Darshan 23 August 1979
Anand Friederike. Anand means bliss; friederike means rule of peace. Your full name will mean rule of bliss and peace. Peace alone can become cold, can become unloving, can become a kind of death, can easily go negative. There is every possibility that it will be the peace of a cemetery - not of life but of death.
Anand - bliss - alone, can become too much of an excitement. It is ecstasy. It can become feverish; it can create a delirium. One can easily become a victim of hallucinations. The bliss will be very loving and very warm, but the possibility is that one will go mad with that warmth, with that love. It can drive one easily insane. Hence a synthesis is needed between bliss and peace.
Bliss should be peaceful and peace should be blissful. Then you have the best of both and all that is dangerous in each is dropped. Then the peace is a dancing peace; then bliss is cool. And when bliss is cool and peace is a dancing, singing one, one has arrived. That's the ultimate state of consciousness.
Anand Jacques. Anand means bliss; jacques means God is the protector - be blissful, God is the protector. Feel blessed that you are not alone; God is always with you, and not as a judge, but as a protector.
This insight can transform a man. It is a very small insight in the beginning, like a seed, but it can grow into a big tree. Thousands of birds can rest on the tree and thousands of travelers can take shelter under its shade. But the seed is very small. This is a seed idea, that God is continuously caring for you; you are never left uncared for; that God is not indifferent to you, that he loves; that he is interested in your destiny; that he would like you to grow, to blossom, to come to an optimum experience of life, joy, love.
Start feeling it, and whenever your name is said by anybody, remember again: God is the protector.
In fact in the old days all names were given with a certain purpose, with a certain device in them.
New names, modern names, have lost that quality, and in the future they are thinking to drop names completely and to give numbers to people. That will be the ugliest thing possible, mathematical, logical - they do it in the army right now - but that will transform the whole world into a military camp. It has its own meaning.
In the military they give you numbers. When a person dies, only a number dies - 13 died. Nobody feels anything for 13 - it is just a number and a number can be replaced; somebody else comes, he becomes 13.
We cannot replace any person; persons are irreplaceable, but numbers can be replaced very easily.
A name has an individuality; a number is impersonal, cold, mathematical, has no love in it.
The farther back you go in history, the more you will find names becoming significant. In fact, all ancient names are somehow concerned with God. All Jewish old names - Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian - they are all in some way connected with God, because God is our search. And the name has to be used so much: you will be signing it, you will be called by the name, you will become identified with your name. If you can remember its meaning it can become a subtle climate around you.
Let this be the climate: feel blissful because God is continuously protecting you. He is like an umbrella: when it is raining he is protecting you; when it is hot he is protecting you. God is protection, and we are not unprotected; hence we can dare to adventure, we can enquire into truth. We need not be afraid of death. If God is, then there is no death. Only one of the two can exist: either death or God. If death is, then there is no God; if God is, then there can be no death. This is the ultimate choice. A few people choose God; millions have chosen death. No wonder they suffer, no wonder they are miserable.
Becoming a sannyasin means: choose God; forget all about death. It is the greatest lie there is.
Prem Tim. Prem means love; tim is a short form of timothy.
In Hebrew it means honoring God. Your full name will mean love is the way to honor God. Be loving:
that's the only way to honor God - not by going through empty rituals, not by going to the church and repeating parrotlike certain prayers, but by actually being in love with existence: with the clouds and the stars and the trees and the people and all that is, because God iS spread all over the space.
He is the cloud and he is the star and he is the trees and he is the pebble. It is stupid to seek and search for him in any particular place - Kashi or Kaaba. It is foolish to go in search of him in a temple or in a church or in a mosque, because there is not a single place where he is not. You cannot find a place where he is not.
A Sufi parable. Two disciples came to a Master, they wanted to be initiated. The Master gave one parrot to each and told the disciples to go to an absolutely lonely place where nobody is watching, and kill the parrot, and come back. The first came back within minutes. He went outside the house, went behind the house, looked - there was nobody - killed the parrot came back. The Master said, "Wait. Let the other one come back too."
Days passed, months passed, and then years passed. After three years the other man came back with the parrot still alive. He said, "Take your parrot back. If this is a condition for initiation it is impossible to fulfill. I searched in every possible way: I went into the mountains, I went into dark caves, underground caves, but it is impossible."
The Master said, "Why is it impossible?"
He said, "I was present, the parrot was not alone - one thing. I closed my eyes, I blindfolded myself, I put the parrot behind me, but the parrot was present! I drugged the parrot, I made the parrot unconscious, but then suddenly I became aware that God is present and he is present everywhere.
I have tried hard for three years; I could not find a place where he is not. So please take your parrot back. I am sorry - I have failed."
The Master laughed and said, "You have succeeded; the first one has failed!" He told the first one, "Get out, get lost! You are simply stupid. It will take lives for you to understand what I have to teach."
But to the other he said, "You are accepted, you are welcomed. This was a test - you have passed it."
There is no need to go anywhere to find him; he is everywhere. And the way to honor him is to love life and to love all that life contains.
Anand Shantam. Anand means bliss; shantam means peace. Bliss and peace are two aspects of the same energy, two sides of the same coin. Wherever bliss is, peace is bound to be there, and vice versa: if bliss is there and peace is not there, then the bliss is false. It is only something cultivated from the outside, it has not grown within. It is like a plastic flower, not a real rose.
If peace is found without bliss, then that too iS only something practiced. One can train oneself, one can train so perfectly that one can start looking like a Buddha from the outside, but deep inside there will be a volcano, ready to erupt any moment, and you will have continuously to fight with it, to keep it repressed.
Hence my advice to all of my sannyasins is: start growing both together. Let them grow side by side. Peace should be the center of your being, the center of the cyclone, and bliss should be your circumference, the cyclone. Bliss should be the dance on the circumference, and at the very core of the dance there should be absolute silence. This is how I conceive a real sannyasin to be. Become one!
[To a sannyasin, returning from the West, Osho says: I was concerned about you. The sannyasin asks: Why?]
Because you are such a simple person! And going into the world... and it is a very complex world!
That's why!
When a few sannyasins go to the West I become concerned. Now you are becoming so innocent and so flexible and the world is totally different. But it is good that you are back home and unscratched!
[A sannyasin, arriving, says she has already booked groups.]
Do the groups. And melt as much as you can into the family. Three months can be the right time for a total change, but many people waste their time in resisting.
Don't resist. Just become absolutely vulnerable, defenseless, with no armor, and these three months will prove three lives!