CHAPTER 27
30 June 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Anand Nimus. Anand means bliss. Bliss does not mean happiness; it is something totally different. It is not only quantitatively different, it is qualitatively different. Happiness always has unhappiness as the other side of it, as a shadow to it. It is never alone. Even when you are happy you know that unhappiness is just close by. It is a duality and it exists only in duality.
Bliss means transcending the dual, the two, going beyond the two. It is a state of absolute silence, peace – rather than happiness it is more peace. But not a negative peace either, not just absence of noise, conflict, but something very positive – a presence of peace.
My sannyasins have to become the presence of peace. Then love oozes out of its own accord; it is the byproduct of a peaceful heart. When the peaceful heart sings, it sings songs of love.
And Nimus is also good. Basically it means life, elan vital, the principle of vitality, the positive principle of vitality. Anima means the feminine principle of vitality; animus means the masculine principle of vitality. Anima is passive, receptive; animus is adventurous, outgoing, exploring.
Bliss has to be explored; it is an adventure. It is a long pilgrimage: many hazards to be crossed, many fires to be crossed, many darknesses to be transcended. All that is part of ego in us has to be dropped – that is the journey, pilgrimage. As the ego disappears and adventure becomes purer and purer, bliss is closer.
At the ultimate point, when there is no ego to be found, suddenly peace is found. The absence of ego becomes the presence of peace.
And there are only two kinds of seekers: one, whose search has to be that of exploration, one who has to follow the principle of animus; and the other who has just to wait, to remain available, receptive.
Zen follows the principle of anima: sitting silently, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. Zen does not believe in exploring; there is no need to go. Buddhism basically is rooted in the feminine principle, hence Buddha looks so feminine, so graceful, so round.
But Mohammed is rooted in animus. Mahavira, PatanJali, they are rooted in the animus. They are positive explorers. They can’t sit silently; they have to go in search of truth. And these are the only two possibilities: either one has to be receptive or one has to be a pilgrim.
Be the pilgrim: explore!
Anand Elaine. Anand means bliss – Elaine means light. Bliss is the inner light; without bliss we live in darkness. Without bliss our life is nothing but a dark night, full of nightmares, accidents, miseries. And even though we have eyes, we cannot see because the light is missing. Eyes can see only if the light is there.
People are not blind; people are without light. They have eyes, they can see, but the light is missing. And if you live too long in darkness you start forgetting that you have eyes; you may even start believing that you are blind.
Nobody is spiritually blind. Physically there are blind people, but spiritually nobody is blind because everybody has consciousness. That is our real insight our capacity to see. But the light is missing, and we have to create the light. It can be created, because all that is required to create it is also available.
There is a Sufi story: a man is dying, starving, and he has everything but he does not know how to cook. The wheat is there, the rice is there, the vegetables are there, the fire is there, but he does not know how to cook. Everything is available; all that he needs is a little art of cooking.
And that’s what I teach you: everything you already have got, nothing else is needed to be added to you. Everybody comes perfectly equipped, but how to use that equipment? How to arrange your life? How to give it order and discipline? Then the noisy mind becomes an orchestra and the constant inner war is transformed into your own energy; it becomes your nourishment.
Meditation is the art to create light. That’s why the ultimate realization is called enlightenment one becomes full of light, one becomes light.
Remember constantly that all that is needed we are already given; nothing is missing. Eyes are there, the oil is there, the lamp is there, the matchbox is there. Just you know how to use the matchbox – just a little effort, it is not much. But one may go on living in darkness, not knowing how to use the matchbox.
Meditation is nothing but learning how to use the matchbox that is already inside you. Meditation, in short, simply means becoming detached from your shoulds, becoming unidentified with your mind, becoming a pure witness, just seeing and not getting hooked with anything. And the day for the first time you can feel few moments unhooked, of freedom, you would have known that the light has happened, that the first lightning has happened, that the first glimpse has arrived.
Now the same method has to be deepened, has to be used more and more and more constantly. Slowly slowly it becomes just a running undercurrent in you. The mind goes on working, you go on remembering that you are separate. Then it is not even a remembrance; you simply know, it is a feeling. Then it is not even a feeling. You have known it so deeply that there is no need to remember, there is no need to feel: it’s simply so.
Then light becomes a flame, an eternal flame, and one knows for the first time who one is, what life is. All the questions disappear; a great silence descends. That silence is seeing, that silence makes you capable to see the truth as it is.
Prem Gunnar. Prem means love; Gunnar means bold in battle.
