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‌CHAPTER 13

13 February 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss; mario can have two meanings, because it can either be derived from Latin or from Hebrew. In Latin it means god of Mars or god of war; in Hebrew it means rebellion. Choose the Hebrew meaning – god of war is ugly. If one wants to be a god, one should be a god of peace.

In fact it is a contradiction in terms; god cannot be a god of war. War belongs to the devil, peace belongs to god. War is evil, peace is the most virtuous thing in life. War is evil, peace is divine. So my choice is for the Hebrew meaning: be a blissful rebellion.

Rebellion can also be not out of bliss but out of misery. Then it is turned into something political. The moment a rebellion is out of misery, it is more a reaction than a rebellion: you act out of anger, you are aggressive, you are in a rage, you are destructive. And the true rebellion is creative, not destructive. The true rebellion is not a reaction against something but an effort to produce something, to create something, to beautify life a little more.

Reaction is destructive but basically impotent. It destroys and then it knows nothing about what to do. That’s why all political revolutions have failed. They destroyed much, they were very capable of destruction, because rage has that capacity. But once the revolution is finished, rage is gone, the leaders are at a loss: what to do now ? Once the revolutionaries are in power they are simply at an utter loss – and not knowing what to do, they start repeating the same as that which they have rebelled against. That’s how Joseph Stalin became the greatest czar.

Rebellion, to be true rebellion, has to be out of bliss. Then it is not against something but for something. Then it has a concept of how things should be, it has a vision; and because it is out of bliss, it creates bliss in the world.

Bliss is creative energy: it sings, it dances, it creates.

Deva means divine. Eleanor is Greek, it means light. The full name will mean divine light.

We may find ourselves in darkness, but we are not darkness. In fact, to find oneself in darkness is proof enough that one is not darkness; to be aware of darkness means that we are separate from it. To be aware of anything means we are separate from it. Whatsoever we are aware of becomes an object and we are a witness to it.

It happens to every meditator that when he starts moving inwards he comes across a dark continent where everything is dark, utter darkness, darkness so deep and so dense that one has never felt it. The Christian mystics have called it the dark night of the soul. One can be very much frightened of it. One can rush back into the outer; there is some light on the outside. That’s why very few people ever try to go in – and those who try, many of them sooner or later, escape. It seems to be dangerous to enter deeper into that darkness.

One of the English philosophers, David Hume, reading again and again in mystic treatises ‘Go within and there is great light’ tried it once. He was a sceptical mind, one of the greatest sceptics of human history. He tried closing his eyes for a few minutes, to see what these mystics were talking about. He could not find any light, it was all darkness. So he wrote in his diary ‘It is all nonsense. I have tried, but there is only darkness inside and no light. All this talk about divine light is sheer nonsense.’ But he missed the whole point. He could not understand the message of the mystics. It is so simple that one is surprised how such a great mind like David Hume could not see it; it is so obvious.

One thing is certain: whomsoever is looking into darkness is not darkness. The mystics were saying that you are light, not that you will find light. It needs a transfer of attention from the object to the subject, it needs a change of gestalt.

Once you start looking – not at what you are surrounded with, but at who you are – the light bursts forth. You will never experience light as an object, it will be felt as your inner subjectivity.

Remember it, because sannyas is nothing but going into meditation, going inwards, going in search of one’s self, one’s authentic self.

Anand means bliss. Bernd is Teutonic, it is from bernard; it means brave, courageous – blissful courage. That’s what is needed in the search for truth. Courage is needed – and not only courage, but a blissful courage is needed. Courage is a must. Religion is not for cowards, although cowards are the first to go to the churches and to the temples and to the mosques. They are the first to become religious, but their religion remains a formality. It never goes deep in them – it cannot; they never risk anything for it.

It is a social affair, it is nothing spiritual for them. It is a good sociality; just as they go to the Rotary Club and the Lions Club, they go to the church. It helps in their worldly affairs. If people know that they are church-goers it creates prestige, respectability – and you can exploit prestige and respectability. It is a good asset, economically, financially, socially, politically; you can exploit it. And that’s what people are doing in the name of religion.

