22

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 22

22 June 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, nirakar means formless. Misery has a form, bliss has no form. Misery is definable, bliss is not. You can pinpoint where misery is; you cannot do the same with bliss. Misery is small; bliss is vast. Misery is smaller than you; bliss is infinite. Misery is always in you; bliss never in you. You are in bliss – that’s a totally different dimension.

That’s why people have decided to remain miserable, because they are in control. With bliss you are lost, you are no more. You don’t function as an individual, as an entity any longer. With misery you can be; you can be only with misery. Everybody wants to get out of misery but nobody wants to get out of the ego. And the ego cannot exist without misery so it goes on creating it. You can drop one misery; the ego creates another, immediately. It has to – it is a question of its survival; it feeds on it.

Once you see the point of why we cling to misery, things start changing. The basic point is that if you want to remain, you will have to be miserable. That is the price we have to pay for being an ego. Nothing is without a price. And if you want to be blissful, you will have to pay by dropping the ego. Egolessness is the occasion for bliss to happen. So one who is ready to efface himself can be blissful; then the kingdom of god is his.

That’s what Jesus means when he says to his disciples ‘Unless you are born again...’ One has to die as an ego, as a person, as a separate entity, and one has to be reborn as a presence, as a nobody. That is the meaning of your name.

Prem means love, rajo means a king, a great king. Love is our kingdom and through love we become kings. Without love we remain beggars. One can have all the money in the world but without love one is a beggar and poor. And one may not have anything but if one has love, one has all. So the real search should be for love, for nothing else; everything else is secondary.

Searching for love, you will live beautifully in the world and in the beyond too, because love makes available all the mysteries of god too. This is the only key that opens the lock of the world and the lock of god too. It functions both ways. And it does not divide you or existence; it bridges.

If a person searches for meaning, truth, god, without love in his heart, he is bound to become anti- life. That’s what has happened in the past with the monks of all the religions: they became anti-life because they were lacking in love. Only love can help you to understand life and its joy and the great gift that it is.

Without love life seems to be almost a drag – one wants to get out of it as soon as possible. But if you are against life, you cannot be for god, notwithstanding what you think. A man who is against life is basically against god too, because this life is his life. This is god’s manifest form.

Love bridges both: it makes you capable of living, living at the optimum, and it also makes you capable of going beyond life to know the eternal. Life is momentary, that is true, but in the moments, only the eternal is manifest – nothing else. Life is fleeting – it is like a glimpse, it comes and goes, like lightning – but still the light that is in it is of the eternity. Love makes it possible, this clarity, this vision, so that the whole existence becomes one in your vision. When the existence is one in your vision, you are a king!

And everybody is born to be a king. If we don’t become, then we and only we are responsible, nobody else.

Anand means bliss, pantha means path. The English word ‘path’ comes from the same sanskrit root pantha – the path of bliss.

Bliss should not be a goal, it should be a path. When people start thinking of bliss as a goal they miss it. It is not in the end; it is in the journey itself. The first step and it is there; and it is there in the first step as much as it will be in the last step. One just needs to be courageous enough to allow it.

God is not a goal – it is spread all over the way – so one need not wait for the end, one need not work for the end. One can go on celebrating each moment. God is not in heaven, god is all the way to heaven – as much here, as much there, as much now, as much then... no difference.

So let bliss be your path. Start being blissful. Don’t postpone it for tomorrow: don’t say ‘Tomorrow I will be blissful.’ That is the sure way to miss it forever. Either now or never. Not even a single moment’s postponement is needed. Always think of each moment as the last, as if there is going to be no tomorrow at all. Then what will you do?

Will you remain miserable in this moment if there is going to be no other moment? Will you still persist in being in misery? You will drop the whole thing and you will say ‘Let me dance, let me sing, let me be! Enough of all this nonsense – this trivia, this rubbish...’ You will forget all the small things that were so important just a moment ago because you were thinking you were going to live forever and ever.