Love is the greatest battle in life. It is not fighting with somebody else; it is fighting with our own ego – hence the greatest battle and the most difficult. In fact to be victorious in it is the only victory worth calling victory.
To fight with somebody else is easy; it is ego-satisfying. But to fight with one’s own ego appears almost like a suicide, because you don’t know who you are except the ego. And you are fighting with the ego; you want to drop it, you want to surpass it. It seems as if you are going into a kind of emptiness, that you are moving into the unknown territory – which can appear maddening, scary – but that’s what love needs, requires.
The fundamental requirement of love is to be without the ego; with ego, no love is possible. The ego is an iron wall. You cannot approach love through it; it has no doors, no windows. And people are encapsulated in their egos; windowless is their existence. They don’t allow the wind and the rain and the sun to come in; they are completely closed. They are already in their grave, they are not alive. The moment they open up, they become alive. But one price has to be paid: one has to sacrifice the ego. The ego is the false idea of who you are. The false has to cease for the true to be.
And the moment ego is dropped you become all love, pure love. Then your whole energy is transformed into love. The poison is removed; you become nectar. And this is the life’s greatest battle. It has to be won, one has to be victorious in it. Only then one can feel fulfilled, only then one can feel grateful to God.
Prem Sven. Prem means love; Sven means youth. Love is always young, it never grows old; that’s its intrinsic quality. Not only that it never grows old, it never allows the lover to grow old. Physiologically the body will become old, but if love remains flowing, spiritually one remains always young.
A man like Socrates is never old; even in his old age he is younger that the so-called young, far more younger. Even in his death he remains a young explorer. He is not afraid of death; youth is never afraid of death – it is always old age that is afraid of death. And those who become afraid of death early become old the same day. One may be just a child, but if he is afraid of death he is already old. And even one may be dying and if he is not afraid of death he is young.
To be young is the greatest joy, the greatest bliss that is possible to human consciousness, and to know the secret of eternal youth, youth forever, is the real discovery. The alchemists in the past used to call it their search: the search of eternal life and the search for keeping people always young.
They were not talking about chemistry – they have been misunderstood: they were talking about the secrets of religion.
But it is not only the fault of the people who have misunderstood them; they were also responsible for the misunderstanding. They had to create this misunderstanding because the church was so much against anything which was not part of the established church that they never allowed any kind of religious activity to go on. So in the garb of alchemy the real spiritual seekers were trying to preserve the secrets, the secrets of the ages; it was just a camouflage.
So if you had entered into an alchemist’s workshop, first you will find almost like a lab, a chemistry lab. That was a deception; that was meant only to keep people away and to keep the church completely oblivious of the fact that something totally different is going on inside. Inside they were searching meditation, and the church was against meditation. Inside they were searching yoga, and the church was against yoga. Inside they were looking in the secrets of tao, and the church was against it. Inside they were Sufis, and the church was against it. Inside they were real Christians, searching for the real Christ, trying to find out the real meaning of Jesus’ message; but the church was against that too.
So just to keep people away, crowds away, and the church unaware, they had created this camouflage. Because of this, great misunderstanding has persisted down the ages. Otherwise they were not chemists at all it was a strategy. But they were not keeping the secrets from those who needed them, so they were saying, “We are searching the secret of eternal life, we are searching the secret of eternal youth.” This was a metaphorical language; they were telling that, “We are seeking ways and means how to attain the consciousness which abides forever and remains always young.”
My field is also an alchemist’s lab. And if it becomes difficult – as it is becoming every day more and more difficult because of the state and because of the established churches – we may have to create some camouflage. Carpenters and potters and weavers – that will be our camouflage. Behind that camouflage we will continue our search for tantra, tao, yoga: the real secrets of the ages.
But the society has always been against of any real search for truth because the society is based on lies; it is afraid of the truth.
[The new sannyasin said he had left the Intensive Enlightenment group after one day because he wanted to get away from that nonsense and dance.]
Nothing... just nonsense! Listening to this stupid mind, growth will be impossible. And what you have done with your time that you have saved? What you have gained by saving the time? You started thinking you are wasting time – then what you have done with that time? What can you do with that time? It is wasted.You dropped out of the group, thinking that it is wasting time. What
you have done with that time then? [He answers: Enjoyed it!]
Enjoying is not going to help. Enjoying is not going to nourish your growth. Enjoying is simply wasting time. What can you enjoy? Just you can fool around – the mind will remain the same. And these are methods to change the mind.
So if you really want to grow and if you really want to expand your consciousness, and you want to know what joy really is, then don’t listen to this mind, otherwise it will just go on telling you things.
