Darshan 24 August 1979
Anand Barbara. Anand means bliss; barbara means a stranger.
The world becomes misery if you start thinking that you are part of it; if you become identified with it, then it is going to become a misery. Identification is the root cause of all misery. If you can remember that you are a stranger here, a visitor, a tourist, only for a few days, and the world is not more than a caravanserai - we stay the night and in the morning we go - if you can remain alert of this phenomenon, that we come from somewhere else and one day we have to go back to the original source, then bliss starts growing in you like roses in a rosebush. Then bliss is natural.
To be a sannyasin means to remember that we are strangers here, outsiders - this is not our home.
This remembrance is sannyas.
Stay, enjoy, but don't become attached; remain unattached and ready to go any moment. And when the moment of going comes, don't look back.
Anand Stefan. Anand means bliss; stefan has many meanings, but the meaning I would like you to remember is garland - a garland of bliss.
Life can either be just a pile of flowers or it can be made into a garland. Ordinarily it remains a pile of flowers, and a pile of flowers is useless; it cannot be offered to God as a garland.
Life has to be made into a garland. A thread is needed to run though all the flowers. Once a thread starts running inside the flowers - invisible, but connecting those which are all disconnected - then life starts having a unity. Then one is not accidental. Then one is integrated. Then one is one, not many. And only when we are one can we be an offering to God.
Become a garland of bliss. Then only are we acceptable to God, are we worthy of being accepted.
Anand Stephane. Anand means bliss; stephane has many meanings, but the meaning I would like you to remember is crown - a crown of bliss.
Man becomes a crowned king when he attains to bliss, otherwise he remains a beggar. And those who seek and search for bliss in the outside world remain beggars because bliss is not to be found there. For bliss one has to go in, turn in. It is an inward journey. And the sooner one starts on the journey, the better; this is the right age for you to enter.
Once a person has gone out too much it becomes more and more difficult to turn in; one becomes habituated to going outwards.
The right time to become a sannyasin is in childhood; the right time for meditation is childhood.
Once you start meditating, going in, once you know how to go in and meditate, for your whole life you will be able to avoid many miseries that befall all others.
So here, participate in dance, participate in singing, participate in meditations. Don't think that you are a child so you need not participate in all these things. These are not only for grownups; in fact grownups find it more difficult to enter in meditation. And soon the day will come when you will be crowned in bliss!
[The new ten-year-old sannyasin says: Why do you pick the certain color of orange for everyone to wear?]
It is the color of sunrise and it is also the color when the inner sun rises. It is the color of the roses, and I would like my sannyasins to be as beautiful as roses, as full of light as the sunrise. It is the color of blood, life, and I would like my sannyasins to be absolutely alive, not dead and dull. It is a color of revolution, and my sannyasins are revolutionaries, rebels.
It is a very significant color - that's why I have chosen it, and slowly slowly you will know all its meanings. Good, ... good!
Veet Colin. Veet means going beyond. Colin has two meanings. One comes from Greek; then it means victory, people's victory. The other comes from Celtic, and that's what I would like you to remember. In Celtic Colin means an animal. Your full name will mean go beyond the animal. Very few people go - those who go, they are known as Buddhas, Christs.
People live only apparently as human beings; deep down they are animals. There is no break between the animal kingdom and man, it is a continuity. Of course man is a more evolved animal, but the difference is of quantity, not of quality. His reason is nothing but a slave to his instincts, his mind a shadow of his body. He pretends to live a very rational life but deep down it is utterly irrational.
This is one of the greatest discoveries of modern psychology, particularly the great contribution of Sigmund Freud. Aristotle defined man as a rational being; Sigmund Freud says man is not rational at all, he lives through the unconscious. He is not even conscious what to say about being rational?
All his desires come from the basement of his being where all is dark. The conscious part is only a very small thing, just the tip of the iceberg. The whole iceberg is underground; we don't know anything about it and it goes on functioning from there, manipulating us. We are toys in the hands of something unconscious, something invisible.
This is the state of an animal. To be ruled by the unconscious is what I mean by being an animal.
To be ruled by the conscious is the meaning of being human. And to be so conscious that the whole unconscious disappears and you are full of light - not even a nook or corner is dark any more - that is the meaning of Buddhahood.
