Darshan 30 August 1979

Deva Pim. Deva means divine; pim means resolution.

The mind is always indecisive. That is one of the basic characteristics of the mind, indecisiveness.

The moment a resolution arises in you the mind disappears. To be decisive is to go beyond the mind; to remain indecisive, hesitant, divided, is to live in the mind.

Resolution means totality, commitment, involvement, a quantum leap into something, into something which is not yet clearly known. Taking a risk is resolution. But the mind is a coward. It avoids risks; it seeks security, safety. Resolution is one of the ways to go beyond misery, schizophrenia.

Ordinarily man is a crowd, a thousand and one desires dividing him. When all these desires become a single pool of energy, that is resolution. Sannyas is resolution; it is a total effort to get out of the mind. And if one really strives to get out of the mind - difficult thought it is, but not impossible... And life gains significance only when you know something which is beyond the mind.

Hence I will call you divine resolution. The beyond is divine; the mind is mundane.

Deva Gerard. Deva means divine; gerard means brave.

To conquer the world is not real bravery; to conquer oneself is. To be a fighter in the world - that is another meaning of gerard, a mighty warrior. To be a warrior with others is nothing extraordinary.

Everybody is, more or less, because the whole world is fighting. It is a continuous war, sometimes hot, sometimes cold.

And each single individual is fighting because everyone is brought up in ambition, everybody is poisoned with ambition. And wherever ambition is there is fight, there is competition. And when

you are too ambitious - as everyone is, because all the societies that have existed up to now have lived on ambition... All the educational systems are doing nothing but conditioning the child to be ambitious and to be successfully ambitious.

The real bravery, the real fight, is not outside the real fight is inside, it is an inner conquest. There the problem really is that Alexander may be great as a warrior but as far as his own instincts are concerned he is a slave. Napoleon may be a great soldier, but as far as his own anger, lust, possessiveness, is concerned, he is just as ordinary as anybody else.

The really brave ones are Jesus, Buddha, Patanjali - these people. They have overcome themselves. Now no desire can pull them here and there, now no unconscious instinct can have any power over them. They are masters of their own lives.

Sannyas is a search for self-mastery.

Anand Deborah. Anand means bliss; deborah means a bee.

Bliss is possible only if you live a multidimensional life, only then can you know life in all its aspects.

Not only the superficial ones but the deeper ones too, and ultimately the very center of life. To live a rich life one has to be a bee.

The bee has a few beautiful qualities. First: it moves from one flower to another, it is continuously moving. It never settles anywhere, it never becomes stagnant. It loves the flower but never grows any attachment; it remains free.

That is the way of the sannyasin - remaining utterly free of all attachment. The moment you become attached to something you become closed to everything else. Then you don't look anywhere else.

You become afraid: if you look and you see some more beautiful flowers, what are you going to do?

It is better to remain blind, deaf, and to remain enclosed with your attachment.

The bee is never possessive. It never fights with other bees: "Why have you come to my flower?"

On the contrary, the moment the bee finds beautiful flowers, full of juiCe, it goes back to inform the commune.

Now scientists have discovered that bees have a certain language. At least four words have been discovered, deciphered; now that much is certain, that they use four words. These words are not linguistic, they are gestures.

The moment a bee discovers some flowers, rather than hiding the fact from others - which is how the human mind functions... if you discover a treasure you will hide it. Instead of hiding it, instead of keeping them for itself, the bee runs back to the home, to the commune. The bees live in communes, thousands of bees together in one honeycomb. And it starts dancing a certain dance, that is the first symbol. When a certain dance is danced by the bee, all the bees become aware that she has discovered something. It is as if she is saying "Eureka! Eureka! I have found! I have found!n And then after the dance it starts moving and the whole crowd of bees follows. It is non-possessive, and it knows all kinds of flowers, all colors, all perfumes; hence it becomes richer and richer in its experience.

And the last but not the least quality of a bee is: it takes the juice of a flower but it never destroys it.

It is so artful that it never hurts the flower at all. It is never violent with the flower. It is not like human beings. The moment you love a flower you immediately pluck it; your love is destructive. It is not love, it is violence; it is hatred hidden somewhere in the name of love.

Let your name become a metaphor for your life. Be a blissful bee, unattached, always moving, non- possessive, living all aspects of life, all the colors of the rainbow, all the notes of music. And never be destructive - be creative. The creative person is a divine person, a holy person.

Prem Elaine. Prem means love; elaine means light.

Life is dark without love, life is a night without love. It is only with the explosion of love energy that the night disappears and the morning arrives, that the darkness disappears and light arrives. Just as the outer eyes cannot see without light, the inner eyes cannot see without love.

So those who are unaware of love... And millions are unaware of love; what they call love is something else. If it was really love they would have known who they are because love brings light, it makes you full of light. But even the so-called lovers seem to be very dark, stumbling, groping in darkness, fighting, quarreling, in darkness, destroying each other, exploiting each other. Even lovers don't seem to be friends.

Now the psychologists say that they are intimate enemies. A certain kind of intimacy is there, but if you watch, their behavior is very inimical; it is not friendship because there is not real love yet.

