23

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‌CHAPTER 23

26 March 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Prem means love, anneke means grace. Love is the only experience in life which makes you aware of the presence of god. And to be aware of the presence of god is to be full of grace; suddenly one is overflowing with grace. The benediction is such, the blessing is such, that one becomes a blessing to existence through it.

Love is the only proof for god, because it is not a question of argumentation, syllogism, inference. It is a question of a totally different kind of approach to life – not logical, not calculative, not even that of an observer. But when one participates in existence, melts. merges, in those rare moments when one becomes one with existence, the presence is felt. And to feel that presence is to be full of grace, full of beauty. full of blessing.

Seek god in love because he is found only in love and nowhere else.

Anand means bliss, sugit means a beautiful song – a beautiful song of bliss. Man is born to be that. Man is a hidden music, and the music is trying hard to explode, but we have created such a hard crust around ourselves that neither the music of existence can enter into us nor our music can have a meeting with the music of the without. We have created a wall between the without and the within; that wall is the ego. That wall is the idea of separation, that ‘I am separate from existence.’ We are not.

The only illusion that man has to drop is the illusion of separation. Then suddenly the inner song bursts forth and meets with the outer. The inner and the outer are no more inner and the outer; they become one... a pulsation, a rhythm. That experience of the within and without becoming one is the peak of joy, of ecstasy. Only through that ecstasy does one come to know the significance of life, the utter beauty of it.

So remember, the idea of separation has to be dropped slowly slowly. Seek and search for moments when you can feel more in tune with existence so that the layer of separation becomes thinner and thinner: in love, listening to music, in meditation, seeing a beautiful sunset or the starry night, or just sitting silently doing nothing, merging, melting, disappearing. Allow more and more moments of that kind. It is a rare kind, because we are so occupied that we never allow those moments to erupt, or even if sometimes they happen, we are in such a hurry that we never take any note of them.

Start taking note of those beautiful moments because they are windows into god.

Anand means bliss, nitsan means the bud of a flower. We are born as buds. It very rarely happens that one becomes a flower. We die as buds; that is the misery of life, the agony of life, the hell of it. If the bud blooms, the Buddha arises in you: you become an awakened soul. The bud means consciousness asleep, the flower means consciousness awake.

Every effort has to be made to break this sleep, to come out of it, to be more alert, to be more attentive. to be more watchful, more observant. From every comer the sleep has to be attacked. It is a long long sleep. It is not easy to enter into it, to penetrate into it, but it is not impossible either. The task is difficult, the greatest challenge that a man can ever accept, and the greatest adventure too, because once the bud opens you will enter into a totally different kind of existence. Everything remains the same and yet everything totally changes.

So this is going to be your meditation: awareness.

Deva means divine, uli means a ruler, a king – a divine king. We are living as beggars because we have fallen asleep and we are in a dream, otherwise we are kings; the whole kingdom of god is ours. Awake we are kings, asleep we are beggars; it is a dream, a nightmare.

When we are beggars, desire is all that we have. Desires and desires and desires – that is the begging bowl. And we cannot satisfy those desires: they go on increasing. You fulfil one and ten more arise; you are just reaching the verge of fulfilling one and ten more have come. Unless the dream is broken man remains a beggar, and once the dream is broken the whole thing seems to be so ridiculous.

Mm? – you must have seen sometimes when you had a nightmare how much you suffered in it. When you were back and you knew that it was just a nightmare, it looked so ridiculous; how could you have believed in it? But it was so real when you were asleep.

So there are two kinds of realities: the reality that is created by sleep and the reality that is revealed by wakefulness. The whole effort of sannyas is to change sleep into wakefulness, to shock you, to shake you, into awareness. Then the kingdom is yours. because the kingdom is within you. It has not to be achieved. We are already rulers of it: it is inborn.

Anand means bliss, Inge is from a Norse mythology; Inge is the name of the god of creativity, fertility, peace, prosperity. So your full name will mean goddess of bliss, creativity, peace, prosperity. And all those things come together, they are not separate things – aspects of one phenomenon. One who is blissful is naturally peaceful. One who is peaceful and blissful is naturally creative, because the peace and the bliss are bound to overflow you; they cannot be contained. It is too much, it has

to be shared; and sharing is what creativity is all about. One has to do something with the released energy. And when one is creative, one prospers; prosperity comes automatically.

It is a beautiful name. Think of these things: bliss, peace, creativity, prosperity.

And they are possible. Whatsoever we start working upon becomes possible. Man’s capacity is immense. Man is limited only by his beliefs. There are people who think they cannot be happy, hence they are not happy. They won’t allow themselves to be happy; their belief is there and they have invested in the belief for so long and they have believed in it for so long that it has become a settled phenomenon. Even if happiness comes they will close their doors. They know they can’t be happy. Happiness must have come for somebody else, it must have knocked on the wrong door; they cannot be happy.

