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but one should not go from here as a student. If one goes as a disciple one has taken a great jump. And if you are a disciple then it is not very difficult to be a devotee. The first gap is bigger -- from the student to the disciple. The first change is very radical; the second change is very gradual. It comes on its own, of its own accord; you need not strive for it. The disciple one day naturally becomes a devotee, but it is not so with the student. The student may remain a student for his whole life. The pundits, the scholars, the theologians, the professors, the philosophers -- they remain only students.
Sannyas means disciplehood, and sannyas is fulfilled when you have become a devotee. When the trees and the mountains and the sun and the moon and the stars, all represent one reality, one god, you have come home.
Pankaj means a lotus, and the lotus has always represented something of tremendous value. Two things particularly have to be remembered. One: the lotus grows out of mud -- the most beautiful flower grows out of dirty mud. It means that the dirty mud contains something beautiful. So don't reject the dirty mud, because it contains lotuses.
One has to know the art of how to grow lotuses. And it is a miracle, one cannot believe it! If one has not seen a lotus growing out of mud one cannot believe it; one cannot conceive that this beautiful flower, this delicate flower, with such fragrance, with such colour, has come out of ordinary mud.
Man is born as ordinary mud, but man contains a lotus -- just in the seed. Man has not to be rejected, man has to be accepted and transformed. The world has not to be denied, because it contains something infinitely beautiful. It is not on the surface, it has to be brought to the surface.
Hence I am not against anything: not against body, not against the world, not against the outside. I am not against anything, but I am for transforming everything. Whatsoever god has given is something valuable; if we cannot understand its value it is our fault, our limited vision.
The second thing to be remembered about the lotus is: it lives in the water, but the water touches it not. It has
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