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‌CHAPTER 20

20 April 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand Kees. Anand means bliss, kees means tree – a tree of bliss. Man is also a tree; man also has roots. They are invisible but man is not without roots. Man is constantly being nourished by existence. Each of the senses is a root into the universe. From the eyes we are nourished, from the ears we are nourished; from each pore of the body we are nourished.

Man remains miserable if he simply remains a tree with great foliage but no flowers and no fruits; that’s the misery. Unless a tree blooms, something remains missing.

The moment the tree blooms there is blessing, bliss. Not only is one blessed, one becomes capable of blessing others too, because the fragrance is released to the winds.

My sannyasin has to be a flower – a flower of joy, a flower of celebration, a flower of song, basically a flowering. I am utterly in love with life, and there is no other God except life itself. So to live totally, to live with abandon, to live in the moment without any thought of the future and the consequences, to live consciously, is the whole of religion. No ritual is needed, no priesthood is needed, no temple, no church, is needed. Wherever you are in love with life there is the temple.

Anand Julius. Anand means bliss, julius means youthful, young. Bliss is always young, it never grows old. And sadness is always old, it is never young; because sadness is part of death and bliss is part of life. So if a person can remain blissful he remains youthful. The body becomes old – that follows the natural law – but the spirit always remains young.

To remain young is one of the most significant things in life, because it is out of youthfulness that all poetry is born. It is out of youthfulness that all joy arises. To be youthful means to be fresh, and to be youthful means to be adventurous. To be youthful means ready to learn; to be youthful means to be courageous. Only the young mind can risk, and without risk there is no truth.

The older in spirit one becomes, the less and less one remains capable of risking, because one gathers security, convenience, comfort, and one becomes afraid of losing something. And the moment you become afraid of losing something, you are encaged, you are imprisoned. Then you are no more free, you are a slave.

Remain young to the very end. A really alive person remains young even while he is dying. When Socrates was dying he was young. To the very end, to the last moment, he was so youthful, so curious to know about death, so enchanted, that he went again and again and asked the person who was preparing poison for him – because he was sentenced to death through poisoning – he asked again and again: How much more time will you take, because it is now time! Why are you making it late?

And the man who was preparing the poison started crying. He said: I am delaying it knowingly, so that you can live a little longer. But why are you in so much of a hurry to die?

Socrates said: Life I have seen; death I have not seen yet, hence I am more curious about death than about life.

This is youthfulness to the very end – the spirit of adventure, enquiry. If this spirit gets hold of you from this moment, from this age, it will transform your whole life. It will keep you fresh and flowing; and to remain fresh and to remain flowing is enough: one day the river reaches the ocean of its own accord.

Prem Gudrun. Prem means love, gudrun means divine wisdom. Your full name will mean love, the divine wisdom. Knowledge is of the head; wisdom is of the heart. Knowledge is intellectual; wisdom is intuitive. Knowledge comes through logic; wisdom comes through love. Those who remain interested in knowledge remain heartless, and the more knowledgable they become, the more heartless they become. And to be heartless is not to be alive at all.

Life consists in being heartful. The really alive person is just heart and heart and nothing else. From head to toe he is only heart. If you touch his hand, you touch his heart, because he is nothing else. Only in such a state of heartfulness are mysteries revealed; the doors of the divine open. For the intellectuals they remain closed.

There is a knowing that happens only through love, and that is the knowing worth knowing.

Forget all about knowledge and pour your whole energy into love. And following love a different kind of knowing which is not of words, which is made of pure experience, which is immediately felt as so, will happen to you. No proof is needed for it; it is self-evident.

That’s why mystics cannot prove anything about God; they cannot argue. As far as argument is concerned they are dumb. But that’s how it is: what can you say about love and what can you say about beauty and what can you say about music? And God is the ultimate music, the ultimate love, the ultimate poetry, the ultimate beauty. God is all that is ultimate; how can anything be said or proved?

Yes, God can be known, but not through the mind: through the heart. Let that become your persistent search from now onwards.

