27

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‌CHAPTER 27

29 January 1979 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, atithi means a guest. Literally atithi means one who comes without informing, one who comes without announcing the date of his coming. That’s how it used to be in the past – there was no way of informing; the guest would suddenly come. And bliss is a sudden guest. When it comes, how it comes, why it comes – no questions can be answered. It comes, that much is certain.

It always comes, but it cannot be brought. Yes, you can invite it, but you cannot force it to happen. It is not a doing; it is a happening. One can be available to it, receptive to it, vulnerable to it, that’s all that one can do. One can wait, can wait prayerfully, one can be utterly expectant, but that’s all that is humanly possible. We cannot manufacture it; it comes from the beyond, and there is no science to bring it about. Its coming is a mystery, its going too. Just like a breeze it comes, and just like a breeze it is gone; you cannot hold onto it. The moment you start holding it, it is no more there; it has already left you. In fact the moment you become aware that it is, it is already gone. Even that much awareness creates a distance between you and bliss; you become unbridged.

When bliss is there, you are not; there is no distance: you are it. You cannot watch it, you cannot observe it, you cannot analyse it, you cannot understand it. It is simply there in all its grandeur, and you are lost in it.

If one understands the mysterious ways of bliss, things become very easy; one can make oneself more and more available to it, more and more open. That preparation is negative. You just keep your windows and doors open: when the breeze comes it will enter.

If your doors and windows are closed, even if the breeze comes, it will not enter. Keep your eyes open, so when it is light you will see. But if you keep your eyes closed, then even when it is full daylight you will remain in darkness.

Bliss comes via negativa. One has just to remove hindrances, one has just to destroy barriers; it is a negative kind of work. Once all barriers are removed, suddenly it starts showering from everywhere. And even those on whom it showers are made dumb: they cannot say why it is, what it is, how it is.

Anand means bliss, shantam means peace. Bliss is not happiness, because happiness is a kind of excitement, it is feverish, hence it cannot last forever. If you watch closely you will find that happiness tires you as much as unhappiness. One can take only so much – more than that, and it starts turning sour, more than that, and it becomes poison.

Bliss is not happiness, neither is it unhappiness, because it is not an excitement at all. It is a state of utter non-excitement, of being at ease, of being totally at home, of simply being – no ripples of positive excitement or negative excitement, no question of liking and disliking, no idea of good and bad – just being without any idea, any distinction, any duality. Then there is a tranquillity, a transcendence.

That transcendence is bliss. It is the ultimate state of meditative consciousness, when all contents of the mind have disappeared and the mirror of consciousness reflects nothing at all.

That is the greatest joy possible. But again, remember, don’t start thinking in terms of dualities. It is a non-dual state; you are one with existence. All dis-ease has disappeared, all conflict has died. There is tremendous accord, harmony, at-one-ment.

Veet means beyond. Rudi is a dangerous word. It is Teutonic; it comes from Rudolph, its basic meaning is a wolf. The second meaning is a very famous wolf and the third meaning is fame. There is something in fame which in some way relates with the mind of the wolf. Fame, ambition to be known, is violent deep down. To be famous means to be on an ego trip, and the ego is the wolf. So the idea of fame and the wolf are really deeply connected.

In the past, only violent people have been famous people. Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Nadir Shah, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler – these are not men but wolves. History is full of the names of wolves. Up to now, human history has been that of the animal in man, not of the divine in man. Even if the divine has been expressed, it has not yet become part of history.

Jesus is still a myth. There are millions who doubt that he ever existed; there is no historical proof. Buddha also seems to be a myth. And the farther back you go – Krishna, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra – the more mythological they become. The reason is because they represented the divine in man, and our whole history takes note only of the violent, of the inhuman, of the subhuman, of the animal. The divine belongs to the future.

The very idea of attaining fame is ugly, because that means competition, that means struggle, that means treading over people’s heads – that’s what politics is all about.

So by giving you this name I am changing its basic meaning.

Veet means beyond, rudi means fame: go beyond the desire of fame, go beyond the wolf, go beyond the animal. go into the divine. The way into the divine is by being nobody, just an utter nonentity, a nothingness.

If you want to be famous you have to be somebody very solid, rocklike. If you want to be nobody you have to be utterly non-existent, as if you don’t exist any more. But in that non-existence, god penetrates you. When you are not, god is.

