's radio. But you are not yet fully alert. Yes, these things go on like ripples, enter into you — you kind of hear, and yet you don't hear. You go on swinging between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes you hear something and again you are drowned in sleep. You cannot figure out what is happening. Then you are fully awake.

Adam dies to God, is born into the world. Jesus lives in the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again. And these sutras belong to his last night, the departing message to his disciples.

Before we enter into these sutras, a few things will be of great help.

Teilhard de Chardin believes that 'the evolution of consciousness depends on three steps.' And Chardin is one of the most important Christian thinkers of this century. But still he remains confined to Christianity; he cannot soar higher than Christian boundaries. These are the three steps that he talks about. Ordinarily, consciousness is simple, innocent. After that there are three steps.

First he talks about complexity. He says 'Consciousness grows through complexity.' That is true. The original mind is absolutely simple, its taste is one, it has no duality. And because there is no duality there is no possibility of dialogue, argument. And because there is no possibility of argument and dialogue, there is no possibility of understanding. With the conflict, with friction, one evolves. So from one, man becomes dual; from unity, duplicity: from duplicity, triplicity: from triplicity, multiplicity. That's how man goes on growing — complication.

Man's consciousness is one in the original state, then it becomes many. Through the many... the growth; that is the Hegelian concept of growth, and Marxian too. Hegel calls it 'the dialectical process': thesis creates its antithesis, antithesis and thesis join into a synthesis, and the synthesis becomes a thesis and creates its antithesis. And this is how it goes on.

You cannot grow if your consciousness is unitary. It has to create a conflict in itself. With the conflict, energy is created. Conflict creates energy, friction creates energy. You strike two stones and fire is born. You strike two dry woods and fire is possible. You rub your hands and electricity is born. All energy is created through friction. So the original human consciousness has to become divided, has to become split, has to become dual. And the more evolved a mind man has, the more fragments he will have. So a thinker is almost a crowd. He is not one, he is not two, he is not three, he is many.

The second state Chardin calls 'concentration', because once the unity is lost and man has become many, there arises chaos and one loses one's identity. One does not know who one is, then an identity is needed, a self is needed, an ego is needed to hold all these fragments together. Otherwise they will start falling apart and you will not be able to survive — hence the ego. Ego is an effort to create a kind of unity inside yourself. The natural unity is lost. Now you have to create an unnatural, synthetic unity. The ego is a synthetic self, a created self, a managed self. One part of your being becomes the master and forces other parts to be slaves. A kind of government arises inside you.

Complexity creates energy. Concentration creates a possibility to use that energy; otherwise there will be no use for it. Energy will be there, and energy will kill you. It will be too much and it will be in so many directions. All those directions have to be focused in one direction, the whole energy has to be channelised into one. This is what Chardin calls 'concentration'; unification around a centre; a self is born, ego is born, discipline is born.

And the third he calls 'direction'. Once the ego is there, once you have a kind of self, a kind of unity — although managed, but still a unity — then the goal is possible. You can become an arrow, you can have a target in the future.

These three steps Chardin thinks are enough to explain human consciousness. They are not. They are important but not complete. The Hindu vision of life is far more complete. Chardin's vision is linear: unity, then complexity, then concentration, then direction. And the direction goes on and on, the arrow goes on and on and on, and there is no end to it. It is linear. The arrow goes on for infinity, it never comes back. This is not true. This is logical, but not natural.

The Hindu vision is circular. Hindus say everything moves in a circle not in a line. Nature moves in a circle, seasons move in a circle, stars move in a circle, man's life moves in a circle. Everything natural moves in a circle. The circle is the way of nature. The linear is just a concept of the mind. The line does not exist in nature. If you are aware of non-Euclidean geometry then you will know. Euclid believes in line; non-Euclidean geometry says there is nothing like line in existence. The line also is part of a bigger circle, that's all. No line is straight, and no line can be straight — you cannot draw a straight line. If you draw a straight line, that simply means you are sitting on a circular earth and drawing a straight line. Go on drawing the line from both ends, go on drawing it, and you will find one day that the line has become a circle around the earth. So that small straight line was just a part of a big circle.

Hindus say it is circular. To me, the Hindu concept is far more true than the Christian concept of linear progress. But still, my own suggestion is a little different to both. My suggestion is: spiral — neither linear nor circular; evolution is a spiral. In that way both are joined together. In a spiral the progress moves as if it is moving in a line, because it never comes to exactly the same point again. Christ never becomes Adam again, because Adam was ignorant and innocent, and Christ is innocent and fully aware. He never comes back to Adam, exactly to Adam. So the Hindu concept misses something. But in another sense he becomes Adam again because the innocence is the same, just that now it is fully aware. Then it was not aware, then it was asleep, now it is alert. In a sense Christ becomes Adam again because it is the same innocence.

So Hindus are right. And in a sense Christ never becomes Adam again, because it is luminous innocence. In that sense Christians are right. But they are only half-half right.

