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‌CHAPTER 20

23 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand Ron. Anand means bliss; Ron means power. Bliss has a power of its own, very different from any other power, qualitatively different from any other power. All other powers are destructive, violent. Bliss has a non-violent power, the power of love. Bliss has the power to bless others. It is not destructive, it is creative energy; it only creates. It is feminine, not masculine. The masculine power is aggressive; the feminine power is receptive.

Bliss is capable to receive the infinite, the God. Its power is not that of snatching away, forcing things. Its power is of spontaneity, flow, let-go. Its power is not in pushing the river but going with the river, becoming part of it, flowing with existence inseparably.

[The new sannyasin says: My future worries meEverything’s unknown.]

The unknown can never create any fear. How you can be afraid of the unknown? You don’t know it, so you cannot be afraid of it. Fear is not of the unknown but of losing the known. We wrongly think that it is of the unknown – it is always of losing the known. The known is known; and we have our comforts and securities and safeties and our involvement with the known, our investment with the known. And we are afraid of losing it, we are afraid of moving away from it. That is the fear – of losing the known. We call it the fear of the unknown; that is not right.

The unknown can only excite you; the unknown can only challenge you. The unknown can only provoke and seduce you for a pilgrimage. It can call you forth, but it cannot make you afraid. It is always the known, and the fear arises because you will have to lose it if you go into the unknown. Once you understand the problem rightly it is almost solved.

To understand a problem exactly is to solve it. And if you remain in a misunderstanding about the problem itself, then the solution is very far away. Then it is almost impossible, because you are moving in a wrong direction.

Now to say that “I am afraid of the unknown” is to create a false problem, and you will never be able to solve it. Change it! The problem is, the fear is of losing the known. Once rightly the problem is pinpointed, things become simple.

Then the second thing to be asked is: what is there in the known that you are so much afraid of losing? What it has given to you? What it has made you? Then search into it, and you will not find anything; it has not given you anything. Then why be afraid of losing that which has not given anything? It only promises but never fulfills any promise. It goes on postponing till death arrives.

The past has not given you anything. In fact it is good to get rid of it. It is good to learn the ways of the unknown, because the known is known. Even if it has given something to you and you cling to it, it will be only a repetition, and repetition can never satisfy. Each time it is repeated it gives you less and less and less. It follows the law of diminishing returns.

You saw a film; it was beautiful. You want to see it again – it will not be so beautiful now. It will be a repetition. It was really beautiful because it was unknown. The first time you saw it, it was not known. The beauty came out of the unknown. Now you want to see it again, you want to repeat – you have become greedy. It was such an ecstasy! You go to see it again. Now there is nothing because now it is known; the basic thing is missing. It was the unknown that had given it the ecstatic flavor. Now it is known so the ecstasy is not possible. And if you see it a third time it will drive you crazy! And fourth, fifth and sixth and seventh... and you will be in the mental hospital!

That’s how people have gone mad – almost the whole humanity is mad – repeating. The same thing, the same sex, repeating again and again in the hope that it will give you again the first glimpse, the first joy. It cannot! That joy was because of the unknown.

Once you understand that all bliss arises out of the unknown, how can you be afraid of it? You will be enchanted by it! You will continuously search the unknown and you will continuously go on dropping the known.

That’s what I call a meditative mind: looking into things, inquiring into the root causes, and then following your understanding. If you watch deeply, this is a simple truth: die every moment to the past so that every moment remains new. With the new is life; with the old is death.

Anand Kazuhiro. Anand means bliss; Kazuhiro means harmony. Bliss is a state of harmony, misery just the reverse – a state of discord.

Man can live in both the ways; it is man’s freedom to choose. We can live an integrated life, we can become an organic unity – that’s the whole purpose of meditation. Or we can remain a crowd: many minds, many fragments, no unity. And when there are many minds there is conflict, discord, a constant civil war. And when you are at war within yourself you are at war with existence too. As within, so without.

All these minds have to be dissolved into one mind. The whole crowd has to be melted into one single individual. Then the inner war ceases, and with it the outer too. That state is of harmony and bliss. Only in that state life is fulfilled.

Let that be the goal from now onwards. Always think of harmony. A sannyasin has to become a beautiful music, and it is our birthright to become so.

Deva Aida. Deva means divine; Aida means bliss – divine bliss.

Man can create, at the most, pleasure. Bliss is beyond man’s creativity. Bliss always comes as a gift from God. It is always divine; it is never human. Pleasure is human; that’s why our world is so full of pleasures. But pleasures don’t satisfy; they can’t. The longing in the heart is for the bliss.

Pleasures are pleasant – I am not against them – but one thing has to be remembered: that they are playthings, toys. Man creates them – just because man creates them, they cannot fulfill man. They remain below man. The creation always remains below the creator; the creation can never be bigger than the creator.