First sannyas takes you into the world of human beings; it makes your conscious the master, and the unconscious, the slave. It changes the animal into a human being, and in the second step it takes you beyond the human too. Then you enter into the divine. That's the goal. Less than that - being a god - nothing is going to satisfy. One is born to be a god; that is our intrinsic destiny. Unless it is fulfilled discontent continues.
Contentment is possible only when one has attained to one's ultimate destiny. That destiny is God.
Anand Roseanne. Anand means bliss. Roseanne is made of two words: rose means rose, anne comes from hannah. It has many meanings but the one that I would like you to remember is prayer.
Your full name will mean a prayerful, blissful rose. And that's what a sannyasin has to be: a blissful, a prayerful, rose.
Bliss and prayer are not separate, just two aspects of the same experience. If you are blissful you are bound to be prayerful, because when you feel bliss, you feel gratitude, and gratitude is prayer. If you are prayerful you are bound to be blissful, because prayer is surrender, let-go, bowing down to the ultimate in tremendous thankfulness. Just for the sheer joy of being. One bows in thankfulness, and in that bowing, in that letting go, bliss arises.
If you can attain to bliss, prayer arises; if you attain to prayer, bliss arises. They come together, they are inseparable. And when there is bliss and there is prayer, one is a rose. One is beauty personified, one is grace materialized; one is paradise on earth.
Anand Nur. Anand means bliss; nur means light.
Bliss is a state of infinite light, just as misery is a state of infinite darkness. Darkness represents unconsciousness; light represents consciousness. In darkness all kinds of errors are possible, bound to be. I don't call them sins; they are only errors, mistakes. They are natural, nothing to be condemned for, nothing to be punished for. They have their own punishment: each mistake brings its own misery. The punishment is not something outside, it is inbuilt.
When your inner being becomes full of light, all those errors disappear. Not that you Stop making them, simply you cannot make them. When one can see, one behaves differently than the person who cannot see. The blind person is bound to stumble. Not that he wants to stumble, he also does not want to stumble, but what can he do? - he is blind. He cannot see the table, he cannot see the chair, he cannot see the door. He cannot see so he bumps into people or into things. But when you have eyes, you simply don't bump. It is not that you prevent yourself from bumping, effort is needed:
you simply see and you move through the door and not through the wall. Your seeing is enough, your seeing is a transformation.
The basic foundation of religion is how to transform your inner unconscious into a conscious phenomenon, how to change your darkness into light. That's what my work is here. The moment you become a sannyasin that becomes your life's work. Constantly remember that one has to become more and more alert. Alertness has to go deeper and deeper. Do things more consciously than you have ever done before. Think consciously, feel consciously; don't miss any opportunity to be conscious, and drop by drop your being will become full, brimful of light.
Nur is also one of the Sufi names for God, because God is light.
Deva Nandano. Deva means god; nandano means garden - God's garden.
Man has infinite potential: millions of flowers can bloom in him. Man is not as small as he appears from the outside, just the opposite: he is infinitely vast, beginningless, endless. He can contain all the stars, he can contain the whole sky in him. As a body he is limited; as consciousness he is unlimited.
We have to make a garden of consciousness and we have to grow all kinds of flowers. We have to be creative. Consciousness can become music, consciousness can become poetry, consciousness can become sculpture. All creativity comes out of consciousness; as rivers come from the mountains, creativity comes from the mountains of consciousness. And as rivers run and rush towards the ocean, all creativity rushes and runs towards God, the creator.
Grow flowers, be multidimensional. The more you create, the more blissful you will be. People want bliss but they are uncreative. They think that bliss is something that can be purchased, given, conferred upon them. They think that they can have bliss if they have more money or more power, or more prestige and more fame. Bliss does not depend on any of these things; bliss depends only on one thing: that one is creative, creates something. Only in creative moments are you part of God, and those are the moments of bliss too.
To be part of God is to be blissful. That should be exactly the definition of bliss: to be part of God, to be bridged with God. That is the only possibility of being bridged - to be creative - because he is the creator. If you are also a creator, you are bridged. In fact the moment you create you are no more, God creates through you. And when many many flowers of many many colors bloom in you, life becomes a celebration.