To have the vision of the full truth, I would like to call evolution a spiral. It comes back to the original point but never on the same plane — on a higher plane. It comes again and again but always on a higher plane. If you have been trekking in the mountains you know what I mean. You go on a path; the path moves around the mountain. Again you come to the same point, the same rocks, the same valley, the same trees, but a little higher. It is a spiral.

To make it a spiral, I would like to add three more steps to it. Chardin says: complexity, concentration, direction. These three more steps have to be added.

The first is: awareness, meditation. Concentration is just the beginning. Concentration is not relaxed, it is tense. One cannot concentrate twenty-four hours a day; one will go mad. So concentration can never become natural, but one can meditate twenty-four hours a day. One can live in meditation. It can become natural, it can become like breathing. It can be relaxed.

Concentration is focused consciousness. Meditation is just aware consciousness. For example, if you are listening to me, you can listen in a concentrated way. That will tire you, that will exhaust you. If you are listening very very tensely so that you don't miss a single word, then it will be tiring. But you can listen in a meditative way. That means you are relaxed and open, vulnerable, that's all. You will not be tired. Listening, for one and a half hours, rather than being tired, you will be enriched, rejuvenated. You will feel more energy afterwards than before, and you will feel more flow in your being.

So the fourth thing has to be awareness, meditativeness, openness. Concentration is directional, meditation is non-directional. Concentration has an object, a content. Meditation has no object, no content; it is just an opening. You are listening to me, a bird starts singing — that too you listen to. A train passes by — that too you listen to. You are not listening to me. All is included. You are open from all the sides, not only open to me. This is a higher stage of evolution than concentration is: it is de-concentration.

And the fifth I call playfulness. Christianity has no idea of playfulness, and Chardin has no idea of playfulness. 'Direction', 'goal', 'purpose' — that is very business-like, tiring, and makes man sad and serious. Something like playfulness has to be added, because a really grown-up person is capable of play. A really grown-up person is sincere but not serious. Seriousness is a kind of illness because seriousness will create tension in you; it will never allow you to celebrate. Only playfulness can become celebration and joy.

And there seems to be no space for joy in Chardin's chart — nothing of playfulness. Complexity, concentration, direction — good as far as they go, but they don't go far enough. And they don't go into creating a happy, celebrating human being . And without celebration what is the purpose? All purpose leads to a purposeless play. You work, but you work finally to relax. You work hard, just so that you are able to play. You work five days, so that at the weekend you can rest on the beach. All purpose leads to purposeless play. So the fifth I call playfulness, non seriousness, non-purposiveness, celebration, joy.

And sixth I call egolessness. Ego is needed — because one falls into a chaos, and a synthetic self is needed. But that self is synthetic, plastic, it is not real. It has to be dropped one day. Use it, go beyond it, and throw it! One has to come to egolessness, one has to forget that one exists separately from existence. In that forgetfulness, in that dropping of the ego, one becomes Adam again in a totally new way. One becomes Christ — again unity, again simplicity, again innocence, but now luminous this time. You are twice-born.

This way one again comes back to the original simplicity, the original face. But it is higher than the first originality, hence I call it spiral. It is primal innocence, but not just primal innocence. It has immense light in it, it is not dark. It is not primitive, it is the highest point of consciousness. It is divine innocence. What Plotinus calls 'the One' — this is the One. First the One was not aware of itself, now the One is aware of itself. God is born in you. In Adam God was a seed, in Christ God has become a flowering. The seed has come to its full manifestation.

This is the difference between the child and the sage. Adam is the child, Christ is the sage. They both are alike and yet not alike at all. Something similar, and something absolutely different: similarity in innocence, dissimilarity in awareness, luminosity. Or you can call the first state 'nature', and the second state 'God'. When nature realises itself, it becomes God. When nature recognises itself, it becomes God.

The beginning and the end have to be the same in some way, and yet not the same in some other way. The alpha has to be the omega, and the omega has to be the alpha; and yet they have to exist on totally different planes. Adam is body, Christ is soul; Jesus is mind — a bridge just in between the two polarities.

This is the last night. Jesus is ready to depart. That scene of departure is one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole history of human growth — the Last Supper. Jesus has gathered his disciples, the twelve. Amongst those twelve is Judas Iscariot, the one who is going to betray him. He washes the feet of his disciples for the first time. They are very very embarrassed. And they ask again and again 'Why? Why are you washing our feet? You are our Master, our Lord!' But he says 'Because I want to give you my last commandment. The last commandment is the commandment to love.' And Jesus is giving it in a very existential way, not verbally.

Just the other night a new sannyasin, Lola, was there. A few days before, she took sannyas. I gave her the name Deva Lola. It means 'moved by God', 'possessed by God', but she was so thrilled on that day of her initiation that although I explained the meaning of her name she could not follow it. She was so thrilled, she was so ecstatic — she was there and not there. She was flying high, she was drunk. So she heard it and yet she could not remember anything. Last night she was again there going back to the West, and she asked 'Please tell the meaning of my name again, because I could not remember what you had said the first day.'

