Darshan 16 August 1979

Deva Werner. Deva means divine; werner means a friend.

Friendship is one of the most significant qualities, particularly for a seeker of truth, because truth can be known only if you befriend existence. If you antagonize existence, existence will not allow you its innermost secrets. You have to befriend nature, both without and within; you have to be in a loving relationship with all that is. The more loving you are, the more existence opens its secrets to you. Truth is a revelation, but it is revealed only to those who are tremendously friendly.

It is because of this that Jesus says: Love your enemies too, so that in you no enmity remains. It is not a moral commandment. It has been misinterpreted by the Christians down the ages; they think that it is something moral, that Jesus is saying love your enemies. It is something very spiritual. It has nothing to do with the enemy or loving the enemy, it has something to do with your inner energy.

If you can love even the enemy, then all enmity within your heart disappears; only friendship remains.

And that is the point, because that is the key, and a master key which can unlock all the doors of existence.

Anand Lisa. Anand means bliss. Lisa is Hebrew; it comes from a root which means god, divine.

Bliss is godly, bliss is divine - that will be the meaning of your anand lisa. Hence the search for bliss.

Everybody is seeking and searching for it; knowingly, unknowingly, rightly, wrongly - everybody is searching for bliss. Bliss is God. All other gods are inventions, except bliss. Bliss is a natural longing.

The god of the church is invented by the Christians, the god of the temple invented by the Hindus, the god of the mosque invented by the Mohammedans.

Many gods have been invented, many have died - now nobody worships them. Many religions have come and disappeared and the religions which are today may not be here tomorrow. New religions

will go on coming and new religions will go on creating new gods; but one God remains, that is the God of bliss.

The true search is for bliss; it is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. My sannyasin is to search for the truth and only the truth.

Svatmo Salvatore.

Svatmo means self; salvatore means savior. There is no other savior except your own self. The last statement of Buddha is: Be a light unto yourself. That is precisely the meaning of your name.

Don't look for saviors in others. That creates bondage, slavery; that has made the whole earth ugly. There are Christians, but Christs are missing... Buddhists, but Buddhas are missing - and the world needs Buddhas, not Buddhists. It needs more Christs, not Christians. A Christian is one who believes that Christ is the savior; a Christ is one who knows: "I am the savior." The Buddha believes in Buddha: the Buddha believes only in himself.

My whole approach is to help you to be yourself. By becoming a sannyasin you are not becoming a follower, but a friend. You are not becoming dependent on me; on the contrary, I will destroy all kinds of dependencies in you. If there is anything worth giving as a gift, it is freedom. By initiating you into sannyas I am initiating you into total freedom. That's the very taste of sannyas: freedom.

The very texture of sannyas: freedom.

Be in contact with my people in Italy. Where do you live in Italy?

[The new sannyasin answers: Sardinia. I don't think there are any sannyasins there.]

Sardinia? So that's great - be the savior... and create many more sannyasins there. Sardinia has to be saved! This is perfectly right time!

Anand Monique. Anand means bliss; monique means alone.

Bliss is a state of absolute aloneness. It is found when you have forgotten the whole world, when you have forgotten even your own body, when you have forgotten your mind, when you have forgotten all; when there is just empty silence in you, not even a single thought to keep company with.

That is the state of meditation: when one is simply alone. And when you are alone the ego disappears. The ego is not part of your reality; it is a false appendage, created by the society for its own purposes. When you have forgotten the world the ego disappears; it cannot exist without the world. The ego needs people, the ego needs crowds, the ego needs the marketplace.

The ego can exist only in relationship; the ego cannot exist without relationship. Just as a bridge needs two banks to exist... It cannot exist only with one bank, if there is only one bank the bridge will fall. And that is the beauty of being alone: when you are tremendously alone, all the bridges that connect you - with money, power, people, prestige - start evaporating. Soon all is gone; only a pure consciousness is left, and the purity of that consciousness is God and the bliss of that consciousness is the ultimate peak of joy.

Monique is a beautiful word; it comes from "monos", from the same word comes "monk"; monk means one who lives alone. From the same word comes "monastery"; monastery means a community of people who live alone, who have come together only to live alone, who will help each other to be alone, who will not create bridges and relationships at all.

It is exactly the meaning of sannyas: to be absolutely alone. But I am not in favor of people going to the monasteries and escaping from the world. that aloneness is not true aloneness. It is closer to loneliness than to aloneness. I would like my sannyasins to live in the world and yet be not of it.

Then yom aloneness is true aloneness. You are in the crowd and you are not part of it; you are in the marketplace, yet far away, a watcher on the hill.

Prem Els. Prem means love; els comes from the Hebrew root "el"; el means god or divine or goddess.

Your full name will mean: love is God. There is nothing which comes closer to God than love. It is the most approximate word that we have for God. It is the closest possible that human language can reach, because love knows how to be silent; love knows how to give without any conditions. Love is something that is bigger than you.