Only very few are really religious, because to be really religious means to be committed, involved – so much so that it becomes a question of life and death, so much so that truth is more important

than life itself. If it is needed, one is ready to sacrifice one’s life for it – not that it is needed, not that truth requires your life to be sacrificed. God is not a murderer; it is not that god expects you to kill yourself, to commit suicide, no: but unless you are ready to do even that, your life will remain lukewarm. It will not be really hot – and unless you are hot, one hundred degrees hot, you can’t evaporate, you can’t start moving upwards, you cannot whisper with the clouds, you cannot enter into the unknown, you can’t have wings. Courage gives you wings.

But courage can be sad, courage can be out of despair, courage can be out of anger, courage can be nothing but a repression of fear. Then again you miss.

It has to be very very blissful. When it is blissful it has a spontaneity to it. When it is blissful nothing is repressed, because in repression bliss is impossible. When it is blissful there is no fear hiding behind it. When it is blissful it is not a desperate effort; it is an adventure. Lovingly, playfully, one goes into it. When it is blissful you are not a masochist just finding ways and excuses to torture yourself – because courage can be that too. It can be pathological: one can simply move into dangerous situations because one wants to torture oneself. It can be a strategy for self torture; then you miss the point.

So I make it an absolute condition that courage can help only if it is rooted in bliss. Then it is not masochistic, it is not an effort to overcompensate for one’s fears and paranoia. It is not just a suicidal attempt to go into danger, and it is not sad – because nobody can contact the divine with sadness in the heart. The divine can be contacted only when the heart is singing, is a singing, when the heart is in a state of dance, ecstasy.

Ecstatic courage: that is the most fundamental thing in the search for truth, in the search for ultimate liberation.

Deva means divine, vipassana means insight. Vipassana is Buddha’s word for insight, for meditation, for going in, for turning in. Passana means to see, vipassana means to see in.

Man lives almost on the outside. The whole of life is lived on the outside, as if one has been given a palace but is not aware of it and lives only in the porch and thinks ‘This is all.’ Hence the misery: we cannot be contented with only the outside, because the outside has nothing compared to the inner. The real treasure is inside.

If we live on the outside we remain beggars, because we remain unaware of the treasure that we have, that we are. Once we turn in, life goes through a metamorphosis. Suddenly you are no more the same person, because now you are aware of things that you have, of which you were never aware. You have such an infinity within, such an unbounded sky of freedom, such an inexhaustible source of joy, such an eternity – how can you remain a beggar?

To move in is not against the outside. Once you have moved in, even your outside starts having new colours, because you have changed. So when you look outside, your eyes are different: the same trees look greener, the same flower looks rosier and the same stars are no more the same. The whole existence becomes luminous with the unknown, because you have touched it inside yourself. You meet the same people, but they are no more the same because now you know that they also have the same treasure; they are souls. First they used to be just bodies, first you used to see only

their garments. Now you see them, now you can look into their eyes and now you can see that the same consciousness, the same bliss, the same truth, exists in them as it exists in you.

And it is not only so with people: it is so with animals, birds, trees; even rocks are no more dead. You can touch a rock and you can feel that it breathes, that it pulsates. You can touch the rock with love, and you can see and feel that it responds. You can touch it with anger and you can see that it shrinks back.

Once the inner is known, the outer is no more the same; a great insight has arisen. An insight into oneself is the first thing to happen, only then is insight about anything else possible.

[A sannyasin says: I’ve been here two and a half months, but not until I told you I was going home did I begin to be here!]

One has to wait for the right moment, and one never knows when it comes. It comes very unpredictably, it comes on its own; we cannot manage it. We cannot pull it, push it; we can only wait. But it has come, that’s good. Now even if you are gone you will remain connected with me. The distance, the physical distance, will not matter.

This moment is the beginning of real sannyas. This is the communion, the first contact, the first penetration. Just continue to meditate and it will go on growing; it will not make any difference that you are far away, not at all. Sometimes it can even be helpful, because when you are far away and still you can feel close to me, you are far away and you can still feel here and whenever you close your eyes you are here, it can be a very deepening experience and very liberating – liberating because it will show that you need not depend on a particular space, on a particular situation; it can go on growing anywhere.

