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‌CHAPTER 22

22 October 1978 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Anand Rupen – Bliss beauty]

Bliss is the ultimate state of consciousness. Bliss is not possible unless the mind is completely gone. It is the absence of the mind; it happens only in the absence of the mind. And the mind is the source of all ugliness, all negativities – hatred, anger, jealousy, possessiveness; all that comes from the mind. And when the mind is gone then something totally new starts happening: love, compassion, gratefulness. Those are not the qualities of the mind; they are the qualities of no-mind, and they make one beautiful. It is bliss that beautifies.

No-mind has two aspects. One is: inwardly you become utterly blissful and outwardly you become utterly beautiful. Only a blissful person is a beautiful person; only a Buddha, a Jesus.…

There is a parable not related in the Christian scriptures but Sufis have it, that Jesus had been walking the whole morning and then he came to the place where he wanted to rest, so under a big tree he rested. That tree and that place belonged to Mary Magdalene; that was the first time she saw Jesus, resting under the tree. She could not believe her eyes. She was a prostitute, she had known the most beautiful men possible, but she had never seen such beauty, such grace... and the man looked like a beggar! She could not believe her eyes. She came to Jesus, waited for him to wake up and when he was awake, she invited him to the house and told him ‘Come to my house. Stay there for a few days, rest there.’

Jesus looked at her and said ‘I have already come into your house, I have already rested. Your invitation is enough.’ But she felt offended. That was the first time a man had refused her. Many times she had refused men – she was a beautiful woman – but no man had yet dared to refuse her. She was hurt; she said ‘Can’t you show a little love towards me?’ and Jesus said – and it is of tremendous significance what he said – ‘Only I can love you; others only pretend.’

The blissful person becomes beautiful, the blissful person becomes love. He is not only loving – he becomes love itself. That’s the meaning of your name.

Gyan means wisdom, Rasiko means a lover – a lover of wisdom. That is exactly the meaning of the word ‘philosophy’. The original meaning of philosophy is ‘love for wisdom’. It lost the track; it become more and more ‘love of knowledge’ rather than ‘love of wisdom.’ In the West it has taken a totally different route. The concern became how to know more; the concern became more and more extrovert. The basic enquiry of knowing oneself was lost, and ‘know thyself’ is the beginning of all wisdom.

The first thing necessary is to know oneself, because that is to be the first step. If I don’t know myself what else can I know? If one cannot know even oneself then all else is impossible. In knowing yourself you have put down the right foundation; now the temple can be built. Now you can know others and you can go on growing in your knowing.

And this knowing that is based on self-knowledge will have a totally different quality; it will be wisdom. The person who does not know himself and knows many things is knowledgeable but not wise. He is functioning only like a computer. He only stores information, he is a storage system; he has a good memory. And the human brain is infinitely capable. The possibilities are the one single human brain can contain all the libraries of the world. That much potential is there in the human memory. But memorising means that others have known; you have simply collected the data, information. But this is not authentic because this is not yours. It has not grown in you, you have not produced it on your own; you have not been creative.

It is like adopting a child. You can adopt a child and become a parent but in reality you are not the parent. To carry a child in the womb, to live with the child in a togetherness for nine months and then to suffer the pain of the birth of the child, the whole arduous journey of bringing up the child... that makes one a mother. You can simply go to an orphanage and adopt a child, but you have not suffered for it, you have not earned it. You will only be a mother for the name’s sake. But motherhood is not possible this way. Motherhood cannot be borrowed – it has to be attained.

So is the case with wisdom: wisdom has to be attained. It is a pilgrimage into one’s own being. Knowledge is adopted – it is cheap. Wisdom is costly, and unless one is in deep love with truth, one cannot sacrifice so much. Only love knows how to sacrifice, and sacrifice blissfully. Only love knows how to sacrifice and yet feel grateful that one was allowed to sacrifice.

Veet means beyond, transcendental, manaso means the mind – beyond the mind. The mind is the whole faculty of thinking, the whole process of thought; the traffic of thought is what the mind is all about. We are not it. We are like a mirror, reflecting whatsoever passes in front of the mirror. Anger arises – you are the watcher of the anger. You know that now you are angry, so you cannot be anger; otherwise who will be left to know? Then anger goes and you know that the anger is gone. Love arrives and you know love has come.

