Darshan 13 September 1979
Anand Vincent. Anand means bliss and vincent means a conqueror - one who has conquered bliss.
That the real conquest in life; all else is just rubbish. Money power, prestige, all those things are for insane people The sane person conquers bliss.
Prem Ron. Prem means love: ron means mighty power. Power has two dimensions: the masculine and the feminine the aggressive and the receptive, the destructive and the creative.
The masculine power is aggressive, destructive. The feminine power is receptive, creative. Hate creates masculine power. That is the key for masculine power: create hatred. Adolf Hitler in his autobiography says, "If you don't have real enemies, create false enemies, otherwise the nation will lose power. Even the fear of a false enemy is enough to create hatred, enmity, antagonism; in that context power arises." Adolf Hitler represents the masculine power at its peak, at its worst and best.
Buddha represents the feminine power, the power that is created through love.
Even if you don't have anybody to love, love love the emptiness that surrounds you, love yourself be love, and a totally different kind of power arises in you - which is a blessing, to you and to the world.
Adolf Hitler is a curse but he dominates... the whole of history is dominated by Adolf Hitlers. Buddhas are very few and far in between. They are lost in the ocean of destructive power, like small islands you cannot even see them - but they know real power. Hence my suggestion is that we should drop calling God "father"; it is far more beautiful to call God "the mother", more significant, because then God also represents love, receptivity, creativity. It is the male mind that has created the idea of God as father.
Adolf Hitler used to call his motherland, "fatherland". The idea of father is basically aggressive. It is man who can rape a woman; nobody has ever heard of a woman raping a man. That is impossible - she can't be aggressive. And because she can only be receptive, she can be raped.
Love suffers much. Jesus is murdered. Socrates is murdered. Mansoor is murdered. Love suffers much. But love makes nobody suffer - that's its glory and its beauty, its spirituality.
So become a mighty power, not through hate, but through love.
Prabhu David. Prabhu means God; david means beloved - God's beloved. And remember it always, that God loves you. The very remembrance helps you to love others. Good.
[Devapriya: beloved of the divine]
Man without God is man alienated. Man without God is man without roots. Man without God is utterly lonely. Man without God constantly has to face death; each moment death is there, and life is slipping out of his hands. Man without God knows nothing of life, meaning, significance. He knows only death, frustration, despair, anguish.
And that's what has happened to humanity: slowly slowly we have turned our backs towards God.
We have done it in a very rational way, we have done it very scientifically, so we seem to be very convinced of whatsoever we have done, as if we have done right. But if one looks all around there is misery. People are living m nightmares, utterly afraid, feeling the emptiness, because the place that could have been filled by God remains empty. It cannot be filled by money, by power, or with the new gadgets that technology goes on inventing. Man goes on stuffing himself with things, but the emptiness can't be filled. It can be filled only by God only God can reach to your innermost core, nothing else. So man goes on becoming technologically affluent, rich, and spiritually very poor.
Man has never been so poor spiritually as he is today, and has never been so rich outwardly as he is today. This is a paradox, on the outside riches go on piling up, mountains of riches; and in the inside the valley becomes deeper and deeper and the darkness deepens. The reason is only one, that for these three hundred years we have done one foolish thing, although we have done it very rationally: we have turned against God, we have turned our backs towards God.
God contains all the meaning of life, all the poetry of life, all the celebration of life. God is not a person. God is a totally different way of living your life. God is a way of life, the way of celebration, the way of dance, the way of love.
But because the word "God" gives the idea of a person and we start looking for where he is and we cannot find him, we come to the conclusion there is no God. But in the first place we create a false god and then we start looking for it. It is like the old definition of philosophy: a blind man, searching in a dark room for a black cat which is not there. Now how is he going to find it? First, he is blind, second, the room is dark, thirdly, the cat is black, and fourthly, t is not there.
This is what has happened about God: we have created a false god, and then we start looking for him, and we cannot find him so we conclude that there is no God.
Friedrich Nietzsche says God is dead. It was the false god, om created god which is dead. It has nothing to do with the real God. Nietzsche knows nothing about the real God. About the false he is perfectly true, I agree with him, but he is in a confusion. He thinks that the false god is God - that's where I disagree. The false is created by man. Now man is mature enough and cannot go on trusting in the false. We have to bring the true God into man's life. Then God is not a person, then God is a way of life.
Living life poetically, living life lovingly, living life as a constant celebration - that's what is represented by the word "god". It is better if we drop the word "god" and start thinking in terms of "godly". There is no God in the world but the existence is godly, it is divine. We are all rooted in it, and it loves us, otherwise we would not have been here in the first place.
It is because the existence loves us that we are. It keeps us alive: it goes on breathing life into us, it goes on pulsating in our blood, it goes on beating in our hearts.
That is the meaning of devapriya: beloved of God. To start feeling it is to bring a new vision to your life.
