23

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‌CHAPTER 23

23 May 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, Derek means ruler. Let love rule your life, let love be the ruler. Let everything else be just the supreme God of love.

There is no other God. All other gods are just myths, inventions of man out of fear and greed. All other gods are false, fictitious. But love is not man’s invention; love is natural. It is given to us from the very beginning. It is our very being, the very ground of our being. But we have made other rulers, other masters – logic, calculation, intellect... they have become the rulers.

Love is so silent that it never asserts itself, it simply accepts whatsoever is the case. It keeps quiet. It is a silent force, a passive energy, feminine, non-aggressive. So unless you really become attentive towards it, it remains in the dark, it remains part of the unconscious; it never comes into light. And unless it comes into light there is no light in life.

So everything has to be dropped and a space has to be created for love. That’s what sannyas is all about: creating a context for love to surface, creating a space for love to function. The moment love starts functioning, your life has poetry, your life has meaning; your life has God in it.

Anand means bliss. Bliss is the ultimate state of consciousness. It is not happiness. Happiness always has its opposite. unhappiness. with it. Happiness can exist only through unhappiness; they cannot be separated. The happy person is carrying the seeds of unhappiness in him and vice versa: the unhappy person is carrying the seeds of happiness in him. Happiness and unhappiness are like a wheel, spokes of the same wheel. Sometimes one comes to the top and the other goes to the bottom, then the other comes to the top; and so on, so forth, the wheel goes on moving. But they are not separate, they are inseparable. And that’s what man tries to do his whole life, to separate them – which is not possible in the very nature of things. Hence those who try are doomed to fail.

Bliss is not happiness. Bliss is transcendence of the duality of happiness and unhappiness. It is go-ing beyond both, it is dropping both, it is getting free of both.

The desire to be happy brings unhappiness, it is bound to bring it in. We go on trying not to be unhappy and we go on trying to be happy. We only create a mess out of our lives.

Seeing it – that they are together like two aspects of the same energy, two sides of the same coin – seeing it, a great understanding arises. That understanding is bliss. It is neither against unhappiness nor for happiness, it is simply unidentified with both. It is just a witnessing state. Happiness comes: you witness it, you don’t get identified. You don’t say “I am happy”; you say “Happiness is passing by.” Unhappiness comes: you don’t say “I am unhappy”; you say “Unhappiness is passing by.” You remain the seer, utterly cool, collected, calm. That state is bliss.

And Winfried means a friend of peace. Only a blissful person can be a friend of peace. The unblissful can never be a friend of peace. The unblissful knowingly, unknowingly is bound to create conflict, hatred, anger, rage, jealousy. All kinds of poisons are bound to arise out of his being because he is full of poison. He is going to radiate poison, he is going to radiate death, whatsoever he may believe. That is one thing. He may think that he is a great lover but his love will be something else: his love will be possessiveness, his love will be domination. He may think that he is a great servant of people and all his service will be nothing but a subtle ego-trip. He may think he is humble and his humbleness will be nothing but a new kind of pride. He may not know it, that is not the point; he may remain completely unconscious about all this, but if he is not blissful whatsoever he is going to do in the world is going to bring more and more misery, more and more war, more and more turmoil. He is going to create a more and more insane world around himself.

Only a blissful person can be a friend of peace. He is; there is no question that he can be. He cannot be otherwise; he simply is a friend of peace. Peace flows through his being. He radiates peace, he vibrates peace, he pulsates peace. He becomes a blessing to the world. To be blissful inside is to be a blessing for the whole world.

Prem means love, buddha means awakening – the awakening of love. And that’s the greatest revolution in life: when love awakens, when the heart starts singing songs of love.

Ordinarily love is fast asleep; only logic works. And logic is mechanical, it is like a computer. Sooner or later man will not need his head: the computer will do the same work far more quickly, far more efficiently, far more reliably. In fact already computers have arrived which are far more efficient than man and his mind. They are going to take his place, they are going to replace man.

Unless love awakens in man, man is going to become out of date, man is going to become just useless, only worth throwing in the junk yard. Man’s own machines are now his competitors. It has been easy to fight with the animals, it is not going to be easy to fight with the machines. Man has created his own greatest enemy. And there is no going back, we cannot go back. Machines are going to become better and better.

All that is needed is awakening of love so that man can do something which machines cannot do. That will be the only supremacy that man can have over machines. Logic, calculation, arithmetic, history, geography, physics, chemistry – all that is not going to prove man higher than the machines.

Only one thing – love, and a few things which grow around love: poetry, music, dancing, painting... That is going to be the future, that is the only hope for man.

If love cannot be awakened then man is finished. Then this century will see the end of humanity on the earth. Man may still live but he will be secondary to the machine; the machine will be the ruler. Man may still exist but he will not be a human being. He will not have that glory – the glory of a Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed – not at all. He will be a worthless creature, condemned in his own eyes.

It will not be a surprise if he commits suicide. Of course when he commits suicide he will commit it with a method, with some excuses, great rationalizations: a war between capitalism and communism, a war between East and West, a war between this and that, this ideology and that ideology. He will find beautiful excuses to commit suicide. In fact that’s what he is trying to prepare for.

In this dark night that prevails on the earth there is only one hope: if love is awakened then man can still regain his lost glory. That is the meaning of your name – the awakening of love – and that’s my work here.

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