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‌CHAPTER 21

21 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, gandhraj is one of the most fragrant flowers. Literally it means ‘the king of all flowers.’ Bliss, the king of all flowers – that will be the meaning of your name. Bliss is a fragrance – like musk. The musk deer starts searching for the source from where this fragrance is coming and starts running hither and thither in the forest not knowing at all that the fragrance is coming from his own navel. He almost goes mad searching for it but cannot find it anywhere. Wherever he goes it is there, but still he cannot catch hold of it. That is the situation of man. Bliss is a musk fragrance. One goes on searching for it in money, power, in respectability, in a better house, in a better position in society, with a better salary, with a better woman. One goes on and on and it almost drives one mad because one cannot find it anywhere! It is somewhere within you.

Each person is a musk deer. One has to learn how to go in. One has to be utterly frustrated by the outside journey. One has to be really hopeless as far as the illusions of the outer world are concerned, and then suddenly a change happens. It is a sudden change – one does not move gradually from the outside to the inside; it happens in an instant. The moment you see the futility of the outside search it drops; it drops of its own accord. And suddenly you are in and you are at the very source of perfume.

That perfume is blissDo not search for it outside anywhere. Sannyas is the beginning of this

inward pilgrimage.

Deva means divine, rituraj means the season of spring. Literally it means ‘the king of all seasons.’ The full name will mean ‘divine spring’. Sannyas is the king of all seasons; it is spring. In the East orange is the colour of the spring because so many millions of flowers bloom: the whole forest looks afire.

Spiritually also, man blooms only in a certain season. You cannot grow roses in a desert. You will have to find the right soil for them, you will have to prepare the ground. That’s what sannyas is. It

is preparing the soil, it is finding the right field of energy where you can ride on the wave, where meditation is simply as easy as the opening of a bud in spring.

The ordinary world is not very helpful in people’s growth. On the contrary it harms because its vested interest is in your not growing. The more grown-up a person is, the more independent he becomes and more rebellious. He starts living on his own; that is his rebellion. He becomes less and less compromising because he is no more afraid. And the society becomes apprehensive about such people so it starts destroying the very possibility of growth from the very beginning. That’s why the mental age of a normal human being is only thirteen years. That’s a very very rotten situation – that when a person is eighty, his mental age is thirteen. So the body continued to grow but the mind has stopped long ago.

This creates a great split in the person; he has the mind of a thirteen-year-old person and the body of an eighty-year-old person, and the distance is tremendously vast; he cannot bridge it. He is constantly in conflict, always falling apart. It is a miracle how people somehow manage to remain together. It is not surprising that people go mad; the people who don’t go mad are really a surprise. How do they manage? Maybe they have managed by living at the minimum, by not living at all, by living a closed life. If you have only the mental age of a thirteen-year-old person, you will always remain dependent, you will always ask for a father-figure, some authoritative person to dominate you.

Now, people go on fighting for freedom, not knowing at all that freedom is not possible in this society.

This society creates only slaves. And the slavery is not something outer; the chains are not visible and the prison walls are not made of stone. The prison walls are very inner, transparent, and the chains are not there on your hands but deep down in your consciousness. And this is the fundamental of creating slaves: never allow them inner growth. Keep them as ungrown as possible; then they will always be hankering for somebody to dominate them.

On the surface they may talk about independence and freedom and all that nonsense, but deep down they will hanker and search for somebody who can dominate them. They will feel at ease only when there is somebody to dominate them and to order them. They resist, and yet they demand it, they ask for it. This is a double bind, this is a deep knot in their consciousness. They are against slavery and they are for it too. Now their whole life will remain a mess.

So in the ordinary world there is no possibility to grow unless one is very very intelligent, almost sly. That’s what Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples ‘Unless you are sly, you will not be able to get out of the prison.’ Unless you are utterly intelligent, he was saying – sly is his way of saying it – only then can you steal out of the prison. Otherwise it is very difficult, because the prison is not outside; it is inside you. You support it, you make it, you create it, and then you want to be out of it. Even when you are talking about how to get out of it, you are creating it. This is the dilemma.

Sannyas means freedom. Sannyas means standing on one’s own. Sannyas means allowing your growth to happen. This is possible only when you are in an energy field where it is supported, where you can get support, where you can get feedback, nourishing feedback. This is what is happening here: we are creating a small world of a totally different kind of energy. We are creating the season of seasons – spring, where it is hoped that a few people will gather courage, will not remain shy, will start blooming.