They are thinking that their lust is love, they are thinking that their sexual desire is love. Sexual gratification is their only goal; the other is only a means. And the moment you think of the other as a means you are being very immoral, very unspiritual, because no person is a means; every person is an end unto himself.

Love never thinks of the other as a means; love knows how to respect. Love never reduces the other to a possessed thing. Love knows how to help the other to be free; love brings freedom.

Love is missing. It is bound to be so because unless one becomes meditative one cannot bring the explosion of love and light that I am talking about. Meditation creates the space inside. And only in that space and in that certain climate does the seed of love start growing. Meditation is like the spring for the love to bloom. Without meditation it is lust; with meditation the same energy becomes love.

And once you are full of love you are full of light too. That light makes you able to see God.

Prem William. Prem means love; william means unwavering resolution. Love is possible only if you take a jump into it. It needs great trust in oneself; otherwise one goes on hesitating, wavering, one remains irresolute.

Because of this constant wavering life becomes accidental, you become a driftwood. You have to depend on circumstances: wherever they push you, they pull you, you have to go because you don't have any sense of direction of your own. You don't know where you really want to be; you don't know where you want to go, whether you want to go in the first place at all or you would just like to be here.

People go on wavering with the waves, with the winds, and that's why their lives remain empty.

Their lives remain a long long story of frustration. Fulfillment never happens to them. Fulfillment is possible only if you can take the risk of jumping into something unknown, if you can be adventurous enough to go into the unknown - not only into the unknown but into the unknowable.

That unknowable is love. A few people call it God, that is their choice; a few people call it nirvana, that is their preference. My own preference is to call it love. "Nirvana" seems to be too cold; "god"

seems to be exploited too much by the priests. Love is very natural, spontaneous, our intrinsic need.

I talk about love because to me, if a person starts moving into love, he is bound to move into God.

He is bound to find nirvana one day because love helps you to disappear; love creates the situation where you evaporate. And when you are not, God is. But certainly it needs an unwavering resolution.

Let your sannyas be an unwavering resolution. A tremendous will is needed to surrender. It looks paradoxical because ordinarily we think will and surrender are antagonistic - they are not. It needs total will to surrender; only people of will can surrender. People who are impotent as far as will is concerned cannot surrender. Surrender is the flower of willpower, of unwavering resolution.

Anand Patricia. Anand means bliss; patricia means of noble birth. It is not really the birth that makes a person noble, it is blissfulness. Unless bliss is born in you all your nobility is just false. Once bliss starts dancing in your heart, then you are really noble, really aristocratic, because now you are part of God, now you are born of God. This rebirth through God makes one noble.

But people have been trying to find nobility in other simpler and easier ways: just being born in the family of a king one becomes noble. Then Jesus is not noble, then Mohammed is not noble, then Kabir is not noble. And if Kabir is not noble, if Jesus is not noble and Mohammed is not noble, then who can be noble? - the lords and the counts, et cetera? No, real nobility has nothing to do with birth; real nobility has to be created. One has to earn it; one has to grow into it.

And blissfulness has to be the key: become more and more blissful, let your whole life be a tremendous bliss.

Burn your candle of life from both the ends simultaneously. Live with such passion and intensity that even if you have to live only one single moment you will be satisfied, utterly contented. A single moment of bliss is enough, more than enough, more than living for a thousand years or living for a thousand lives even... because the length does not matter. Depth matters and depth comes only through intensity.

My whole approach here is to give you intensity, passion, depth. And then certainly you will attain to a new birth which will make you noble, graceful.

Anand Annemarie. Anand means bliss. Annemarie is made of two words: anne means prayer, marie means rebellion. Your full name will mean bliss, prayer, rebellion. And these are the greatest qualities, the highest one can attain to.

Be blissful. Each moment remember not to fall into sadness, because natural instinct is continuously dragging you downwards. Just as gravitation is there pulling each thing downwards, there is a certain gravitation which goes on pulling one towards sadness. Unless one is alert one cannot get out of the trap Remember again and again that you are not to be a victim of this downward pull.

All the religions of the world say that hell is somewhere down. It is not geographical; they do not mean that somewhere down below the earth there is hell. It is a metaphor. Sadness is a pull from something below, below you. You become sad only when you are under its impact; but it is your choice: you can cooperate with it, you can drop cooperating with it.

Bliss has an upward pull; that is another law. You can move into the other law, you can cooperate with it. Bliss uplifts you; that's why it is said that heaven is upwards, somewhere above. Not that heaven is there somewhere beyond the seven skies; it is simply to say that bliss has an upward pull.

It makes you lighter and lighter and you start rising upwards.

One has to be constantly alert; till one becomes a Buddha one has to be very watchful because the pull is constantly there. And we have lived under that pull for centuries, so it has become almost habitual. Whenever you are not alert you are pulled into sadness. Whenever you bring alertness, you become conscious, you shrug, you shake yourself, then for a moment you start rising upwards.

It has to be done each moment. Slowly slowly it becomes also natural.

