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‌CHAPTER 18

18 April 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand Tallis. Anand means bliss, tallis is the name of a poet. Your full name will mean a poet of bliss. And that you have to become.

Be as happy as possible. This is the right age – one can learn how to be happy or one can learn how to be unhappy, and then those patterns persist for the whole of life.

So from today start moving more and more towards happiness. Avoid unhappiness, don’t cling to any unhappy thing. Good, Tallis.

Anand James. Anand means bliss; james in Hebrew means a follower. The full name will mean a follower of bliss. Each being is searching for, seeking bliss; deep down each is following the source from where bliss arises. To be a follower of bliss is to be on the right track.

Don’t follow any doctrine, don’t follow any belief, but certainly follow bliss. Wherever you find any fragrance of bliss, that is the right direction. Go in that direction, explore it to the full, because bliss is the invisible symbol of God’s presence. It is just as when you come closer to a garden, the wind becomes cooler and fragrant. You know that you are coming closer to the garden; you may not be able to see yet. If you follow the track, the coolness and the fragrance, slowly slowly you will be able to find the source of it all. Bliss is the fragrance of God – follow it!

A man who follows bliss never goes wrong. A man who follows bliss for himself becomes a blessing to others too. To be blissful is to be a blessing to others; to be miserable means that you will create misery around yourself. The miserable person creates a miserable world. To be in misery is the only sin according to me, and to be in bliss, the only virtue.

Prem Jens. Prem means love, jens perhaps comes from john. In all the languages of Europe john has entered in one form or another, for a certain reason: he was the most beloved disciple of Jesus.

Hence it has become a common name in many languages. Literally it means God’s gracious gift. Your full name will mean: love, God’s gracious gift. Prepare yourself to receive the gift. Not that you have to become worthy – you are worthy already – but still, a few preparations are required.

For example, the sun has risen. You are ready to see it but your eyes are closed. You are worthy of seeing it but your eyes are closed. Just open your eyes – that is the preparation. The sun has risen but you are living in a closed room, with the windows and the doors closed. You are worthy of enjoying the sunlight, the warmth, the joy of being in the open, but there are a few things between you and the sun which have to be removed

All preparation is negative: it is removing something. Anything that obstructs has to be removed. And the only thing that obstructs is the mind, the thick wall of thoughts; it is thicker than the China Wall. Slowly slowly, brick by brick, we have to remove the wall. Once the wall is removed, God’s gift starts pouring into you. The taste of it is that of love.

Anand Karl. Anand means blissful, karl means man – a blissful man. The moment man becomes blissful he starts becoming divine. Bliss is the bridge between humanity and divinity. To be blissful means to be fulfilled as man, and the moment you are fulfilled as man, you are capable of surpassing, transcending. You are ready to take off. Man is not the end: man is only a journey. There is far more yet to happen. Unless man becomes a god the journey remains incomplete.

The greatest thing that can be of help is to be more and more blissful. And it all depends on you, because it is your choice: man is free to choose between misery and bliss.

So remember it: if you are miserable, you have chosen it – maybe unconsciously, but still you have chosen it. Don’t throw the responsibility on anybody else, because throwing the responsibility on somebody else is the greatest barrier in spiritual growth. Then there is no way to grow. If you take the responsibility – that “I have chosen it” – then it is for you now to choose or not to choose, or to choose the opposite. All the alternatives are open.

Man can create hell or heaven in his being. It is the same energy that becomes hell and that becomes heaven; the only difference is that of awareness. If you choose with deliberate consciousness you will never be a victim of accidents. If you start moving more consciously in your relationships; in your actions, you will be surprised that slowly slowly misery is not chosen any more. Nobody can choose misery consciously. Bliss starts being chosen more and more; consciousness can only choose bliss. Once the knack is in your hands you have the secret key.

Deva Patrick. Deva means divine, patrick means noble, nobility – a divine nobility. Man becomes noble only when he starts feeling the presence of God, otherwise he remains ignoble. Without feeling God, man has nothing higher than him, and life seems to be a cul-de-sac, an impasse. If there is no God, then man has nothing to look up to. No vision is possible, no aspiration.

Man becomes noble only when God starts having a place in his vision, when he starts feeling the presence of God close by. The closer the presence is felt, the more and more one becomes noble, graceful. Only a religious person can be noble; the irreligious can only pretend.

Nobility is one of the greatest arts. But one can cultivate it from the outside and that will be false. If it arises because of the feeling that God surrounds you, then it is spontaneous, then it is natural, then it is authentic.