But for so many lives we have lived with this idea, we have been taught this idea again and again, that you are your mind. So an identity, a false identity of course has arisen. So when anger comes, you become identified with anger; you start thinking that you are anger... and you are not!

This identity has to be broken. This is the whole goal of all meditations – to break this identity. We have become welded to the mind. Once this is broken there is a great surprise; one cannot believe how much one has suffered for one stupid thing – that identification... how many hells one has lived for no reason at all, just because of a misunderstanding. Man’s whole misery is just a misunderstanding. That’s why Buddha says again and again ‘All that is needed is right understanding.’ That’s all that is needed, nothing else – a right perspective, a clear-cut vision of what is what. The mind is not you.

From this moment start watching. There is no need to strain – just in a very relaxed, calm, quiet way, start watching. Slowly you will become aware that the mind is an activity that surrounds you, but you are beyond the activity. just hovering above it. You are a mirror that reflects everything; you are consciousness. The deeper this experience goes, the less miserable one becomes. Then anger comes but it does not stay long because there is nobody to receive it, there is nobody to cling to it, there is nobody to get attached to it. It comes and goes. Its visitations will become less and less, far and few in between. And so will be the case with so many things that one was constantly surrounded by. And one day it starts happening: moments pass and there is nothing to reflect. The mind is utterly silent... not even a ripple of thought. Those are the great moments, the first glimpses of samadhi, of enlightenment.

And when the first glimpses have come then the ultimate is not far away. It is like the morning: if you have seen that the east is becoming red then the sun is not far away... just below the horizon, just coming up.

So that has to be your work, and that is the work of every sannyasin too: to recognise the fact of ‘I am transcendental to my mind. The mind is my faculty but I am not it.’

Prem means love, anand means bliss. Premananda means: love blissbliss that arises out of love,

bliss that follows as a shadow of love, bliss that is a consequence of love. Love means falling in unity with the existence, dropping the illusion of separation, not being an island, becoming one with the whole that surrounds us.

Man can exist as an ego or as love. Ego means a state of frozennessLike a cube of ice. Love

means the state when one has melted. The ice is no more there – it has become water, flowing. If you drop an ice cube into the ocean it will still remain separate unless it melts.

We are taught by the society to become egos – the work of a master is to undo that. So let this be the beginning of a great undoing. You have to disappear; then there is love. If you are then there is violence, because the ego can exist only in constant conflict. Conflict is its nourishment. It knows only how to fight – it thrives on it.

The ego does not allow love to happen. They cannot exist together, there is no possibility of their co-existence; it is a question of either/or – either ego or love. And sannyas means that one has decided to choose love against the ego. The bliss comes of its own accord.

Deva means divine, apurna means imperfection – divine imperfection.

The desire to be perfect is the most ugly desire. It is nothing but ego projection; it is the ego that wants to be perfect. All the perfectionists are egoists. Their desire to be perfect is a camouflage for the ego. And the desire to be perfect is the root cause of all neurosis.

The perfectionist is bound to be neurotic because he is asking for the impossible. And when you ask for the impossible you will be in trouble, you will be in anguish and you will be constantly frustrated with life. You will be frustrated with yourself and with everybody that you come across, because the perfectionist not only wants himself to be perfect; he wants everybody else also to be perfect. So nobody comes up to his standard; everybody falls short. He is constantly in a condemning mood; he hates himself, he hates others. And that’s what has been taught by the so-called religions up to now.

My teaching is radical. I teach you to be utterly happy in your imperfection. One should love and accept oneself as one is; one should not desire something else, somebody else; one need not be somebody else. You are accepted by god as you are – nothing is missing; this is the way he wants you to be. So drop all shoulds and all oughts. There is no need of any should, any ought. The is is beautiful, and to be in the is, is to be contented, to be blissful. It really needs guts to accept one’s imperfections; they are there. Remember, the part cannot be perfect. Perfection can only be the quality of the whole; the part cannot be perfect. The part does not exist apart from the whole. How can it be perfect? It cannot even exist on its own. The very idea of perfection is stupid.

