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‌CHAPTER 4

4 February 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, tim is a short form of Timotheus. It is a Greek name; it means worshipping god, honouring god. And bliss is possible only if you become related with the existence in a personal way. That’s what the word ‘god’ implies – a personal relationship with existence.

The person who does not believe in god does believe in existence but there is no personal bridge, there is no love affair. He cannot address existence as thou; existence remains ‘it’ – dead.

Love is not poured on it, worship does not arise. And without love, without worship, you are bound to live in a dead existence. To live in a dead existence is to live in a dead way, because if you are surrounded by this immense existence which is not alive, which has no soul to it, how can you have a soul? The ‘I’ arises only when in deep love you have called somebody ‘thou’. Thou is first, I is second. This is corroborated by modern psychology too, that the idea of thou arises first in the child’s consciousness, and only later on comes the idea of I, as a by-product of thou.

The person who has never been in love is not really a self. He has never looked in the mirror of love: how can he see his face? He has never called somebody with tremendous joy. He will remain asleep himself

Even in ordinary love affairs you become awakened: life starts burning in an intense way, you start vibrating, you have a new flair, there is a new gust, a new wind. So what to say about when a person falls in love with the whole existence?

And that’s what sannyas is all about – falling in love with the whole existence, being able to call the existence thou in a personal way, being able to address existence, being able to write love letters to existence, being able to be in a dialogue.

And that is the basic meaning of Timotheus. Tim is a short form of it. Become a blissful worshipper!

Veet means beyond; marco is Latin, it means god of Mars or god of war. Your full name will mean: one who has gone beyond war and war gods.

Man has lived under the calamity of war too long. We have to destroy all gods of war; instead we have to create a temple of love. We should kill all gods of war, because only through their death – the god of war dead, all gods of war dead – will the god of love be born.

War exists. not because there are warring groups outside in the world; fundamentally war exists because man is in conflict. The root of war is within; on the outside you only see the branches and the foliage of it. After each ten years, humanity needs a great world war. In ten years’ time, man accumulates so much rage, madness, insanity, inside him that it has to erupt.

Unless we transform the very script of man, unless we give him a totally new programme of living and being, we can go on talking about peace but we will go on preparing for war. That’s what we have been doing for thousands of years: talking of peace and creating war. The absurdity is that even in the name of peace we have been fighting: the greatest wars have been fought in the name of peace. This has been a sheerly destructive past. With the same energy, man could have created paradise on earth; and all that we have done is to create a hell instead. But it is not a question of changing the political ideologies of the world, it is not a question of teaching people to be brotherly, because these things have been done and they have all failed.

Something more basic is wrong. Man is split, and the same people who talk about peace are the cause of the split. They have divided man into good and bad, the lower and the higher, the earthly and the divine, the material and the spiritual. They have created a rift inside the human soul, and there is a constant war inside. Everybody is fighting with themselves, and when it becomes too much they start fighting with somebody else.

That’s why in times of war, people look happier. Their faces shine with enthusiasm, their step has a dance to it. They are thrilled, because at least for a few days they will not need to fight with themselves; they have found a scapegoat outside. It may be the Fascist, it may be the Communist, it may be the Mohammedan, it may be the Christian – it doesn’t matter, but somebody is there outside. It is an escape from the inner fight; in a very sick way it is relaxing. But one cannot go on warring continuously; sooner or later man has to turn inwards again. The politician creates war without, and the priest creates war within. This is the longest and the greatest conspiracy against humanity.

My vision of a sannyasin is that of an integrated soul. The body is respected, not denied; it is loved, praised, one feels grateful for it. Matter is not condemned, it is enjoyed; it is part of our spiritual growth. There is no duality: it is a dialectics of growth. This is how we move on two feet, the bird flies on two wings. Matter and spirit, body and soul, lower and higher, are two wings.

What I am trying to bring here is something utterly new, something that has never existed before on the earth: a man who is at ease with both the worlds, this and that; a man who is as wordly as one can be and as other-wordly as one can be; a man who is a great synthesis; a man who is not schizophrenic, a man who is whole and holy. That’s what my sannyas is all about.

Anand means bliss; ursula is Latin, it is the name of a constellation of stars. Your full name will mean: a blissful constellation of stars.

Man is multi-dimensional. Man is not one star but a constellation of stars. Man is not finite, man is not limited. Man appears limited, finite, but that appearance is only an appearance. The deeper we go into man, the more we become aware of ourselves, and boundaries start disappearing. And to know the unbounded in oneself is to know God.

It is not something that we have to seek and search for; it is already there. We have only to uncover it. It is veiled: we have to remove the veil.

Anand means bliss, sara is Hebrew. It is the name of the wife of Abraham. The original name was sarai; sarai means the quarrelsome. The story is: god took pity on poor Abraham and changed the quality of his wife and she was no more quarrelsome. So her name was also changed, from sarai to Sara. Sarai means quarrelsome, sara means a princess. But this is the story of almost every woman – all are quarrelsome!

