24

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‌CHAPTER 24

24 February 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva is Sanskrit. it means god. Lars is Scandinavian, it means symbol of victory – god, the symbol of victory. Remember, unless god is achieved, nothing is achieved. Unless god is realised, we are failures, utter failures. It is only with the realisation of god that victory arrives; there is no other victory. All are cover-ups for defeats. One can have all the money of the world and all the power and all the prestige and fame, but they are all cover-ups, cover-ups to hide the wounds – wounds of continuous defeats, wounds that every desire and its disillusionment have left behind.

Let this become your only longing – that god has to be attained, that everything has to be sacrificed for this search.

Sannyas is a commitment to this ultimate victory.

Anand is Sanskrit; it means bliss, the ultimate state of consciousness where no duality exists, where nothing is good, nothing is bad, where nothing is happiness and nothing is unhappiness, where darkness is light and light is darkness, where all dualities have disappeared into one. That state of serenity where the conflict, the constant conflict of dualities has disappeared – that is bliss. That is the goal, and unless a man achieves it, he remains hollow, empty, and goes on feeling that something is missing.

Michael is Hebrew; in Hebrew mythology, Michael is the chief of the angels. To be blissful is to become an angel. Man has to surpass himself – that is the meaning of being an angel. Below man is the animal, above man is the angel; man is a tension between these two. There is a great pull from the animal, but also there is a great desire, a longing, to go upwards.

If you co-operate with down-going energies you start behaving like the animal. If you co-operate with the upwardgoing energies you start behaving like the angel. The angel simply means that energy has started moving upwards.

Become a blissful angel!

Sat is Sanskrit. It means truth, the ultimate truth – not as we know it, but as it is, as it is in itself. And janine is Hebrew; it means a gracious gift of god – truth, a gracious gift of god. Truth cannot be manufactured, cannot be invented: it can only be received with a grateful heart. Truth is a gift of god. One cannot speculate about it, guess about it.

That’s what philosophy goes on doing – guessing, inferring, thinking; it never arrives at any conclusion, it cannot. In the very nature of things, truth is not a by-product of a thought process; it is a gift. The mind knows nothing of it; only the heart can open up to receive it, only the heart can become the womb, can receive the seed of truth and give birth to a new life – but it is the heart.

That’s the difference between philosophy and religion: philosophy remains thinking, religion is experiencing. Philosophy tries to find out truth, religion prays so that truth can be given to us.

In Latin, rose means rose, the flower; but in German it has a very strange meaning, it means horse. It comes from... [Ross]. In the past, the Germans used to worship the horse, they thought the horse divine – just the same foolishness as Hindus thinking the cow divine. Either all is divine or nothing is divine! So forget the German meaning; don’t be a horse, there is no need. Stick to the Latin meaning. Your full name will mean: a divine flower.

Man is born as a bud. We have to help ourselves to open up and to become a flower. And unless the fragrance is t released to the winds, one remains unfulfilled, one remains meaningless. It is only by sharing your fragrances with existence, by singing your song to the world, by dancing your dance to the stars, that you will find meaning.

Meaning is a by-product of sharing.

Deva means god, and benjamin, the son – the son of god. We all come from god, we all live in god, and finally we all disappear in god. It is the same energy that is born, that lives, that disappears in death.

To think of ourselves as separate from this universal energy is the cause of all misery, and to drop the idea of separation is the beginning of joy, is the beginning of celebration. In fact that is the meaning of being a son of god: god fathers, mothers, everything. God is just like the ocean for us; we are just the fish in the ocean. He is our life, our being, our very breath.

Slowly slowly start dropping the idea of separation, and as the idea of separation disappears you will be surprised that a totally new being has come into existence – something that you had never known before, something that you had always been but were unaware of.

[The new sannyasin says: After just my first day here I realised that I had been a sannyasin at heart for much of my life.]

You have been – not only in this life but in other lives. I can feel it, I can see it. It is a long, long relationship; it is not new.

It is just the renewing of something very ancient. Good!

