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‌CHAPTER 16

17 July 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva Yoshiro. Deva means God; yoshiro means favorite – God’s favorite. Everyone is, but very few people become aware of it. Those who become aware become full of gratitude. And to be grateful, to feel grateful for all that is, is to be religious. And it is really a tremendously beautiful existence; it cannot be improved upon, it is perfect as it is.

But we are completely asleep: we don’t know who we are. We don’t know that God is constantly showering a thousand-and-one blessings on us. We don’t know that he is following us like a shadow that he is our safety, security, that we are eternally rooted in him. We can forget him but he cannot forget us; we can forget him but we cannot lose him.

Prem Katina. Prem means love; katina means pure. What is pure love? Pure love is giving your life energies just for giving’s sake – enjoying the very act of giving, not waiting for any reward.

The moment any motive enters into love, love becomes impure; unmotivated love is pure. The moment there is a demand, howsoever subtle or unconscious, it pollutes love, it destroys its beauty; the love falls from the skies and becomes very muddy. Love is the most innocent phenomenon; bring desire in and it becomes cunning and clever and the innocence is lost.

In the biblical story the serpent represents knowledge, cunningness, cleverness. The serpent has always been a symbol of cunningness. Before the serpent persuaded Eve to eat the fruit of knowledge, love was pure. After that it was no more love, it was lust. Hence they became guilty, ashamed of being naked.

Love can be naked because it knows nothing of shame, it knows nothing of guilt. It is so pure, so innocent, like a child, that it need not hide. But lust hides, lust needs some camouflage. Before the serpent met Eve and persuaded her, there was love in existence. To eat the fruit of knowledge is to

fall from love and its innocence, is to become cunning, clever, knowledgeable. That is the original fall: from love to knowledge, from the heart to the head. And the whole process of sannyas is to reverse this phenomenon: move back from the head to the heart.

Katina basically comes from the same root as catharsis. We need to cathart all that we have eaten; knowledge has to be catharted out. It is poison; our system has to be freed of it. Sannyas is a process of falling back into innocence, getting to that state of Adam and Eve before they met the serpent. Jesus calls it becoming a child again, a rebirth – and it is so.

And the only way is to go on purifying your love, go on making it less and less motivated, less and less possessive, less and less demanding. And a moment comes when there is no demand, no motive, no possession. Then love becomes your wings; it can take you to the ultimate.

Satya Edit. Satya means truth; edit means blessed happiness. Truth is the only blessing there is, the only bliss there is. But man lives in lies; he is afraid of the truth, he escapes from the truth. There is a reason: because his whole ego is a false phenomenon, to face truth means to die as an ego – that is painful.

And we have been brought up for centuries and centuries to enhance the ego: by money, power, prestige; by education, by virtue, by morality, by character; even by renunciation, saintliness. But all are decorations of the ego, hence everybody is afraid. The man who is in any way involved with the ego is bound to be afraid of truth, but then he has to remain in misery.

Lies can promise but they cannot deliver the goods. They keep you hoping, but nothing is ever fulfilled. They keep you postponing – tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. What really comes one day is death, and the whole life has been a waiting – waiting for nothing, waiting for Godot, a futile existence. But the ego is very cunning, political: it persuades you: “Just wait one day more; don’t be hopeless.” It goes on giving you hope. It is through hope that it thrives.

To face truth is to drop the ego and to drop all projections for the future. To face truth means to face the present: this moment in its totality is truth. Truth is never in the past and never in the future. The ego is always in the past or in the future, it is never in the present. The necessary, inevitable outcome is great misery, but we go on suffering and still we go on clinging to the ego.

To be really a sannyasin means taking the great quantum leap beyond the ego, jumping out of it, becoming a nobody. And then one is blessed, one is blessed with great happiness. Then it goes on showering like flowers, day in, day out. Then your whole life becomes fragrant: fragrant with the unknown, fragrant with God.

