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‌CHAPTER 17

17 March 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva means divine, julian means youthful – divine youthfulness. To remain young forever is of immense importance. It is the past that makes one old. If one can go on dying to the past every day, one remains young. If one lives moment to moment then one never becomes old. The body will become old, certainly, but the body is not the question; the spirit is the question. And if the spirit remains young you are in contact with god constantly.

Blessed are those who can remain young for theirs is the kingdom of god. And the secret is simple: don’t accumulate the past and don’t project the future – this moment is enough unto itself – and you will remain fresh, flowing, alive, young. All those qualities are the basic qualities of the religious mind.

Veet means going beyond, transcending, william means will. God cannot be conquered; it is not a question of will power. One has to surrender, one has to disappear, for god to be. The whole idea of will power is rooted in the ego, but we have been taught, we have been conditioned, we have been prepared to fight, to conquer, to compete. Our whole ideology is centered on a single phenomenon: the phenomenon of the ego. It supports it, feeds it, nourishes it, it keeps it alive. The ego is the barrier, and will is nothing but the shadow of the ego. The ego has to go and will has to disappear.

In that state of utter will-lessness, egolessness, the beyond penetrates you, you become available to god. You become available only when you are not. Your being is a disturbance, your non-being is silence, harmony.

So go beyond will and go beyond the ego, because the ego and will only create hell, misery. Going beyond is the greatest experience of life because it brings benediction: it brings god to your door.

Prem means love, steven means the crowned one. Love makes one an emperor, it crowns one. It opens the doors of the kingdom of god. You are no more ordinary. As love arises in the heart it

makes everything extraordinary, unique, just unbelievably blissful. Love makes one a king. Without love a man is a beggar. Without love man is not yet; he is just waiting for something to happen. Without love man is just an emptiness – and not the emptiness that Buddhas talk about but a negative emptiness, a hollowness, a kind of darkness.

The emptiness that Buddhas talk about is very full, too full really, overflowing. It is very positive. It is empty of the ego but full of god. The ordinary emptiness that people feel is simply empty; there is nothing else. Only love can transform it. Only love can crown you.

But why are people afraid of love when love makes people kings? People are afraid because love not only crowns you, it also crucifies you. First it crucifies you, then it crowns you, and people are not courageous enough to take that challenge. First it kills you and then it resurrects you. You have to be abolished as you are; you have to be utterly effaced so that the space can be created in which the king can be born. Because of that crucifixion people remain unloving, or at the most they pretend to love, but they never really go into it whole-heartedly.

Only the courageous person can go whole-heartedly in love, because it is a kind of death. although it brings eternal life, life abundant. but that is only later on. Who knows? What is the guarantee? The coward asks for the guarantee. There is no guarantee, there is only risk.

Sannyas is a risk. It is a jump into a love affair with existence. It certainly crowns you, but before it crowns you it crucifies you. Be ready for both!

Anand means bliss, virendra means god of courage. The full name will mean god of bliss and courage. Bliss and courage are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Only the courageous can be blissful and only the blissful are courageous. It looks strange that only the courageous can be blissful, but it is not so, it is not strange: there is an inner logic in it.

Misery needs no courage, misery needs no intelligence. Misery needs no creative talents, misery needs no risk. Everybody is miserable, so when you are miserable you are part of the crowd. And the crowd feels comfortable, cosy; you are surrounded by people, you are sheltered. To be blissful means you will be alone.- To be blissful means you will not be a part of the crowd any more; and the crowd is very revengeful with blissful people. Naturally, it feels offended. It kills a Jesus or a Socrates for the simple reason that these people are really joyous.

Jesus says again and again to his disciples: Rejoice, rejoice, I say again and again, rejoice! He must have been a man of great love, of great dance and song. I don’t believe the picture that Christians have painted of him. He must have been a man of laughter, humour; that’s how all the Buddhas have always been. But that is their crime, the sin that the society cannot forgive them for.

Hence to be blissful one needs to be courageous. And it needs creative talents; one cannot just be blissful. Blissfulness is a by-product of creativity; when you create something you taste bliss. In those rare moments of creativity when you are lost in the act – painting, singing, dancing, making love or whatsoever it is – when you are utterly lost in it, when you are no more separate from the act, when the door and the doing are one, in that moment, that rare moment of oneness, bliss arises. Bliss is another name of falling into orgasmic unity with existence.

It needs great intelligence. Any stupid person can believe in any philosophy, ideology, that is being taught to him by the society. Only the intelligent person revolts, because he wants truth first-hand, and truth can only be first-hand; second-hand it is a lie.

Be courageous – be blissful.

Deva means divine, alice means truthfulness; and that is one of the most fundamental qualities. Once a man has it, everything else follows. It becomes the beginning of a new life, it triggers a new birth. To be truthful means to be authentic, to be simply what one is – with no pretensions, having no persona, no personality, having no mask – utterly naked in the sun, simply open, howsoever one is, with no fear. And that is the moment of conversion: when one starts dropping all the coverings. There are layers upon layers of coverings and there are masks behind masks, and the real face is lost behind thousands of false faces. When one starts dropping these faces, one is simply surprised how much weight one had been carrying unnecessarily.