Prem is Sanskrit, it means love. Suse is Hebrew, it means a lily flower – love, the flower. Love is the only way to flower – it is only the juice of love that helps one to flower. It is only when the spring of love has come that one starts blooming. Without love, all that is significant starts dying. Without love, the soul remains unnourished. Just as the body needs food, the soul needs love; and just as the body can be healthy and blooming and radiant, the soul can be. The radiance of the soul, the flowering of the soul, the health of the soul, is what I mean by flowering. And when one has come to flower in the innermost core of one’s existence, one knows who one is. That knowing triggers an infinite sequence of knowing; then one goes on knowing more and more about the mysteries of life and death. Just open the first door of self-knowledge... and many doors start opening on their own.

But self-knowing is possible only when we nourish our being with love. So love as much as you can, don’t be afraid of love. When it knocks on your doors, receive it; and whenever you can share, share it. Take as much as possible and give as much as possible. This is my basic message for my sannyasins: love is my religion.

Deva means divine, and luigi is a very strange word. It is from the Teutonic; it has many meanings, but only one is worth choosing. It means battle, fight, hale, wild, etcetera, etcetera; but there is one meaning that is glory: I choose that.

Your full name will mean divine glory, divine splendour. We may not be aware of the treasures that have been entrusted to us. We have completely forgotten our real identity, hence we look like beggars. Otherwise the whole kingdom of god is ours; our glory is infinite, our splendour is eternal.

Sannyas is only to remind you that you are not a beggar, that you are an emperor. And this has nothing to do with the ego, because in reminding you that you are an emperor, I am reminding everybody else too that the same is the case with them – not only with man and woman, but with animals, birds, trees.

Everyone in his own right has this whole kingdom as his own. Once this is understood, a great explosion happens; consciousness starts expanding. Then you cannot remain confined to the small body and to the very small mind-they are small keyholes through which we are looking at the sky – and the whole sky is ours.

[The new sannyasin says: I feel I can gain an enormous amount of energy; I feel as well that I can give it to other people. The only thing is, I don’t know how.]

Just lay your hands on the needy part of the person. If the person has a headache, lay your hands on his head, close your eyes, start feeling energies pouring, and you Win have a tingling sensation in the hands, they will become electrified. Or if the person has some trouble with the stomach, put your hands on the stomach.

The needed part has to be touched. If it can be touched bare, without clothes, it is better, it will be more effective. But don’t touch the needed part for more than one minute.

If you touch the needed part for more than one minute, then sometimes the disease can start flowing towards you.

Energy is a rhythm: one minute it goes outwards, another minute it comes inwards. So make it a point that when you put your hands on somebody’s body, exhale; it synchronises with inhalation, exhalation. When you put your hands on them, exhale, and go on exhaling; and when you see that you cannot exhale any more, take your hands off and then inhale. If you inhale while laying your hands on, you can be affected by the illness. The person may be healed but you will suffer, and that is meaningless. Just lay your hands with exhalation, and the moment inhalation starts, withdraw.

You will be able to do it. You can be of immense help to people.

Prem means love, palma means palm tree – a palm tree of love. Man is also a tree, man also has roots in the earth. They are invisible, but they are there. We are continuously nourished by the earth. We ate in its gravitational energy-field. We are pulled by it; just as trees are caught by it, we are caught by it. And we have also to grow branches in the sky, we also have to whisper with the clouds.

The tree is a bridge between the earth and the sky; the tree is a longing of the earth to meet the sky. The tree is a hand stretched towards the stars. It is a tremendously, significant symbol.

Sannyas is also a longing for the distant star of god – a tremendous desire to know, to be, to love, to sing the song of life m all its multi-dimensionality, to bloom.

[A sannyasin, leaving, says she is very afraid because she will have to say no to her people at home, in order to return here.]

I will make you strong enough; don’t be worried at all. Just go and you will be strong enough; I will see that you are strong enough. You will be able to come.

[Another sannyasin, leaving, says she often feels frightened and doesn’t like it.]

One has to learn to accept, and the miracle is: if you accept it, it will disappear. Fear can exist only if rejected; fear dies the moment you welcome it. If you want to have it forever, go on rejecting; if you want to finish, it can be finished right this very moment. Just accept it as a part of life.

What is wrong in it? It is natural, it is human. You are not a rock; you are a human being! And the heart is so delicate, more delicate than the rose. Life is so hard, and the experiences of life are so bitter and so poisonous, that it is simply natural that the fear arises. But if you can accept it, it will be gone. Give it a try!

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