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‌CHAPTER 8

8 January 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Shubha means good, virtuous; anand means blissful, happy – goodness and blissfulness. And virtue is virtue only when it brings happiness; if it brings sadness and seriousness then something has gone wrong. Then it is the worst kind of sin. And that’s what generally happens: it is very rare to find good and happy people. They are too burdened with their duties, moral attitudes; their puritanism is too heavy. They live according to the commandments too much, and because they are not spontaneous they cannot be happy.

In life you will see that happy people are not good and the good people are not happy. Sinners you can find laughing and enjoying, and saints are always sad. This is a very ugly state; it should be exactly the opposite. That is the meaning of your name: you have to be good but you have to remember that goodness is goodness only if it brings happiness. To be happy is the basic virtue; everything arises out of it.

So don’t impose any commandments on yourself from anybody. Rather listen to your instincts, listen to your heart, and wherever the heart says happiness is, go there. And by being happy you will start becoming good. A happy person cannot be bad because a happy person cannot make anybody unhappy. We give only that which we have. So this is the whole philosophy for you to live.

Anand means bliss, kailash is a name for the Himalayas, a special name. The Hindu mythology believes that everything that is on earth is also in heaven – of course, far more beautiful. The Ganges that flows on the earth is only part of the Ganges that flows in heaven, and the Himalayas that are on the earth are part of the kailash that is in heaven. It is the ancient adage: ’As above, so below; as below, so above.

It is significant, because heaven cannot be a discontinuity with the earth. Wherever you are, whoever you are, there will be a continuity. The tomorrow will out of today and the other life will arise out of

this life. That is the significance of the myth, that this world is a miniature of that world. Everything exists here too, maybe in a lesser quantity, but we are not abandoned by god and the other world is not against this world. That’s to be remembered: the other world is just a prolongation of this... more glorified, more hallowed, but still a glorification of this.

Kailash is the Himalaya of heaven. Blissful kailash... And there is a message for you in it: meditate more and more on coolness, on the mountainous silence, on nature, on peaks, and that contemplation will be of great help to you. think of trees and rivers and mountains, get into the spirit of nature, imbibe nature more and more, relax more and more with nature. and then there is no need to find any other temple: nature is god’s temple.

Deva means divine, mada means wine.

Wine! (laughter) One has to be drunk with god – less than that is never effective; less than that is bourgeois, middle-class. One has to be utterly intoxicated. The english word ‘mad’ comes from the sanskrit word ‘mada’... but it has lost its beauty. In english, it has lost its beauty. In sanskrit it was used for someone who was mad for god; then it became an ordinary word in english – just madness, any kind.

All other madnesses are tiny, very small. Only the madness that happens when you fall in love with god is real, authentic, incurable. And I teach that madness which is incurable.

[The new sannyasin says: I’m a therapist; I live in California.I used to call it primal therapy but I

use it as a clearing process; I do other things with people. Mostly it’s growth work.] Now you have to do my work too!..

Help people towards me... because cleansing in itself is not enough. It is the beginning; that is one of the things to be understood. It is as if a man wants to create a garden he uproots, weeds, he throws stones from the soil, he prepares the ground but never sows the seeds. The weeds will start growing again, the stones will gather again. In time, that always happens. Anything that you have cleaned can’t remain cleaned forever; it will become unclean again. The very process of time makes it unclean. Again there will be blocks and again there will be garbage. The very process of living gathers dust, just as dust gathers on the mirror. You had cleaned it in the night; in the morning when you see the mirror, the dust has gathered.

Cleaning is a necessary process but not the end; one has to sow the seeds. And that is where growth groups are lacking. They do great work of uprooting weeds but then everything stops, and weeds will again come. Before weeds come up you have to plant roses. That’s where religion becomes relevant. Religion alone is not enough, that too is true, because there are people who go on planting roses anywhere and everywhere and they don’t think of the weeds that are there. Those weeds will suffocate the roses, they will kill the roses. The roses cannot exist long; those weeds will exploit the whole soil.

So a religion planted in a man who has not gone through group processes is a wastage, and a group process in itself is good but is just the beginning. That’s what I am doing here: trying to bring the whole humanistic psychology into close affinity with religion. Once humanistic psychology becomes

part of religion and religion becomes accepting of humanistic discoveries, man will be immensely benefitted.

Primal is very good. The agony has to be released, but what about ecstasy? That’s where again something goes wrong; one gets stuck in primal. Primal is a good thing but Janov is not a mystic! It is very good that the primal should happen, that the primal scream should come. When it has left you the weeds are uprooted – now the ecstasy, now meditation. Otherwise, sooner or later you will gather the scream again. This can become a vicious circle, and you can go on moving in a circle but you don’t grow. And once the ecstasy is sown, the scream will never gather again because the energy will be taken by the ecstasy.

Ecstasy is also a scream, but a blissful scream – not of agony, not of pain, but of joy. It is hallelujah! Once the roses have taken in a place, the soil has accepted them and they have accepted the soil, the weeds won’t grow because they will be nourished by the soil and the soil will be blessed by their presence. Then the soil itself will reject the weeds because now the soil knows that roses exist; then why have weeds?

