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CHAPTER 6
6 May 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Gyan means wisdom, prem means love – wisdom through love. There is a knowing that is possible only through love. All other kinds of knowing are only acquaintances from the outside. Love takes you to the very inside of a thing.
The scientist can say many things about a rose flower but all that is from the outside. He has never entered into the being of the rose. He has never participated in the dance of the rose. He is utterly unacquainted with the interiority of the rose. That is possible only for the poet who loves.
The poet also knows but in a totally different way. He is not an observer: he knows by participation. He dances with the rose, he sings with the rose he feels with the rose. In certain deep moments he becomes the rose.
That is the way of love to know, and that is the way to know God: not by knowledge but by love.
Prem means love, Danny means God is my judge or God judges. The full name will mean the God of love is my judge. Everything has to be tested on the criterion of love. If it fulfils the criterion of love it is good, if it falls short it is bad. The only decisive factor in life is love. One should decide only through love and never through anything else. Nothing else really matters; only love matters.
So a man of love is a moral man and a man without love is immoral. Howsoever virtuous he may try to be, without love he cannot be virtuous. His virtue will be only a pretense, his virtue will only be social respectability, a formality. It will not come from his heart, it will not be his soul.
[To an Indian eye-surgeon working in America:]
This is your new name, and let it also be a new birth. Sannyas is a rebirth, and unless it is a rebirth it has no meaning. One has to become discontinuous with the past. Let this be your birthday. You begin life anew, unburdened of the past, utterly open.
The past becomes a closing. And the past becomes heavy and starts directing you, guiding you, forcing you, coercing you, into certain directions, into certain patterns. One should be able to die to the past every day, in fact every moment, so that one remains new, available to the new life, to the new sun, to the new moon, available to existence as it is. Carrying a past inside distorts reality and does not allow you to be spontaneous. So let sannyas be a new beginning: a death and a resurrection.
This will be your new name: Swami Anand Bharti. Anand means bliss, Bharti means one who belongs to India – bliss that belongs to India. And by India I don’t mean the land, I don’t mean the geography, I don’t mean the political map. By India I mean the adventure of the Buddhas, the exploration of thousands and thousands of years into the inner world of man. India represents the inner search, the inner quest.
It is a symbolic name. It has nothing to do with the politics, the history, the geography, the boundaries of a country. It has nothing to do with time and space, but it has something to do with the ultimate quest of man, the quest to know “Who am I?” That is the only contribution that the East has given to human consciousness. Just as the West has given science, the East has given religion.
And India has been the very heart of the East. Everything that has happened in the East started happening through India. And it still remains an undercurrent; it is still alive, not dead. Of course from the surface everything has disappeared. Now on the surface India is just an ugly, poor, starving country; but in the innermost core something of Buddha, something of Krishna, something of Patanjali still continues. It cannot die, it is eternal. As long as man lives on the earth that India cannot die.
Wherever one is searching for God one belongs to that India. In that sense Jesus is an Indian, and so is Mohammed and so is Francis – off-shoots of the same quest, but the roots are in this country, in this part, and those roots have not died yet. Maybe the tree has been cut and you cannot see any foliage, no fruits any more, no flowers any more, but the roots are alive.
My whole work here is to bring new shoots, new foliage. Those roots have to be nourished, and the whole world can be transformed. The world needs that transformation – utterly needs it, urgently needs it. There has never been such an urgency. Man will not live; if the quest for the soul is not revived man cannot live.
By the end of this century we will have to decide either to commit suicide, a global suicide, or to move to a new plane of humanity, to drop all politics, to drop all nations, to drop all isms, and to create a humanity which is religious, simply religious, neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan – to create a humanity that is constantly inquiring into the ultimate. In that very inquiry one becomes transformed, one becomes luminous.
Just to long for truth is enough to be transformed. Just to have a dream is enough to be transformed. A dream of God is far more real than this so-called world. A small longing in the heart is enough... just a drop of it, because it is no ordinary water, it is nectar.
Let your sannyas become a great search – not a formality but an authentic quest
The time has come for it. You have been groping in the dark; now there is no need to grope. I give you the light, I give you the insight. This much insight that sannyas makes available is enough. I take away all ideologies, theologies, philosophies. I simply give you a silent space from where you can function without the ego. That’s what sannyas is all about: a small space inside you where no ego exists. If one can function from that space life has a totally different flavor. Life becomes a blessing, not only to you – it is not only that you are blessed, but you become a blessing to the world too. Just that small space has to be created and each moment is a benediction.
[A sannyasin who has to leave says: My heart feels like a rock most of the... for a long time. It’s just beginning to open... and I want to know how to nurture it when I go back.]
It will continue to open, don’t be worried. You need not do anything in particular, because the heart is a very indirect, delicate phenomenon. If you start doing something to open it, that very doing will close it. It will be like forcing petals of a rose flower to open. That won’t help, that will destroy the flower.
One cannot be direct about the heart, one has to be just indirect. One has to be very very delicate about it – not gross, very subtle. Listen to music. Go into nature whenever you can find time: be with the trees, birds, animals. Look at the stars in the night... sing, dance. These are indirect ways – you are not doing anything directly to open the heart. Be loving, be friendly, even with strangers. These are all indirect ways. This is how one can nourish the opening heart.
And then come back as soon as possible, mm? Because the real opening is going to happen here!
A little bit will go on happening there, but the explosion is going to happen here. And it is better that it happens here, because when the heart really opens suddenly you enter into such a new world that you almost feel insane. Then the close proximity of the Master is needed – one who can help you to pass through those few days when you feel insane.
Those are just a few moments. Once you have settled on the new plane then there is no problem. Then you know for the first time what sanity is. Then you know that up to now you have been insane; now you are sane. Then the whole world looks insane. Then there is no problem; but in the beginning when the heart suddenly opens up it is such a new experience, so unknown, that one is shattered, one’s whole identity disappears, because our identity is in the head. And this is so new that it seems as if somebody else has possessed you.
So go on becoming more and more sensitive and do whatsoever helps in becoming more sensitive, but don’t be direct; dance, sing, play music. And then come back!
Keep it (a box) with you, and whenever you need me just put it on the heart. And help my people there – that helps you the most!
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