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‌CHAPTER 4

4 March 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss and bhaven means feeling. Feel it and you will have it. You are missing it only because you have not looked at it through feeling. And feeling is real life. Thinking is phoney because thinking is always about; it is never the real thing.

It is not thinking about the wine that can make you intoxicated, it is the wine. You can go on thinking about the wine, but just by thinking about the wine you will never become intoxicated. You will have to drink it... and the drinking happens through feeling. Thinking is a pseudo activity, a substitute activity. It gives you a false sense of something happening, and nothing happens.

So shift from thinking to feeling – that’s my indication through your name: shift from thinking to feeling. And the best way will be to start breathing from the heart.

In the day as many times as you remember, just take a deep breath; feel it hitting just in the middle of the chest. Feel as if the whole existence is pouring into you, into your heart exactly in the middle – not on the left, not on the right... exactly in the middle. That is where your heart centre is. It differs with different people; ordinarily it is leaning to the right.

It has nothing to do with the physical heart. It is a totally different thing; it belongs to the subtle body. Your heart is exactly in the middle and that is a good sign, a very good sign, of balance. You can have centering very easily.

So breathe deeply, and whenever you do, do it at least five times – deep breaths; take it in, fill the heart. Just feel it in the middle – that the existence is pouring through the heart: vitality, life, god, nature... everything pouring in.

And then exhale deeply, again from the heart, and feel you are pouring all that has been given to you back into god, into existence. Do it many times in the day, but whenever you do it do five breaths at once. That will help you to shift from the head to the heart.

And you will become more and more sensitive, more and more aware of many things of which you have not been aware. You will smell more, you will taste more, you will touch more, you will see more, you will hear more; everything will become intense.

Ordinarily the senses have become dull... as if much dust has gathered. You hear but it is just so-so, you taste but it is flat. You look too, but the existence does not look psychedelic.

Once these senses are cleaned – and that cleaning happens when you move from the heart.If

you move from the head, senses become dull, dust gathers, because the mind never allows you to feel. Each time you want to feel it gives a substitute.

It is almost as if a child wants the breast of the mother and the mother gives a substitute, just a rubber breast, and the child is happy sucking the rubber breast. Or even sometimes the mother is not there, then the child starts sucking his own thumb; he creates his own substitute. Now, the breast is nourishing; the thumb is not nourishing. Thinking is like the thumb and feeling is like the breast.

So move from the head to the heart and all your senses will become suddenly luminous. You will start feeling life really throbbing in you, ready to jump, ready to flow.

[A sannyasin says: I get an image I had before I took sannyas: I get an eye when I do meditation in a group. An eye starts coming and going.it has different colours.]

Allow it. It is just your third eye which is starting to function in a subtle way. When the third eye starts functioning, this is how it begins. Don’t get puzzled. Soon it will settle and soon it will disappear. The moment is has settled it will disappear, and you will have a very cool quality between your two eyes. Once it has settled, there you will find your centre and from there you will find a deep contact with the existence. As we breathe air from the nose, so we breathe light from the third eye. Once it settles you will be full of light.

Jesus says in one of his sayings, ‘If you can be one-eyed, you will be full of light.’ That is that one eye he talks about.

But first it will be very hazy. Coming, going you will see it in many colours and many shapes, sometimes far away, sometimes very close. This is how it will move, it will swing, and then by and by the swing will be smaller and smaller and smaller, and one day it will simply settle. When it settles you will feel so full of light – the whole body will become light.

So just enjoy it; nothing to be worried about.

[A sannyasin says: Every day I think you’re going to send me away because I don’t do anything to deserve to be here.]

Nobody is needed to do anything!

You are allowed to be here not because you deserve but because you deserve but because I have too much to give and I have to give it anyway! So drop that idea completely. You deserve or you

don’t deserve; that is not the point at all. I have so much to give, what will I do with it? I have to give it!

So it is not because you deserve – that’s why I give, no! – but because I have in such abundance. What am I going to do with it? I have to give it!

That idea of deserving is also an ego idea. Why? Why should you think in terms of deserving? You are – that is enough – and as you are, you are beautiful. But the idea has been put deeply into the minds of everybody from the very childhood, down through the centuries. Every parent has done that, every teacher, every priest has done that – has said that if you want to be loved, you have to deserve it. So that idea clings to you.

To have my love you need not deserve it at all; your being is enough! You are not supposed to do something, you are not to become worthy of it; those are all nonsense things. Because of those things people have been exploited and distracted and destroyed.

You are already that which you can be; more is not needed. So you have to just relax and receive me. Don’t think in terms of deserving, otherwise you will remain tense. That’s what is your problem, your anxiety, continuously – that you are falling short, that you are not doing this, you are not doing that, that you are not surrendered enough, that your trust is not enough. You create a thousand and one things.

Even if your trust is not enough, it is okay. Let it be as it is; it will do. If your surrender is not enough – good; this will do!

I accept all your limitations and I love you with all your limitations.

I don’t want to create any sort of guilt in anybody. Otherwise there are all the tricks. You are not trusting me – you feel guilty; then I become dominant. You are not worthy, you are not doing this, you are not doing that; I will cut the supply of my love to you. Then love becomes a bargain.

No, I love you because I am love.

Even if you are not here, even if nobody is here, I will be as loving as I am. And it is not something that can be exhausted.…

So don’t worry about these things. Simply relax and enjoy. Because of these ideas you continuously remain in anguish and suffer. Drop all this! If you don’t trust, perfectly good! I need a few sannyasins who don’t trust me. That makes variety! Right?

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