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‌CHAPTER 14

14 March 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means blissful, helga has three meanings. The first is holy, the second is pious, and the third is religious. They look alike, they are not; they look synonymous, they are not. There is a great difference between them, and the difference is of immense import.

The religious is always a formal person, a pretender – a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan. He is religious because he follows the rules prescribed by the society. He has no inner understanding; he believes, and to believe is to remain blind. Less beliefs and one has more eyes; no beliefs and one has clarity of vision.

So I will not make it mean religious.

The pious, the righteous, has a moralistic tone to it, that ‘Whatever I am doing is good, is right, is virtuous’. It gives a very subtle ego, the pious ego is created. and the pious ego is more poisonous than any other ego. Because it is pious, you cannot see it, and when you cannot see the enemy it is more dangerous. So my preference is ‘holy’, because holy really comes from the word ‘whole’.

To be whole is to be holy. It has nothing to do with religion and it has nothing to do with piousness. In fact a religious person can never be holy because already in being religious he has denied the world; he will remain partial. And the pious person can also never be holy because he has chosen what is right and he will have to repress, deny, and cut, whatsoever he thinks is wrong.

The holy person is possible only when consciousness transcends duality, when one does not think in terms of right and wrong, good and bad, sacred and profane, this world and that world, god and devil, when one drops all dualities and one lives moment to moment with no idea of how to live but trusts life – that whatsoever is spontaneous and natural is holy. One is responsible but not righteous, not pious. One responds to the situation that is present, not according to some old

ideology, not according to some conditioning, not as a Christian or as a Hindu. One simply responds as a consciousness, fully herenow, and in that space of being fully herenow, one becomes whole, one becomes holy.

So this will be the meaning of your name: blissful wholeness, blissful totality.

Deva means divine, valerie means strength. Man is not strong and cannot be. Unless god is allowed to flow l, through, man remains weak. The part is always weak unless it functions in tune with the whole. The strength of the part is functioning in tune with the whole, and the weakness is going against the whole. Man has become tremendously weak, and the reason is that we have been taught to fight with existence. That is the greatest stupid idea that has dominated humanity down the ages: to conquer nature.

In conquering nature we have destroyed nature and we have destroyed ourselves. Strength is possible, victory too, but it is going to be with the whole, not against the whole. And that is the Eastern insight into things: go with the wind, not against it. Don’t push the river, float with it; and don’t go upstream otherwise you will be destroying your own energies in unnecessary conflict, in friction. And the part can never win. The part is doomed if it is against the whole. The part can be victorious only in the whole, with the whole, at the whole.

If this is understood then we have understood the very fundamental law of life, tao. Then we know logos, then we know how to be more and more strong and more and more victorious. That means we have to surrender to conquer. That means we have to disappear to be. That means that unless we are crucified there is no resurrection.

Prem means love, gisela means promise – the promise of love. What is the promise of love? It promises the ultimate – it promises god; and not only does it promise, it fulfils its promise. The world also promises many things, but never, never, are they fulfilled. Each time one is disillusioned. Life becomes slowly slowly a long chain of disappointments. Each time you believe in the outer you start moving with a great hope. By the time you reach, everything proves to be a mirage. It is like a rainbow: from far away it looks so beautiful, so colourful, so psychedelic. The closer you come, the rainbow starts disappearing; and when you have really arrived. there is nothing... maybe a little mist in your hands. All those colours are gone. They existed from a certain angle, from a certain distance; they can only exist from a certain angle and from a certain distance.

All worldly hopes are like that: when you don’t have, there is great hope; when you have, all hope disappears. Hence the richest man proves to be the poorest. The richer one gets, the more hopeless one becomes. The world promises much but it never delivers the goods. There is only one thing in the whole existence – love – that promises and also fulfils it.

But to be in love with existence, with life, really needs nerve, it needs guts. It is a tremendous leap of courage. It is not a gradual thing; it is a jump, a quantum jump.

Very few, courageous people are able to love, to love and to be loved, because one is so afraid of one’s emptiness. To love means to open oneself – and one is embarrassed by the inner emptiness and the darkness – to allow somebody to love you. Again the problem, that you are allowing somebody to come very close to you and the fear arises: sooner or later he will discover your

emptiness. It is better to keep at a safe distance. Hence people have decided to play games in the name of love, never really allowing love to happen.

But if one allows love to happen, one allows god to happen. Love fulfils the promise, and the promise is god!

Veet means going beyond; rolf has two meanings: one is fame, the other is wolf. One has to go beyond all ambition. and the greatest ambition is that of becoming famous, of being somebody, of not being anonymous, of leaving one’s footprints on the sands of time, to do something so that one is remembered when one is gone, to be in the eyes of people. The desire for fame is the desire for attention so that everybody looks up to you. And when many people look at you their attention functions almost like an intoxicant. It is a very subtle drug, and man has lived under its impact for centuries.

