19

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‌CHAPTER 19

19 August 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love and chandralekha is a mythological tree, a tree that is found in paradise. The whole name will mean, a love tree of paradise. Get more and more in tune with trees and you will find great moments of silence through it. Just sitting by the side of the tree get lost in it. Treat trees as persons and be very loving towards trees.

The tree is the most primitive form of life. If you start loving the tree then love starts arising. Then you can love the animals, and then only can you love human beings, not before it. These three steps have to be taken: start with the trees because they are the most innocent, then the animals – they are innocent but they can play tricks – then man, who is very cunning.

To love man needs a great compassion, a great understanding, but to love a tree nothing is needed. No tree has ever deceived you, no tree has ever cheated you, no tree has ever been fraudulent, so it is very simple to be loving towards a tree. It is very difficult to love a man, because men have cheated, deceived, and who knows? – this man may cheat and deceive you. One can never be certain about man.

So start with the trees and then grow towards animals, birds, and then man. And then one can take the last jump – that is god. When one has become capable of loving man then one may be able to love god – because god is invisible. And if you can’t love man who is deceptive, cunning and cannot be trusted... If you can love this kind of man, then only can you love god, because it is god who has created this world of deception, illusion. Behind all this is god’s hand – behind all this misery, illness, death.

If you can love without any conditions from your side, only then can you love god, otherwise this idea will arise in the mind: if there is a god, why is there so much misery in the world? Why? Why does

a child die who has not committed any sin? Why does a child suffer from cancer? Why are so many people poor? Why do so many people die out of starvation?

These questions persist in the mind and won’t allow love to flow towards god. But if you can love man, then a new quality of love arises in you. You love man irrespective of what he is doing, what he has done. That is not a condition in your love, it becomes unconditional. Then the highest jump is possible.

This will be your new name: Swami Deva Tusar. Deva means divine, divineness, and tusar means fine rain – fine rain of god, fine rain of divineness. And that you have to make into a meditation: whenever you are sitting silently, just close your eyes and feel rain falling on you, god showering on you... very soft, with no noise. When you are going to bed, just lie down on the bed for two minutes, feel the shower and then fall asleep feeling that. In the morning when you feel that sleep is gone, don’t open your eyes first: first feel that shower again for just two minutes, three minutes. Within a few days you will get in tune with it... and you can feel it anywhere. Just sitting in the car or in the plane or in the train, just close your eyes and feel it. You will be protected by that shower and it will keep you continuously fresh.…

Deva means god and chama means one who sings in praise, a poet who sings in praise, a bard. So the full name will mean: one who sings in the praise of god, a bard of god... and there is the key for you.

Start remembering god more and more – and any excuse is good enough to remember. Feel grateful for small things. They arc not small; they only look small because we have become accustomed to them.

If a man is dying in a desert, is thirsty, he will not think that a glass of water is small; that will be his whole life. And if you can give him a glass of water he will be thankful forever. But ordinarily, a glass of water is just a glass of water – who bothers?

We start taking things for granted so we miss their mystery, their joy, and we start forgetting how to be grateful. Just the very fact that one is alive is enough to be grateful for; nothing else is needed. Just the very fact that one can still breathe, that one is breathing, that one can see a rose flower, can see a cloud pass by, can see the rolling waves in the ocean and one can hear a child giggle, is enough... more than enough to be thankful for!

Just think of a blind man who has never seen a rose flower. Think of what he is missing. But we never think that way so we never feel what we are getting. Think of a blind man who has never seen a rainbow, who will never see a rainbow. You will pass by, the rainbow will be there and you will not look.

Just the other day I was reading that it happened in new york that the sun never set for three days. But nobody became aware of it; who bothers? People are rushing to their own work. They move according to the clock; the sun is almost non-existential in new york. Yes, that is the case for millions of people. It looks absurd but that is the case.

If one day in the night suddenly the moon disappears, will you become aware of it? Many people will be passing on the road, coming and going, and nobody may see that the moon is no more there

and that this is the full moon night! Days may pass and then people may become aware. Maybe some poet will stumble upon the fact or a child may start asking ‘Where is the moon?’ Otherwise, so-called normal people will not take any note. This so-called ‘normality’ is so abnormal.…

In giving you this name I am just giving you an indication, a finger pointing to the moon, to start becoming more and more grateful... for small things. They are not small. Nothing is small... nothing can be small because all is suffused with god. Feel grateful for everything – for a green leaf in the wind, for a small bird singing alone, for a kite on the wing in the sky just relaxedly floating. All these are great mysteries but because they are given to us free of any charge, we don’t take any note of them.

If there were a price we would have hankered to see a kite, just relaxing high in the winds above the clouds. If there were a price then people would have stood in a queue, would have waited long, and would have felt very thankful.

Life is given without any charge: it is a gift. So start being more and more praise-full. That is the meaning of ‘chama’ – one who goes on singing in praise.…

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