Instead of perfection I teach the idea of totality. Be total in whatsoever you are doing but don’t bother about perfection. Once perfection starts haunting you, you will never be at peace, you will never be at home. You will constantly create a nightmarish life. You will create hell for yourself because everything will look imperfect; nothing will be satisfying. And this idea has been forced into the human consciousness so deepy that it is creating havoc.

Each man is in search of a perfect woman, hence no woman is satisfying. Each woman is in search of a perfect husband, perfect man, and you cannot find one... so whosoever you find falls short. Every person is trying to be perfect and one cannot be, so what happens? People become hypocrites; they are not perfect but they start pretending, because if you cannot do it then at least you can pretend. That saves face. Deep down they remain imperfect and on the surface they paint themselves as perfect. Their life becomes a lie, and to live a lie is to be miserable. Only truth liberates, and the truth is that the part cannot become perfect. The truth is that the part has to enjoy itself as it is.

The dewdrop has to enjoy itself as a dewdrop; there is no need for it to hanker to be the ocean. Why? The ocean may be beautiful but the dewdrop is also beautiful in its own right. In the early morning sun, the dewdrop on the lotus leaf has such beauty – who bothers to become the ocean? It contains the whole. It contains that which fulfils.

There is no need to become something big, something extraordinary – to be ordinary is so satisfying. And to live an ordinary life is to be grateful to god, thankful to god: ‘Whatsoever you have given me is more than I can ask for...’ and out of that, prayer arises.

So I am giving you one of the most beautiful names possible, and my whole philosophy of life is contained in it.

Deva means divine, ruparahi means on the path of beauty. The old religions were very much against beauty because they were against life itself, because they were against love. Beauty provokes love. They were against the world, and the world is utterly beautiful. And because they were against

the world, against life, against love, against beauty, they created very insensitive people, obviously; there is no possibility to grow in sensitivity. If beauty is not respected, appreciated, enjoyed, all your sensitivity will die: The old religions were not sensuous, and whenever a man is not sensuous, he starts dying; he loses contact with the living forces of existence.

I teach a sensuous religion. I teach a sensitive religion. And to me, beauty is far more valuable than truth. Truth is only an aspect of beauty... a face of beauty. Beauty is god himself. I teach a very artistic religion. And aesthetics to me is like ethics was to the the old religions; aesthetics is my ethics. If you are in love with beauty you will not do anything wrong – that is enough safeguard – because to do anything wrong you will have to do something ugly. The man who loves beauty will not be able to assert a lie, because a lie is ugly. His sensitivity towards beauty will certainly prevent him from doing many things that he could have done if he was not sensitive enough.

And the old religions have all failed. They produced a few rare beings – a Jesus, a Buddha, here and there – but it is not worth counting. If you plant a million trees and only one tree becomes fruitful you are not much of a gardener. In fact if that one tree has become fruitful, has bloomed and flowered, there is every possibility that somehow it has missed the art work that you were doing. It is not because of you but it is in spite of you. It is an exception; somehow it missed the gardener. Otherwise the gardener who has killed one million trees cannot be expected to create this beautiful tree. The older religions have all failed. They cannot claim Jesus, Buddha and Krishna – these people must have escaped somehow from the old religion’s grip. They really escaped. Jesus escaped from Judaism; that’s how he bloomed. Buddha escaped from Hinduism; that’s how he bloomed. These were the people who somehow escaped the traditional way of life.

Religions have not yet been creative. They have been, on the contrary, destructive, very destructive. And my own observation is that they became destructive because of their life-negative attitudes. Life has to be loved, lived, worshipped – that is the meaning of your name.

Satyam simply means ‘the truth’, with nothing attached to it, with no strings attached, with no adjectives... just the truth – not a belief in truth, not any doctrine about truth, not any philosophy, but simply the truth. The truth means that which is. Take a dive into that which is with no idea of what it is, because if you have some idea that will be a hindrance, that will be a prejudice. And if one goes with a prejudice into the enquiry, the enquiry is foredoomed. You will come out of the enquiry with all the proofs in favour of your prejudice.