Buddha has said to his disciples ‘Think of each moment as the last and your life will be transformed, your whole perspective will be different. If death is going to come this moment, then why not enjoy it?’

It happened that a great king became very angry with his prime minister – so angry that in a rage he sent the message to the prime minister ‘This is the last day of your life; tomorrow morning you will be killed.’ The house of the prime minister was surrounded by the army so he could not escape. But the king was puzzled, because he didn’t even try. He was a powerful man, he could have managed some way – but rather than escaping, he invited in all his friends.

When the king heard that they were having a party – dancing and singing and eating and drinking – he himself went to see what was happening. Had he gone mad? – because tomorrow was to be the last day. And he had never seen the prime minister so happy in his life; he was just vibrating with joy, pulsating, radiating. He was so happy to see the king. He invited the king in and he said ‘Come and participate, because this is my last day. I decided: Why waste this day? Why not enjoy it? so I have called all my friends. And you have also come – this is great grace. Let us dance and sing, because I will never be again. Tomorrow I disappear... let me disappear with dance. We are going to celebrate the whole night!’

The king was so impressed that he hugged the prime minister and forgave him and said ‘You have taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life.’

This is the way one should live, because each moment is the last as far as we know, because the next is not certain. So be blissful herenow, be blissful all the way. And once the decision is there, it starts changing your life. Values become diff rent: things that were important up to this moment lose their importance, and things about which you have always thought ‘Some day I am going to do them’ become important. Anger becomes unimportant; love becomes important. Enmity starts looking meaningless; friendship becomes meaningful.

If one can live in constant remembrance of death, one is bound to become a buddha. Buddha used to send his disciples to the cemetery. The beginners had to go there and to live there for three months so that they could see death continuously happening, people being burned. And just the day before the monk would have seen this man walking so happily on the road, and then he was no more. Day in, day out, people would be brought and would be burned because in India they are burned – and he would see the people disappearing into flames. He had to wait, to sit there for three months continuously watching, watching, seeing how fragile life is, how uncertain the future is, how death is an absolute certainty. And when he would come back after three months he would be a totally different man – his values different, his priorities different.

So this is the meaning of your name, Anand Pantha. From this moment be in utter bliss – dance, sing, celebrate – and that will bring you closer and closer to the home. That home is god.

[A sannyasin, who is going to the West to work, says: I feel very sad. There seems to be a sort of bottomless well of doubt and impatience which I can never get over.]

I understand. I have been watching it – it is there, and it is there with every intelligent person. Intelligence lives in doubt, it is doubt. Trust is very difficult. An unintelligent person can trust easily, but then his trust is meaningless.

This is the paradox of trust: trust is meaningful only when an intelligent person trusts. The idiot can trust but his trust has no value at all because he cannot doubt. His trust is impotent, it is almost

mechanical. He cannot do otherwise, he is helpless. He trusts because he cannot doubt. And the intelligent person goes on doubting, he cannot trust. Doubt is impotent, so the intelligent person can go on in a vicious circle, can go on moving in the circle forever and ever, and the journey never comes to an end because one doubt creates another and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

The idiot can trust; the intelligent person cannot trust. Both are hooked into a habit, a mechanical habit.

Trust is meaningful only when an intelligent person trusts; then that is a revolution. And doubt is also meaningful when an unintelligent person starts doubting; that is a revolution. If an unintelligent person starts doubting he will become intelligent. And if an intelligent person starts trusting, he will become super-intelligent.

So I can see your problem. It will take a little time; hurrying cannot help. I can see that the impatience also is there. You would like to trust – it is not that you don’t want to trust, it is not that you are against trust but your intelligence goes on creating doubts. So I can see your conflict, your split, but this going away will be of immense help. It will give you perspective; it will give you a chance to see what your doubt can give to you.

