< Previous | Contents | Next >
CHAPTER 11
11 April 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium
[Sybrand: It means burning iron or flaming sword. It’s actually the sword of the guards who protect paradise.]
Prem Sybrand. Prem means love – the fire of love, a burning love, a flame of love, or love aflame.
Man is alive only when love is aflame, when the heart is hot, otherwise man lives in a kind of ice- coldness. And to live in a cold way is not to live at all; it is a kind of slow suicide. One should live passionately, intensely, totally. One should burn one’s life torch from both the ends together, and then even if one only lives for a single moment it will bring contentment. Otherwise one can go on living for lives together – a lukewarm life will never bring any contentment.
Deva Stephan. Deva means divine, stephan has many meanings, but the meaning that I would like is garland; that is one of the meanings – a divine garland. Man can either be just a heap of flowers or he can be a garland; and the difference is much. The garland has a thread running inside it. The flowers are not separate; they have a certain unity, a togetherness. They are not just a crowd; the garland has an individuality.
Life remains just a heap of flowers if there is no sense of direction. Once the sense of direction has entered into your being, you start becoming a garland. And only the garland can be offered to God – not a heap of flowers.
You can become an offering only when you have a certain individuality, integrity, when you have a center. And that is the whole function of sannyas: to give you a sense of direction, to help you to become integrated, rooted, centered, to help you to drop all kinds of splits, divisions.
If your inner space can become one you will be surprised. The greatest surprise of life is there when the inner space becomes one. Suddenly you have arrived! You were searching so much, and there
was no need to search; it was already there inside you. But because the crowd is there, the noisy crowd, your own fragments quarreling in a constant civil war, you cannot see the space.
Once the furniture of the mind is removed, the space becomes available, and that is the space in which for the first time something of the divine is felt. In that space the first proof of God becomes available to you – not a logical proof but an existential proof.
Anand Ivanna. Anand means bliss, ivanna is the Russian form of john. John was the most beloved disciple of Jesus, so his name has become the symbol of the beloved disciple. Ivanna is the feminine form of john. Your full name will mean blissful, beloved disciple.
Sannyas means to enter into disciplehood. Disciplehood means opening up to receive the grace of the Master, becoming vulnerable to his presence, dropping resistance, all defense measures, all armor, trusting that even if the Master kills, one is ready. And the Master has to kill; in a certain psychological sense he has to destroy you before he can create you. Each disciple has to carry his cross, and each disciple has to be crucified, because only after the crucifixion is resurrection. You can be born anew, you can have a new being, but the old garbage, the old identity, the old ego, has to be destroyed.
A disciple is one who is so surrendered that even if the Master gives death as a gift, he will receive it with great gratitude. And then life, eternal life, abundant life, follows!
Prem Maurizio. Prem means love, maurizio means dark. Love has both the qualities in it: it is light and dark, it is day and night, it is life and death. One has to start from the dark side; the beginning is always in ’ the dark. Just like the seed that starts its life in the – darkness of the soil, or the child that starts its life in the darkness of the womb, all beginnings are in the dark, because darkness is one of the most essential things for anything to begin.
The beginning is mysterious, hence darkness is needed. And the beginning is so delicate, that’s also why darkness is needed. The beginning is also very ’ intimate, that’s also why darkness is needed. Darkness has depth and a tremendous power to nourish. The day tires you; the night rejuvenates.
So start moving into the darkness of love. The morning will come, the day will follow, but if you are afraid of the darkness then the day will never come. If one wants to skip darkness then the day is impossible. One has to go through the dark night of the soul to reach to the dawn. Death is first, then life is.
In the ordinary sequence of things birth is first, then is life, but in the inner world, in the inner journey, it is just the opposite: death is first, then is life.
Veet Marc. Veet means going beyond, transcending, surpassing; marc is the god of war. Your name will mean: going beyond violence, war.
For centuries man has been prepared to be at war with others and to be at war with himself. The god of war has been worshipped all over the world in different names. k is an ugly history. War is not what man is here for. Man is here for love. Man is here to grow in friendship, to go deeper into intimacies, to love more, because that is the only way of being more: to love more is to be more.
