Darshan 8 August 1979

Anand Mark. Anand means bliss. Linguistically bliss gives the idea of happiness, joy, pleasure, but existentially it is something higher than happiness, greater than joy, deeper than pleasure. All those three things - happiness, joy and pleasure - are part of it, but it is not just the sum total of them.

The total is more than the sum total of all the parts.

Bliss is the state of absolute harmony within you, not only within yourself but with the existence too.

Hence within and without, when absolute harmony prevails there is no discord. All is at ease, at home. Then it is bliss. And that's the goal of all life: to attain it.

Mark means the god of Mars. The ancient people all over the world were always tending to change and transform everything into the divine. The sun became a god, the moon became a god, Mars became a god, mountains became gods, rivers became gods, even trees, rocks... That was a totally different world view in which all was divine, in which dust was divine.

Those were really poetic people - visionaries, dreamers. They had a certain quality of innocence, hence wherever they looked, they penetrated deep; everything became transparent to them. They were childlike. It was the primitive age of humanity, and when I use the word "primitive" I don't use it in any condemnatory sense - on the contrary. In fact, to know God one has to be a primitive again:

innocent, full of wonder, awe, knowing nothing and exploring everything. In that wonder and awe and innocence, worship naturally arises.

So it is not a question of what you worship: the sun, the moon, mars - it doesn't matter. All that matters is that deep inside you a great longing to worship arises. It becomes focused on anything:

whatsoever you can find, you start worshipping it. That is the state of religious consciousness.

That consciousness has disappeared from the world. Instead we have a very mundane, scientific approach to reality. The poetic has disappeared, the religious seems invalid, the spiritual seems

absurd. But for a sannyasin the absurd, the illogical, are the pathways to God. Life itself is illogical, absurd.

And anything is significant if you can use it for worship. If worship can arise in you, if you can become prayerful, then use everything: then let trees be gods, and rivers and mountains and everything be divine. If the poetic vision arises in you then bliss becomes very simple. When you can see God everywhere you fall in accord. Then the enemy disappears, and with the enemy, all struggle, all conflict. Then all is melody and all is music.

Deva Anne. Deva means divine; anne means prayer - divine prayer.

Prayer is not human, it is always divine, because it is not done by us; it happens to us. It is a penetration of the beyond, a ray of light coming into the darkness of our being. It is not something that we invent, it is a gift. All that is needed on our part is to be ready to receive it, to be willing, to be open, to be vulnerable.

Prayer is not an act that you can perform; it is not a ritual, it is nothing that you can do anything about. One is utterly helpless before prayer. There is only one thing you can do and that doing is very negative: don't hinder it. When it comes to you, welcome it; when it fills your heart, don't be afraid; when it starts flowing in your tears, allow it. Be in a let-go and prayer happens.

So whenever you are feeling harmonious, whenever you are feeling happy for no reason at all - morning, evening, night - then just sit with closed eyes, in a state of surrender... just available.

Not available to anything in particular, not expecting something to happen, not waiting for God to do something to you... because those are subtle demands and they become the hindrances. Just being silent, enjoying silence, utterly surrendered and open to existence, one starts hearing the footsteps of the beyond, very close by. They go on coming closer and closer and closer, and suddenly they are so close that they become your heartbeat. Ultimately they are so close that you cannot separate yourself from them; you are them.

A man cannot do prayer but a man can become prayer. Prayer is a state of being, not a state of doing.

Anand Renate. Anand means bliss; renate means reborn.

Sannyas is a process of rebirth, it is being born again. The society corrupts. It corrupts every child; it distorts every child's consciousness, it paralyzes its freedom. It makes the child crippled because only crippled people are ready to depend on others. The crippled and the paralyzed need leaders to guide them, they need saints to teach them, they need priests; they need all kinds of exploiters.

So before a child can become conscious of what is happening to him, he is already poisoned.

