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‌CHAPTER 2

2 January 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means blissful, Sarmad is the name of a Sufi master, one of the greatest Sufis of all ages. He was also killed like Jesus.

When he was being killed he said ‘I am god!’ That’s what he was saying again and again, and that was the cause of his death.

Somebody said ‘You have not learned a lesson at all. You are being killed, your head is being cut only because of this statement; still, at the time of death, you are not repentant.’

He said ‘What are you talking about? Even when my head is cut off, my head without the body will say the same thing three times.’ And it happened that way: his head was cut, it had started rolling down the steps, and thrice the head shouted ‘I am god!’ It is a very beautiful story.…

In life or in death a real man is the same. Even death makes no difference. Life and death are irrelevant; to the real man who has known his original face all is the same.

Once one has known the eternal truth there is no death. The body can be destroyed – the body will be destroyed, some way, some day – but there is something in you which is indestructible, and that is bliss. To know that is bliss; to know ‘I am god’ is bliss. In knowing ‘I am god’ you are not denying the godhood of anybody else; in fact you are proclaiming the godhood of everybody else. Everybody is included in that proclamation, it is not egoistic.

Let that become your mantra: silently, deep down, start feeling ‘I am god and so is everyone else.’ Let that feeling permeate your whole being. Become Sarmad, in life and in death both.

Sarmado. It will mean the same. And that has to become your meditation too: ‘I am god.’ It has nothing to do with I. In feeling ‘I am god’ the I starts dissolving. A moment comes when there is only

godliness; the I has disappeared utterly. Only a fragrance, only an invisible feeling, remains; even the flower is no more there. Then one has come home. One has transcended all gross realities, one has reached the ultimate essence.

The emphasis in ‘I am god’ is not on I. If it is on I then the whole point is missed. The emphasis is on god; slowly slowly the I dissolves into god. If the emphasis is on the I then slowly slowly god disappears and it is only the ego pretending. So the mantra is dangerous: on one side is I, this world; on the other side is god, that world; and between the two is a small bridge of am-ness, of is-ness.

First one has to feel more and more am-ness and less and less I-ness, then one has moved onto the bridge. Slowly slowly I is left behind, then even am-ness disappears and there is only godliness.

I is like a root. Am is like a flower. Godliness is like a fragrance: one has arrived, the ultimate thing has happened, and that is bliss!

Deva means divine, maharshi means a seer. Truth cannot be thought about: it has to be seen. It is a question of attaining a new perspective, it is a question of opening new eyes. The ordinary eyes won’t do, the ordinary eyes only look outwards. Just hidden behind these eyes is the capacity to look in to. One becomes a seer when one starts looking inwards. And to look inwards is the only way to know oneself, god, truth; they are different names of the same reality.

So think less, slowly slowly drop thinking as much as possible, because only when thinking stops can one look in. Thinking obstructs the vision. Thinking is like clouds: even if you look within you will only see thoughts and thoughts – not the sky but the clouds. When the clouds are no more there and the sky is cloudless, the vision is simple, total. That makes a person a seer. The seer is not a philosopher, he does not speculate about truth; he knows it.

Seeing is knowing. Trust only seeing, nothing else. Unless you have seen, all your beliefs are just useless. And when one has seen, there is no need for belief. When one knows, one knows; the question of belief does not arise. The ignorant believes: the man of wisdom knows. Become a knower by becoming a seer.

Madhurima means absolute sweetness. That is a metaphorical name for love. Love is sweet, and when one is in love sweetness wells up. When one becomes love then one is just sweetness from one end to another. In a love relationship sweetness comes and goes, and when sweetness goes it leaves bitterness behind. A love relationship is a rhythm between sweet and bitter. A love relationship is really a relationship of love-hatred: coming closer, going away, coming closer, going away.

But to become love is totally different. By ‘one becomes love’ I mean there is no more a relationship; it simply becomes your state. In that state there is no possibility of any bitterness arising. And only that sweetness will satisfy, will fulfil.

Love, ordinary love, only gives glimpses of it. In fact it never satisfies; on the contrary it makes more thirst, it creates more longing. Instead of creating contentment it creates a great fire of discontentment, because you have seen something but it comes and goes. You have seen the

light but again there is darkness. If you had not seen the light there would have not been so much trouble; you would have relaxed with darkness, you would have accepted it as life. Those few dew- drops of love cannot allow you to accept darkness as the truth. But they are just dew-drops, and one can be fulfilled only when oceanic love arises.

That is the meaning of madhurima: when one becomes love itself, when love is unaddressed, not a relationship but a state, one’s very quality.

Saburo means infinite patience; and that is the basic requirement for spiritual growth. One cannot be in a hurry. In a hurry, growth is not possible. The hurried mind is a disturbance; and the modern mind is constantly in a hurry. If it has lost anything, it is patience; it cannot wait.

That’s why so many people in the world are thinking of meditation, prayer, god, but nothing substantial is ever achieved. And the basic reason why it doesn’t happen, although people are sincerely longing for it, is that their minds cannot wait. Their idea of meditation is almost that of instant coffee: they want it immediately. And it is not that it cannot happen immediately; it can happen. but not by your wanting. That is the only barrier. If you are relaxed, patient, ready to wait for ever, it can happen immediately too, instantly too. The deeper your patience, the faster is the possibility of its happening. The more in a hurry you are, the further is the goal. The people who run never reach. The people who can sit silently have already arrived.

