Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 4

CHAPTER 1

Never be the First in the World
23 August 1975 am in Buddha Hall

LAO TZU SAYS:
ALL THE WORLD SAYS:
MY TEACHING, TAO, GREATLY RESEMBLES FOLLY. BECAUSE IT IS GREAT, THEREFORE IT
RESEMBLES FOLLY. IF IT DID NOT RESEMBLE FOLLY, IT WOULD HAVE LONG AGO BECOME
PETTY INDEED!
I HAVE THREE TREASURES; GUARD THEM AND KEEP THEM SAFE. THE FIRST IS LOVE.
THE SECOND IS, NEVER TOO MUCH. THE THIRD IS, NEVER BE THE FIRST IN THE
WORLD. THROUGH LOVE, ONE HAS NO FEAR; THROUGH NOT DOING TOO MUCH ONE HAS
AMPLITUDE OF RESERVE POWER; THROUGH NOT PRESUMING TO BE THE FIRST IN THE
WORLD ONE CAN DEVELOP ONE’S TALENT AND LET IT MATURE.
IF ONE FORSAKES LOVE AND FEARLESSNESS, FORSAKES RESTRAINT AND RESERVE
POWER, FORSAKES FOLLOWING BEHIND AND RUSHES IN FRONT, HE IS DOOMED!

THE greatest miracle in life is love, and it is the greatest mystery also; greater than life itself, because
love is the very essence for which life exists.

Love is the source, and love is the end also. So one who misses love misses all.
But don’t misunderstand love as an emotion – it is not. Love is not an emotion, is not a feeling. Love
is the subtlest energy; subtler than electricity. The very substratum of all energies is loveIt manifests in many ways. First try to understand love, then the other treasures will be easy to
understand.

If you ask me what are my three treasures I will say: First, love; second, love, third also, love. And
in fact that is what Lao Tzu is saying – but we will understand.

Man is a trinity, as Christians have called God a trinity. God may be, may not be, but man is a trinity:
body, mind, soul. In fact because of his deep understanding of human beings Christ came to say
that God is a trinity.

If there is any God he has to be a trinity, because everything that exists has three layers. Hindus call
them three GUNAS, three qualities: SATVA, RAJAS, TAMAS. Christ called them the trinity.
When love expresses through you it first expresses as the body. It becomes sex. If it expresses
through the mind, which is higher, deeper, subtler, then it is called love. If it expresses through the
spirit, it becomes prayer.

And there is something in you which is beyond the trinity also. Hindus have called that ’the fourth’,
TURIYA. They have not named it, because it cannot be named.

The three can be named; they belong to the manifest world. The fourth cannot be named; it belongs
to the unmanifest. But it is the substratum of all. They simply called it ’the fourth’, TURIYA.
In the fourth, love becomes samadhi, nirvana, enlightenment.

First, when love – the same energy – expresses through body, it becomes sex. If everything goes
well and sex is natural and flowing it is a beautiful experience because you can have a glimpse of
the second through it. If sex goes really very deep, so that you forget yourself completely in it, you
can even have a glimpse of the third through it. And if sex becomes a total orgasmic experience,
there are rare moments when you can even have a glimpse of the fourth, the TURIYA, the beyond,
through it.

But if sex fails, then many perversions happen to the mind. These perversions are expressed in
hatred. Hatred is a failure of sex, a failure of love energy. Violence, lust for money, the continuous
conflicting attitudes of egos: war, politics – these are all sex perversions.

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