Truth is another name for God, and to be in God is to be blissful. Not to be in God is to be in misery. To be separate from God is pain; to be united is bliss.

Anand Valann. Anand means bliss; valann means a child of God – a blissful child of God. That’s what you have to become, that’s what every sannyasin has to become; blissful.

And religious people have almost forgotten how to be blissful. They have become very sour faced. They have created such stupidity in the name of religion that their life has become sad. They have created so many negative attitudes towards life that they cannot be blissful.

Unless you love life how can you be blissful? Unless you love flowers and stars and people, you cannot sing, you cannot dance.

One becomes lonely if one is life-negative; one starts living like an island. Then sadness is bound to gather, then one becomes like a dark cloud. And that’s how our so-called saints, mahatmas are: dark clouds, not even a silver lining. They cannot smile, they cannot laugh, they cannot participate in any kind of celebration – that is all mundane, profane, below them. They can only sit like stone statues, dead, dull. They have died before their death. They are no more alive, because aliveness is in dance, aliveness is in joy, aliveness is in love.

So the first thing to be learned is to be blissful. And the second thing: become a child. Knowledge leads nowhere; innocence is the gate to God. Become like a child again. Forget all that you have learned – unlearn. That’s the process of becoming a sannyasin: unlearning. And then again that wonder that was there when you were a child rises up: again those eyes full of the mysterious, the heart throbbing constantly with surprise. Again that beautiful space wells up. And one can meet God only in that innocence. We have lost paradise; childhood is another name for that paradise that we have lost. It has to be regained, and then all is regained.

If a man can die again and be as a child, as he was born, then the circle is complete; one is fulfilled. When the circle is complete there is tremendous fulfillment. A great contentment descends: one is grateful to life, to death, for everything that has happened and for everything that has not happened. One dies with a smile, with a song in the heart. And when one can die with a song in the heart one has really lived. Death becomes the proof of how you have lived. To die as a child is to learn the lesson of life; to die in any other way is to miss the whole point.

Anand Daniel. Anand means the state of absolute bliss. It contains peace, it contains joy, it contains silence, it contains contentment. It is multidimensional: it is not just happiness, it is much more.

In fact there is nothing higher than that; it is the ultimate harmony of existence. And in being in rhythm with existence, in being in accord with existence, one comes to know it.

Meditation is a way of finding the accord. Ordinarily we are not in accord with existence; we don’t know how to bridge ourselves with existence. In fact we go on fighting it, struggling with it

We are brought up with such wrong notions: that one has to struggle for one’s survival. We have been brought up with very poisoned ideologies. The idea of ambition keeps us in a state of constant tension; the idea of competition keeps us unrelaxed. And slowly slowly the tensions, the inner conflicts, the struggle outside and inside, is so much that it drives us crazy, mad.

To be mad means that one has fallen very far away from the eternal harmony of existence. That’s the definition of a madman: one who has completely forgotten that there is a way to enter into unity again, that one can be in a love affair with existence. There is no need to struggle, there is no need to go against the current – one can go with it. One can move with the river so lovingly that one need not even swim, one can float with it. And one can be so attuned with the flow that one is not separate from the river any more, one becomes the river. And the river is already going to the ocean, there is no need for us to strive. The very idea of striving, of achieving, is the base of all our misery.

A blissful person is one who has become relaxed, calm, quiet, in tune with existence, one who accepts life as it is, without any struggle.

Daniel means God is my judge; it is a beautiful name. But God can be your judge only if you are utterly attuned with existence – otherwise there is no God, at least not for you.

If you are in conflict with existence you cannot feel God. God is not a person, but that great joy which comes when you feel at home in existence – that feeling is God.

And if you are in accord, blissfully in accord, then naturally there is no need to be afraid, there is no need to be guilty, there is no need to feel unworthy... because God is our judge, and God is compassion; God is justice, and God is love. If we are in harmony then there is no fear of any judgment or judgment day. Then we are already accepted, we are already forgiven.