Any work, and the mind immediately starts creating trouble, and it starts saying “Why you are wasting your time?” But meditation is work, and deep and hard work. And nothing is attained without hard work.
So this time you enjoy. Next time you come, I will give you a few groups. Good.
Anand Michaelangelo. Anand means bliss; Michael means god-like; Angelo means a messenger – blissful, god-like messenger, or a god’s messenger for bliss.
Each being is a messenger because each being carries a message within his heart. And each being is godlike because each being is godborn. And each being is searching for bliss, wants to express it, sing it, dance it.
Life’s whole search is how to come to a state where no misery, no limitation, no bondage, exists, and one is as vast as the sky and one can contain all the stars within one’s being, and one can contain all the flowers and all the mountains and all the rivers into one’s own being. Unless one becomes a universe, misery remains.
Misery is nothing but the awareness of limitations, the prison walls. They have to be broken. All kinds of beliefs have to be broken, all kinds of prejudices have to be burned. And finally one has to become so alert that one can know that “I am not the body,” that “I am not the mind,” that “I am simply the pure principle of consciousness.” And it has not to be just a belief, it has to be your experience.
Then you are godlike, then you are a messenger, because the moment you know, you have to share it. That is an intrinsic necessity of knowing: you cannot contain it within yourself. Just as the flower opens and the fragrance is released, when your heart opens up and you know who you are, you immediately become a messenger. Without any effort, without any deliberate work for it, you simply become a messenger; the fragrance is released.
And what is the message of one who knows himself? It is contained in the simple word “bliss.” He is bliss and his message is bliss. His being is bliss, and whoever comes in contact with him is touched and moved and thrilled.
Seeing that, “Yes, this is possible. What I have been longing for is not just a dream; it can become an actuality...” seeing a Buddha or a Christ, one immediately starts trusting one’s deepest longing of the heart, that “Yes, I too can become the same.”
Anand Rosanne. Anand means bliss; Rosanne means a rose of grace – a blissful rose of grace, or bliss, the rose of grace. Bliss is a rose, because it is opening of the flower of the heart. And it brings tremendous grace. When the heart is open you are surrounded by grace, you have an aura of grace – that’s a natural byproduct. Just like the shadow follows you, the open heart is followed by grace, waves of grace. And not only that you will feel it, others who are a little bit sensitive, they will also feel it, they will also understand it.
It is a mysterious quality. We don’t have yet any scientific way to measure it, and I think we will never have because it is immeasurable. And it is something of the beyond, not of this earth. It descends in the open heart from God.
Grace is a gift; you cannot create it. You can help your heart to be open, you can remove all the hindrances, but when the heart opens the grace simply comes. It is a synchronicity. It is not caused by you, but when something so tremendous, so incredible, happens in a heart, something so rare that a heart opens up there is a resonance in the beyond. The invisible resonates, the invisible is thrilled.
It is said: the day Buddha became enlightened the trees that were surrounding him bloomed out of season and flowers showered from the sky. This is not literally true, but it is absolutely true. This is not a historical fact, not a scientific truth, but it is far more important than being historical. It is a poetic expression of something inexpressible. “Flowers showered from the sky” means grace descended. And even trees responded, so what to say of God? Even trees bloomed out of season, so what to say of God’s heart? God must have danced! Whenever a man becomes a Buddha it is bound to happen that God will dance, that the whole universe will dance with him.
That invisible link between the open heart and God is grace. You have a beautiful name, but it has to be made a reality too, and it can be made a reality.
Your sannyas is a beginning, a first step towards it. Many more steps will be needed. This is the outer step, now inner steps will be needed. But this is a great beginning: it is a gesture from your side that you are ready to trust in me. And just the phenomenon of trust is a transforming phenomenon. It is a gesture of surrender, and even if a glimpse of surrender comes to you, you can’t be the same again.
Prem Christina. Prem means love; Christina means a follower of Christ.
Christ has nothing to do with Jesus. A Buddha is also a Christ, a Krishna is also a Christ. In fact, linguists say that the word “christ” has come from the word “krishna,” it is a form of Krishna. Christ simply means one who has arrived, one who has been crowned by God with glory. Many have been crowned – a Lao Tzu, a Zarathustra, a Mohammed; many have been crowned. Jesus is only one of the Christs, remember it.
To confine Christhood only to Jesus is to make humanity very poor. That means only one flower has happened down the ages for thousands of years, and only one man has been crowned by God? No, many more have happened. Many are still alive who are Christs, many more are going to happen; humanity is evolving every day higher and higher.