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‌CHAPTER 4

4 July 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand Paul. Anand means bliss; paul means small. The way to be great is to be small; the way to be superior is to be a nobody. The superior man is not aware that he is. He is humble, not even conscious of his humbleness. Then bliss is natural.

Be a nobody, and you will be fulfilled. Be nothing, and all belongs to you. Prem Ruud. Prem means love; ruud means the loyal one.

Love is loyal, faithful. Love can be trusted, love can be relied upon. Love never betrays. If it betrays, it was not love in the first place, it was something else. If it is disloyal, then it is only pseudo. If it cannot be relied upon, it is not worth anything. It may be lust, but it is not love.

Lust uses the other as a means, which is the ugliest thing in the world – to use the other as a means – the most immoral act, because everyone is an end unto himself. Nobody should be reduced to a means. Lust reduces the other to a means.

Love respects, raises the other to their ultimate glory, makes the other divine, makes the other feel worthy, loved, respected – not used as a means, but worshipped as an end unto himself. Love is ready to sacrifice, but love never sacrifices the other. And love is the way to God.

The world is only a school to learn the art of love. When you have learned the art of love, you have to direct your love energy towards the divine. You have to become loyal to God, you have to become surrendered to God.

And that’s what sannyas is. It is a rainbow bridge between the known and the unknown, the visible and the invisible, the gross and subtle. One part of it is rooted in the world, in the earth; the other part reaches to the highest sky. You cannot even see the other part, the other end of the ladder.

Sannyas is earthly and unearthly, worldly and otherworldly, materialistic and spiritualistic. That’s my definition of sannyas; hence I call it neo-sannyas. The old sannyas, the old idea of being a monk, was purely otherworldly; it was not rooted in the earth. Because it was not rooted in the earth it never became really alive, it was never nourished. It was always suicidal, life-negative, life-denying.

I am bringing a new vision of sannyas: life-affirming, life-nourishing, rooted in the earth and yet reaching towards the sky. I call it the rainbow bridge. It contains all the colors of the rainbow, it has the whole spectrum. It is not one-dimensional, it is multidimensional.

My sannyasin has to live life in its totality. Love life, trust life! And life is the only master, the real Master. I can only indicate the way; I can only show you how I have attained to life. You are not expected to imitate me or to follow me. You are just expected to listen and understand, and then to go on your own way, following your own insight.

Deva Lane. Deva means divine; lane means the cheerful one. The full name will mean divine cheerfulness.

Religion is not something serious – sincere, but not serious. And sincerity is a totally different phenomenon than seriousness. Seriousness has something sad about it, something heavy, gross, rocklike. Sincerity is authenticity, truthfulness. It is not a weight, it does not crush you. On the contrary it gives you wings, it makes you more and more light, unburdened.

Sincerity helps one to become simple, and the simple person is naturally cheerful. It is only the complex person who becomes a victim of sadness; his very complexity creates it. And seriousness is the shadow of the ego: the more egoist one is, the more serious. The egoist cannot laugh, it is below him. He cannot joke, it is below him. He is always in a state of tightness, he cannot relax. He lives as if in a straitjacket, in a very very tense armor. The ego can exist only in tensions; it feeds on tensions, anxieties, sadness.

If a person is religious, the only proof of his being religious is his cheerfulness. Going to the church does not prove anything. Reading the Bible or Bhagavad Gita proves nothing. You can worship God and pray every day ritually; it means nothing unless your heart dances continuously, unless you create an aroma of cheerfulness within and without. Then whether you remember God or not, it does not matter. If you are cheerful, God remembers you. And that’s what is really significant: not your remembering God, but God remembering you.

One of the great Indian mystics, Kabir, has said that “There were days when I used to remember God, and I searched in every nook and corner, I went everywhere. I asked the learned people, I listened to very scholarly discourses. I was continuously crying and weeping and calling God, but no reply, no response; the skies remained absolutely indifferent. But then one day when I forgot all about God, and was dancing and singing, and was so lost in my dance and in my song that I could say I was not, only the dance was, he came and started calling me ‘Kabir, Kabir!’ Since then he follows me and calls ‘Kabir, Kabir, Where are you going? What are you doing?’ I don’t call him any more, but he continuously calls me.”

And that’s what is really significant, when God calls you. That is possible only if you create the space of cheerfulness.

Prem Toshi. Prem means love; toshi means contented – contented with love. Love is the only contentment in life; everything else deceives. Everything else is a mirage; it allures you but it never satisfies you. On the contrary it leaves a feeling of great frustration – money, power, prestige, everything except love. Love gives you the first taste of contentment. One feels perfectly satisfied as one is, and in that state of contentment God comes in.

You are open to God only when you are in a state of contentment. The discontented man is so preoccupied with himself that he remains closed. Even if God knocks on his door he cannot hear it, there is so much noise inside him. But when one is contented there is silence, calm, everything is quiet. And then one starts hearing the whispering of God from everywhere. The wind blowing through the pine trees – it is God whispering. The river running towards the ocean, and the sound of the water – it is God’s song. The cuckoo calls from the distance – and he has called you. Then in laughters and in tears only he is felt. Then he is day and he is night. Then he is life and he is death.