Deva means divine, atosh means discontentment – divine discontentment or discontentment for the divine; both mean the same. The people who are contented with their mundane life have no hope. They are contented with their houses, their families, their TV, their car, their money. They have no hope, because unless a great discontentment happens you never search withinwards. Unless you are utterly frustrated with the outside, there is no possibility of turning in. Unless one sees the futility of all that one is doing in the outside world one never looks up to heaven. People go on crawling on the earth never becoming aware of the starry night. They are continuously engaged, occupied, with the ordinary things of life. They cannot listen to the music of th rain falling on the trees, they cannot see the beauty of flowers opening up in the morning. They have no time, they have no space. They are not aware of the beauty of the sunset, they are not aware of the freedom of a bird on the wing. They are not aware of anything of significance. They will go on missing the music of existence.

To be a sannyasin means that now you will think of the sacred too, that now you will think of the within too... of beauty, of joy, of love, of meditation, of poetry. Think of these things too because these are the real sources of blissfulness. And the person is really poor who has not meditated upon the glories of life.

This is the meaning of your name. Become discontented with the world – that is divine discontent because it leads to the divine. Don’t be contented with the world, otherwise one remains mediocre, and to remain mediocre is to commit a suicide.

Great intelligence is born when you start searching for something higher – higher than you, bigger than you. Friedrich Nietzsche has said ‘The saddest day in humanity’s life will be when man will not think of surpassing himself.’ He is right. And it seems that the saddest day has come... it has come too soon. Nietzsche was here just one hundred years ago; within a century his prophecy is almost fulfilled. The major part of humanity thinks no more in terms of transcending itself. People have all become engaged with small toys, and meanwhile life goes on slipping by... a very precious life wasted in gathering rubbish.

Fortunate is the man who starts becoming discontented with the so-called world, and in whom a great discontent arises – a longing to reach to heaven, a longing for the moon. That’s what sannyas is all about: the longing for the impossible. But if you long intensely, the impossible becomes possible.

Deva means divine, bhavan means feeling. God is available only through feeling. And those who think about god think in vain. Their whole thinking is sheer wastage of time and energy. Thought is basically important to know god. Just as ears cannot see and eyes cannot hear, thought cannot connect with god – only feeling.

There can be no religion of thought, just as there can be no science of feeling. The scientist has to drop all feeling; feeling will be an interference in his work. He has to be utterly detached, unemotional, unfeeling, then only can he arrive to the objective truth. If he allows his feeling to infiltrate, his conclusion will be more subjective than objective; it will reflect his heart rather than the fact. So the scientific training is how to bracket out of your heart completely so that it doesn’t interfere. The scientist functions purely as a head.

Just the opposite is the case with religion: in religion you have to bracket out the head completely so that it does not interfere. Science is interested in the object, there, outside; religion is interested

in the subject, here, in. Their dimensions are diametrically opposite, their methodologies have to be different. If somebody tries to create a science through feeling he will go mad; he will never be able to create any science. That’s why in the East science could not grow; it is not just accidental.

The East has learned the art of how to bracket out the head, and that is the place from which science grows. Great religions were born in the East; in fact all the great religions belong to the East. Even Judaism and Christianity and Mohammedanism belong to the East, basically they are Eastern. But the East has not been able to produce even a single Albert Einstein, just as the West has not been able to produce even a single Gautam Buddha. And the reason is very clear – there need not be any confusion about it – they have chosen. The West has chosen to bracket out the heart.Then

great possibilities open for scientific development; in three thousand years technology has touched the very sky. Science has been developing in leaps and bounds.

In the East we have touched not the sky but the very depth of consciousness, the depth of the Pacific. Thought can know the object but not the subject. The subject is behind the thought, hidden; there is no way for thought to reach it. Feeling, the heart, can know the subject. And to know oneself is the beginning of knowing god.

So this is going to be your work: bracket out thinking for at least a few hours – when you are meditating, praying, dancing, singing; when you are moving inwards bracket out thinking completely. Just as sometimes when you don’t want anybody to interfere you take your telephone off the hook, like that, bracket out thinking – become completely oblivious of it – and feel. Cry, sing, dance, laugh, love... the whole spectrum of feeling. Paint, play... anything that is concerned with the feeling world. Be with the trees, animals, children – wherever thought is not needed at all – and you will be surprised that a great experience is waiting for you, the greatest ever, because science can only give us dead things; it is only relgion that can make us available to eternal life.

Deva means divine, ajeej means a friend – a divine friend. Become a friend to everything that is. Become friendly to existence – not to somebody in particular, but let friendliness become your very style of life. One is just friendly – to the stranger, to anybody that comes by; your heart throbs with friendliness. Slowly slowly it starts deepening, and then even wi I trees and rocks you will feel a great friendship. An the real life starts only when you have started feeling friendly to the whole existence, because then the existence starts revealing its secrets. There are many secrets but they can be revealed only to friends.

Yes, trees have much to say, and rocks too, but we keep a very closed mind. And we carry on a subtle, tacit enmity, as if we are afraid of everybody, as if everybody is potentially an enemy: that is our attitude. That’s what we have been taught – that all are your competitors, even friends are not really friends because they are also competing in the same world; they are your enemies.

