Darshan 29 August 1979
Anand Phillip. Anand means bliss, and Phillip is the name of one of the disciples of Jesus, one of the twelve apostles - a blissful disciple.
One can become a disciple only through blissfulness. Disciplehood is not born out of sadness. It is the most cheerful phenomenon possible because it is love in is highest form.
Prem Willem. Prem means love; willem means resolution. Love needs great resolution, the greatest, because it is the greatest challenge. It needs resolution because it is a quantum leap; it is going from the known into the unknown. It is moving from logic into paradox, from the clearcut world of the head into the vague, mysterious world of the heart.
One hesitates, one is afraid; one can see the risk involved; one can see the death possible. One can see that one may not be able to come back, one may be gone forever, because from the intellectual viewpoint the world of love looks like a world of madness. If the head is to decide, it is going to decide against it. Hence the resolution cannot be intellectual, it can only be total, existential: your whole being decides.
But even in the decision something great starts happening: the moment the resolution is made, the moment you are committed to love, you start becoming crystallized. Otherwise man is a crowd. He has not one self, he has many selves - he is multipsychic. With resolution you attain to one self; the many disappear and only one remains. And with one is the mastery, with one is the beginning of God, because God is also one. With one the flight from the alone to the alone begins.
Veet Maria. Veet means going beyond. Maria in Hebrew has many meanings; one of the meanings is bitterness. Your full name will mean going beyond bitterness. The mind is full of bitterness, because it is full of ambition, jealousy, possessiveness - these are all poisons. One has to go beyond the
mind. The mind is very competitive, always ready to fight, quarrel, seeking and searching for some opportunity to hate, to be angry, to be enraged. It lives on these ugly things.
But the heart is sweet. And the whole process of sannyas is getting down from the head to the heart.
Then the same energy that becomes bitterness in the head becomes sweetness in the heart.
Remember, all the games of the mind have to be transcended - and there are many games. And when you start becoming aware of the gross games, the mind starts playing subtle games. It is very cunning; it is very political, diplomatic. You change it from one side and it starts asserting itself from another side.
Sometimes it can even move to the very opposite to deceive you. From being indulgent it can become ascetic, from being too worldly it can become too otherworldly; but it is the same mind, nothing has changed. It may even renounce all the riches: it was greedy, now it renounces; but this too is another phase, a subtler phase, of greed. Now one is hoping that one will be rewarded in heaven; this is even a bigger greed than the first one. The worldly person is greedy, but your so-called saints are far more greedy. The worldly person is satisfied with the momentary, but your so-called saints are so greedy that they demand the eternal; less than that they are not ready to take. It is the same mind!
But there is a way: if you remain exactly in the middle you can drop into the heart. From the exact middle there is a connection with the heart. Don't move from one extreme to another. Find exactly the middle between two extremes and you will be surprised: a door opens and suddenly you are entering into your own heart of which you had no idea before. We have only heard about the heart.
When the mystics talk about the heart they don't mean the mechanism that purifies the blood, they don't mean the heartbeat. They mean that there is a passage in your being from where you are connected with God, a cave in your heart; if you enter you will enter into God himself. The heart is only used symbolically, it has nothing to do with the physiological heart.
The heart represents love and the head represents logic. Logic is bitter, argumentative. Love is sweet, love is pure honey.
Deva Knut. Deva means divine; knut means risk.
Sannyas is the greatest risk possible because it is going into the uncharted without a map. It is entering into the mysterious, not knowing exactly where you are going. But some intuitive force pulls you, calls you; some unknown source of energy functions like a magnet. You cannot resist, you cannot avoid, you cannot escape. But it is a risk because all that you have known will be useless in this venture. All that you are familiar with will have to be dropped because it becomes an unnecessary burden on the journey. And the journey can be made only if you are very light, utterly unburdened with philosophies, theologies, ideologies, religions. You can only go into this unknown with a mind with no thoughts.
