24

< Previous | Contents | Next >

‌CHAPTER 24

25 July 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand Ursula. Anand means the state of ultimate bliss, a state from which one cannot fall – it is impossible. Once gained it is not ever lost, once gained it is forever. It is not a momentary phenomenon, it is not a changing phenomenon; it is the only constant factor in existence. Everything else changes, but not bliss. Hence bliss is another name for God, the unmoving center of the moving universe.

That’s the goal of all religion: to attain to that state, because unless it is attained, life remains in misery. Life can never be in a state of contentment with constant change. When everything goes on changing around you, you remain disturbed, you cannot find your home, you can’t be at ease. You remain a disease. And bliss is non-changing, knows no movement. It simply is. Not even a ripple arises: no thought, no desire, no memory, all is still. In that stillness one finds one’s home

And ursula means... it is a name of the constellation of stars, Ursa Major. Bliss is a faraway star, a long journey, arduous journey. Unless one is really committed, involved, unless one is really a seeker, it can’t be found. It can’t be found only by curiosity; it can be found only through deep, intense, total dedication. And that’s what sannyas is: a life dedicated to the search for truth, bliss, God.

Arpito Hans. Arpito means surrendered, totally surrendered. Arpito is a state of ego loss; you are, but there is no ego to be found. You cannot assert the word “I”. At the most you can say “am”. These two words, “I am,” are very significant. Am is your reality, I is your invention. Amness simply means isness. I is a superimposition on it. I is pseudo, and if we look through the I, then everything else becomes false, because your vision is distorted.

There are two great lies in life: one is I and another is death. And if one searches deep and far enough, then there is only one great lie in life and that is I, because death is only a byproduct of I.

Death cannot exist without the I. It is the false that dies. In fact it never lives in the first place: it was always dead but you were carrying the corpse, imagining that it was real. But sooner or later reality asserts and you have to recognize it. You cannot go on postponing it forever.

The I brings death in existence; hence the real untruth, the only untruth, the only lie, is I. Arpito means surrendering it, dropping it, withdrawing your energies from it, not cooperating. Without cooperation, it dies on its own accord, out of sheer starvation, and then what is left is simply a pure amness. One is, but one is not separate from it.

And hans means God is gracious; it is a form of the Hebrew name, John. But God is gracious only when you are not. So your surrendering the I makes you available to God, makes you available to his gifts, makes you capable of receiving the guest. God is certainly gracious. God is simply graciousness, but we are closed, we are non-receptive, and the ego is the cause. The ego functions as a barrier between you and God. Remove the ego and God starts pouring in a thousand-and-one ways upon you. Then you are permeated through and through with God’s bliss.

Life starts having tremendous significance only then. The beginning of sannyas is surrender, the end of sannyas is your experience that God is gracious, that God has given all, all that was asked and all that was not even asked for!

Deva Huub. Deva means divine and huub made everybody cheerful – it simply means cheerfulness! It’s really a significant word – even those who don’t understand what it means, they got the feeling of it! So deva huub will mean divine cheerfulness.

Be of good cheer. Let cheerfulness become a climate that surrounds you day in, day out. Cheerfulness should not remain just an emotion that comes once in a while; it should be a constant undercurrent. On the surface you may be doing anything, but deep down there should be a singing heart.

You may be involved in day-to-day activities of life, but deep down your energies should remain in a dancing mood. That’s the real art of being a sannyasin: being in the world and yet not if it. And the only way to fulfil this is to remain ordinary with cheerfulness; otherwise life becomes boring, one has to do the same things again and again. It becomes routine and rut.

Unless you can remain cheerful, life is bound to become heavier every day. Unless you can keep cheerfulness flowing, your life is going to become dormant, stagnant. Stagnant water starts stinking; it remains fresh if it flows. And the only thing that can keep you flowing is cheerfulness. So don’t miss any opportunity; whenever you can, laugh, smile, dance, sing. And go on missing all the opportunities which make you sad, which make you down, which make you heavy. And just a little alertness is needed and one can avoid... one can go on avoiding the negative, the darker side of life and one can go on living in the lighter side of life. Then a miracle happens one day: you become so full of light that you can go in darkness and the darkness disappears. You become so cheerful that you can go into sadness and the sadness starts laughing. That is the miracle that has to be achieved. Unless that is achieved a man has lived in vain. It is difficult but it is not impossible, it is within our grasp; it has been achieved by many people.