Logic is always smaller than you; love is always bigger. Logic you manipulate, you control; love possesses you. You cannot manipulate it, you cannot control it; you are overflooded by it. God also comes like love, like a flood: it drowns you totally. It does not leave a single spot in you untouched, unmelted. And God comes only to those who know how to love because love prepares the way. It teaches you how to give, and the more you give, the more God gives you. The more you give, the more you have.

And love teaches you the sheer joy of giving, not for any result, without any motive. If there is any motive it is business, it is not love. It is bargaining, it is not love. And God gives to us without any bargain, without any business, without any motivation.

If we also know how to give in the same way as God gives to us, only then do we fall en rapport with God. Something in us starts becoming attuned to God. We start existing, in our own small way, like God. In love you become divine; you pulsate in a miniature way, in a very small way, like a dewdrop... It is nothing compared to the ocean. But the dewdrop contains the ocean; it contains all the secrets of the ocean. If we can understand one dewdrop, we have understood all the oceans.

Love is just a dewdrop, but a dewdrop of the ocean.

Learn to be loving, learn to be love, and then there is no need of any other religion. Love is the highest religion. Below that is all politics: Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism - that is all politics, it is not religion. Religion knows no distinctions.

[The sannyasin says: I want to thank you for the miracle that happened to me right after I booked for sannyas.]

Good! Many more miracles are going to happen!

Anand Hamida. Anand means bliss; hamida is a Sufi name for God. It means the praiseworthy.

Bliss is the taste of God. We cannot touch God but we can taste him. We cannot hold him but we can feel him. God is not a thing, so there is no way to encounter God as an object. God is your own subjectivity. It is the one who looks from your very center into the outside world. It is the one who is hearing me right now. It is the one who is conscious within you.

Remember that consciousness is the door to God. And also remember that when you enter that door your whole being feels a tremendously blissful state which you have never known before. All happinesses fade away before it. All joys known before appear like toys. When you know the real thing, for the first time everything unreal is recognized as unreal; and before God is known all is unreal. After God everything becomes real, because once you have tasted God and his bliss, you have totally different eyes to see.

Devadas. It means a servant of God.

Man does not exist as a separate entity from God, although he believes that he is separate. That belief is utterly false, and it is because of that belief that man lives in misery, because out of a false notion only misery can arise. Truth brings bliss; untruth brings misery. And the greatest untruth in life is the ego. By ego I mean the separation between us and the whole. Drop that separation. It is false, and because of this false separation you unnecessarily live in nightmares.

By dropping the ego the fear of death disappears because then there is nobody to die. By dropping the ego, suddenly you find a great emptiness inside you. That emptiness is the first step towards God. To be a servant of God means not to be at all, to be utterly absent as a separate entity, to disappear as an ego. And the miracle is: when you are not, for the first time you are, but on a totally different plane, in a totally different dimension. You disappear as man and you appear as God.

Hence, by becoming the servant of God one becomes really a master. It is the way of victory through surrender.

Anand Premal. Anand means bliss; premal means loving.

These are the two qualities, immensely valuable: be blissful and be loving. And then contentment is not far away, then fulfillment is just by the comer. Nothing else can ever satisfy, but these two things simply saturate one with tremendous contentment. The body, the mind, the soul - all three become permeated with a great joy. And only in that joy does one become aware that God is. But you have to create these two things.

The potential is inside you but it has to be awakened; it is fast asleep. Everybody is capable of being blissful and everybody is capable of being loving; they are inbuilt in our consciousness. We are born with them. Just as flowers are hidden in the seeds, bliss and love are hidden in us. The right soil, the right season, and a gardener who knows how to grow plants - that's all that is needed.

Initiation into sannyas means entering into the garden of the Master. Now be ready to die as a seed in the soil of the Master. Disappear as a seed so that the sprout can come up. Surrender totally and the spring is not far away. A thousand and one flowers are waiting and have been waiting for centuries and for many lives. Unless they all bloom, one goes on feeling that something is missing.

But now there is an opportunity - don't miss it! Don't hold yourself back. Jump headlong!

Chidanando means consciousness, bliss. Consciousness and bliss are not two phenomena but one phenomenon. These are the two sides of it: on one side you become conscious, on the other side bliss grows. Or, you become blissful and on the other side consciousness grows. Develop one and the other follows of its own accord.

And for you the right course will be to start by increasing your consciousness. Become more alert, more watchful. Witness everything and always remember that "I am the witness," that "I am not part of it." Keep the distance of a witness from everything. Talking, listening, seeing, eating - keep the distance.

Many times you will forget, that's natural, but when you remember, bring it back again. In the beginning it will feel very bizarre, a little eccentric, a little crazy, because you will start seeing that you are separate. You are eating and you will be seeing that you are eating; you will be walking and you will be seeing that you are walking.

When for the first time this separation starts becoming clear and distinct, it creates a weird feeling, but don't be worried about it; that is natural. After that feeling has subsided and settled... And it takes a little time. With each person the time gap is different - between three months to nine months. Once it has settled you will feel a totally new kind of bliss entering into you from all sides, from all directions. Your work has to be on consciousness, on self-remembering.