Anand Monique. Anand means bliss. Monique comes from the Greek monos; it means alone, aloneness. The full name will mean blissful aloneness.

Remember, being alone does not mean being lonely. To be lonely is a negative state; it means that you are missing the other. You want the other but the other is not present. You hanker for the other, you are desperate for the other, but the other is not available. Although the other is not available, in your mind you are with the other. It is a state of misery, of darkness, of hell.

But to be alone is totally different, qualitatively different. It means the joy of being oneself, enjoying one’s own being, celebrating one’s own being. Even just breathing is so joyful One is not missing the other – one is too full of oneself, one cannot miss anyone. One is with oneself, the other is not needed.

It is a solo song, just a solo play on the flute, not accompanied by other instruments. It has its own tremendous beauty. It is not an orchestra. An orchestra has its own beauty, but a solo flute brings something of silence, something of the unknown, and brings it in a very penetrating way. It touches the heart more than any orchestra.

To know how to be alone is meditation. There are two paths: one is of love, that means to know how to relate; the other is of meditation, that means how to be alone. Both paths reach to the same peak, but they pass through different territories.

Your name fits exactly with your path. Whosoever has given it to you may have felt something in you, or maybe it was just coincidental, but it certainly fits your type. Meditation is your way and you will know God only in your absolute aloneness – not through prayer but through meditation.

[The new sannyasin says she would like to know what is the meaning of the mala and of the color of the dress.]

The meaning of the color red, all the shades of red, all the shades of my color, is that you have to die and to be reborn. It is the fire through which you have to pass. It will burn your ego, it will burn all that is false in you, and only that which is essential will be left in its utter purity. It is the color of fire. Fire can give you a new life; it can destroy the old and can create the new.

And the mala is a bridge between us; it keeps you in an inner contact with me. You will know the meaning slowly slowly because it is something existential. Soon you will be able to know that it is a device to remain in constant communion with me. Any time you hold the mala in your hand you will find me close to you. It is a subtle bridge, invisible.

It cannot be explained to outsiders because they will see only the visible mala, they will miss the invisible mystery. They will only see the body and they will miss the spirit. It is to be known only by sannyasins; even sannyasins take time to know about it. It is such an unknown experience that one has to learn. Slowly slowly, passing through many experiences, you will become aware of it: that it keeps you connected with me, that you can be thousands of miles away and yet you are as close as one can be.

Deva Edo. Deva means divine; edo means rich – divine richness.

Whatsoever the world can give to us keeps us poor. It can’t make us rich; it can at the most give us a pretension of being rich. Even Alexander the Great is a beggar. Even the richest person on earth remains empty, futile, deep down, because the riches that he has accumulated are outside and the poverty is within. Your money cannot go inside you, cannot fulfill you there.You can go on piling up money outside; it will remain outside you. You will remain poor. In fact you will start feeling more poor as the money starts piling up. In comparison a poor man never feels so poor as a rich man, because of the contrast.

The really rich is one who knows God, because that is an inner experience. Only when God fills you within are you rich. Then you may have money, may not have money, it doesn’t matter, it is not relevant.

Initiation into sannyas is an inquiry, an exploration, into this inner richness.

Jesus says again and again: The kingdom of God is within you. He is indicating this richness. When he says man cannot live by bread alone; he is saying that if a man lives by bread alone he does not live at all. He only exists, he only survives – maybe comfortably but his life has no significance, no song arises out of him. He has not been able to know anything which is really valuable.

And what is really valuable? There is only one definition: that which you can take beyond death, only that is really valuable. All else is worthless. It may have a price to it but it has no value. Things have prices but no values. Only inner experiences have values, but they don’t have any price. You cannot purchase them, you cannot sell them, but you can have them. In fact you already have them, it is just that you are not aware of the fact. One has to turn in and look, and immediately one becomes rich, immediately one is an emperor.

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