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‌CHAPTER 1

1 February 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, christopher means Christ-bearer. The story is that Saint Christopher bore the Christ child across the river. But it can become a tremendously significant metaphor for the inner journey. The meaning that I would like to give it is that each person, man or woman, is a Christbearer in the sense that everybody is pregnant with Christ, that we are carrying the child in our womb.

This is the whole dilemma of human existence, because if Jesus lives then Christ cannot live; if Jesus dies, only then can Christ live. By Jesus I mean the ego; by Christ I mean the egoless consciousness. Jesus and Christ cannot be together. When Jesus dies on the cross, then Christ is resurrected: the death of the ego is the birth of god. The majority of people have chosen the ego, they cling to the ego, and the Christ child remains suffocated, un-grown-up, like a seed– heavy, ready to be born, but finding no opportunity.

Sannyas is nothing but an opportunity for Jesus to die and for Christ to be resurrected.

Prem means love, alessandra means a helper of mankind. The full name will mean: love, the helper of mankind. And this is something very important to be remembered, that unless you love you cannot be of any help. Help cannot be a duty. If it comes out of duty it is ugly, egoistic; it humiliates the other. When. it comes out of love it obliges nobody; it is for the sheer joy of sharing. In fact you feel thankful to the person who accepted your help, because he respected it, he welcomed it–he could have rejected it.

People also become helpers without love–they become great public servants, missionaries, etcetera. These are the most mischievous people in the world: in the name of help they dominate, in the name of service they are on a power-trip. The service is nothing but a camouflage. They don’t love; and without love whatsoever they do, harms – because this is the observation of all those who have known, that only love is nectar, everything else is poison.

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So let love become the centre of your existence, your very being. And if out of the pulsation of love, service arises, it is beautiful; if you can help somebody out of love it is a tremendous joy. But it is not service, it is not duty, and you are not earning virtue. You are simply sharing your life as god has shared his life with you.

Anand means bliss; Jerry comes from Jeremiah, the second greatest biblical prophet. The literal meaning of Jeremiah is: god is exalted. That is the basic flavour of prayer – that god is great, that god is exalted, that god is supreme, that god is holy. The moment we say that god is exalted, automatically the whole existence is exalted, because god is not a person but another name for the totality of existence. It is all inclusive: men, women, trees, birds, rivers, mountains, stars, all are included in it. God simply means the whole, the total, all that is.

There is an ancient tradition which says that god is a code word. ‘G’ stands for ‘that’, ‘o’ stands for ‘which’, ‘d’ stands for ‘is’: that-which-is. God is not a person, but all that which is, all that exists, all that has been.

‘God is exalted’ means the whole existence is sacred. Wherever you are moving you are on holy ground, and whatsoever you are doing is as significant as any prayer. Then the small acts of life are no more small, the ordinary is no more ordinary, everything becomes suffused with extraordinariness. Then even the smallest contains the greatest, and the atom in itself is a universe.

To feel this, this utter exultation of existence, is to be prayerful. Jerry is a beautiful name, the very essence of prayer. Become a blissful, prayerful yea-saying, a total yes – unguarded, unconditioned. And feel in everything the beauty of god, the expression of the divine. Slowly slowly, one becomes suddenly aware one day that we are like fish in the ocean of god. There is no need to go to seek and search for him: he is here, he is now.

Prem means love, dara is Hebrew; it means the heart of wisdom. Knowledge is of the head, hence it has nothing to do with love; in fact basically it is antilove. Love plays no part in the growth of knowledge. Knowledge is the accumulation of dead facts, information, but those facts are not beating, they are not alive, because love is missing.

Wisdom is of the heart. It has nothing to do with fact, it has something to do with truth. And that is the difference between truth and fact: fact is only a corpse, truth is alive. The fact appears like the truth, but it is not – because the heart is beating no more, it is breathing no more; life has left it.

When the scientist dissects a body, whatsoever he comes to know about life is not the truth. It is certainly factual, but the moment you dissect the body you kill it, and whatsoever you know is about the corpse, not about the aliveness. When you dissect a flower you will know many things about it, but something will be missing: the spirit of the flower will be missing.

Facts can be known by the intellect; the spirit can only be contacted by the heart. Information is easily possible through the head, but wisdom only grows in the deepest recesses of the soul.

Love is the very nourishment for truth to live. Remember it: a Buddha may not know more than you, but he is more. A professor of philosophy may know more, but he is not more. Buddha, Jesus or Zarathustra have more being, not more knowledge; more heart, more love, more wisdom, not more

information. The professors, the scholars, the pundits, have more information. Quantitatively they are very well-informed; qualitatively they are just empty.

Sannyas is the search for the heart, the search for wisdom – because it is wisdom that liberates. Knowledge binds you, wisdom liberates you. And love is the most essential ingredient in wisdom, the very heart of it.

[A sannyasin, leaving, has discovered since the Primal group that she doesn’t feel good with people.]

It will change; all that is needed is awareness, more awareness. Almost everybody is trapped in the same situation, and those who become aware are fortunate, because from awareness, transformation starts. In the name of love, people are trying to dominate, to possess, to be powerful. Love is just a bait to be powerful. It is a strategy – the socalled love is just a very cunning strategy to dominate the other in such a way that the other never feels directly dominated; it is an indirect way. But the other is also doing the same with you, so there is necessarily conflict. Both are on power trips, and both clash.

Out of one hundred, ninety-nine point nine percent of couples are continuously fighting. And the reason is simple: each wants to be powerful over the other. Clash is inevitable; and in this clash all possibilities of love are destroyed. The whole situation becomes ugly, nauseating, sickening.

But once you become aware of it, then things can never be the same. Just watch and see that power is anti-love; power and love can’t go together. If you are loving, you cannot seek power – hence all politicians are unloving people; if they are loving, they cannot be politicians. And lovers cannot be politicians, because who cares? – when you love, love gives you such fulfilment that who cares about power? Love makes you so high that no power can give you anything compared with it. And love gives you such contentment that all power trips look poor, beggarly, unhealthy, pathological.

So you have to watch and become aware; whenever you move into the next relationship with somebody, any friendship, any love, be watchful. Love is a totally different dimension. Love wants to share, love wants to give, and is not worried about what comes in return. Whether anything comes in return or not, that is not the concern of love. Its joy is in giving – and it is so fulfilling to give.

Then slowly slowly the old strategy, the old power- trip, will start disappearing from your mind. It is just a programme that has to be de-programmed. The beginning has started: just pour more attention into it. Whenever you see yourself playing old games, stop immediately, because they are suicidal. Whenever you catch yourself playing some old power-game, immediately stop. Don’t wait even for a single moment, don’t say ‘tomorrow’.

Come back, because much has to be done. The journey has started; now much more work.… Keep it (a box) with you, and whenever you need me just put it on your heart.

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