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[A visitor says she lives at Esalen Institute, a pioneer growth centre in california.]
Mm mm, good! That is going to become my institute!
It will become! Become a sannyasin -- that will help you to come close to me, because to come close something has to change inside you. Something that is a kind of no has to become yes; only then can you come to me. Physically you can be close; that won't help. A different kind of participation is needed, and that is the whole purpose of sannyas, so that you are in an attitude of yes. That is the greatest secret there is -- to say yes. Then things start immediately opening and there is contact.
Life ordinarily prepares us to only say no. Life goes on corrupting our minds and creating doubts. Because of those doubts and because of those no's and the negatives, one becomes enclosed, one lives in a kind of imprisonment, a China Wall surrounds one. That wall is invisible, transparent, so you don't know that it is there, but it is always there. Once you say yes it starts disappearing.
To say yes is to be religious. Yes is the most sacred word. One Christian saint, a really significant man, Saint Francis of Sales, only had six words in his prayer, 'Yes, Father, yes, and always yes.' That was his whole prayer and I have never come across a better prayer. Nothing more can be added to it: 'Yes, Father, yes, and always yes.' But my feeling is that this is a kind of repetition. One yes will do: why say'Yes, Father, yes, and always yes'? Yes means everything. It is always, it is forever. One single yes is enough. It should be intense, it should be total.
I have heard about a young girl who received a telegram from her boyfriend, saying would she be willing to marry him. The friend wanted an immediate telegraphic reply. The girl was a village girl, was very shy and was thinking how to formulate the message so it was neither on the negative side too much nor on the positive side too much, so it did not discourage him and did not show too much enthusiasm on her side either. She tried hard but she could not find how to do it. Then she went to the telegraph office and just wrote 'yes'. But the clerk at the window
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