Our beliefs become our limitations. Drop all beliefs. Man’s capacity is infinite. That is the meaning when we say that man is divine: he has infinite capacities, nothing is impossible. Bliss certainly is not impossible; and that seems to be the most impossible thing in the world. In fact it is so natural and spontaneous that when it happens one is simply surprised how simple it was; but we had not allowed it. Allow it to happen!

Sannyas means allowing god and existence to happen to you, withdrawing all barriers, dropping all armour. defence arrangements. We are not in an alien existence, the universe is not our enemy, so we need not continuously defend and shield ourselves. Put the shields and all defence aside and suddenly things start happening; and one thing brings another and so on, so forth. Life becomes a continuous surprise; each moment brings new joys, new experiences, new ecstasies. One just has to be open and vulnerable.

Deva means divine, frederick means peace – divine peace. There is a peace which can be cultivated by us, but it remains only a veneer, a facade, just a mask; it is not more than skin-deep or not even that deep. Anybody can scratch it and the animal will come out immediately. People call it character.

It is a kind of pseudo life, pseudo because deep-down you are one person and on the surface pretending to be somebody else. It creates a split too, you are never one whole, and there is constant conflict between the real and the false. The false is appreciated by the society, valued, respected, and the real is condemned, but the real has power and the false has no power. So one has to learn ways to always be two persons and one has to be constantly on-guard. That creates hypocrisy, and one cannot forgive oneself; one feels guilty.

There is another kind of peace that is not cultivated by you but that is only allowed to happen. That peace happens through meditation. It is not character, it is just an opening. You cannot practise it, you can only let it happen. In a state of receptivity it comes from the beyond like a ray, penetrates your heart, transforms you. Then you are one. Then your smile is true; it is rooted in the heart. Then you don’t need any masks; your original face is beautiful. Then you have grace because all conflict is gone, and when there is no inner conflict, no inner war, there is tremendous grace. Even others start feeling your coolness, your calmness, your centredness, your groundedness.

So never cultivate peace. All that is needed on our part is negative, not positive. We are not to cultivate peace positively; we have just to withdraw all the barriers between us and the whole. Once

the barriers are withdrawn when the windows are open and the doors are open, the sun comes in, the wind comes in, the rain comes in. You are not to create the wind, you are not to create the rain, you are not to create the sun. If you create it it is going to remain false, arbitrary, artificial. And that’s what ugliness is: to be artificial. Then one lives like a zombie; one goes through all the movements of life but never really lives.

My sannyasins have to live, truly live, and whatsoever it costs has to be paid, but live truly.

Be authentic to your very core. On that point never compromise, because to compromise on that point is to sell your soul. Then all is lost.

[Hiroko is the name of a great ninth century master, and means wide and vast.]

Anand Hiroko. Anand means bliss, and you say that hiroko means wide and vast, so it will mean wide and vast bliss.

Misery is very small. Misery is a kind of shrinking of the soul. In misery one shrinks; when one is blissful one expands. In misery one is alone; in bliss one joins with others. When the ultimate bliss has happened one has become part of the whole. Then one is as wide and vast as the sky itself.

And this is good that the name belongs to a Zen master. Zen is wide and vast. It contains all that is beautiful in all the religions. It is the essential-most religion, the very essence of all the lotuses. To understand Zen is to understand the very soul of existence.

And forget about the ninth century; you have come to Hiroko again! Look into my eyes and you will see the same wideness and the same vastness. So for you, I am Hiroko!

[A sannyasin, leaving, says: I’ve been very happy, but I’ve been very lonely as well, sometimes.]

Nothing to be worried about, nothing to be worried about. If happiness is there then loneliness slowly slowly becomes aloneness. Happiness is the real thing. It transforms the loneliness into aloneness; and aloneness is beautiful. If happiness is not there and one is sad, then loneliness becomes more and more lonely, and then it is dark and dismal.

You have really been happy; I have been watching you. So it is not a question to be worried about. Happiness has its own alchemy: it changes the whole chemistry of your being slowly slowly. It makes one capable of enjoying one’s aloneness – which is really needed, because we are alone. Whatsoever we do to hide the fact, sooner or later we are disillusioned: we are alone. Nothing can be done about it, and there is no need to do anything about it because in our aloneness is our freedom. Just go and come back!

[A sannyasin on his first visit, says he had a seizure three years ago and another last year; he lost control and blacked out for forty-five minutes, and afterwards he felt drained.]

Just wait, and after two months remind me. Go through a few groups; things will become clear.

I think that there is something deep down in your unconscious which wants to surface and your conscious does not allow it to surface. It represses it so hard... that can create the seizure. But I

don’t think that there is much to be worried about; it will disappear. But after two months remind me again, so if needed, we will bring on a seizure and see how it is. Good!

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