Once you know that ecstatic exclamations are possible in life, then why scream? So introduce me into your groups. You do the cleansing and I will plant the roses!

[A sannyasin says she’s been in some difficulty lately since trying to be conscious of the present: The first time I consciously stayed in it, I wasn’t too afraid of it, I didn’t know what I was doing and it lasted a couple of hours. Then it started again yesterday and today and it’s been going on and off, on and off.… I’m afraid because I don’t know if I’m just going insane or... ]

Nothing to be worried about. You are already mad, so you cannot become mad! (laughter) You can drop all fear because there is nothing else that can happen to you anymore; it has already happened. It is perfectly good – you stay in it, mm? But just make it a point never to stay more than one hour. For one hour go into it intensely and totally. Put on an alarm and when the alarm goes, pull yourself out of it, so you will remain in control.

Or when you are going into it, just repeat three times very deeply, ‘... you will come out of it after exactly sixty minutes.’ Repeat it three times and then go into it, and after sixty minutes you will automatically come back. So the fear will not be there because you can go in and can come back. And the more you go in and the more you come back, the more you will become aware of the whole process of what is happening and the fear will disappear. The fear always disappears when you know a thing; when it remains unknown, fear exists.

Some beautiful space is growing in you. But it is scary because it is so new and is so out of the boundary of the mind. The mind knows only one thing which is out of the boundary – that is madness, so it immediately becomes frightened, apprehensive. But once you have become capable of going into it and coming out of it – consciously going in. consciously coming out – the fear will disappear. It is perfectly good. You go into it. But make it a point to do it for one hour, mm? And you will be able to; one hour will be enough. All that happens, happens between forty to sixty minutes, so more than that is just useless. It can linger on for hours but all that , happens always happens between forty minutes and sixty minutes. Then it can remain but nothing will happen out of it, so there is no need to waste time.

Just make it a point. go in it for one hour then come out. And when it is only for one hour you will go deeper because you will go more intensely. When it is spread over four, five hours, naturally you will not be so deep in it. Rather than making it lengthy, make it deeper; make it vertical rather than horizontal. But it is perfectly beautiful – I am happy!

[A sannyasin who leads the T’ai Chi group. She says she s been listening to the voices in her head and seeing how ugly they are. She reacts to them, feels disgusted and finds herself freaking out because of it.]

You are paying too much attention. It is rubbish and everybody is having that rubbish. If you pay it too much attention you will feel as if you are going mad. It is not worth paying any attention; ignore it. You are focusing on it too much, so it seems so big because of your focusing. It is as if you are looking at an ant with a magnifying glass. It looks like an elephant and it is just an ant. It is rubbish; there is no need to pay any attention to it. Simply ignore it.

My suggestion is: pay more attention to the world outside. There are so many beautiful things; why be concerned with your small head and the small things inside? It is such a beautiful world – so many stars and so many trees and so many people... You are losing balance, you are becoming too introverted. And for a few people introversion is dangerous. It is dangerous for those people who are not really introverts. You are not an introvert; your basic type is extroversion. You are not the one who closes his eyes and contemplates on the navel, otherwise you will see ghosts and you can go mad!

Forget about this. Get lost in things outside: dance and sing and meditate and meet people and forget about it. The extrovert has to find a different kind of way to reach truth; it goes through the other. The introvert does not go through the other; he has a short-circuit, he simply goes into himself. But even for introverts it is a difficult phenomenon to just be oneself and watch. Even for a natural introvert, for one who is a born introvert, it is a difficult phenomenon because you are left there alone. And the mind becomes so big, out of all proportion. because you pay attention and the whole world is forgotten; so you lose consciousness of proportion.

One can become moribund, morbid. And then it is very easy to fall into all kinds of hallucinations. That’s why the so-called mystics, monks, who go to the mountains, start hallucinating, because they go on looking inside themselves and there is no judgement, no possibility how to judge what is just a dream and what is real. All is a dream there. You have lost contact with reality; you don’t know how to decide. Sooner or later one becomes hallucinatory, one loses distinctions between reality and dreams and then there are dangers. Then a person can believe anything, that he has seen god or he has seen this and that and heaven and hell – and those are all just your projections, your creations.

This is so with a natural introvert and you are not a natural introvert at all; you are a natural extrovert. So it will be very very difficult for you. It will create tensions and anguish... and you can go mad! Don’t do it! Just forget about yourself. There are so many beautiful people; why bother about yourself? Get lost in others.

For six months just be an extrovert and then I will see. For six months forget about yourself; that is not important at all. Everything else is important except you; for six months that is your method and then we will see.

[A sannyasin ma asks: Why do all my lovers beat me?]

Start beating them! This is not good... this is not fair! You start beating them! No need to be worried about why they beat you; the problem is why you don’t beat them. That is their problem, mm? – let them come and ask! You start beating them.

(to Vivek) You have the whip? Tomorrow find a whip and give it to her. (to the sannyasin) I will give you a good whip! Nothing to be worried about. It is good; it is part of love. It brings a little spice into love.

You are with somebody right now? [She answers: Yes.]

So you give him a good beating (much laughter) and he will enjoy it. It is really... it is worth experiencing! And I will find something for you – a whip or something. Good!

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