That is the real thing to understand: what doubt can give to you. If it can give something that is valuable, it is perfectly good; I am not against it. If it can fill your life with meaning, then it is absolutely good. Go with it – it is divine. Then that is your prayer because it gives meaning to your life; anything that gives meaning to your life is prayer. But if it only promises and never delivers the goods, and it is just like a carrot hanging in front of you which goes on moving and move towards it – it only deludes, it only destroys your opportunity and your time, and you can go on moving and moving and moving and you will never arrive anywhere – if you see that, only in that seeing will it disappear. And it is going to disappear – just a little patience...

And this going away will be helpful, because here you are in too much of a hurry. You want to trust and your intelligence won’t allow you to, so you are almost in a schizophrenic state, driven in two directions simultaneously. There there will be no hurry – I will not be there and I will not create this urgency to trust, mm? Here you are continuously in a state of urgency.

That’s my field I have to create that urgency, because only when something is urgent do people start jumping into it; otherwise they can’t. If they can wait for tomorrow, they will wait for tomorrow. When they see that there is no possibility of tomorrow, only then do they take the jump. When they see that the house is on fire, really on fire, then they escape from it. And sannyas is an escape – not escape from reality but escape into reality. So the urgency is bound to be there. If you are here, there is a continuous urgency and I go on creating the crescendo of it. That is making trouble for you.

Back in [the West] you will be far away from this field of urgency. You will be able to relax and there will be no hurry and I will not be driving you so hard. You will be able to see what your doubt is doing to you, where it is leading you. Alone, relaxed, meditating, contemplating on the doubt, you will soon be able to penetrate it. It will disappear, it will evaporate, and the West will be of great help.

And you will be able to compare. When you are too close, here with me, you cannot compare what is happening to you; there is nothing to compare it with. There you will be able to compare between what can happen there and what was happening here. Then things are in their right place.

Help the centre there, do a few translations if it is possible – that will be good. Meditate, relax there, and don’t be in a hurry. It may take six to nine months, and when you come back, that will be a real coming.

[A sannyasin says that he feels a failure ‘cos he hasn’t got ’a nice girl’.]

There is no problem as far as your energy is concerned – the whole problem is in your mind. The way you have been thinking in your past has become a rut. It is not that you are a failure; it is the constant repetition that you are a failure that has hypnotised you. It is an auto-hypnosis.

Now you are afraid to succeed in anything, because if you succeed that will go against your whole ideology. That will prove that you were wrong – that will go against the grain, it will be against your ego. Now failure has become your trip. If you can fail, that will be your success. So you can say to the whole world, ‘Look, I have always been saying that I am a failure, that I am destined to be a failure – now see!’

There was a hypochondriac who had been torturing the doctors and the physicians and the psychoanalysts his whole life. He nad no real problem but that was his way of life; he could not live without problems so he was creating them. Wherever he would go, the doctor would say ‘There is no disease in your body so I cannot do anything.’ He would go to the psychoanalyst and he would say ‘There is nothing that can be done because there is no problem at all.’

He was very angry. He was feeling that everybody was against him, as if there was a conspiracy. But when he died people discovered under his pillow that he had a marble stone ready for his grave, and on the marble stone he had engraved this message ‘Now do you believe me?’

His whole life he was telling people that he was ill and this and that. ‘Now, am I dead or not?’ – that’s what he was asking.

People can get into negative trips, remember. This is a negative trip...

You have to drop it. Nobody can help you with it; you have simply to drop it. This is your life – if you want to live it in a negative way, you can. There is no problem in your energy at all. You can have a beautiful relationship, you can find a beautiful woman; there is no problem at all. In fact, you have starved yourself for so long that your honeymoon will be very long!

Just drop this idea. This is a stupid idea that has settled in you. But it settles in many people’s minds because of a wrong training in the childhood, because we don’t yet have a perfect way of bringing up children, that’s why.