This is the paradox of the seeker. Remember it: god is not far away, but if you are in a hurry he is very far away. God is very close by, closer than you are to yourself, closer than your very heart-beat. but you need to be in an utter relaxation, as if there is infinite time and no hurry. If it ever happens, good; even if it doesn’t happen there is no worry. Then suddenly it happens! If you can fulfil the requirement of patience, god can happen immediately, right now. So remember it!

Farid was a great Sufi mystic. Sufis are the people who follow the path of love, beauty, music, dance, celebration. They are not ascetics, they are celebrants.

I also teach that the way to god is not through renunciation but through rejoicing. There is no need to be hard upon yourself. In fact the harder you are upon yourself, the more difficult it will be for you to reach, because the person who is hard upon himself is basically hard upon god, because who is he except god himself? To torture yourself in any way is to torture god, because there is nobody else except him. Torture yourself or torture others, it makes no difference: you are always torturing god.

Sufis say ‘Love’. Sufis say ‘Celebrate the gift of life! Be creative.’ And true religion is bound to be creative. It is only the pseudo religion that teaches destructiveness, that teaches people to be violent – with others and with themselves too – that teaches people methods to be sadistic and masochistic. The pseudo religion creates pathology; the true religion gives you a wholeness, a sanity. That has to be remembered: love is your path and dance is your method. Sing and dance your way to god!

[A new sannyasin says: I don’t know which meditation to do. I have been sitting quietly.]

Very good. Just sit silently for at least one hour every day, doing nothing; that’s meditation. If one can manage not to do anything for one hour, that is enough. In those moments when you are not

doing anything you are utterly silent; god penetrates you. When you are not doing something he starts doing something in you; when you are occupied he has no chance to work on you. When you are unoccupied you are available to him, open, and then miracles are possible.

Everyone is entitled to miracles, but we don’t allow them to happen; life is lived in such a miserable way. It is so stupid, it is so ridiculous, that people go on living in misery for no reason at all. All the glory is theirs, all the beauty of existence is theirs, and god is ready to pour infinite blessings, but he cannot find a way to approach people, to enter them. People don’t allow even a single passage; they are utterly closed.

So that’s perfectly good. Simply sit for one hour without doing anything, so relaxed, as if you are not. That’s meditation: to be in a state of non-being, of non-doing, as if one has dissolved, evaporated. Only something utterly empty, a zero, is sitting there.

Become a zero, and one day you will see: the zero is not empty, god has filled it; it is overfilling with godliness!

[The new sannyasin then says: I have got a boyfriend and sometimes in his presence I feel that I become unaware.]

That too is perfectly good. Sometimes lose your awareness; that is love. Sometimes forget yourself; that too is good. One should not become monotonous. One should be capable of moving from one polarity to the other polarity. That makes life richer, otherwise it becomes monotonous. One can be fed up with meditation and one can be fed up with love too, but one is never fed up if one is able to move from meditation into love, from love into meditation. One is never fed up, boredom is impossible; then life continuously renews itself.

Meditation means being alone; love means being together. Meditation means that only you are; love means that the other is. Meditation is I, I, I; love is thou, thou, thou, and it is good sometimes to remove yourself from the I position to the thou position. That will bring more riches to you.

Don’t be worried about it. Whenever you are with your lover be totally drowned in him; and that will intensify and deepen your meditation, it will not disturb your meditation. The deeper you can go into the other, the deeper you will be able to go into yourself. Go on going deeper into the other and you will be surprised: you are going deeper and deeper into yourself. And vice versa: if you go deep into yourself, you go deep into the other. This is a simple but very fundamental law. So manage both and become a synthesis of love and meditation.

[A sannyasin, who is six months pregnant, asks about doing groups.]

It will be a little hard, mm? so I think don’t do groups but do a few individual sessions: Massage, Acupuncture, Shiatsu. All three will help you and the child too, mm? And do groups next time. This time is not good. From the very beginning, the child will start asking ‘Who am I ?’ if you do the Intensive Enlightenment! It will be too much for the poor child. Just wait!

[A sannyasin couple ask for a name for the small community of bamboo huts that sprang into life by the river not far from the ashram.]

This will be the name: Fana. Fana is a Sufi word; it means dissolution into god, dissolving into god. It is the highest state, where the ego disappears and god appears, when one dies into god and is reborn. Fana means to die, on your part, as you are – small, fragmentary, separate from existence; and to be born as the whole – egoless, infinite.

So help people to dissolve themselves into god!

Prem means love, surya means sun – sun of love. Love can have two kinds of expression: one is the moon, the other is the sun. But first love has to be lived as sun, only then can it be lived as moon. Those who miss the first will never achieve the second. By the sun is meant passionate, hot love. By the moon is meant cool, passionless love.

The sun represents life, passion, longing, adventure, going out, spreading. The moon represents a totally different dimension, a higher dimension: coolness, collectedness, a gathering together, a silence.

Many people would like to have a love which is cool, serene, but you cannot simply go into it unless you have lived love with heat. So the sun energy has to be used as a stepping stone towards the moon energy.

The moon is like a Buddha: the sun is like Zorba the Greek. My effort here is to bridge these two energies. But first one has to live at the optimum as the sun: outgoing, passionate, hot, adventurous. Only when one has known the other in all its possible expressions, only when one has shouted ‘Thou!’ with joy, can one have a return journey; one becomes worthy of returning. And when one returns, the circle is perfect. Then there is silence and quietude and serenity. And that cool love is the ultimate phenomenon. So you have to live the first part first.

You have a beautiful name! Love passionately, love tremendously, love totally.

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