Gyanrahi. Gyan means wisdom; rahi means a pilgrim – a pilgrim who is in search of wisdom, a seeker of truth.

But remember, wisdom cannot be sought outside your consciousness. Whatsoever you gather outside your consciousness will remain knowledge – and knowledge is not wisdom. Knowledge is a false coin. It is repeating beautiful words, nice theories, but all repetition is mechanical. It is not your own experience.

And truth has to be your own, only then is it true. Truth has to be a growth of your own consciousness, only then does it liberate. Knowledge binds; wisdom liberates. Information fills your head with noise; wisdom empties your head utterly, and a great silence is left behind.

That silence has a music of its own, a melody of its own.

The Zen people call it the sound of one hand clapping. There is utter silence, but still the silence is not dead. It is very alive, throbbing, pregnant, breathing, flowering. All those flowers are invisible; only you will know it, or those who have attained to that state will be able to know it.

Knowledge can be shown to people, it can be exhibited; wisdom cannot be exhibited. You know it, and those who know it will understand, will recognize. But the crowd will think you mad, because you are talking about things of which the crowd has no inkling, no experience – as if you are talking about light amongst the blind, or you are talking about Beethoven, Mozart, amongst the deaf.

Search within, seek within, because all that one needs is there, potentially. If one starts looking for it, it starts growing. Your very search feeds it, nourishes it, helps it to become stronger. Your very search, and the seed starts sprouting.

Anand Prema. Anand means bliss; prema means love. These are the most important qualities that one has to have before something like God can happen. People start seeking and searching for God without creating the necessary requirements, without any preparation. God is not far away, we are just not prepared. God is not far away, we are just not ready. Our unreadiness is the problem, not God’s distance. Our unreadiness is the only distance.

And these are the two things which will make you ready and ripe: be blissful and be loving. And forget all the nonsense that religions have been talking down the ages. Nothing else is needed: only a blissful and loving heart.

God knows only these two things. God has never heard about the Ten Commandments. He knows nothing about manmade morality and he knows nothing about the so-called great philosophical systems. He is not found in the churches and the temples; these are the very places which are utterly empty of God.

He is found in the loving heart, in the blissful heart. He is found when somebody is nothing but love, bliss. In those rare moments when your energy is dancing blissfully and you are ready to bless the whole existence, there is so much love in you... those are the moments. Suddenly the revelation, suddenly God is... and not far away but surrounding you, surrounding you from all the directions. Then only he is.

In blissfulness and love the ego dies, and when the ego is no more, God is.

Anand Pankaj. Anand means bliss; pankaj means lotus. Bliss is a lotus. It is the opening of the heart, and the heart is symbolized by the lotus. The word “pankaj” has far more meaning than the word “lotus”. Pankaj literally means that which is born out of the mud. The lotus grows out of mud. It is a miracle, out of dirty mud grows the most beautiful flower. It is very symbolic: it is out of the body, out of the mud of the body, that consciousness blooms. It is in the mud of life that God is known.

One need not escape from the world. One has to know the art of transforming the gross energies into the subtle, of transforming the base metal into gold, of transforming the mud into a lotus. Then dust becomes divine.

And we are all carrying the potential of becoming. A great blossoming is waiting for you. Just a little work, just a little effort, a little more alertness, a little more conscious living, and the lotus starts opening its petals. Life becomes fragrant, and life becomes a joy, a benediction.

Anand Sargam. Anand means bliss; sargam means music.

Existence consists of music. There is a celestial harmony: the stars are dancing in a certain tune. The trees and the rivers and the mountains and the planets are all joined together in a certain invisible orchestra.

Your body is also a miniature universe. In your body there are all the elements and they are all in a certain melody. They are not in conflict, they are not fighting each other; they are helping each other. The thread that joins all your elements, that keeps you together, is very subtle. You are almost like a garland: the flowers can be seen, but nobody can see the thread running through them which is keeping them together.

That thread is known by the mystics as the celestial music. It is a rhythm that is keeping the whole existence together. And that rhythm can be heard within your heart. Just silence is needed, because it is a very still, small voice. If the mind is too noisy you cannot hear it – hence meditation.

Meditation is nothing else but a means so that your mind drops its noisy patterns, so for at least a few moments it falls into a quiet, calm space. Then suddenly you hear that which you have never heard before – and it is within you, arising, welling up – a music divine, a music that has infinite bliss in it.

Once you are showered on by it, all joys of life simply become meaningless. Once you have tasted it, then there is nothing comparable to it. Then you can move through life without being disturbed by it or distracted by it. And you will remain for twenty-four hours a day in a state of orgasmic joy, because that music continues, it is an undercurrent. Even in deep sleep it is there, even in death it is there.

So one who has heard this soundless sound has become deathless. He knows what eternity is because he is eternal.

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