Life is so vast and so contradictory, so paradoxical, that if you start with a prejudice you will find all the arguments for it. If you start with another prejudice just the opposite of the first, you will find arguments for that too. Life is vast – it contains all. If you believe in one thing again and again you will come across a thousand and one proofs that this is the truth. That’s what people go on doing. The Christian finds all the truths that prove his Bible, and the Hindu finds from the same sources all the truths that prove his Gita, and the Mohammedan and the Jew and everybody. The source is the same, but their doctrines are very much in conflict.

The real seeker will not start with a conclusion. To start with a conclusion is to deny truth, is to falsify it from the very beginning. The real seeker simply starts with an open mind. An open mind means no prejudice, no conclusion, no belief. The real seeker is a blank paper, empty. He has nothing to prove – he simply goes into that which is to know what is the case.

It is going to be hard. To start with a conclusion is easy because you are already settled, you have a shelter. But to start with no conclusion means that you don’t have any roots anywhere. The whole of life will impinge upon you. And it is contradictory, it consists of polar opposites: night and day, summer and winter, life and death, negative and positive. The whole will impinge upon you; you will be almost in a chaos. You will feel lost, you will not feel that there is any shelter for you by which to survive. This is the price the seeker has to pay: life becomes maddening.

And it is in this moment that a master is needed. One can start the journey on one’s own, but when life impinges upon one from all the directions, and one is lost in a cloud of unknowing, then somebody is needed. Not a conclusion, not a prejudice, but a living presence, a loving presence, who can go on nourishing you, who can go on calling to you ‘Don’t be worried; go ahead. Don’t be worried – a few steps more; soon the morning is coming closer’... somebody whom you can trust. A master is needed for a seeker of truth.

So drop all prejudices, all conclusions, all readymade ideas. Unburden yourself totally, move utterly naked. Jump into this beautiful chaos of existence, be lost in it, and trust. You will come out of it greatly enriched. You will not come out a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan – you will come out as truth. And that is the ultimate goal of life: satyam, the truth.

[Prem Samira] It means love breeze, mm? Love is something that happens – it cannot be produced on order. It is like a breeze; it comes when it comes. There is no way to make it come, one can only allow it. When the breeze is there you can stand and be showered on by it, when the breeze is there you can open your windows and your doors and it will come. But when it is not there, nothing can be done about it.

This is very difficult for man to accept. He wants to be in control of everything. The ego is a great controller – it wants to control even love, and in trying to control love it creates a false love, because only the false can be created. Yes, you can create a certain breeze by putting the electric fan on, but that is not the true breeze; that is the same stale air being blown around.

Because the ego is always interested in controlling everything it has created a plastic kind of love – call it ‘marriage’ or call it something else, but it is a plastic kind of love, man-made, man- manufactured. It does not satisfy, it cannot nourish your soul; it leaves you completely hungry. You go on eating that false food. It becomes a weight but it doesn’t create life energy; you gather fat. Yes, false love can give you much fat – fat for the soul, and the fatty soul is more ugly than the fatty body; it is dull, unintelligent, stupid. One has to learn one thing, which is hard but one has to learn it because there is no other way, one has to accept this fundamental truth about love – that it comes when it comes, it is beyond you. It comes from above. You can wait, you can pray but you cannot pull it down. You can allow it to happen, you can remain open.Great patience is needed, then true

love starts stirring your heart. And when true love has stirred your heart, you are already accepted by god; you have entered into the dimension of spirituality.

The message in your name is: learn to let things happen; don’t strain to produce them. Yes. there are a a thousand and one things which can be produced – they are commodities; they can be purchased and produced. But there are a few things – truth, love, meditation, prayer – which cannot be produced. And they are the real thingsthings that really matter. All that matters is beyond

human grasp, and all that doesn’t matter is within human grasp.

So for that you have to prepareAnd slowly slowly you will see what I mean. It has to become your

perception, it has to become your experience. It is going to happen – just wait in deep trust.…

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