Anand Antje. Anand means bliss, antje means prayer – a blissful prayer. One can be in prayer formally as a kind of ritual. Then it is pointless, it is an empty gesture. It is simply wasting time. It is not going to be heard, because in fact it has not been done at all.

Prayer is true only when it is of the heart: informal, a love affair. The formal prayer always desires, demands. It is a means to some end. The true prayer is simply a thankfulness for all that God has already done. It is gratitude, and gratitude is always blissful. Desire is always out of misery, so the formal prayer arises out of misery and remains part of misery. The true prayer arises out of a kind of joy – the joy that “I am”, the joy that “Existence is”, the joy that “There are roses and stars and oceans”.

It is such a mysterious universe that surrounds you. Not to be aware of its poetry is to be dull and stupid. Not to be aware of the constant dance that goes on around you is to be completely asleep. The true prayer is an awakening, awakening... that “We are surrounded by a great mystery. Within and without there is a constant flow of joy going on, a song is there, a music persists.”

Become a blissful prayer. Then it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan – it is simply a prayer. It need not even be uttered in words: even bowing down will do. It need not even be a bowing down: just the feel is enough, just a stirring in the heart.

Prem Ingrid. Prem means love, ingrid has many meanings: the god of .fertility, prosperity, crops, and peace. Remember peace. Your full name will mean love and peace.

Peace can be without love but then it is cold, very cold. That’s how monks have been down the ages: peaceful but without love. It is a kind of stony peace – not warm, not alive, not dancing; no song arises in it. It is not worth anything; it is a very negative state.

There are people who have love but don’t have any peace. Their love is a kind of neurosis – noisy, much ado about nothing. Unless these two are together a man remains lopsided.

One should not choose either/or. Both have to be lived together; and that’s my effort here with my sannyasins: be loving and peaceful. Love should not be at the cost of peace and peace should not be at the cost of love. It is easier to choose one, but to live both needs great skill, and the name of that skill is sannyas.

The energy-field that I am creating here is just to help you to synthesize these two polar opposites, to integrate these polar oppo-sites into one phenomenon. When love is peace and peace is love one has arrived home.

Anand Jan. Anand means rejoice, jan means God has been gracious; it is a form of john – rejoice because God has been gracious. The grace is showering. The very fact that you are is enough proof that God has been gracious. There is nothing higher than life, and life has been bestowed upon you. There is nothing more precious than love, and the treasure is hidden in your heart. Man needs nothing except consciousness, and that has already been given. All that is needed for this immense journey into life is provided for. Because we have got it without any effort we are not aware of it.

Just think if you had to earn life. Just think if you had to earn love. Just think if you had to earn consciousness. Then you would have appreciated the value; but because they are given we take them for granted.

Don’t take them for granted. Feel grateful, and the only way to feel grateful is to rejoice, to dance with abandon. God has been gracious and God is constantly gracious! The more you rejoice, the more you will be able to see the grace, the more you will become capable of receiving the grace.

This is one of the most beautiful words, but become aware of the meaning, and not only verbally but existentially.

Anand Deva. Anand means bliss, deva means God – God of bliss. Bliss is the goal of all life: the trees are moving towards it, and the animals and the birds and all life is a groping for bliss. If you can find bliss you will find God too; bliss and God are synonymous. One can forget about God but one cannot forget about bliss. You can find a person who denies God, who says that there is no God, but you cannot find a person who denies bliss. Even the atheist is searching for bliss. That means that God is only a concept: bliss is the true thing. Nobody can deny it, nobody can reject it. It is impossible not to seek and search for it. Hence I say, bliss is God.

Anand Michele. It means exactly the same as Anand Deva: anand means bliss, michele means godlike. Bliss is the only experience that is godlike, that is divine, that gives you the feeling that God exists, that proves to you that God is. There is no other proof, no other proof possible. God cannot be argued about, for or against; people can only prove him by their own blissfulness. Become proof of God!

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