Deva means god, klaus is Greek; it means victory. The full name will mean god’s victory. You are not to be victorious: god has to be allowed to be victorious over you.

These are the only two ways people live their life: either they are trying to be victorious over god, or they are trying to allow god to be victorious over them. The first effort has become science, and the second effort has become religion. Science is a way of conquering, religion is a way of being conquered. Science is substantially violent; it is a rape on nature and god. Religion is love; it is a love affair with nature and god.

The true victory comes only through religion. The true victory is very paradoxical: unless you learn the art of surrendering yourself it cannot happen. Remember it, that one has to surrender to the whole, one has to efface oneself. The victory is not against the whole but with the whole.

Anand means bliss, ageya means that which cannot be sung. There are things which can be experienced but cannot be expressed, and those are the greatest things in life. They are so vast that they cannot be reduced to words. They are so significant that no word exists which can carry their meaning. Words exist for the mundane reality, for the market-place.

There are things of the heart: for those things there is no language, they can be communicated only in silence. The only song about them that is possible is silence.

When a person is really blissful. then his bliss is a silent presence around him; it is like an aura. There is no noise, it is not noisy, so it can be heard only by those who are silent and it can be seen only by those who have real eyes to see. It can be felt only by those whose hearts are ready to be stirred by the unknown and the unknowable.

Prem means love, barbara is Greek; it means the stranger. The Greeks had the habit of calling everybody who didn’t speak their language a stranger – not only a stranger, they thought that he was a barbarian. ‘Barbarian’ comes from the word ‘barbara’. They thought that he was wild, that he was primitive, that he was not yet civilised. But that has been the attitude of all the people all around the world. Everybody thinks himself the highest in the hierarchy and everybody else subhuman.

When for the first time Europeans came to China, Chinese books say that to see them was hilarious. They looked so stupid and ridiculous in their strange dresses and costumes, and whatsoever they said was utter gibberish and nonsense. Of course – it was!

The Europeans wrote in their diaries that the Chinese were the missing link between monkeys and man. They were not human beings, they were midway. They are no more monkeys, true, but they are not yet human beings either. They are just on the way, turning from monkeys into human beings.

But this has always been the attitude; this is how the human ego functions.

The Greeks thought that everybody who did not speak Greek was a barbarian. But the word is beautiful; it means the stranger. And the name that I am giving to you will mean: love, the stranger.

Love is the most mysterious phenomenon on the earth, the most misunderstood. Love is the greatest stranger on the earth, because the earth has become so unloving that to speak about love seems almost mad. In the world of power politics, in the world of atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, to talk about love just does not fit.

Love seems to be only for the poets, the dreamers, the lotus-eaters; it is not for the practical man. This is strange, very saddening, that love has become a stranger on the earth – because if love is a stranger, then man loses all meaning in life and all sense of direction and all possibility of growth. It is only through love that man is sustained, nourished. It is only through love that man becomes an integrated soul. It is only through love that the soul is born. Without love, man is a being without a soul. Without love, man is nothing but a machine.

It is not intellect that makes the difference between a man and a machine; it is love that makes the difference. Now machines are capable of creating computers far more skilful, far more intelligent, than the human mind. Sooner or later, computers will be doing all the work that the human mind has been doing down the ages, and they will function in a far better way than even the mind of an Albert Einstein. Then what will be the difference? They will be superior human beings – computers.

The only difference that is going to be decisive in the future is that of love. No machine can be created which can secrete love; love remains intrinsically a human phenomenon. The whole future depends on how much we can grow love in the world, otherwise man is on the verge of disappearing. Man is going to be enslaved by his own created machines. The only hope is love.

My whole teaching is based on love. Love is a stranger – but befriend it. Let love become the most welcome guest in your heart.

Sabine is Latin, it means ancient; dharmo means religion – ancient religion.

Religion is always the same, from the beginning to the end. Everything else changes, but the ultimate reality remains the same and the ultimate law of reality remains the same. You can call it the ancientmost or you can call it the newest, it doesn’t make any difference; both mean the same.

Religion is timeless, it exists beyond time. Once in a while, it enters into time – when a Buddha is there or a Jesus is there or a Moses is there. Their receptivity is such that they bring the beyond into the world; for a moment the world becomes luminous with the eternal. But once Buddha is gone, once Jesus is gone, that light disappears again into the beyond. Then churches exist and scriptures exist, creeds and dogmas exist, Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans exist but they go on worshipping something dead.