When bliss has become natural, prayer arises. Prayer is impossible before bliss - you have nothing to be thankful for. When bliss is there you can thank God - you have to! It is such a tremendous gift, how can you withhold your gratitude? Gratitude grows out of bliss, that is prayer.

And a man who is blissful and prayerful is the greatest rebel in the world. No prison can imprison him, no chains can chain him. You can kill his body but you cannot kill his spirit. He lives according to his own light. He is nonconformist, he is never a part of the crowd, he is never a sheep. He is a man, a real man.

And the real man also becomes divine. Jesus says many times that he is son of man and many times that he is son of God. Christians have remained puzzled for centuries: what to make out of it? A real son of man is also a son of God; It is not a contradiction. The moment you become authentically human, suddenly the doors of the divine open for you.

But the authentic human being is basically rebellious. He is not only a rebel, he is rebellion writ large. He lives life as revolution. And to live life as revolution is the greatest ecstasy available to us.

It is our birthright, but we have to claim it again.

Anand Daniel. Anand means bliss; daniel means God is my judge. Be blissful because God is our judge. Why should we be blissful because God is our judge? - because God is love, and love only knows how to forgive.

Love is compassion. It cannot punish, it cannot throw you into hell - it is impossible! Our sins are tiny; God's compassion is infinite. Our sins are nothing much; there is no need to brag about them.

The people who go on confessing are simply bragging. The very idea that "I have committed a great sin" is egoistic.

A man came to confess to his priest. He said, "Is it not very bad to make love eleven times in one night?" The priest was aghast. He said, "It is bad. I had never thought about you that you would do such a thing!" The man said, "But it was my own wife." The priest said, "Why have you come to confess? - you are allowed to make love to your wife." The man said, "I know, but I just had to tell somebody!"

God is our judge. That means that we are forgiven, already forgiven. Before you have ever committed a sin you are forgiven. Hence, be blessed!

Premdeva. Prem means love; deva means god - love is God.

Jesus says: God is love. I say: Love is God. The difference is great - the change in words is not much. When Jesus says God is love, love becomes a quality of God. He has many other qualities too. When I say love is God, then love itself becomes God. Love becomes all in all and there is no competing quality to it. It is not just a quality of God, it is God itself. This single world "love" contains my whole message.

Be as loving as possible. Don't hold back - share whatsoever you have, share. Share your life, share your joy, share your song, share your dance. And the more you give, the more you will be given. It comes back a thousandfold. Just know the art of sharing.

A sannyasin is not one who renounces the world, a sannyasin is one who shares his world with people. Renunciation is not a big deal, it is very easy to escape, but to share is really something of tremendous import. Renunciation can be done in a single moment but sharing is a lifelong process.

Renunciation is like committing suicide: if you had waited one moment more you may not have committed it at all. If somebody had stopped you when you were just about to jump and asked you what time it is, that might have been the end of the whole idea! It happens in a madness; in a single moment you become so mad, so crazy, so enraged - you can do something.

And that's how renunciation happens a person renounces the world, escapes to the mountains, then it goes against his ego to come back. Then people will laugh, now his ego prevents him from coming back. He thinks of coming back...

I know that monks living in the monasteries want to come back to the world because they are constantly obsessed with the world. They have left the world without experiencing it. They were unripe. They were unprepared. They were not ripe fruits which fall of their own accord, they were unripe fruit. They were not still sweet, they were bitter, and that bitterness persists. They hanker for the world but they cannot come out of the monastery. They cannot leave their order because now they will become laughingstocks - people will think that they have fallen. And they did it in a moment of madness.

My idea of sannyas is not a momentary thing but something spread all over your life. Share - that is real renunciation, and go on sharing every day, every moment. Share your life, share your love, and share your death too. Share all that you have, that's what love is all about. And remember always:

love is God.

Anand Pragita. Anand means bliss; pragita means a song. Now the time has come to become a song!

Sannyas means becoming a song. It is dropping all seriousness, it is taking life playfully. It is transforming work into play and looking at things not with a heavy, prejudiced head, but looking like a child, in wonder, in joy, in fun. If one can take religion as fun then one grows into religiousness so quickly, so immediately, that looking backwards it looks almost impossible.

Life is fun, love is fun - let God also be fun! And when I use the word "fun" I am not using it in any derogatory sense, because fun is the highest understanding. In the East we call it leela: it is God's play. The moment it becomes your play also, then the distance between you and God is lessened; you start coming closer to God, God starts coming closer to you.

Prem means love; sudharma means the ultimate law.

Man can either live in conflict with existence, or in love. To live in conflict with existence is to live irreligiously. It is pushing the river, it is going against the current. And all struggle is egoistic, struggle as such is egoistic.

The moment you start flowing with the river, going with existence relaxedly, in tune with it, in accord with it, religion is born. Religion is not Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan: a religion is a way of life m accord with the ultimate law.

And love is the ultimate law. Be in tune with love, never go against love. Let love be the criterion; judge everything on that criterion. If it goes against love, drop it, forget the whole idea. If it fulfills love, go into it; do it, and do it totally. If you can remember love in your actions you will be moving in the right direction. You will find the temple of God, it is absolutely certain. Those who have loved have never missed.