She has great potential. So I told her 'Rather than giving you the meaning verbally, I will give you the meaning existentially.' And I told her to raise her hands and be possessed by God, and whatsoever happens to let it happen. And within a few moments she started swaying — swaying like a flower on the stalk in the breeze. And then faster and faster movements... and her hands started moving, her whole body started moving. She was possessed by the divine. Now this is an existential meaning, not verbal.

Jesus touched the feet of his disciples because he wanted to give them an existential meaning of love. In love nobody is higher and nobody is lower; love knows no hierarchy. Jesus touched the feet of his disciples — the Master touching the feet of his disciples. Jesus is declaring that 'You are exactly like me, there is no difference. You and I are absolutely the same. I have known it, you have not known it, that is the only difference. But there is no difference in our beings.'

Those disciples are not yet twice-born, those disciples are yet seeds, they have not bloomed, and Jesus has bloomed. But one who has bloomed can see that those seeds are going to bloom too. The seeds cannot recognise the flower because they have never known themselves blooming, but the flower can recognise the seeds because he has known both the states. He has known himself as the seed and he has known himself as the flower; he can recognise.

The same story happened in Buddha's life. Buddha says: Once, many many lives before, when I was not enlightened and I was as ignorant as anybody, I went to see a Buddha — a man who had become enlightened. His name was Dipankara. And when I touched the feet of Dipankara I was surprised, because he touched my feet too. And I felt very embarrassed because there was a great crowd, and everybody started looking: 'What is the matter?' And I was very shy. And I started feeling a little guilty too, and I said to Dipankara 'Sir, what have you done? You have touched my feet. I am an ignorant man, a sinner. You are enlightened, you are a great Master, thousands follow you. I had come just for your blessings, and you have touched my feet! What have you done?' And Dipankara laughed, and he said 'You don't know that soon you are going to become enlightened. I can recognise. You are in the state which I was once in, and you will be in the state in which I am now. You cannot see, that I understand, but I can see.'

The higher can see the lower, the lower cannot see the higher. Jesus touched the feet of his disciples. That is a rare phenomenon, a great message — that there is no higher, no lower; that all hierarchies are of the mind, are political; that in spirituality there is no hierarchy. It is all one, it is all the same. It is one being all over the place. It is one heart beating in millions of hearts. It is one consciousness in every consciousness. It is one moon reflected in millions of pools, oceans, rivers, tanks, reservoirs — but it is one moon. Jesus says 'This is to give you my last commandment — the commandment of love.'

Then they ate, then they drank. Jesus never divided the ordinary life from the spiritual life: his second message — what I was saying the other day, that the first hedonism has to be transformed into the second hedonism. Jesus is not an ascetic, Jesus is not in any way a masochist; he enjoyed life. There is no reason why one should not enjoy life. Enjoying life you will become capable of enjoying God. If you don't enjoy life, you will become incapable of enjoying God too.

Life has to be a training ground for enjoyment. God is going to be such a big blessing that if you don't taste life's small blessings you will not be ready for it; it will drown you, it will kill vou, it will be too much. Increase your capacity. Even on the last night Jesus is breaking bread, filling cups with wine for his disciples. They are enjoying, they are eating, they are in a merry mood. Death is coming close, but celebration has not to stop for it because Jesus knows that this death is going to be the greatest celebration.

He wants to leave his disciples in celebration. He wants it to be imprinted on their consciousnesses that Jesus was a celebrant, that he was a man of feasting not of fasting; that he was a man who was thrilled by the small joys of life — the flowers, the birds, the rivers — that he liked the lilies in the field; that he liked people, that he was immensely thrilled — always immensely thrilled when looking into people's eyes; that he loved, that he was not against life.

Still it happened: Christianity went against life. Still Christianity became monkish. Monasteries were created, masochists gathered there, self-torturers became dominant, and the feasting of Jesus disappeared, or it remained only as a ritual. Yes, it is repeated still.

Just the other night, Hal Musin took sannyas — the author that I talked about in the morning. Now he is Pramod, his name is Pramod — joy. He said to me that in his whole life these ten days that he has been here have been the happiest, he has never known such happiness. Now he is worried, because he has promised his daughter that he will be back home at the time of Christmas.

I told him 'Here is Christmas. Where are you going?' Christians have forgotten completely what Christmas is or should be. It has become a ritual. It has to be a kind of inner glow, it has to be a love for life. It has to be a search into the ordinary for the extraordinary, into the mundane for the supramundane. It has to be the search for the spirit in the body. It has to be the search for God into nature, for the invisible in the visible.

Jesus' last message is of love and joy. He left his disciples in a feasting mood, not crying, not making them sad. He hugged them all, he hugged even his betrayer. He kissed Judas, because for a man of that consciousness there is no friend, no enemy.

But the disciples were feeling a little bit scared. Rumours were around; and when Jesus said 'Only a little while more and I will be gone — gone to my Father' — they became very frightened, afraid, sad. To comfort them, to give them hope, to give them courage, these sutras were spoken. These are of immense value. Meditate on these.

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