15

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‌CHAPTER 15

15 April 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva Allene. Deva means divine, allene means harmony – divine harmony. The only secret worth learning in life is the secret of being in harmony with oneself, with others, and with the existence itself. Ordinarily people are constantly in conflict; they are in conflict with existence, with others, and with themselves. This triple conflict is their whole life. Naturally it culminates in more and more misery. Misery is symptomatic of conflict. And so is bliss symptomatic of harmony. Not being in fight, but being in a kind of love with existence, in deep trust, harmony arises.

Conflict brings the ego; trust dissolves it. But one has to begin with oneself. The first step has to be taken in dropping all the inner conflict that has been taught to everybody: fight with yourself. So many things have been said to be wrong in you that the natural outcome is fight, and in fight only energy dissipates. Nobody ever wins, because the other part that you are fighting with is you. It is as if you are making both you hands fight: there is no possibility of either of them ever being victorious, but meanwhile your life is dissipated. Both your hands can be together, and then they can do miracles. Body, mind, soul, can be together and they can do miracles.

All that you have has some intrinsic value. Nothing has to be denied, everything has to be accepted, absorbed, then one becomes an individual. That is the first step and the first is the most difficult. Once you are in harmony with yourself, you suddenly find it so easy to be in harmony with others, because others only reflect you; they are mirrors. And when you are in harmony with others, the third harmony becomes very very simple; it comes so silently that one never even becomes aware that it has come. One becomes attuned with nature, existence.

This triple harmony is what makes you aware of God... it is divine.

Anand Manfred. Anand means bliss, manfred means a man of peace. Your full name will mean a man of peace and bliss. Peace alone is not enough unless it is overflowing with joy. Peace is good

but not enough; peace is a necessary condition for being blissful but it itself is not bliss. One has to be peaceful before one can be blissful, but one may get stuck there; one may never grow towards bliss. One may think “I have come home.” That feeling comes because peace is so beautiful that it seems that the journey has ended, it seems that one has arrived. Peace can give you the feeling of having arrived; and then it is dangerous, because unless bliss is attained, nothing is attained. Peace is only a means; bliss is the end.

Just to be peaceful is negative. It is a kind of emptiness, with no turmoil, with no noise, but it is kind of dead. Unless some flowers start blooming in it and some birds start singing in it, and some music arises, and one feels like dancing, unless peace becomes bliss and celebration, remember that one has not to get stuck in it.

It has happened to many people, that’s why I am saying it. Many monks down the ages – Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan – got stuck at the idea of peace. They thought “This is home.” It was only a resting place; the ultimate was still not available. They were ready to receive the ultimate but one step more was needed; and that step is of bliss.

When your silence starts singing, then you have arrived. Then your emptiness is not empty: it is fullness. It is empty and yet full. It is a very paradoxical experience: empty of all that is meaningless and full of all that is significant.

Deva Wilma. Deva means God, wilma means a resolute fighter – a resolute fighter for God. If one fights for oneself then one goes farther and farther away from God, existence, because fighting for oneself only integrates the ego. It makes it more and more crystallized, and when the false becomes very crystallized it is difficult to drop it. But to fight for God is a totally different matter, because the basic requirement is dropping of the ego, and that’s where resolution is needed.

The greatest resolution in life is to drop one’s own ego. There is none higher, none greater than that, and none is more difficult. It is almost impossible, but I say almost. It happens. It has happened. It can happen to you too.

The difficulty is: it is very easy to fight if the fight feeds the ego. Everybody is doing that; in his own way everybody is fighting for his ego. Everybody is searching for a kind of identity. Everybody is creating an edifice around himself of security, safety, so that the ego can hide behind a citadel.

That’s very easy; but to fight for God, the first requirement is: drop all your armor, all security arrangements. Be vulnerable, be helpless, be surrendered. And that’s what sannyas is all about: a resolution not to fight any more for the ego, but for God.

Anand Eva. Anand means bliss, eva means life. Life to me is synonymous with God. It precisely means God, and not only life with a capital “L”, but even life with a lower case “l”. All that is, is divine, and all that is alive is full of the presence of God.

Love life, and that is prayer. Dance with life, feel blissful that you are. Feel blissful for just being, and that is worship. Nothing else is needed. In love with life, in dance with life, in celebration with life, the whole religion is fulfilled. All else that goes on in the name of religion is just a cunning invention of the priests.

[A sannyasin who is leaving for three weeks, bursts into tears.]

I am coming with you – don’t be worried! I continuously have to travel without a ticket! Let us talk about good things:... Come back soon! And don’t be worried – you will find me continuously with you!

Prem means love, sampurna means perfect, total. Love either is or is not. If it is, it is perfect; if it is not, there is no question of its being perfect or imperfect. Love cannot be divided into fragments; you cannot have a little bit of it. Either the whole ocean is yours or not even a single drop. It is indivisible, so whenever it happens, it happens in absolute perfection. All other kinds of love are just deceptions. They are just play things to keep you engaged, to keep you occupied, illusions to live by.

It is very difficult to live without illusions because then there is nothing to live for; everything is an illusion. So we go on making illusions as if they are real, we go on believing in them as if they are real, and when one illusion is broken, shattered, we immediately create ten more.

Love is not an illusion: love is the experience of reality as it is. Love is not a projection of the mind. You don’t fall in love: you simply become love. You are not in love with somebody else; you are simply love. Then it is perfect, and that perfection has tremendous beauty and power.

You have a beautiful name... it has to be made your experience too. It is going to happen!

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