And unless one attains to one’s original face, one has no real life, one has no real love, and one cannot find any bliss anywhere.

Be authentic and then you need not be a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan; you are religious. In your authenticity you are religious.

Anand means bliss, mireille means of wondrous beauty. Bliss brings a beauty of its own, and it is not ordinary beauty; it is wondrous, it is unbelievable, because it is not of the body, not of the form. In fact one cannot locate from where it is arising. That is the wonder: one cannot find the source of it, from where it is welling up. That is the wonder.

In bliss one is in deep communion with god – that’s what bliss is all about – and then from the unknown sources of existence beauty starts flowing through you. A grace comes from the beyond, from the unknown.

It is simply a wonder to see a Buddha. It does not seem to be a fact, it seems to be a fiction. That’s why down the ages people have continuously doubted whether Jesus ever existed, whether he was really a historical person, whether Buddha is just a myth, a story, a parable, a metaphor; was he really a person?

Millions have asked these questions; and the reason is that even if you encounter a Buddha you cannot believe that such grace is possible in such an ugly world, that such beauty can exist in such a world which is so blind, whose heart has gone utterly stony. Even if you encounter one it looks like a dream.

Bliss brings a beauty which is not of this world. Bliss becomes the door to some other dimension of existence. It takes you into the realm of the mysterious.

I teach bliss. That is my simple, single message: be blissful, be cheerful, be full of love. There is no need to worry about god and there is no need to worry about prayer. Those things will arise of their own accord, they always arise. The blissful heart starts praying without words. The blissful heart starts remembering god without words. It is a feel, it is not a thought.

Devapriya means beloved of god. Life is a gift, a gift of love. It is utterly precious, nothing can be more valuable, but because it has no price we forget that it is a gift of great value.

Price and value are not synonymous. Price reduces everything to a commodity; then it can be sold and purchased. But there are things which cannot be sold and cannot be purchased, so they can’t have any price. For example, life can have no price, love can have no price, meditation can have no price, joy can have no price; they have value but no price.

God valued you, that’s why he created you. He loved you, otherwise you would not be here. Your very presence is a proof that existence needed you; and to feel needed is tremendously satisfying, to feel loved by existence is to feel at home.

My sannyas is not against the world, it is not a renunciation; on the contrary, it is a rejoicing in the world – rejoicing in everything, from the smallest to the greatest, from the morning tea to the night prayer. Life is so precious, each moment of it is so precious, that once you start understanding it, feeling it, you will feel so grateful that that very gratefulness becomes prayer.

Anand means bliss, christine means to follow Christ. But to follow Christ does not mean to be a Christian. In fact by being a Christian one avoids Christ. By following the organised religion one starts avoiding the true. To be part of the vatican is to be against Christ. This is a great calamity, but it has happened all over the world, that the followers are not really followers but have turned into enemies: they do exactly what should not be done.

Jesus’ message is that of love, and down the centuries Christians have killed so many people. In the name of love they have been fighting great wars, holy wars, crusades. And not only have they been killing non-Christians, they have even been killing Christians. Such hatred, such violence has followed the man whose message was of love that it is unbelievable.

To be really a follower of Christ means not to be a Christian, and to follow Buddha means not to be a Buddhist, because all ideologies, once they are organised, systematised, start destroying truth. Truth cannot be systematised. Truth cannot be reduced to a dogma, it cannot be changed into a belief. It is an experience, it has to be lived.

And the second thing: Christ has nothing to do with esus in particular. Christ is not a personal name, it is a state of consciousness, just as Buddha is a state of consciousness. Jesus is only one of the Christs; many have existed before him, many have existed after him. Any one who blooms into total consciousness becomes a Christ.

Follow Christ-consciousness so that one day you also can become the same. It is everybody’s possibility and everybody’s birthright.

[A sannyasin, leaving, says: I felt the whole time here that I have no chance in anything.]

That is just your own projection, otherwise every door is open, and every door is god’s door: knock anywhere and it is his door. But if you stand aloof, if you don’t participate, if you remain a spectator, then there is no chance. You are missing it yourself, otherwise every moment there are chances and chances. Opportunity never comes, never goes; it is always there. Use it! Jump, risk, stake all that you have, and immediately the door opens.

Next time you come, remember it from the very beginning: participate in everything; don’t remain.… You are keeping a distance, you go only so far; you are being clever, calculating. Then there is no chance, because the chance exists only for those who jump in with totality.

You can go on standing on the bank of the river and you can remain thirsty. You will have to bow down, you will have to cup your hands, yoU will have to drink! The river is there, the river is available. but still you have to do something so that it can quench your thirst.

I am just a river, absolutely at your disposal, but if you don’t drink, then nothing can be done. You can show the horse the water but you cannot make him drink.

So next time you come, take a plunge!

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