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CHAPTER 19
20 July 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
Prem Naoko. Prem means love; naoko means straight. Love is simple and straight. Because it is not cunning, it does not go roundabout, it does not move in circles; it goes like a straight arrow. It is innocent, hence it is straight.
And only love can reach to the ultimate source of life, because the ultimate source has to be penetrated like an arrow. Devious ways can’t help, and logic is very devious, very cunning. To be straight means to be honest, tO be sincere, to be authentic. These are all the meanings of naoko, and they are all parts of a life lived according to love. The man of love is honest, cannot be otherwise; otherwise love will be killed immediately, poisoned immediately.
The man of love is bound to be authentic. He will say only what he means, and he will do only what he says. His outer and his inner being are always in symphony. He is not divided, he is not split, he is not schizophrenic; he is healthy and whole. And that’s what sannyas is all about.
Be loving, be straight, be indivisible, be sincere, be honest, be authentic, and then there will be no need to think about God, heaven and hell, and other nonsense. A straight life is a religious life. It is simply like two plus two are equal to four.
Satya Christine. Satya means true; christine means Christian: one who is a true Christian. Not one who is Christian by birth, not one who follows the formality of going to church every Sunday, not one who goes on reading the Bible like a parrot; not even one who somehow superficially tries to create a character according to the prescribed, established past.
The true Christian is one who starts moving towards Christ-consciousness. Christ-consciousness is the ultimate state of your being. It is an inner journey; it has nothing to do with the church, it
has nothing to do with the Bible, it has nothing to do with Jesus even. It has something to do with awakening, with becoming more conscious.
Jesus is only one of the Christs; Buddha is another, so is Lao Tzu, so is Zarathustra, and many more. What is called samadhi in India is called Christ-consciousness in the West.
The moment you know consciousness in yourself without any thought, any desire, any memory, distracting you, disturbing you, when there are no waves, no ripples even, when the consciousness is completely, totally, a pool of silence, bliss immediately starts overflowing. That is the moment you enter into God. It is an inward journey.
Religion has nothing to do with outer formalities. Those formalities are preventing people from being really religious; they are the hindrances. The church is the enemy of Christ, the pope represents not the Christ but the Antichrist. And so is the case with all other religions: Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism. Man needs only religiousness, not any religion in particular. Man needs a flavor of religion, a fragrance of religion; not a dogma, not a system of belief, but a state of love, meditation, being.
Remember it. Forget all the formalities, become more informal, and let love become your prayer, and let alertness, awareness, be your method to go in. Love plus awareness is bound to result in Christ-consciousness.
Anand Satyamo. Anand means bliss; satyamo means truth.
Truth is not a logical category. It is not arrived at by argumentation, it is not arrived at by any mind process. It is not a conclusion of thought; it is a jump of the heart. It is not thinking but feeling. It is very illogical, and as it is not a conclusion, it can happen immediately. A conclusion needs a certain process, process needs time, but truth can happen at any moment. It can happen without any time involved at all. It is intuitive, not intellectual; intellect needs time, intuition needs no time.
It is a conclusion without any process; hence the most important thing to be remembered is that the search for truth is possible only if you slip down from the head into the heart. If instead of trying to achieve truth logically, intellectually, you start moving illogically towards it – through singing, through dancing, through loving – then there is a possibility of its happening. That’s what I mean by anand: if you start by being blissful, anything that brings bliss to you – painting, music – has to be used as a way towards truth.
Become more and more blissful and you will be more and more full of truth. Bliss is truth. When the bliss is total you have arrived home.
Anand Gabriele. Anand means bliss; gabriele means God is my strength. It is the ultimate state of trust. Ordinarily our ego says that we are the masters, that all the power is ours. The ego is always on a power trip, and it goes on claiming more and more. It gives you the feeling that you are an island, separate from the whole. That is really the cause of our weakness.
It is as if the tree were to start thinking that it is separate from the earth and the moon and the sun and the wind and the sky; now the tree will start dying. No tree ever did such a foolish thing, but man
goes on doing such stupid things. Man goes on thinking that he is separate: “I am my own strength.” Now to live on this small, tiny energy is to be poor, is to be utterly impoverished; that’s why there is so much misery in the world and everybody feels so limited. But we are at fault.