Everyone has to give birth to religion in his own being, only then is it alive. Everybody has to become a mother to religion, a womb to religion. And that’s what sannyas is all about: you have to be pregnant with the beyond. You have to bring something in that is not available in the material world, something that is non-material. Once that non-material thing is contacted, your life is transformed. The very touch of it and the baser metal changes into gold. The mortal is no more mortal: the mortal becomes the immortal .

Prem means love; el is a Hebrew root, it means god or divine. And Elisabetta was the name of the mother of John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was one of the greatest revolutionaries of the world. The whole credit for bringing Jesus into the world goes to him. He was more responsible for Jesus than Jesus’ own father and mother. It is he who transformed Jesus; he gave him a second birth. He cleansed Jesus of all impurities, he opened Jesus up to receive god in his heart: that’s what baptism is all about.

Elisabetta is John the Baptist’s mother’s name, and comes from a very beautiful root: ‘el’ – divine. Your full name will mean divine love. And the woman who gave birth to John the Baptist must have been a woman of divine love.

Love and divineness are synonymous: if you are loving, you are divine; if you are divine, you are loving. They cannot be separated; it is a single phenomenon looked at from two different angles. Remember it: love as much as you can and you will find god coming closer and closer to you.

One can forget all about god; love is enough. If one can drown oneself in love, in totality, god comes of his own accord.

[A sannyasin, leaving, says he was doing counselling work in the West, and now he would like to work more as it is done in the ashram, but feels he needs more training, skills and meditation first.]

You can start the work, but if you are a little more prepared, you will feel more confident. The energy is ready, no problem, but you still don’t have that confidence. You will be a little hesitant about how far to go, where to start, what to allow, what not to allow; it will be a strain on you. Your energy is ready, you can start the work, but your confidence is not yet ready. So just to strengthen your confidence, if you can, be here for one year and do the university course and you will be perfectly ready.

The greatest thing in all kinds of therapy work is a tremendous confidence. That is the real healing force: not what you do, but how you do it. The technique is secondary, the personality of the therapist is primary; if the therapist is utterly confident, then fifty percent of the work is already done. If the therapist is a little hesitant, wavering, immediately the patient catches hold of that. It is a subtle vibe; you cannot hide it, it is infectious. Then the work becomes long and unnecessarily complicated.

[The sannyasin asks: But doesn’t confidence come by doing the work?]

Confidence can come by doing the work, that is true, but then it will take many many years to come.

So my suggestion is that if you can come, if it is possible, then come and be here for a little longer, do all the groups, the university courses, and become more and more suffused with my energy. If it is difficult you can start work. But my suggestion is that the better course for you and for your patients will be to come here and be here a little longer. Soon you will be a good therapist.

Therapy is an art, and a very subtle art too, because you are playing with human energy. Just a little mistake, and it can be dangerous to the person; just a little doubt in your mind, and it will create doubt in the patient’s mind. You need infinite trust in what you are doing; that trust is the real treatment.

Now psychologists say that seventy-five percent of therapy happens through placeboes. It is not real medicine that works, real medicine does only twenty-five percent of the work. Seventy-five percent

is the infectious quality of the therapist, the bubbling, bouncing confidence of the therapist, the shine in his eyes, the utter trust that he is going to help, that you are going to be helped, that there is no problem at all – that is seventy-five percent of the work.

So my suggestion is: if you can manage it, come back. Be here for a few months more and then start work.

[A sannyasin says: My beloved moved away from me some months ago and I don’t feel connected with anything. One of the reasons to come here and be with you was to feel some connection of love I’ve lost.]

It happens: when you separate from somebody with whom you have lived for a long time and whom you have loved, this gap is bound to be there. One has to learn to accept these dark gaps; they are natural.

If you have enjoyed the company of somebody, then who is going to suffer when the person leaves you or you leave the person? This is the price we have to pay for it. Suffering is the price for all the joys that you purchase in life, and nothing is without cost. One has to learn the hard facts of life; this is simple arithmetic. You never asked me when you were enjoying the company of the woman – now why do you ask me? If you had asked me then, I would have disturbed things then and there; this time would not have arrived. But one has to learn.

Just relax, meditate, do a few groups... and you may find another woman! Then get into trouble again!

It is only slowly slowly that one learns to be a Buddha – very slowly! And without women, there would be no Buddhas!

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