Karl Renz: But this is a joy. This is a joy that you cannot choose. The choicelessness of being. Things happen in spite of your liking it or not. And you have to enjoy yourself in spite liking it or not. This is a joy that everything already happened. And there is no way of changing anything. So the nature of peace and joy is not different. That why in India they call it Sat Chit Ananda. Three names for the Self. The Self, Chit means knowledge, and Ananda is happiness or joy. But they are not belonged together. So the Self doesn’t need to know itself to be happy.
Question: So it’s not an emotion?
Karl Renz: No.
Question: This is my question.
Karl Renz: Yeah, emotions come. It’s motion. It’s movement. It’s something. It’s an imaginary body chemical reaction, you can say. But that’s not joy. Joy is in spite of events. In spite of the chemical reaction in your brain. In spite of your kid does what you want or something. Or the world is as you like it. The joy, which needs an environment, is a depending one. And it’s not worth talking about.
So the joy I talk about is even the joy of happiness and sadness. So the nature of sadness is joy. And actually the biggest gate to happiness is sadness.
Question: Is it a movement, sadness?
Karl Renz: Sadness is your nature when you wake up. You experience yourself in sadness.
Question: Sadness, it’s like a movement?
Karl Renz: No, sadness is not a movement. Sadness is a presence of relative existence. It’s very natural. It’s an underlying presence of sadness, which is presence. The experience to exist is an experience of sadness. And the opposite is the experience of absence. So you call then the absence – joy, and the presence – sadness. In these both tendencies you realize yourself. You realize yourself in sadness in presence and joy in absence. But you cannot have one without the other. As there is joy of absence, there is the sadness of presence. And that’s the way it is. And in that way you realize yourself. And that is called in India – the two faces of Shiva.
Just the day before yesterday was Shivaratri. And Shivaratri means no moon. When Shiva doesn’t know Shiva. The Self doesn’t know the Self. The absence of Self. The absence of knowing the Self. The Self being the Self without knowing itself.
Then comes new moon, and then he knows itself again. And the first light is awareness. So being awake. And then comes full moon again. Then you fool moon. Then Shiva is in its full jiva state. The Absolute in its most relative state. So absolute relative. So he is not loosing his absolute nature. So it’s Absolute in the relative and Absolute in the absence of relative. So the Absolute Reality has to realize itself in that so called relative presence.