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‌CHAPTER 6

6 April 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, nirup means formless. Bliss is not an object, so it can’t have a form. Bliss is an experience, hence it is invisible, intangible. You cannot hold it in your hand; you cannot give it to anybody. Nobody can take it away from you. It cannot be stolen, it cannot be robbed. Not even death is capable of taking it away, because it is not a thing; it is a no-thing. Hence Buddha says: It is a nothing. It is a formless experience. That is the meaning of your name. That is the ultimate that happens in meditation.

One comes to know a formless bliss, and in knowing it one also becomes formless. It is a kind of disappearance of all forms – the knower and the known – and still, one is. Not only that one is: one is utterly blissful. That one is God.

Anand Hiltraud. Anand means blissful, and hiltraud we will make mean trust – blissful trust.

A trust can be out of despair, but then it is not true, because despair cannot really trust; it can only doubt. It can pretend to trust out of helplessness, but that is not the trust that grows in the heart; it is just a mind phenomenon. One is tired of doubting, tired of thinking, and one takes shelter in trust. This is a negative trust, an impotent trust; it cannot transform you.

The real trust is not out of despair and helplessness: the real trust is out of joy, out of celebration, out of love, out of blissfulness. The real trust happens only when you start becoming more and more sensitive to existence: you feel more, you see more, you hear more. Then slowly slowly you start growing a new sensibility which makes available to you the hidden, the invisible.

Then you not only see the trees and the rivers and the mountains, but the hidden hands of God. Those are there in the trees, in the rivers, in the mountains. We just need penetrating eyes so that the circumference does not hinder us from seeing the center. And that transparency happens only

when you are blissful. A blissful person is a person with eyes; and a sad person is a person with no eyes, he is blind.

Learn to be blissful and let trust grow out of that blissfulness. This is your work, this is your sannyas.

Deva means divine, maurice means darkness – divine darkness. It is very easy to understand that light is divine, hence all the scriptures say: God is light. But unless darkness also becomes divine you will remain half, you will never be whole; because darkness is as much part of existence as light. They are not really two separate phenomena but two polarities of the same energy. Darkness is one extreme of the same energy, as light is the other extreme.

One has to be capable of loving darkness too. Then darkness becomes luminous, then darkness is transformed into light. By darkness I mean all that is known as dark; for example, death. If your God is synonymous with life, then what are you going to do with death? Then your vision will have to deny death. You will not be able to accept it, and if you cannot accept it you cannot be whole.

If your philosophy of life only accepts flowers and rejects the thorns, your philosophy of life will remain partial. A partial philosophy of life creates a partial human being, and a partial human being is a miserable human being because the part can never be happy; something is always missing. The part is not whole, hence it cannot be happy. All happiness is in wholeness.

That’s my basic approach: that God and devil have to disappear into each other and become one. All dualities have to be transcended, and this is the basic duality: darkness and light, life-death, devil- god, good-bad, beauty-ugliness. The moment one can see that both are the same, the moment one is capable, large-hearted enough to accept both without any choice, the moment one is simply choicelessly aware of the duality of existence – that moment is the moment of transcendence. One attains in that moment, one comes home.

Anand means bliss, geoffrey means God’s peace. Your full name will mean God’s blissful peace. Two things to be understood... One: peace is always from God; it is not something man-made. We cannot create it; we can only receive it. So one has to learn how to receive. One has to learn how to be open. One has to become a welcome to existence and to all that existence implies. There are tremendous beauties all around but we are closed. The benediction is constantly showering on us but we are unaware of it.

God’s peace is always waiting for us but we go on ignoring it; we have other things to do. We have too much occupation. The world is too much with us and we are too much with the world. We don’t give God a chance. Even in sleep we go on dreaming and thinking and planning. Only for a few moments in the night when dreaming stops does God’s peace descend on us. It is those few moments which rejuvenate us, which refresh us, which make us alive again. In the morning we feel something lingering, something like a fragrance. It is not very visible, you cannot catch hold of it, but if you have slept a good night’s sleep, a dreamless sleep, then in the morning you have the feeling that you have been somewhere, to some deeper realm of your being, that you have not been your ordinary mind; that you had slipped down into some depth, and that your energies are reoriented; that your roots are watered, that you are again full of zest and full of energy; that you are again ready to live, to love, to be.

But even those few moments are disappearing from the modern mind. Hence meditation has become an absolute necessity. It was not so in the past; people could have afforded not to meditate. But now it is not a luxury, it is a necessity – far more important than bread and butter.

Jesus’ statement, that man cannot live by bread alone, is only half. The other half is: man needs meditation to be really alive. Meditation is food for the soul, because in meditation God’s peace descends in you, surrounds you, refreshes you, gives you a shower. You are bathed and you are again new.

The second thing: peace can be negative or peace can be positive. If it is negative then it is simply a kind of withdrawal, a disinterest, an indifference to life, to existence. One is no more interested; life has lost all joy. This is the peace that so many saints in the monasteries experience; it is the peace of the cemetery. Of course when you are not occupied and when you are not in the world, you attain a certain kind of stillness, but it is negative. It is not dancing, it has no song in it. It is stagnant, it has no flow in it.

So the real peace has to be also blissful, cheerful, dancing, singing. That is the second thing to be remembered: peace alone, in itself, is not enough, because it can be negative. It has to be overflowing with joy. Then it is not the peace of the cemetery but the peace of a garden where birds sing and flowers bloom.

[A sannyasin, leaving, says she is afraid to go to the West.]

It’s always... the fear is always there, and when you go from here it is very natural.…

Come back again. And this fear will disappear. Once you are there, within three to four days it will be gone It happens to every sannyasin, Mm? This becomes your home; you start living in a different kind of energy system and a different energy-field, and then in going to the world you feel hesitant. You feel you are going into something which is not going to fit, you will be in a discord; that is the fear. But there is nothing to be worried about.

Just continue one meditation every day, whichever you choose. That will help you and that will keep you connected with me. Whenever you need me just put it (a box) on the heart, Mm? – within three, four days the fear will disappear.

And come back again. Help my people there. Good.

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