And the longing of the heart is something infinite, for something vast, for something tremendously powerful; something that will take you away from yourself, something that will come like a flood and will wash you and cleanse you and purify you, something that will shower on you from the beyond. Only that can become contentment. Bliss is divine.

And never be misguided by the pleasures. They are good in themselves, good games to play with. But games are games; one should not expect much from them. They keep you occupied. A beautiful house, a beautiful family, children, husband, wife, friends, good company – these are games. Play them as skillfully as possible, play them as artfully as possible, but remember they will not fill your life with contentment. They will keep you superficially occupied, engaged, that’s all.

So remaining amidst pleasures of all kinds, never forget for a single moment that life is not only to play games. It has to achieve something very definite: it has to achieve something of truth. And that is possible only when we move beyond the human mind, when we put the human mind aside and bow down before the beyond. That is surrender and that is sannyas. In that bowing down, in that surrender, the beyond enters in you.

The entry of the beyond in you, and suddenly all that has been lying asleep inside you becomes awake... as if suddenly the sun has arisen on the horizon and all the birds are singing and the flowers are blooming.

Anand Smita. Anand means bliss; Smita means smiling. Bliss is more like a smile than like a laughter. It is very delicate and feminine. It is very deep but very delicate too, hence it is more like a smile. Laughter has a little violence in it, a little aggression in it. Smile is just pure grace, silent, a very very feminine gesture. So is bliss.

We cannot grab it and we cannot proceed directly towards it. That is the sure way to miss it. One cannot move towards bliss like an arrow, straight. One has to move indirectly. Rather than moving towards bliss one has to invite it. One has to become vulnerable, open, receptive. One has to prepare oneself and wait.

The more silently, the more happily, the more patiently, one is capable of waiting, it comes. It comes so silently that you cannot hear its footsteps. It comes like a breeze: you can feel the coolness but

you cannot touch it. It is not a storm... a cool breeze. Hence I say it is more like a smile than like a laughter.

Remember that one has to approach very indirectly, just the way one falls in love with a woman and has to be very cautious. A little aggressiveness and the woman can shrink back. The woman has to be seduced very slowly, very lovingly; not even a hint should be given. So is bliss: bliss is a woman, it has to be seduced.

Deva Arupam. Deva means God; Arupam means formless.

All forms are divine, but God has no particular form. In all the forms he exists but not in any particular form he is found. He can exist in all the forms because he has none. If he had a certain form of his own he could not have been all the forms; that would be impossible. He is so liquid that he can mold himself into millions of forms; that liquidity is his formlessness.

That’s why all the idols made of God are imaginary. No image represents him, no image can represent him. And all the temples are false. And all the statues are poetic, aesthetic, but have nothing to do with truth. The Bible says God made man in his own image. The truth seems to be just the opposite: man has made God in his own image. Hence Hindu gods look like Hindus, and Chinese gods look like Chinese. It is our own imagination and a subtle game of the ego. We make God in our own image; that is a projection of the ego.

No statue is true, because God is this whole infinity, and the whole infinity cannot be represented by anything less than the whole. No map is possible of the universe. All maps will be partial; they will misrepresent. And if they start proving themselves to be the whole, they will be destructive, not helpful towards truth but hindrances. Whenever a partial truth starts proving itself to be the whole truth it is far more dangerous than a simple lie.

Do not go to any temple in search of God and do not bow down to any statue in search of God. God is all over. Bow down to the trees, bow down to the rocks! And if you can bow down to the rocks and the trees and the people and the animals and the birds and the stars, then there is no problem: you can bow down to the statue too. It is just a rock! Then you can go to the temple too because it is also part of the whole. Then there is no problem. But the emphasis should be on the whole, and the whole is formless.

The only way to have a bridge with the whole is to go down deep into your own being where you will find a formless substance, a vital energy. That is your life, the spring of your life. And you will be surprised, that in this small body there is a formless element hidden. When we come to our own being we have come to the being of the whole, because at the center we all meet, we are all one. Only on the periphery we are different and separate.

Anand Gitama. Anand means bliss; Gitama means a song – a song of bliss.

Life has to be lived as a song and not as a syllogism. Life has to be transformed into music, into rhythm, into love; only then one comes closer to God. Not by rituals, not by scriptures, not by being a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan, but by becoming a song, a joy, a blissful dance.

Once this is understood, religion then is a totally different affair than one has been thinking about it or one has been taught about it. Then it has nothing to do with the established church. Then it has nothing to do with theology, it has nothing to do with the priests. It has something to do with your love, with your capacity to rejoice into small things of life.

Don’t make religion a serious phenomenon; it is not. It is much closer to playfulness than to seriousness. A real saint is one whose heart is always in a state of singing, whose very breath is a dance.

And my sannyasins have to become songs, dances, rejoicers.

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