And that's the risk, because with thoughts the mind is well-acquainted, with thoughts the mind is efficient, skillful. Without thought the mind becomes just like a child's mind, innocent, ignorant. But the search for God needs you to be innocent and ignorant; the knowledgeable never reaches. God is available only to the innocent, to those who are full of wonder but have no knowledge. Great questions arise in their hearts, but not a single answer is there.
Anand Silva. Anand means bliss; silva means woodland. We have to create a blissful woodland in the heart. The woodlands outside are of no use. Yes, you can find a certain silence there, but it cannot transform you. It comes from the outside and can only touch you at the superficial level. It has a beauty, it is worth enjoying, but deep down you remain the same. The same turmoil continues, the same insanity, the same crowd, the same market-place.
We have to create a woodland inside the heart, and that has tremendous beauty and infinite joy.
If you have a woodland in the heart - that's what meditation is all about - then the whole world becomes a place of beauty. Then wherever you are, in the woodland or in the marketplace, the silence continues, the stillness permeates. It cannot be disturbed, in fact the outer noise enhances it.
Prem Angela. Prem means love; angela means messenger of God. Love is the messenger of God, so whomsoever attains to love becomes a messenger of God. Whosoever starts flowing, overflowing with love, brings the good news to the world. He is the only proof that God is. A Jesus, a Francis, a Buddha, a Kabir - their arguments for the existence of God are useless. Those arguments can convince only those who are already convinced. Their presence is the real proof; it convinces even those who are not convinced.
Anand Sandesh. Anand means bliss; sandesh means message.
A sannyasin has to become a message of bliss not by talking about it, but by being it. He has not to become a missionary, but a message. A missionary carries only theories, scriptures, interpretations, words. He himself may not have known anything at all: he may talk about Christ and he may not have tasted anything of Christ-consciousness. He is a missionary. He is in business, he is in search of customers. He has nothing to do with religion.
A religious person is not a missionary but a message. His whole being, his way of life - not his philosophy but his way of life - his very presence creates a pulsation, creates a vibe, and people start feeling that something that has not happened to them has happened to this man; that this man is carrying something mysterious about himself; that he has a candle lit inside his heart. While we are dark, he is full of light.
Anand Usha. Anand means bliss; usha means the dawn, the morning - the dawn of bliss.
Sannyas is only a beginning, the first ray of the sun in the early morning; hence the orange color. It is not the end, it is the first step of a long long journey and pilgrimage. But the first step is almost half the journey, because the first is the most difficult. The second will be just like the first and the third will be just like the first.
Lao Tzu says: If you know how to take one step you can cover ten thousand miles. Then there is no problem, because you cannot take two steps simultaneously; each time you have to take one step.
And if you know how to take one, then the whole universe is yours.
Sannyas is a first step, the beginning of something of which you cannot yet be aware. Slowly slowly it will become clear. The early morning is full of mist. Even if the first rays of sun have reached, it is very cloudy and misty and things are not clearcut. It is not yet noontide, but soon the noontide will come.
Just go on moving deeper and deeper into meditation. Sannyas is a vow that "Now my whole energy will be devoted to meditation;" that "Nothing else will be more important than meditation" that "Meditation is now my life's goal." Once the resolution has become definite, crystallized, meditation becomes easier. All that it needs is a commitment. One cannot just be curious about meditation, one has to get involved. One cannot be just a spectator, one has to be a participant.
And that's what is happening by becoming a sannyasin: it is participating in a great adventure; it is participating in a commune of seekers; it is participating with a Master; it is participating in the mysterious aspect of existence.
Prem Navyo. Prem means love; navyo means that which always remains new. Love never becomes old; it knows nothing of oldness. Love always remains new, fresh, like dewdrops in the morning or like the lotus leaves just opening in the sun. Love never becomes old because it never gathers dust, it never accumulates experiences. Love knows how to die each moment to the past. Love knows how to get rid of the past, that's why it never becomes old.
The head is always old because it accumulates, hoards experiences, knowledge, memories. The heart is always young; it hoards nothing. It knows nothing of the past, and because it knows nothing of the past it never projects itself in the future. It is always in the present. And to be in the present is to be in God. There is no other way to live God; the only way is to be utterly in the present. And love knows that secret.