Real religion means something that is never social. Real religion is always anti-social. Jesus is anti-social, Christianity is not; hence Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus. Buddha is religious but Buddhism is not. Because Buddha is anti-social he is a rebel. He has not only made himself free of all bondage, he helps others also to become free.

And that is the whole process of sannyas: all that the society has done to you has to be undone.

Slowly slowly the whole structure that surrounds you, the armour, the defense, has to be withdrawn, taken out, taken away, dismantled, so that the consciousness hidden behind can assert itself, so that you can become an individual. And to be an individual is the greatest bliss in life.

Unless a person becomes an individual he re mains pseudo. Personality is pseudo; individuality is authentic and real. We are born as individuals, but the society immediately starts changing us into persons. It destroys your freedom, individuality, integrity, and it makes you a pseudo phenomenon, a slave.

Sannyas has to go against this whole process. It has to destroy the personality so that the individuality can be found again; that is the rebirth. And when you feel yourself it is the greatest moment in your life - when you are not dominated by others, not pulled and pushed, when you are really rooted in your being, centered in your own being, resting in your own self. Bliss arises out of that rest and one is reborn.

The first birth is only physical; it happens through the parents. The second birth happens through the Master; it is spiritual. Get ready for the second birth, get ready to be reborn. And life can become paradise. It is paradise: all that is needed are eyes, free eyes, to see it, and a free heart to feel it.

Anand Wil. Anand means bliss; wil means resolution, unwavering resolution a determined resolution.

Sannyas is a commitment - a commitment to know yourself, a commitment to be yourself, a commitment to risk everything for this exploration. It is total involvement with existence, going to the very depths of existence and to the very heights of existence.

Ordinarily people live only accidentally. They are like driftwood at the mercy of the waves and the winds. They don't have a direction; they don't have any sense of direction either. They don't know who they are, why they are and where they are going and from where they are coming. They are sleepwalkers, somnambulists, living in utter unconsciousness.

Sannyas is pulling yourself together, sannyas means making all possible human effort to wake up.

It happens, but one has to make a very concentrated effort for it. It has to be passionate, intense; it has to be total and whole. And that is the meaning of your name.

Let it become a reality, not only a name: a blissful resolution to know who you are, a blissful resolution to know what existence is. What is beauty? What is truth? What is God? - when these questions are no more curiosities, when your whole life is at stake, then only do answers start coming to you.

Just as water evaporates at one hundred degrees' heat, when your commitment to self-enquiry is total, the ego starts evaporating. And the moment the ego has evaporated, the knowing happens.

When all that is false is gone - the ego is the center of the false: the ego gone, all that is false disappears from your life - suddenly you are face to face with reality. And to know the real is to know God, and to know God is to know bliss and benediction.

Anand Sharabo. Anand means bliss; sharabo means wine. My way is the way of the drunkard. I would like you all to be drunk with the divine. Less than that won't do.

The mind is calculative, hence it remains superficial. And because it calculates too much it always hesitates; only when the time has gone does it come to a conclusion - but then it is pointless.

When the right moment is there the mind goes on thinking and hesitating. The mind is basically an extension of fear. That is not the way to know God. God cannot be known through calculation, through cleverness; God cannot be known by this hesitating mind. It is good in the marketplace but not good in the temple; one has to leave it outside the temple. And to leave the mind outside is to be drunk.

Then you function through the heart. Then your heart starts creating a wine of its own and your whole being becomes permeated with it. You start living in a totally different dimension: the dimension of love, the dimension of poetry, the dimension of dance, the dimension of music.

Then you are getting away from the marketplace. The way to get away from the marketplace is not to escape to the Himalayas or to a monastery. The real escape is to drop the mind and to exist as the heart. To exist as the heart is what I mean by being a drunkard... to exist as a lover.

Then prayer is easy, then worship is easy, then trust is easy. It becomes so easy that one never asks how. If a person asks how to trust, how to love, he is simply showing that he exists in the head - the head always asks "how". The heart never asks how.