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legs! -- how could one manage? Which one to put first and which one next and next and next? You have to continuously remember otherwise they will get intertwined, entangled in each other, knotted into each other and you will fall! The crab must have been a great philosopher. He asked the centipede 'Sir, can I ask a question? How do you manage? -- one hundred legs! It must be a constant trouble and puzzle for you. I have been watching you. Just looking at you walking I became so puzzled: which one to put first and which one to follow?'
But the centipede had never thought about it. He said 'I have never thought about it and nobody has asked me about it. I will think about it and then I will tell you.'
He started thinking; but then he could not take a single step! He wavered and fell. He was very angry at the crab and he said 'You fool! Now I will never be able to walk, I will be worried which leg to put down first. It has never been a worry: things were being managed somehow, nature was doing the trick. Now you have made me self-conscious, you have destroyed my harmony!'
It is a beautiful parable. This is what has happened to man.
Love cannot be improved upon, it is already perfect. This has to be understood. You need not learn loving. All that is needed is: forget all that you have been taught about love and you will be able to love.
This is the meaning of your name, prem anagara: wild love, natural love.
Agni means fire, pariksha means examination -- a fire examination, a fire test. And that's what disciplehood is: it is passing through a fire in which you as you have known yourself up to now will be burned, utterly burned. Something will be born out of that death, something immensely superior, superb. But that birth is possible only if death happens first. Initiation means death in the deep trust that resurrection will happen. Initiation means crucifixion in the faith that resurrection will follow. Hence the orange colour has been chosen for sannyas: it is the colour of fire.
The ego has to be burned to ashes. Sannyas is really what the symbol in the West of the phoenix represents. When the phoenix is burned utterly
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