Parents give their own diseases to the children. Maybe your father had the same idea and it became transferred to you. Maybe your mother had the idea or maybe they were worried that you might fail in your life; their very worry became your worry. Or maybe they were too interested in making you a success, a great success and from the very childhood they started giving you great ideals – that you have to do this and you have to do that, and again and again you felt that you fell short.

Something in your upbringing went wrong... but this is the case with the majority of people, so you are not in any way a special sufferer – nobody is! There is nothing special about it; almost

everybody, more or less, suffers. Everybody wants to have power, prestige, money... and fails, not because these things are not available – they are, but that doesn’t make much difference. You can have millions of dollars – still you will think you are a failure because you could have millions more. The imagination always rushes ahead of you. It is always there standing ahead of you, condemning you ‘What are you? You are a failure!’ You can have one million dollars – you are a failure because you could have ten million. You can have ten million – you are a failure because you could have a hundred million.

Because of the imagination man remains a failure, always a failure. Then children come; and the man is a failure, so he becomes worried whether his child is going to make it or not. He starts implanting great desires, ambitions in him, and from the very beginning those ambitions start creating difficulties for the child, because parents are hoping too much and the child starts seeing ‘This doesn’t seem to be possible – I am not that special. Nobody is that special. I am not going to make it, so better not to try.’ At least you can say ‘No opportunity was given to me.’

That’s my feeling about you: you have not been relating to women so that you can say ‘What can I do? No woman seems to be interested in me!’ Just to avoid a failure, you are creating this situation around you so that you are not responsible. Somehow life itself is against you. You don’t have a nice girlfriend because nice women don’t look at you.But I don’t see any problem!

[The sannyasin answers: They do but.I just don’t want to go deep into it.]

But why? Then you want to fail! You don’t want to go deep into it because you are afraid – you may fail – so it is better not to go...

At least you can say that no opportunity was ever given.

There are many people who will not go through an examination so they can say that they never failed; they were never allowed any opportunity. If they go through the examination and fail, it goes against their ego.

These are the thousand and one complexities of the human mind. You have to go deep into a relationship, and when one goes, one has to go deep, wherever it leads. What is the fear? Life will be lost anyway, whether you love or not. You cannot live forever, so death will come. Death will not ask whether you have a nice girl or not? It will simply take you away, whether you have lived or not. You cannot say to death ‘This is unjust – I have not lived yet, I have not loved yet.’ Don’t postpone!

You may be afraid of rejection – if you approach a woman or go into a relationship, you may be rejected. But if you become afraid of rejection, you are already missing the opportunity. Yes, there is a possibility of rejection. Life is a risk, it is a gamble. But the joy is because there is the risk of losing, there is joy in winning. If you are bound to win there is no point.

I have heard about a prince who was a player of chess, a lover of chess. But he was very worried because whosoever would play with him.… It was a rule of his father that the son had to win, so he was always winning. Now what is the point of playing a game if you are always winning? If it is absolutely decided that you have to win and others have to fail, they have to lose, then the whole joy is lost.

He escaped from his kingdom because of his love for chess, went into another kingdom, became a common person, started playing chess. Now there was joy because now he had to fight. The other was not bound to lose; the other could win. Now winning was a challenge.

Remember it! There is a possibility of being rejected – that’s good, that adds spice to love. And don’t wait for somebody to come to you, because other people are also waiting. Take the initiative. And women particularly don’t take the initiative; that is not part of the feminine mind and the feminine energy. The man has to take the initiative. If you are just sitting there like a Buddhist monk then nobody will take any notice of you; they will by-pass you. Who bothers about a Buddhist monk?

You are waiting there for somebody to come and knock on the door nobody will come. And even if somebody knocks on the door, you will not open the door because you will be so afraid. You have never been in a deep relationship, you have become accustomed to living alone; now somebody is there to disturb the whole thing.

And you are not a born monk either, otherwise I would have said ‘Perfectly good!’ You want to have a relationship and you are afraid – whatsoever the reason. You have to drop that fear.

< Previous | Contents | Next >