From this moment live with this constant background, that existence loves you, needs you, that existence is constantly showering blessings on you. Be grateful, be thankful!
Satyabodhi means true enlightenment. The word looks a little strange because we think that enlightenment is bound to be true - what is the point of calling a certain enlightenment "true enlightenment"? But there is a point: there is a possibility of false enlightenment.
The mind is so cunning, that's why. The mind can create the illusion of an enlightenment, it is within its capacity. It can befool you. It befools the whole world and you go on supporting it and you enjoy it. Slowly slowly it becomes so skillful in befooling you that finally at the last moment, it turns upon you: it can befool you too. Many have been befooled. They had not attained to enlightenment, but they thought they had.
What is the distinction? A Zen story:
A disciple has been meditating for years, and as it is traditional in Zen, every day the disciple has to come to report to the Master what has been attained, what he has experienced, how things are going in meditation. Every day he brings beautiful experiences but the Master says "Bullshit! Unless you bring the experience of nothing, I am not going to be contented. Less than that won't do."
But whatsoever you experience becomes something - how can you experience nothing? Even if you experience nothing, nothing is reduced to something; the content of your experience becomes defined.
So he tries hard: sometimes he experiences beautiful light, his whole body full of light, but it is not nothing. Sometimes he feels such fragrance which is not of this world, but still it is not nothing. And sometimes he feels as if he is levitating, as if he is going beyond the grip of gravitation. But that too is something, not nothing. Sometimes he experiences Buddha standing before him, with all his infinite grace... but that too is something. And again and again he is refused, thrown out of the room.
The Master hits him throws him out, closes the door in his face.
It goes on for years but the disciple persists and the Master persists. One day the disciple comes and he says to the Master, "Now you will be happy; I have experienced nothing."
The Master hits him the hardest ever and says "If you have experienced nothing, you cannot be in it; the experiencer cannot be in it. If you had experienced nothing, there is nothing to say and report. You missed again! Your mind befooled you: it even created the fallacy of nothingness. It was creating light, it was creating lotus flowers opening, it was creating fragrances, it was creating so many things. It has also done the ultimate trick: it has created nothingness. But you were there, the experiencer was there, the experiencer was experiencing something, so the duality was there."
And instantly the disciple understands, and a transformation happens suddenly. He bows down to touch the Master's feet; the Master takes his face, looks into his eyes and he says, "Now it is right.
Now you have experienced because you are not; the mind is not, the experience is not. This is true enlightenment, but you cannot report it, you cannot make any statement about it, you cannot brag about it, you cannot proclaim it."
It is not even an experience really, not a feeling. It is beyond all thinking, all feeling, it is beyond all experiencing; it is transcendental. Then it is true - when it is transcendental, it is true. That is the meaning of satyabodhi: true enlightenment.
Beware of the mind - it goes on supplying toys to play with. If you become fed up with one kind of toy, it creates another kind of toy: worldly, otherworldly, religious, spiritual. The mind is capable of creating all kinds of toys.
When you see through and through and your look is so deep that the mind cannot even dare to deceive you, the truth has been attained.
This is the goal of sannyas, because only by attaining it does one know who one is and what this universe is - this tremendously beautiful universe, this incredible, ecstatic, orgasmic, existence.
[Satyaprem: Love of truth. Lies - a great soporific, giving us a sleep in which we can dream to our heart's content]
Who bothers about truth? - because truth wakes you up. It does not allow you to sleep any more.
Once Buddha was asked: "We have watched you sleeping but you sleep the whole night in the same posture - you never move your hand, your feet; you never toss and turn, you never change from side to side. How is it possible?"
Buddha said, "Since I became enlightened I have not slept. Only the body is resting - I am awake."
He is true.
Krishna in the Gita says, "Those who have become real seekers of truth, they can't sleep, and those who are not seekers of truth, they can't be awake. The seekers of truth, even while asleep, are awake, and the non-seekers of truth, even while awake, are asleep."
We are living in fear, and while we are afraid we are not going to find truth; in fact we will avoid it.
A great love is needed, only then can one seek and search for truth. It is a love affair, a mad love affair. That is the meaning of satyaprem: madly in love with truth. And that's what has brought you here.
My sannyasins are not ordinary people. They are not in search of comforts, psychological consolation: they are passionately in love with truth. They want to know the truth, whatsoever the cost.
Before you have known truth you will feel many times that you have to lose many things. But once you have known truth you will laugh, because whatsoever you lost were only shadows, illusions.
They were not real things; they were not substantial. And whatsoever you have gained is the ultimate.
So all sacrifices were tiny, meaningless - when truth is attained - but before it is attained, those sacrifices look too big, because you have no comparison; you can't think what truth is going to be.
You know only your thing that you are sacrificing. You know your attachment, your clinging, and you have to drop your attachment, your clinging. The truth is absolutely unknown. Once known, all our sacrifices look ridiculous. Even to call them sacrifices is stupid.