These stories are really parables; and it is not only so about women, the same is true about men. It is very rarely that a woman becomes a princess and a man becomes a prince. They remain wild animals at each other’s throats. The so-called marriage is nothing but a constant quarrel; it certainly is not a communion. It is not a true marriage. The true marriage will make two persons so one that there will be no possibility of any conflict. They will understand each other so deeply that that very understanding will create the quality of being a princess and a prince. They will not be ordinary mortals any more; they will become part of immortality. They will not be mundane, they will be royal.

So this is a beautiful story.… But the word ‘sara’ in Sanskrit also has a beautiful meaning. It means the essence, the very essence of a thing, the perfume of a flower. Then anand sara will mean: the essence of bliss, the perfume of bliss.

Let bliss become the very centre of your life. Do whatsoever makes you more blissful, and avoid all that disturbs your bliss. And you will be surprised: we go on throwing our bliss to the dogs for such silly things, but this remains so because we are not aware. All our activities in life are so stupid, and the reason is that we never look at what we are doing to ourselves.

If one can remain a little alert and watchful and constantly judging whether this is going to give one more bliss or not, then that single criterion can become a transformation. And when one is blissful, one cannot make others miserable; that is impossible. A blissful person naturally creates bliss in others, and the same is true about misery too.

So to me, to be blissful is the greatest virtue. The blissful person slowly slowly becomes a saint, a sage.

Anand means bliss. Nico can have two origins, either from nicholas or from nicodemus, but both mean the same: both mean victory. So your full name will mean victory over bliss – and that is the true victory. All other victories are just plastic toys, substitutes for the real victory.

To conquer others is just an escape from conquering oneself; it is a strategy of the mind to make you go astray. But no victory over others can ever fulfil you, because deep down you will remain a beggar, you will never be an emperor.

In life, things are very complicated: when you become victorious over others, when you enslave others, in a subtle way they also enslave you. No slavery can be one-sided, no slavery can be one-way traffic; each slavery is a doubleedged sword, it cuts both ways. If a man tries to make a woman a slave, the woman also tries in every possible way – of course her ways are feminine - - to make a slave of the man. If you look at the total result, you will find two slaves, not two masters.

That’s what goes on happening in all relationships, wherever the desire to conquer, to dominate, to be powerful over the other, is there. In fact the very desire is ugly; it comes out of an inferiority complex. The true desire is not to conquer the other; the true desire is to know oneself, who one is. In knowing oneself, the victory happens of its own accord, because knowledge is victory. The moment you know yourself, you have become the master of yourself.

Prem means love. Liesbeth comes from the Hebrew, elizabeth. El means god, elizabeth means godly, divine. Elizabeth is also the name of the mother of the master of Jesus Christ, John the Baptist. But the root, el, is tremendously beautiful; from the same root comes the Arabic Allah.

Your full name will mean love divine. Love is divine. If anything is divine on the earth it is love, and love makes everything else also divine. Whatsoever is touched by love becomes divine. Love is the alchemy of true life, because it transforms the lower metal into gold.

There are ancient stories, many stories, in almost all the languages of the world, that somebody kisses a frog and the frog becomes a prince. The frog was cursed: he was simply waiting for some kiss to be showered on him, he was waiting for love to come and transform him.

Love transforms: that is the message of all those stories. Those stories are beautiful, very indicative, symbolic. It is only love which transforms the animal into the human, otherwise there is no difference between other animals and man. The only difference, the possible difference, is that of love. So those who live without love, live without being human beings. And the more you live through love, as love, the more humanity is born in you. The ultimate, the omega point, is when one has become just love. Then not only is the animal transcended; even the human is transcended. Then one is divine, one is god. The whole of growth is love’s growth. Without love: animals. With love: man. And when love has become your natural being, your very flavour: god!

Prem means love, elysia is the root from where the name Elly, comes, but elysia looks more musical, more beautiful.

Elly comes from elysia. The meaning of the word ‘elysia’ is: divinely happy. Your full name will mean: love that brings divine happiness.

The ordinary happiness can come without love; it can only come without love. You can have money and can have a certain pleasure in having it; you can be successful, famous, and can have a certain happiness in having it – but love is not involved. In fact if you are very loving, it will be very difficult to accumulate much wealth. If you are really loving, it will be very difficult to become politically powerful because politics needs a stubborn struggle. One has to be hard, one has to be like a dagger. One cannot afford to be a flower, one cannot be loving.

There are pleasures which come without love; they are worldly pleasures. Their value is nothing. Their price may be much but their value is nothing. The only thing valuable that can happen, happens

only through love. Then one moves in a totally different dimension: the dimension of grace, the dimension of empathy, compassion, love, sharing, prayer.

They all belong to one dimension, they are members of a single family. Then a happiness descends which is not of the world, which nobody can give you and which nobody can take away from you. It is a gift from god – but that gift is available only to those who prepare their heart in tremendous love and prayer. Those who purify themselves through the fire of love, only they will be blessed by divine happiness.

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