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CHAPTER 30
30 May 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand means bliss, Anna means grace – grace that is a byproduct of bliss. Grace follows bliss as a shadow. One cannot achieve grace directly, there is no way to it. It comes via bliss. If somebody tries to be graceful without being blissful he will only be pretending, he will be at the most a good actor. But his being will remain ugly, graceless. Deep down he will remain animalistic; on the surface humanity will be just a very thin coat. It can disappear very easily; the animal will erupt.
But that’s what society has been teaching people to do: just have a thin layer of grace on yourself; that’s enough for the social world, society demands not more than that. It keeps things going easily, smoothly. It is like a lubricant: it helps people not to come into too much conflict. It is etiquette, manners, civilization, culture, but it is not true grace.
True grace comes only when bliss has happened. True grace is possible only when one is a Buddha or a Jesus, not before that. Then it is not a character, then it is not something imposed upon you. Then it is something that radiates; from the innermost recesses of your being it blooms. It is a fragrance of your soul.
Deva means divine; Sonia means wisdom – divine wisdom.
Knowledge is human. Man can attain to knowledge through experience, through studies, through observation. But wisdom cannot be attained. No effort can give you wisdom., no experience either. Wisdom comes from the beyond. It comes to those who are pure in heart.
That is another meaning of Sonia: purity of the heart.
Wisdom arrives only when the heart is as innocent as a child, as innocent as a flower.
And the innocent heart knows how to trust, because the innocent heart cannot doubt. It is simply impossible for the innocent to doubt. Only the knowledgeable doubts; the more knowledge, the more doubt. And finally knowledge leads into madness and nowhere else. But the innocent of heart, the pure of heart have no doubts. They simply trust life.
That is the third meaning of Sonia: faith in God. It is one of the most beautiful words, with three meanings: wisdom, purity of the heart, faith in God. But those three meanings are only apparently three: deep down they are three faces of one experience. This is the real inner trinity. If purity is there, there is faith, there is wisdom. They all come together; they are inseparable. And they are the greatest things one can experience, one can be. Nothing is beyond them.
Remember these three things and slowly slowly become aware of how these three things can’t be protected... because we all bring them with our birth and slowly slowly we lose them.
The whole art of religion is how not to lose that which we have brought from God’s home. It is not a learning; it is a remembering. It is just being a little more watchful so one does not diffuse one’s qualities. One has to be careful not to imbibe the opposites of these qualities.
For example: when doubt comes don’t support it, don’t feed it, don’t cooperate with it. Just let it be there and watch. Be separate and unidentified and soon it will be gone. And when it is gone great trust will arise in you.
When some impure thought moves in the mind be watchful. There is no need to fight, because fight is also in a subtle way a cooperation. It is paying attention; attention is food. Just watch it unconcerned, as if it is not happening to you but to somebody else. Create a distance between you and the thought and distance kills it.
Don’t become too greedy for knowledge, for information; rather move into other dimensions
Those other dimensions are poetry, music, dance, painting. Rather than becoming knowledgeable become creative.
Annamaria. Anna means many things: it means grace, it means prayer, it means worship. I would like you to remember prayer. Maria also means many things: a wished-for child, bitterness, rebellion. I would like you to remember rebellion. Your full name will mean prayer rebellion.
Prayer is rebellion, the greatest rebellion possible, because prayer is a one-hundred-and-eighty- degree turn, neither less nor more. It is turning inwards; it is becoming other-worldly. It is searching into one’s own subjectivity. It is groping into the darkness of one’s interiority. It is going to the very source of one’s being, to the very roots, because only by going to the very roots of one’s being does one come to know oneself. And to know oneself is the most fundamental truth of life.
Those who don’t know themselves know nothing, and those who know themselves know everything. That single knowing is so revolutionary, it brings such a radical change. It transforms one’s whole life. it changes one, one’s relationship to people, to the world, to everything. Hence I call it the greatest rebellion. It makes you for the first time an individual. It gives you integrity, a center. For the first time you start functioning from your innermost core and not from the periphery. For the first
time you are not functioning from the head but from the heart. And to function from the heart is to know what beauty is, what blessing is, what benediction is.