To fight is to be destructive; and it not only destroys others, it destroys you too, because whatsoever you do to others you have first to do it to yourself. If you love others, you have to love yourself first; if you fight, you have to fight with yourself. That is something very fundamental: that we can do to others only that which we have done to ourselves in the first place.
Drop all violence, all conflict, all competitiveness, all ambition; those are irreligious qualities. Love is the only religious quality. Learn more of love, enjoy love more. Surrender more and more to the god of love; that is the meaning of your name now. Going beyond the god of war means going into surrender to the god of love.
Deva Annelie. Deva means divine, annelie means grace – divine grace. Man unnecessarily struggles. We are defeated because we struggle too much. It is not that we are defeated because we don’t make enough effort; just the contrary: we make too much effort. There are things which happen only in effortlessness; there are things which come only as the grace of God. We cannot grab them, we cannot snatch them away; we can only be passive receivers. And that is the greatest art to learn, because all that is significant comes as grace. Love, meditation, joy – they all come to you. All that is needed on your part is to be available, receptive, welcoming.
Open the doors of the heart and become a welcome to God. And any day the guest comes; when the host is ready, the guest appears of his own accord. That’s my work here: to create hosts, open hearts, hearts which can become wombs, hearts which can be pregnant with God.
[The new sannyasin says: I find it very difficult to accept myself.]
It is difficult for everybody, because we have been taught not to accept ourselves; it has become an ingrained habit. No child is loved for his own being. , Hence the child starts learning one thing, that “I am not acceptable as I am; I have to earn acceptance. I have to do this and I have to do that, then I will be loved, but I cannot be loved simply, just by being myself.”
And that is being done all over the world, in every country, in every culture, more or less. Every child is poisoned by this. It is good that you are aware of the ; fact, because it can be dropped through awareness. It is just a hangover, a hangover from your parents, teachers, priests. They are all teaching one thing continuously, from every nook and corner they are conditioning everybody that “You are not of any worth unless you prove yourself. You have to prove your worth. Become a great painter, then it is good. Become a great politician, then it is okay. Become a great poet, then it is okay. But if you are just yourself, with no claim, then you are worthless.” This stupid idea has been taught to everybody.
This will disappear, because here we love you as you are. This whole milieu is to create the feeling in you that worth is not to be earned, that worth is intrinsic; whether you do anything or not, that is irrelevant. If you do, good; or if you don’t, that too is good: your being itself is beautiful, lovable.
Once this idea gets rooted in you, you will start growing. You will have a totally different flavor to your life. You will fall in love with yourself; and that is a basic requirement to love the world, to love others, to love God. The person who is not in love with himself cannot love at all.
Leave it to me; I will teach you! The work has already started. And next time you come, come for a longer period. Good.
Deva Paul. Deva means divine, paul means small, little – a divine nobodiness. The idea that “I am big,” that “I am somebody,” is the most foolish idea that anybody can have, and everybody has it, almost everybody. One may say it, one may not, but deep down everybody carries this idea that “I am special,” that “I am superior,” that “Nobody understands me,” that “Nobody knows my real value,” that “I am great.” That’s how the ego exists, lives, gets roots in your being.
Paul is a beautiful word. Be small. Know that “I am nothing.” Know that “I am nobody.” Become an emptiness, and in that emptiness something immense starts happening. That emptiness attracts something of the divine within you; that emptiness becomes overflowing love, overflowing bliss, overflowing God. One has to disappear for God to be.
[A sannyasin, arriving here for the first time, says: I was very afraid to come here.]
That’s a good sign! That means that something is going to happen. The mind is afraid only when something really deep is going to happen; the mind is never afraid of superficial things. It is perfectly capable of managing the superficial, but with the deeper it is at a complete loss.
When something of the heart is going to happen, the mind starts freaking out. It is frightened, scared to death; and in a way it is right too, because to move towards the heart means the death of the mind. When the heart becomes more alive, the mind starts fading out; its function is finished. It is a pretender, it is a pseudo-soul.
When the real soul arrives, the pseudo has to disappear. When you have come to know your original face you will drop the mask. The mask is afraid that “Now the time is coming and I may be dropped,” and it has been in control so long and in power so long. So whenever a sannyasin is afraid to come close to me, it is always a good sign!
< Previous | Contents | Next >