Gabriele means: I am not my own strength – God is my strength. In fact, I am not; only God is. Gabriele means: Now I am no longer an island but part of the continent; I am no longer separate but just a wave in the infinite ocean of existence. Then one is eternally enriched, because then all is yours.
This is a paradox: when you are not all is yours; when you are, nothing is yours. When you are, you are a beggar; when you are not, you have attained the kingdom of God – and only when you are a king, you can be blissful.
A beggar cannot be blissful. How can he be blissful? What has he got to be blissful about? A beggar cannot be grateful – for what can he feel gratitude? He is surrounded by his own smallness, he is surrounded by his own darkness, he is surrounded by his own shadows, and he lives in desires and dreams. His whole life is insubstantial. It is a shadow existence. It is not true. It can’t be true.
Truth is when we dissolve into the ultimate; in that dissolution is bliss too. Let God be your strength. Disappear as a separate person. Start feeling more and more in tune with the whole: drop all distances, feel inwardly connected, rooted. And it is only a question of remembering, because we are rooted; it is not something that has to be done. We have only forgotten. So God has not to be discovered, but only remembered.
Anand Punito. Anand means bliss; punito means purity – bliss brings a purity of its own. Bliss brings innocence. Bliss makes you a child again.
Hence, whenever you are cheerful, something of the child and his innocence is on your face. When you smile you are again a child, when you giggle you lose many layers of so-called civilization. When you have a real belly laugh you drop out of this whole nonsense – serious affair of the world.
Laughter is one of the most significant things because it helps you to transcend the ill seriousness of society. Seriousness is illness. It is sadness. Something has gone wrong and sour. A really alive person knows nothing of seriousness. He knows silence, he knows sincerity, but his silence is bubbling with joy, his sincerity has a laughter to it. It is not sad.
Become blissful and you are continuously showered by some unknown energy, as if you are constantly underneath a shower which goes on purifying you, which goes on taking all the dust that naturally collects at every moment. A blissful person never thinks of the past and a blissful person never thinks of the future either: he is so blissful, right now, herenow, why should he be distracted by the past and the future?
It is only the miserable mind that thinks of the past. It has to think somehow to console itself. The miserable mind continuously projects itself into the future; it has to otherwise the present seems intolerable. So either in memory or in imagination, it goes on distracting itself from the present moment – which is the only moment there is, which is the only existence there is.
A blissful person is drowned, utterly drowned in the present moment. And that brings purity, that brings holiness.
To me, that makes a person really a saint. He is a laughter. His each cell is in a laughter. His each fiber is in dance. He pulsates, radiates joy. He becomes the proof of God.
[A sannyasin says: My mother has cancer and I have to go and see her.] You go and help her. Help her to die peacefully, blissfully.
Death is an art, as much as life is. In fact, death is a more subtle art than life itself. Life is spread over seventy, eighty years, but death happens in a single moment; unless you are really aware you are going to miss it. You cannot afford to be unconscious.
So just be with her very lovingly, peacefully. Meditate with her, and tell her something of meditation, particularly the watching of the breath. That will be immensely helpful. And she will be Lying down so she can watch as much as possible. It will stop the thought process; it is one of the ancientmost keys to stop the thought process, watching the breath. Then your whole consciousness is focused on the breath and it cannot be distracted by thoughts. And if she can die watching her breath, in silence, then her life has been a fulfillment, then she will attain to a higher plane of existence. That’s all we can do for each other: help each other to go higher and higher.
So just go. And don’t be sad. Death is natural; it is bound to happen. Cancer or no cancer does not make much difference – how one dies is irrelevant – one dies that’s the whole thing. What excuse you find to die – mm? – that is individual preference. But death comes... you can choose any door for its entry.
Just help her to be silent, happy, alert, and that will be your gift to her before she leaves the body. Death can become a beautiful experience. Death can become the greatest ecstasy possible. Go and help! Good!
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