It is only in those moments of bliss, beauty, and benediction that one becomes aware of God. If one knows oneself, God is; if one does not know oneself, God is not. God is not a hypothesis: it is the ultimate experience of one’s eternity, of one’s immortality, of one’s beginningless, endless, existence.
And the miracle is done by prayer. But by prayer I don’t mean the ordinary prayer: bowing to a god in a church, in a temple, reciting certain words. Prayer is not a ritual, it has nothing to do with i words. It is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. It cannot be labeled. It is a silence, primordial silence, just utter silence. It is not an address to God. How can you address God? – you don’t know him. It is not calling for God. How can you call God? – you don’t know him. It is not praising God. How can you praise God? – you don’t know him. Then what is it? It is simply being silent before this mysterious existence, in wonder, in awe. And those moments of silence full of wonder and awe are prayer.
Prem means love: Wilfried means resolution. Love is the greatest resolution in life, the greatest decision.
The mind is always divided. The mind is always either-or, to be or not to be. The mind is always hesitant, it is incapable of decision. It is impotent as far as decisiveness is concerned. That’s why the greatest thinkers are the most indecisive people in the world. This is a calamity, because the fools are very decisive. They don’t hesitate, they simply enter where even angels are afraid to enter. The Adolf Hitlers and Josef Stalins and Mao Tse-tungs are not afraid to decide. They don’t bother, they simply act: they act first and then they think. But then it is pointless.
The greatest thinkers – people like Immanuel Kant or Hegel or Kierkegaard – they cannot decide. Kierkegaard gave one of his most famous books the name “Either Or”. It became so famous that people started calling Kierkegaard “Either Or”. Whenever he would pass through the streets, children would gather and shout “Either Or! Either Or!” And it was true in a sense: for his whole life he remained in that state of either-or.
He loved a woman and loved her tremendously, but could not decide... For three years the love affair was prolonged but he could not decide whether to get married or not. Out of sheer desperation the woman left him. And he suffered for his whole life because he had really loved the woman; he could not love anybody else again. But he knew that he was responsible: he was indecisive.
The mind cannot decide, so either the mindless people act... Or there is another kind of person: the heartful person who acts. If the mindless person acts he creates misery for others and for himself. If the heartful person acts his act is a kind of prayer; his act brings benediction to the world
That’s what I mean: be decisive, be resolute, not out of mindlessness but out of heartfulness, out of love. If resolution arises out of love it has tremendous beauty in it. Resolution in itself is of great importance but even of far more importance is the source from where it comes. It should come from the heart. It should come out of love, not out of logic.
And that’s what sannyas is all about: living a life of resolution out of the heart, taking all the risk, going into all kinds of insecurities, not out of foolishness but out of a great love for existence. And then whatsoever you do is right. Love is right and it makes everything right.
Anand means blissful; Yugmo means ultimate union.
Man is suffering from separation, separation ‘I’ from God, separation from existence. Man has become a cocoon, a capsule enclosed in his own ego. The ego is like an egg. It has become a wall between you and all that is, that’s the root cause of misery. We cannot enjoy the sun and the moon and the stars. The world is always in a celebration but we are enclosed in our own darkness.
The bird has to come out of the egg. The bird has to learn how to break the egg. The bird has to gather courage because the egg confers great security, safety, comfort. The bird has to learn the joys of insecurity, the joys of the open sky. They are dangerous, certainly they are dangerous! There is a risk, it is a great risk. But life grows only through risk; life becomes more and more meaningful only through more and more dangers. As you move towards the peak of life, you are moving into great dangers. If you fall from there you will be gone forever.
Hence many have decided just to grope and crawl in the dark valley, never to bother about climbing the mountains. Many have decided not to use their wings; they have almost forgotten that they have wings.
They never look at the sun, at the moon. They never aspire to the distant star.
Sannyas is an aspiration to the most distant star. Call it God, samadhi, bliss, the ultimate union, it all simply means the same: that we have to drop our separation and become one again with existence. Then bliss simply happens; it simply showers. You are bathed in it!
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