So all friendship has become only a polite manner; it is no more existential. It doesn’t mean a thing – it is simply etiquette. It is just like a lubricant: it helps you to move in the world with a little bit of ease, that’s all. Otherwise deep down the tacit attitude is that of enmity, of always being on guard, that everybody is going to cheat you, that everybody is after you.…

Nobody is after you and there is nothing to cheat you of either. What can they cheat you of? We come in the world without a thing and we go from this world without a thing. Naked we come, naked we go, so who ca. cheat and of what? Why unnecessarily distrust people?

But this distrust is there and this is one of the fundamental reasons why man has lost contact with god because only trust can bridge you with god. And trust does not mean believing in a god somewhere sitting in heaven on a golden throne. Trust means trusting people, trust means trusting existence. Trust means dropping this tacit attitude of enmity. Trust means flowering into friendship.

The ordinary man’s attitude is this, that one has to take everybody as the enemy unless he proves otherwise. The religious person will have just the opposite attitude: everybody is good unless he proves otherwise. And even if he does prove otherwise, your friendship continues. Then you have even gone beyond religion, and that is the state which is called spiritual.

The irreligious person is one who lives in tacit enmity with the world. The religious person is one who lives in tacit friendship with the world but with a condition: if somebody really wants to harm him then he will be on guard. But the spiritual person cannot believe that anybody can harm him, because there is nothing to harm; it is impossible. That is the day of great liberation.…

[A sannyasin asks about her relationship. She feels hurt because her boyfriend is having an affair.]

Nothing to be worried about. You just do three things. One: go on living with him but start moving with other people also; otherwise you will be constantly in pain. And one should not become too addicted to one person – it is an addiction; one should remain open. Love is a need, and if you become addicted to one person and something goes wrong... which is more possible than something going right because people are living in such blindness, in such unconsciousness that the right almost always never happens; the wrong always happensSo there are a thousand and

one hazards in every relationship, but if the person is available to other people too then it doesn’t hurt so much.

And it is always good to enrich your experience. If he feels that in being with some other woman he is going to experience something then you will be foolish if you don’t enrich your experience of love. It is enriching – he is not wrong: it is always enriching because each person brings something so new that nobody else can do it. In fact because people have become too monogamous their love experience is very narrow.

It is almost as if somebody reads only one book in his life, again and again and again, while there are millions of beautiful books available. What will you call that man? He will say that he loves this book – that’s true – but his experience will be very poor. It is just as if you grow only roses in your garden and nothing else; it is good but it will be monotonous. Monogamy is monotonous and it creates a kind of boredom. In fact that’s why people start moving away. Whenever they have a chance they don’t miss the opportunity.

You were in a negative space, you were ill – he had an opportunity to move; he used the opportunity. And I will not say that there is anything wrong in it; he has not committed a sin. Now, you also need the same kind of courage. Use this time while he is with somebody else: explore a few more people. Who knows? – you may come across something very beautiful. It is only known by exploration; there is no other way to know about it.

Each person is a book, and what you see is only the cover. When you enter into love you start reading his inner script, and the more you know people, the better. If you also move with some

people and he is moving, and by fate, by chance, you come together again, you will both be enriched. Now, if you stop moving with anybody – and that’s the tendencyWhen a woman sees that a man

has started moving with somebody, she becomes absolutely closed to anybody else because she is afraid that if she starts moving then all possibility is lost. She may get really hooked with somebody. One thing.…

The second thing: she will not be able to create the guilt in the other person who has started moving. Now, not moving with anybody you will be miserable: that will create guilt in him. That will keep him miserable deep down: he is torturing you. That is a subtle strategy – you may not be conscious of it – a very subtle strategy to dominate. Even when he is with another woman he will constantly remember ’[She] is suffering.I am making her suffer. She will be waiting there in the hut, crying

and weeping, and what am I doing?’ You will follow him like a shadow, a sadness, and whenever he sees you he will feel guilt. This is the strategy that goes on deep down in the unconscious.

Never be a victim of such strategies – they are uglyalthough you can always find beautiful reasons:

‘I don’t love anybody else. I love only this person, that’s why I am waiting, and I will wait.’ But in your waiting actually what you are doing is forcing the man to recognise the fact that you loved him more than he loved you. It is a very egoistic stance.

No need! If he says that he is learning something with some other woman, then you say ‘This is perfectly good – you learn something – I will also learn meanwhile, so when you come back you don’t find me uneducated. If ever you come back you will be new, because you will have learned something. I must also be ready to receive you with something new that I have learned.…’ In this way you will be opening, your misery will disappear, and you will be helping him also to get rid of the guilt.