Prem means love, pathika means a pilgrim – a pilgrim of love, a pilgrimage into love. And that is the ultimate journey; that’s what takes you to the source and to the goal. It is only love that matters; everything else is immaterial. One can have all the money of the world and one will remain poor, because poverty is something inner and cannot be destroyed by the outer riches. One can have all the knowledge of the world and still one will be ignorant, because ignorance is within, and no knowledge from the outside can ever penetrate that darkness.

Some richness has to arise within you, some knowing has to happen within you. And the name of that richness, of that knowing, is love. We are carrying the potential but are afraid to express it. We are carrying all that is needed, but somehow the society has made it very frightened – so much so that relationship has almost collapsed in the world.

People don’t know how to relate any more; people are really very much embarrassed in relationship, they feel very shaky. All that they do in relationship goes wrong, all that they do brings more and more misery. People have started moving away from other people. It seems far easier and safer to relate with a dog or a cat, to have a pet animal – less risky because the dog will not be too demanding, the dog will not be too binding, the dog will not be too possessive, the dog will not provoke your anxiety, your fear. The dog will not in any way become a mirror in which you will be reflected and in which you will have to see your own ugly face; it is far better.

And now things have become even worse: now in America they are selling pet rocks. Now, this is the last – you cannot go further downwards! In a beautiful box, just an ordinary rock that you can find by the side of the road anywhere – with instructions, because you will not even relate with the rock without instructions; everything has to be told.

A great how-to-ism prevails all over the earth: how to make love, how to do this, how to do that. So there are instructions with the rock, that the rock is very temperamental. Be very cautious! Don’t shout at it – whisper! And they are selling like hotcakes (laughter)! Just an ordinary rock, and the price is ten dollars – one hundred rupees!

Now later on children are going to laugh: what happened to man? They will never know what really happened: love disappeared. And there is a great need to love.

Now you can hold your rock to your heart and you can talk to it, and it will not talk back; that’s the beauty of it. It will not interfere in your life. You can keep it in your pocket or in your box or you can leave it anywhere, and it will not shout at you and you will not need any divorce if some day you want to disconnect yourself from the rock.

Love has disappeared, and with love has disappeared god, with love has disappeared joy, and with love has disappeared all that is beautiful.

My teaching is only of love; that’s my religion. And I call love the highest religion, the greatest truth.

Drop all fears, drop all inhibitions, drop all taboos, and love people – because this moment will never come back! If you love, this moment is saved; if you don’t love, it is lost. Only those moments in which we have been in love are saved. By the time you are dying, you can count: only those moments are going with you which were shared in love, in which you loved and you were loved; only those moments are going with you. That has been your real life, all else was just utterly meaningless.

Your name has a message for you: become a pilgrim of love, because it is the pilgrimage to god!

Prem means love, hasyo means laughter. Laughter has a tremendously spiritual value which has not been recognised down the ages. It is the natural built-in mechanism for relaxation. It relaxes you, and it relaxes you on all the levels of your being: body, mind, soul. When you are really laughing, the ego disappears, time stops, you are transported into another world; you are again a child, innocent.

Love, to be really liberating, has to have the quality of laughter in it. Once love becomes serious, it is a disease. Once love is no more fun, it is dangerous. Then it is like an octopus; it starts destroying the person you love. And when you destroy the person you love, naturally, out of sheer defence, the other starts destroying you. Lovers destroy each other, because they become too seriously involved in love, attached to it. They become possessive, they become jealous; then love is no more love. Love is love only when there is an undercurrent of laughter in it, when it is just a playfulness, when one is not serious about it.

If the quality of love and the quality of laughter join together, you have one of the most exhilarating experiences of life, the most relaxing experience of life. One relaxes into one’s own being in those moments of love and laughter; one suddenly finds oneself centred, settled. That is enough if one

can do it; then no other meditation is needed. In fact all other meditations only help you to attain love and laughter. If any meditation helps you to become unloving, beware of it. If any meditation helps you to become un-laughing, beware of it; it is something else, not meditation. It is some kind of pathology, it is some kind of neurosis.

So this is also a criterion to judge what meditation is worth going into. In fact, this should be the criterion of everything that you do: if it helps you grow into love and laughter it is good, it is virtuous; if it helps you to become more serious, less loving, then it is suicidal.

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