You can achieve it, everybody can achieve it. Just people never try. They don’t think about life as an art; they take it for granted, as if it has been given complete, finished, with a full point. It is not so.

Life is given to you only as an opportunity, it is not complete. Life is given to you only as a context in which a thousand-and-one things are possible, in which everything is possible.

Life is not a fixed phenomenon. It is open ended. You can become the saddest person in the world and you can become the most cheerful man in the world, and it is the same energy and the same life. Just a little alertness and life starts moving towards God. Being cheerful simply shows that something of God has started happening in you, that God is coming closer, that you are not far away from the goal. When you are sad you are far away, when you are sad there is no God, when you are sad you can’t hope, you can’t trust – trust becomes impossible, hope becomes impossible. All longing from the heart disappears, you are simply drowned in sadness and despair. Avoid those situations – they can be avoided – and choose situations which help you to love, to live, to laugh.

[Ameen means the blessed one.]

Prem Ameen. Prem means love. Love is the only quality which exists in the world and is not of the world. It is a bridge between the earth and the unearthly planes. Hence the lover looks mad; he becomes an outsider. He looks very strange because he starts living illogically, he starts living without calculation, he starts living without cunningness; he starts trusting – and that is not the way of the world. The way of the world is to doubt, to be always suspicious, to be always on guard. The lover drops all defense measures, drops all armors, becomes unguarded, becomes vulnerable, is ready to trust.

The worldly way is to struggle, fight, to be ambitious. The lover forgets all about ambition; he is not an achiever. He seems so fulfilled in his love that there is nothing more that can be achieved. It is only the lover who becomes aware that God is. In his beloved he has seen the glimpses, hence he is the blessed one.

So prem ameen will mean: love that makes you a blessed one. Ameen has a few other meanings too. The blessed one is only one of the meanings. The other is saying yes, total yes; hence every prayer ends with ameen. The ending of the prayer with ameen means: Lord, I say yes to you, a total yes to you. The same word “ameen” has become in Christianity “amen”. Their prayers also end with amen. A prayer cannot find a better end. What else could be a better end to a prayer? In fact a prayer is nothing but saying yes to God, in so many ways, in a thousand-and-one ways, saying: Yes, I am ready... yes, I am available... yes, do whatsoever you want to do. Yes, thy will be done, thy kingdom come. And the moment you say yes to God, blessings start showering on you. To say yes is to become blessed. So both the meanings are connected.

Love knows how to say yes, only love knows how to say yes. Mind is a no-sayer. If it can find a way of saying no it is bound to say no. Only the heart knows how to say yes; without saying, it says yes, it beats the yes, it is yea-saying. So ameen comes from the heart, not from the head

If it comes from the head it is hocus-pocus, it is meaningless. When it arises out of the heart when it is not only said but meant, then it transforms your being. Just a simple word “yes”, can revolutionize your whole being. Sannyas is a way of saying yes. It is saying ameen to God

Be full of love so you can be full of yes. When the no disappears, all misery, all hell disappears. When there is yes, and only yes left – every fiber of your being saying yes, every cell of your being

dancing and saying yes – then you are in tune with existence, then you are no more separate, you have fallen in rhythm with God. And that’s what meditation is, prayer is... let it become a reality too.

Satyo Susan. Satyo means truth; susan means a graceful white lily.

Truth is grace. Untruth is basically disgraceful. The moment you assert a lie, all grace from your being disappears. Others may be aware of it, may not be aware of it – because people are blind – but how can you avoid seeing it? When you say anything untruthful, immediately grace leaves you. You can go on pretending from the outside that you are the same, but from the inside something infinitely valuable is lost.

Truth brings grace; the more truthful you become the more graceful you become. Grace is a shadow of truth, a byproduct of truth. Truth cannot be otherwise: to be true and not to be graceful is impossible; to be untrue and to be graceful is also impossible.

And truth also is represented by the color white, because white is the combination of all colors. It is the whole rainbow: when all colors are combined, white is created. White is the highest synthesis, the greatest orchestra; all the colors are in it. White is multidimensional. It is the ray, the white ray of light passing through a prism, that creates colors, the seven colors.

Mix all the seven colors again and you have white. Black is just opposite to white: black is absence of all color, it is death; white is presence of all color, it is life. White is all positivity; darkness, blackness is all negativity.