And things are very complicated. For example, the moment he feels that you have started moving with somebody, he may start coming back to you. There is a tendency in the human mind so that whatsoever is available starts looking useless, and whatsoever becomes beyond your reach, you start thinking about again. If you go on waiting he knows that there is no hurry; he can come back any day and you will be there. He will be coming as if he is obliging you.

Start moving so he knows that now, if he wants to decide, he has to decide, otherwise things will have gone too far; there may be no chance of returning. Giving him a chance also to think.…

And another thing: he may be just moving away from you because you are creating this guilt in him. Nobody wants to feel guilty, and nobody wants to live with a person who is creating guilt. The moment you start moving away, you have taken the old load from him – that he is not doing anything wrong, that he is not guilty – you are doing the same, so everything is perfectly okay. That will be easier for him to think about and ponder over – the weight of the guilt will be removed.

And sometimes it happens that when you see that a woman is waiting for you, she remains your shelter and you can go on fooling around; you are always aware that there is a home where you can always go. When the home starts disappearing, the base starts disappearing, then one has to think ‘What am I doing? Is it worth fooling around?’

Now he is not losing anything – there is no risk involved! And men have been doing that trick down the ages. They would like a wife who is a shelter and they would like a girlfriend alsojust for a

change. But if they are given the choice, to choose between the two, every possibility is that they will choose the home because the home means many more things.

So don’t go on sitting in misery. And if you live in misery and after a few months, a few weeks, he comes back, your misery will have become your habit and you will not be able to drop it. That will be again something that will take him away from you. So don’t be miserable, and the only way not to be miserable is to be flowing, loving, moving with people, so when he comes he finds you happier than he had ever known you before.

Always remember: people fall in love with happy people. Nobody wants to love a sad person. If you want to be sad, you can be sad on your own; there is no need to go to anybody. Sadness is such a thing that you can sit in your room and be sad – it needs nobody’s support and nobody’s help. But happiness is not so easy. Yes, there is a possibility that one can be happy alone, but that needs a long journey, a long inward journey of exploration.

But to be unhappy alone is very simple, so if a person wants to fall in love with somebody, that simply means that he is tired of being alone and tired of the unhappiness. Now, if he sees that the other is also unhappy and sad, then what is the point? This he can do on his own; he himself is an expert!

Remember: becoming sad never attracts people, and if it sometimes does, it attracts wrong people. There are people – psychology has a special name for them; they are ‘sadists’. They don’t want to love; they only want to sympathise. Whenever they see that somebody is in misery they enjoy the idea of sympathising. They are higher and you are just there, at their mercy, and they feel very happy.

It happened once that a friend of mine wanted to marry a widow. In India it is a very revolutionary step to marry a widow; nobody wants to marry a widow. He was thinking that he is very revolutionary and this and that, and I said ‘You are simply a sadist.’ He said ‘What do you mean? I had come thinking that you will appreciate it! I am just marrying her because she is in such suffering. She is continuously sad, miserable; I want her to be happy again.’

I said ‘Okay, you marry her and then I will see you after three months. Remember one thing: she is suffering because her husband is dead, and once she gets another husband she will not suffer anymore. And your interest is not in her – your interest is in her suffering. When she is no more in suffering then what will you do? Then the only way to make her suffer will be to commit suicide. Then she will be again a widow and she will again suffer and will be available for some other sadist to help her.’

He was very angry – he said ‘I cannot believe what you are saying to me.’ He got married and exactly after three months I knocked on his door and said ‘What is going on?’ He was very ashamed. He looked downwards and he said ‘You were right. The day I got married, my whole joy disappeared.’ His whole joy was in the revolution that he was making! It had no concern with the woman; there was no love, no affection, no caring. He was enjoying an ego trip of ‘I am a revolutionary, and that which nobody can do, I am going to do’ but once you have done it, then? And the woman certainly became happy because she was again married and everything was okay, but this man started becoming uninterested in the woman. His whole interest was in her sadness.

So if a person is sad, wrong people become attracted – beware of it. If he comes to you because you are sad that will be not a right coming. And that’s what you are waiting for, thinking ‘I am so sad, so miserable, that he is bound to come. After all he has a heart, he is sensitive; he will feel for my misery’

So start moving and flowing with people and forget all about it. These things happen and they are all good; they are part of growth. One has to learn all kinds of pains and pleasures, agonies and ecstasies; that’s how life becomes rich. Between these two poles, between these two banks the river flowsAnd basically you are not a miserable type, so there is no need to get into it. Just be free

and tell him also ‘Don’t feel guilty – you enjoy it; maybe it is needed. Whatsoever happens is good!’ So give him all your blessings and tell him ‘Don’t be miserable and don’t feel that I am miserable. I am starting my own journey and I am thankful that you have freed me. You also be free, I will be free, and if sometimes it happens, we will meet out of freedom, out of joy’

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