Chapter 23

Anand means bliss, mouna means silence. And silence is going to help you tremendously, so drop as much inner talk as possible. Start renouncing thoughts, don't get identified with them. Start creating a distance between you and the constantly moving traffic of thought. Neglect, ignore, be indifferent to them. Let them be there as uninvited guests if they want. And find out ways and means so that you can listen to the silence of existence. Deep in the night when all is quiet, just sit silently; listen to the silence of the night. And all meditations are useful for you only if you keep this goal in the mind. All other steps of meditations are just steps towards this goal, that silence has to arise. In silence you will know what bliss is.

Whenever you feel like being alone, be alone, sit alone. For a few days it will be very good to keep yourself to yourself. Talk less; unless it is absolutely essential, avoid talking.

Anand means bliss, Isa means lord - lord of bliss, master of bliss, or god of bliss. Isa is also the Indian name for Jesus. And if you can be Jesus there is no need to be John - be Jesus!

Deva means divine, madhyapa means drunkard. Be drunk with the divine! And that is the real search: unless one is lost in god, utterly lost, something remains unfulfilled. To be lost in god is the only way to find oneself. And god is the greatest intoxicant there is. Once one is drunk with god, one never comes down; one moves from high to high.

All other things in life are always finished sooner or later and you are left with a hangover; god leaves no hangover because you never come back. The ordinary love will leave a hangover: there will be a moment when you are high and there will be a corresponding moment when you are low. It will take you to the peaks and then it will drop you into the valleys. Those valleys are the price we have to pay in the world to attain to peaks. God is pure high; it knows no low.

And one thing more: when I say that god is the ultimate intoxicant, I also mean that this intoxicant called god has a very paradoxical quality - it makes you drunk and aware: the more drunk you are, the more aware. When you are utterly lost, you are utterly aware. You are not there but awareness is there. Then awareness exists without a centre. That's what Buddha calls nirvana: dissolution of the ego. Then awareness is there but not tethered to any individual psyche, not tethered to any individual ego. It is just pure universal consciousness. It is not yours - you are no more there.

Prem means love, turio means the ultimate state of consciousness. Love is the ultimate state of consciousness; that's why Jesus says that god is love.

You will be moving only through the path of love; you are a heart person. And it is good, feel blessed that you are a heart person. The head people are really in trouble; they go on creating their own trouble. The head is very very skilful and efficient in creating troubles. The head has only doubts and questions and no answers. The heart has trust, it has only answers and no questions. So the head creates only worries and worries and worries; it drives one mad! It is very easy for you to relax in the heart, so allow it.

You have not been allowing it. You have been afraid of its power, you have always been hesitant about the heart. It is understandable, because the heart people fall out of tune with the society. To keep pace with the ordinary people one has to remain heart-less. But now the time has come to forget about that. This is the place where you can allow your heart its total bloom. And experience of god will not be very difficult for you - it will come very easily, very spontaneously....

[A seeker says he wants to take sannyas but has a commitment to continue some Tibetan practices for another month.]

But you can continue doing your thing; there is no problem. Sannyas is not a hindrance: on the contrary, it will be a help. You can go on doing whatsoever you are doing; sannyas will not disturb your commitment. There is no need to be afraid. You can become a sannyasin... there is no problem, mm?

Anand means blissful, and Marpa is one of the greatest Tibetan mystics... He was one of the very very rarest beings in the whole history of human consciousness... like Buddha, like Jesus, of that calibre and of immense profundity. Read, meditate over his sayings: they will give you great insight.

Good!

[A sannyasin says: I had written you a letter because of my fear of getting red-faced. It makes me feel helpless in the groups... I have the fear of being noticed.]

Mm mm. Everybody is afraid of that, that's why people go on hiding. They are afraid that if they open their heart they will be rejected, that nobody will love them, that everybody will laugh at them, that they will be thought to be fools or mad or stupid or something. Because of this fear everybody goes on hiding behind walls. And that is the fear of the other too: the one from who you are hiding is hiding himself from you! Because both are hiding communication becomes impossible. That is the problem of communication: you cannot talk because there is a wall in front of you and there is a wall in front of the other. So there are two walls between each two persons, two walls, thick walls of fear.

The problem arises because from the very beginning we have been taught to be unnatural and the natural has been condemned. So one starts becoming more and more condemnatory of oneself.

One looks at oneself only to condemn: 'All is wrong with me, so how can I expose myself?'

Nothing is wrong with you! Nothing has ever been wrong with anybody. All that you call wrong is just nature, and nature is neither good nor bad; it is neutral. You have to get rid of your parents; they are too heavy on you. They have created the fear in you. You are still afraid of them; they are not here and you are still afraid of them. I can see the small child in you who is afraid daddy may come to know, mother may catch hold of him doing something wrong, something that they think is wrong. But the child wants to do it and he enjoys doing it. So the child is constantly afraid that he is going to be caught, and he is being caught many times. A child is a child: he has to learn all kinds of strategies, then he will be able to hide rightly. The mother and the father are more clever, more cunning, more calculating and they immediately catch hold of the child. In fact when the child is trying to hide, they become aware that he has done something, so they poke their noses in his affairs. They enquire, they question, and sooner or later he is caught. That fear is still there, but you are no more a child and your mother or father are not here.

Here, nobody is condemnatory in any way. That's the space we want to make available to everybody who comes to me: a space where no parental condemnation exists. You can be natural and nobody will reject you and nobody will condemn you.

I am not saying that whatsoever you are everybody is going to like; that is not the point at all.

Somebody may not like it, but liking or not liking is not condemnation. He is not saying that you are wrong, he is simply saying that this is not my cup of tea. That's perfectly okay. You may not like something in him, but that is something about you that you don't like; it has no reference to the other.

And these groups create the spaces. Don't miss! You will have to be a little courageous in the beginning, mm? because the old habit is there. You will have to push yourself against the habit. In the next group you do, try to let everything come out, and once you start coming out, the joy of it, the freedom of it, is such that you will never hide again. In hiding you are living in stale air; in hiding you don't allow the sun to reach you, the wind, the rain, to reach you. In hiding you don't allow peoples' love to reach you; in hiding you are alone, a prisoner of your own fear when so many beautiful people are available, when so much is possible, where you can have so much contact, warmth, love.

It is just an old habit that is not allowing you to go against the pattern. You will have to try. Howsoever hard it is, it is worth doing, and if you cannot do it here you will not be able to do it anywhere else.

So this is your life's opportunity; don't miss it. And remember only one thing, that all that is natural is good, nature is good! Anger is good, sex is good, all that is natural is good. Once you accept that all is good, it will be easier for you to come out of the shell. You have lived like this long enough. It has made you almost blind, the darkness of it: it has made you almost deaf. It is not real life that you are living; it is a kind of death. Jump out of it! Not a single moment has to be lost; there is no reason....

I will give you a few groups, and this time you really do them, do them madly! It is only a question of once coming out and then things will become very easy. Just a breakthrough is needed.