Truth is graceful; truth is the highest symphony, the greatest orchestra, the meeting of all the notes and all the colors – the ultimate synthesis.

And truth is also a flower; it blooms, it opens, it grows, it releases fragrance. A Jesus, a Buddha – where else can you find more beautiful flowers?

Prem Gudrun. Prem means love; gudrun means divine wisdom.

Love is the door to divine wisdom. Love is not knowledge; it cannot give you knowledge, it cannot make you well informed, more informed. It has no information to deliver to you, but it can certainly make you wise, because it can make you more aware, it can make you more compassionate it can make you more sensitive. Hence, it leads you towards wisdom.

A wise man is not necessarily a man of knowledge; he may be, he may not be. A man of knowledge is not necessarily wise; he may be, he may not be. More is the possibility that he is not going to be, because when the mind is too full of knowledge the heart starts non-functioning. The mind possesses so much of you that it does not allow any space for the heart to function. Knowledge is of the head, wisdom is of the heart.

There are schools, colleges, universities, to give you knowledge; but nobody can give you wisdom, it is untransferrable. You have to achieve it on your own, jumping into the madness of love. It needs guts, because it is going to be a love affair with existence itself.

Prem Dhyano. Prem means love; dhyano means meditation.

These are the two most important things in life. If one can learn these two things, life can take you to the ultimate peaks of joy. These two things can make your life an orgasmic experience; not a momentary experience, but an eternal, ongoing orgasmic flow, a continuum of joys, more joys. The peak goes on becoming higher and higher and higher.

Love means the art of being with others. Meditation means the art of being with yourself. Both are two aspects of the same coin. A person who does not know how to be with himself cannot truly relate with others, his relationship will be awkward, graceless, ugly, haphazard, accidental. One moment everything is going well and another moment everything is gone. It will always be going up and down; it will not gain depth. It will be very noisy. Certainly it will give you an occupation, but it will not have any melody to it, and it cannot take you to the heights of existence or depths of being, and vice versa: the person who is not capable of being with others, of relating, will find rt very difficult to relate with himself, because the art of relating is the same: whether you relate with others or you relate with yourself does not make much difference, it is the same art.

Both these arts have to be learned together, simultaneously; they are inseparable. Be with people, and not unconsciously, but very consciously. Relate with people as if you are singing a song, as if you are playing on a flute; each person has to be thought as a musical instrument. Respect, love worship – because each person is a hidden face of God.

So be very careful, very attentive. Remember what you are saying, remember what you are doing. Just small things destroy relationships, and small things make relationships so beautiful. Sometimes just a smile, and the other’s heart is open to you; sometimes just a wrong look in your eyes, and the other is closed – it is a delicate phenomenon. Think of it as an art: just as the painter is very watchful of what he is doing to the canvas, each single stroke is going to make a lot of difference. A real painter can change the whole painting just by a single stroke.

A small boy was talking to another boy and he was saying, “My father is a great painter, he is such an artist. Just the other day he was painting and he painted a very sad face, and I asked him ‘Change it.’ And just a single stroke of his brush and the painting was totally changed; then the sad face started laughing.”

The other boy said, “That’s nothing. My mother can do that very simply – just a hit and a laughing face starts crying!”

Life has to be learned as an art: very cautiously, very deliberately... So relationship with others has to become a mirror: see what you are doing, how you are doing it and what is happening. What is happening to the other? Are you making their life more miserable? Are you giving them pain? Are you creating a hell for them? Then withdraw. Change your ways. Beautify life around yourself. Let every person feel that the meeting with you is a gift: just being with you something starts flowing, growing, some songs start arising in the heart, some flowers start opening. And when you are alone then sit utterly silent, absolutely in silence, and watch yourself: watch your breathing, watch your thoughts, watch your memories, watch yourself in your totality without interfering – simple watching. And slowly watching one’s breathing, one’s thoughts, one’s memories, slowly slowly, great awareness explodes. One becomes full of light within. That is the art of meditation.

And remember both: just as the bird has two wings, let love and meditation be your two wings. Create a synchronicity between them, so they are not in any way in conflict with each other, but

nursing each other, nurturing each other, helping each other. This is going to be your path: the synthesis between love and meditation.

< Previous | Contents | Next >