Prem Brigitte. Prem means love, brigitte comes from bridge. Your full name will mean: love, the bridge. And that’s precisely what love is – a bridge between this world and that, between the known and the unknown, between matter and soul, between man and God. To be full of love is to be bridged with God; to be without love is to be lonely, unbridged. Hate creates a wall; love creates a bridge.

Man is so foolish that he goes on creating more and more walls. Rather than creating bridges, we create walls. Then we suffer and we feel imprisoned, but nobody else is responsible for it except ourselves.

One of the greatest enlightened masters, Mahavira, has said: Man is the greatest enemy of himself and the greatest friend too. If he creates walls around himself, he is his enemy; if he creates bridges, he is his friend.

Be a friend to yourself!

Anand Samuel. Anand means bliss, samuel means God has heard. Your full name will mean: be blissful – God has heard!

Prayer is significant only when it is heard by God. Otherwise one can go on praying and praying and praying; it is a dead ritual.

What is the situation, what is the space, the context, in which it is heard by God? It is heard only if it arises out of your heart. It should not be a mind thing; it should not be formal. A prayer is heard only when it is a love affair: when you are madly in love with the divine, when it is not an intellectual enquiry but a laving search. When prayer arises out of deep trust it immediately reaches the very center of existence. That’s what is meant by God. We are not disconnected from existence: we are rooted in it.

If something really happens in our deepest being it is immediately echoed by the center of existence. But if something goes on in the head – one repeats a Christian prayer or a Jewish prayer or a Hindu prayer because one has been taught it in the childhood, and one repeats it parrotlike – then it cannot reach.

Sannyas has to become something of the heart. Hence it is not a logical step but a mad jump. I am not trying to convince people to become sannyasins. I am seducing them certainly, but I am not convincing them... because in fact nobody can be convinced about God.

The function of the master is to seduce, to persuade, to slowly slowly take you by your hand so that you can take a few steps beyond yourself. Once you have taken a few steps beyond yourself you will be able to go further and further on your own, to the furthest shore!

Anand means bliss, Idama is very significant; it means thisness, suchness, is ness. To be in the present, to be now and to be here and nowhere else – that is the moment when bliss arises. And to live in suchness means that whatsoever happens, accept it, drop rejecting. Even if you are feeling sad, accept it; live in that suchness. One is sad, so one relaxes into one’s sadness; and immediately the quality changes. Then sadness starts having a beauty, a depth, a joy. It looks contradictory

but try, and you will be surprised: if you accept sadness, if you enjoy the flavor of it, soon you are celebrating it.

Whatsoever happens is good. It can’t be otherwise, because behind everything is God’s hand. So live in total acceptance; that is the meaning of suchness. And never go beyond this, because once you start going beyond this, the mind arises, thoughts arise.

If one can live in the present with total acceptance, bliss is bound to happen.

[A sannyasin, leaving, says: I am confused about all the different meditations and I don’t know which one is good for me.]

Which one did you enjoy the most?... It changes?

In fact it should be so, because life goes on changing. One day you have one mood, another day you have another mood; and with one mood one meditation fits...

So nothing to be worried about; you can go on changing. Whichever feels good, do; don’t fix it. But one meditation has to be done every day, whichever... just sit silently for five minutes and wait, and whatsoever arises in you, do it.

[A sannyasin says that on Osho’s advice he had arranged a job for a year prior to coming to the new commune. However he wants to be here.]

For these few weeks forget everything about it, mm? These few weeks, these few groups, meditations, will bring the clarity and there will be no problem; the decision will come on its own.

Start learning how to be more intuitive. Rather than deciding by the intellect, let your intuition decide it. Intellect needs thoughts; intuition needs silence. Become more silent, still, and then a still, small voice starts telling you what to do, what not to do. To follow it is always right. It never takes you on any wrong track.

One of the greatest problems with the modern man is that he does not know how to connect himself with his own intuition. Then there are always fifty chances of being right and fifty chances of being wrong. Whatsoever you choose you will remain confused, because choosing by the intellect means choosing one alternative against the other, and the other also has a few advantages. Sooner or later you will start thinking whether it was the right choice or not. If you had chosen the other, the same would have happened, because this alternative also has a few advantages.

Choosing by the intellect always brings confusion, repentance, and one always feels: “Who knows? – if I had chosen the other path, maybe my life would f have been better, more contented, more fulfilled.” But now there is no way to know, there is no way to go back either.

If you allow the intuition to choose, this never happens. Intuition knows no alternatives. It is very direct, immediate; it simply says “Do it”. It does not say “Do this or that”. It simply says “Do it”, and it comes so clear and so loud that one never looks back, one never feels any repentance.

Just remain here, meditate and keep it aside. Let the question wait; something will arise through your intuition. If it doesn’t arise, then remind me when you are leaving.

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