The whole idea is basically ill, pathological, because to follow it means to be continuously in conflict with others. The ambitious mind is always at war, and the ambitious mind is always trying to reach to the top by right means or wrong means. For the ambitious mind, means don’t matter, one has to reach to the top; and time is short, so it creates great stress.

The whole idea is stupid. Even when you have reached to the top, you will not find anything there. You will simply look silly, although you will not accept it and you will not confess it; you will pretend that you are very contented, that you have reached. But ask the Buddha, ask those who have come down from the top, and you will know the true story – that by becoming famous nothing is achieved. because by becoming famous you don’t gain anything in your being. The whole desire arises out of an inferiority complex.

The other meaning is also beautiful, related to it. The ambitious mind is animalistic; it is the mind of the wolf, it is a violent mind.

Go beyond it, go beyond the mind of a wolf, and go beyond violent ambition. Rest in yourself. You are good as yoU are; relax into yourself. Enjoy yourself, celebrate yourself. Rather than wasting time in becoming somebody, be a nobody. Then all stress disappears. Then tension is not possible, then anxiety cannot grow, because you have cut the very root of anguish. Then one can live moment to moment in a kind of dance. Then life is as beautiful as roses and as luminous as the stars.

That’s what sannyas is all about: accepting the truth that we are nobodies, and not only accepting it in a kind of despair but enjoying it, the beauty of it, the grandeur of it, the freedom of it.

The person who is not ambitious is free from the crowds. He need not compromise. He can live on his own, he can be his own self; he need not sell his soUl in the market-place, he need not become a commodity.

[A sannyasin couple are leaving and too overwhelmed to speak.]

No need for words – just close your eyes and be with me for a few moments silent.…

Good. Silence is my message. Silence is the only word that I go on repeating continuously. In a thousand and one ways I say only one thing: be silent, because all that is needed happens in

silence. Love happens in silence, bliss happens in silence, truth happens in silence. Silence is the door of the temple to god.

So whenever you need me just put the box on your heart... and be silent. And come back. Help my people there!

Anand means bliss. garimo means splendour, glory – the splendour of bliss. A man who is not blissful has not known the glory of life, has lived in vain, has not really lived but only existed. Only the man who knows what bliss is becomes acquainted with the tremendous splendour of existence. It is unbelievably beautiful. Nothing is ordinary, because everything is so full, so overflowing with god, that it cannot be ordinary. The whole existence is such a celebration; but we miss, because we are not in celebration ourselves. Only a celebrating soul can feel the celebration of existence. So become more cheerful, more blissful; and it is a question of choice, remember.

It is not a question of circumstances. A man can choose to be unhappy in any circumstance. He may be the Alexander, he may possess the whole world and he can be unhappy. Alexander was unhappy; he died an unhappy man, he died utterly empty. And vice versa: a man can choose to be blissful in any kind of circumstance, even in hell. It all depends on how you look at life, it is a question of attitude. A man can be free in the prison and a man may not be free outside; it is a question of the inner soul.

So one has to learn how to choose more blissful moments. They are available, they are as available as misery is. One has to learn the knack of choosing the blissful; slowly slowly the art is learned. That’s what sannyas is all about: an education in choosing the blissful moments. And once you have started experiencing a few moments, more will be coming because you will become more capable. One day it happens that one is simply bliss. Then the blissful moments don’t come and go; it becomes just a state, one is bliss. And then one comes to know the glory of existence, the meaning, the significance of it.

[A sannyasin, arriving, says: I’ve read one book about Rumic exercises and I began to do them. I’m not very sure about the impact, if it’s good for my body, my behaviour... I was very much in my will.]

That’s the problem that is possible.

Because if you feel strong, somehow you will be strengthening your ego and will. You will lose contact with the relaxed flow of life, you will become tense. In fact what is needed is to become more and more vulnerable rather than strong. There are many exercises which can make you strong; in fact the whole world has existed following those kinds of exercises because power has been worshipped. But the way to go is not through power; it is through humbleness, it is by becoming more feminine.

So my feeling is right now stop those exercises. For two, three months flow with the things as they are here, otherwise there will be a contradiction, and that can create a split in you. After three months, if you feel that you would like to continue them again, remind me.

But right now stop, because here the whole work is just the opposite: it makes you more soft, it makes you more capable of surrender, not of will. It is towards egolessness. So they will be in conflict.

For three months give a chance to this relaxed atmosphere, and after three months remind me again about how you are feeling. Then we can decide what will be the right thing.

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