Darshan 31 July 1976

Prem means love and bhagwatam means divine, godly. And love is always godly. Howsoever imperfect, it is always godly. You may understand it, you may not understand it, but it is godly. Love is the only proof of god - that he exists. And people who don't know what love is can never know what god is. There is no way, because they lack the very basic receptivity.

It is like when you don't have any sense of music, you don't have the ear for it; the melody does not exist for you. It is simply noise, a sort of disturbance. At the most, you can tolerate it. If you don't have eyes to see the colour, the paintings are just absurd - people just fooling around. Whatsoever you feel becomes real to you, so the reality of a certain thing depends on the receptivity.

People ask whether god exists or not. They should ask whether they know love or not, then they ask the right question.

So this you have to remember - that love is godly, and to be loving and to allow others to love you...

because that is even more difficult. To love is very easy because you remain the controller, you remain the manipulator and you remain the master; any moment you can withdraw. But to allow somebody to love you is more difficult, very difficult, because to allow somebody to love you means you are losing your definition, your boundaries. You are allowing somebody to trespass your territory, and one never knows what is going to happen. You may not be able to withdraw. To allow somebody to love you means allowing him or her to possess you. So love is a first lesson in surrender.

Love, and allow others to love you. Never lose an opportunity, because all these opportunities add up in the end, and the total of all your love experience is god.

So god never happens in one experience - it is a sum total of a thousand and one experiences.

[A sannyasin has to leave because his father has a serious heart attack.]

Mm... go, and when he is able to do something, show him the nadabrahma, the humming meditation.

You can do it first sitting by his side and he can watch. Then you do it and he can participate with you. That will help his heart too, and it will help something more than the body.

It is most probable that he will become interested in meditation now. After a heart attack people become interested because death has knocked at the door and they have tasted something of death. Now they can never be the same again. The old values - the old life, the competition, the market the money, the power, the prestige, the politics - all seem meaningless. Once you have tasted a little of death, then you know that all this is futile; it has no intrinsic value. One starts seeking for meaning for the first time.

So go immediately, mm? For a few days he will be very vulnerable. If you catch hold of him while he is still under the shock of the heart attack, that can become a transforming moment in his life. But if you are too late and if he has remained for two or three weeks, then he will forget all about the heart attack, and he will start moving again in the same old routine.

Death - even a glimpse, even the idea that one can die - transforms one's whole being. Religion came into existence because of death. If there were no death, there would have been no possibility for religion to exist. And still religion exists only for those people who are very very aware of death.

Animals are not aware of death. Trees are not aware of death, so there is no religion for trees and no religion for animals. Whenever a person is very materialistic, he remains more animal-like. Then he thinks only in terms of this so-called life, and he never thinks anything about death. In fact he goes on saying that people who go on thinking about death are a little perverted, morbid, ill, pathological, because he tries to deny the fact of death. He is afraid of death. Anybody who brings death to his notice seems to be the enemy.

A materialistic culture, a materialistic society, tries to avoid death. Hence so many tricks have been invented. In the west, when a person dies you put a new dress on him, you paint his face, if she is a woman, then lipstick and eyebrows and everything. You make everybody feel that the person is not dead... a beautiful casket and flowers. This is just to avoid.

You don't want to see face to face that somebody who was alive a moment before is no more alive.

You don't want to see death as it is. You put a mask even on death. People live masked while they are alive; when they die, then too they carry the mask. It is a trick, a technology, so that you don't face your own innermost fear. And everybody says that the dead person has gone to heaven, has gone to the world of god, that he is in paradise and will be very happy.

I was reading.... One parapsychologist, meyers, was making a great research into death and about how people feel about death when somebody nearby - a relative, a friend, a wife, a husband - dies.

How do people feel? So he was enquiring of many people. One day he was invited to a party and he was sitting by the side of a very rich lady whose daughter had just died two or three days ago.

He asked,. 'What do you feel? Where is your daughter now?'

'Of course,' the lady said, 'she is with god and she is blissfully happy there. She is in paradise. But please, don't talk about such depressing subjects.'

Now this... you can see the dichotomy, the divided mind, the split mind. 'She is happy, blissfully happy with god in paradise,' and 'Don't talk about such depressing subjects' ! If she is really happy with god then why is it a depressing subject? And if it is a depressing subject why go on hiding it by saying that she is happy with god?

So man has tried to avoid death. That's a way of avoiding religion, because religion is nothing but an encounter with death. It is a date with death, it is a romance with death. It is an adventure into death. Religion wants to face it. It is a fact - avoiding it is not going to help. The religious mind wants to face it and go deep into it, whatsoever it is. The truth of it has to be known. And in that search, meditation and prayer and yoga have arisen.

So whenever you see that some person has become very ill, seriously ill, don't lose that opportunity.

Some clouds have opened, and these are the moments that the man can see a ray of light. Help him to see. And if you love the person, that is the greatest gift you can bring to him.

So go back to your father and don't be worried, because if you are worried you will not be able to help him. Don't go sad, because there is nothing to be sad about. Death is a fact. It is going to happen today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. It is going to happen. Accept it. Simply go with a message to be delivered from me....

Just tell him, 'Now the right moment has come for you to enter into a different world and a different dimension, a different life. You have lived this world and death has given you the opportunity to feel and see that this is just dreamlike... any moment you can be taken away. You were almost taken away. You are still alive; now don't waste it again in the old routine. Now make something out of the days that are given to you. Make something that can lead you beyond death, beyond time.'

And you meditate. It will depend on you, much will depend on you, on how you behave. If you are non-tense, unworried, and he can feel your silence, and he can feel your centre of tranquillity.... Just sit by his side, remember me, and just sit silently. He will be able to feel that you are not only his son - something more has happened to you. He will be able to feel that you have come with a message.

For the first time you will be able to communicate with him. And that will give some roots to you also, because one has to come to a reconciliation with one's own parents. Otherwise something remains like a hangup.

So make it a complete circle: he has given you life - you take a message to him of another life. He has given you birth - help him to meditate so he can be reborn. Then you have paid the debt.

... Bring a few of my books to him, and when he can read.... Or you can read him my books and he can listen to tapes.

[A therapist asks about his new relationship; that he finds it difficult to receive love, rather than to give it.]

Mm mm, the mind is very afraid of love, so you have to consciously drop those defenses, otherwise love will never happen. You can go on giving; giving is not difficult for the mind. The ego remains

perfectly guarded. In fact it feels very good, enhanced, that you are giving love, sharing love; you have so much love to give. The problem arises only when you have to take it; somebody is giving and you have to receive it. When you become the receiving end, then the problem arises. When you are giving you have the upper hand.

When you are receiving you have to be humble, because only in deep humanity can love be received.

That's the problem. The ego cannot allow itself to be humble, because in humility it disappears. So whenever I say, 'Love,' people think they have to love, but that is only the beginning. The culmination comes only when you receive and when you allow others to love you. Then you are completely defenseless. Then you don't know where you are going, what is happening to you.

So you will have to do it self-consciously, otherwise you will not be able to do it. You have to be consciously alert. And whenever you feel that you are blocking, somebody is giving and you are becoming hard, stiff, and not allowing lit in, relax. Say, 'Yes.' Make 'yes' your mantra. Whenever you see that something deep down is going stiff, hard, won't allow any penetration, say yes and relax.

(to the girlfriend) And remember it, you have to help him. When you feel that he is defensive, make all the more effort to love him, because ordinarily this is how it happens. If the other feels that you are defensive, the other starts withdrawing because she feels that she is being rejected. So when you feel that he is defensive, don't leave him. Just jump on him. Break all his barriers... be wild, so he will understand - 'Now [you are] being wild - I must be being defensive.'

(to the swami) So drop your defenses... just a little awareness. And go on reminding her that this is your block, she has to help you. And when somebody is hard, it is not necessaray that he is rejecting you. He is simply afraid. The greater possibility is that he is simply afraid.

Love is such a tremendous phenomenon, such a vital energy, that people are afraid; it is a whirlwind.

It can take you... nobody knows. Where it will land you is not predictable. It is so wild that one thing is certain - that if you allow it, you will pass through a death. Something will be born out of you, but you don't know that man. In zen, they call that man 'the man of no titles', nameless. The bauls call that man 'the essential man' - 'adhar manush'.

[You have] to drop to give space to the man of no titles, because vedanta is nothing but defenses.

When all defenses are gone, you are gone. Then something is there but you cannot say that it is you. It is so vast, you cannot confine it to any name, to any form. Then the man of no titles is born. It is an essential man. It has nothing to do with you or with me, or with anybody else. It is our essential being... nameless, formless, without any adjectives. That's why they call it 'without any titles'.

But that is your nature - and love is one of the greatest ways to come to it. So on your part, be alert, and [your girlfriend] will make it a point (to her) to force him. Whenever he is defensive, make it a challenge for yourself that you have to break this defense. Don't think that you have to withdraw.

Don't think that you are rejected - no. In fact, the moment he becomes hard, he has become afraid of your love. He is not rejecting you - he is just functioning out of an old habit. So take the challenge and break the defense.