Darshan 17 September 1979

[The church equates sadness and sobriety with saintliness]

Because of that, religion become more and more crowded by pathological people. Healthy people started avoiding religion, because health is bliss and health is cheerfulness. It is only the unhealthy - physically or psychologically - who are sad; sadness is a symptom of disease. But for so many centuries we have respected sadness, we have made it the most fundamental quality of a saint. A saint cannot laugh; a saint has to be almost stone cold, he cannot be warm, he cannot be loving.

At the most he can be compassionate, but his compassion is also cold; it has no warmth, it has no human heart in it.

We have not only worshipped stone statues in the temples, we have worshipped people who have become stones. Throughout the whole past stones have been worshipped. That has created a great problem: healthy people slowly slowly became irreligious and unhealthy people became more and more attracted towards religion, because religion gave them a beautiful interpretation for their disease, for their pathology. It made their pathology something respectable; it became a rationalization.

My whole effort is to change the very concept of the holy person. Bliss has to be the fundamental quality. Unless a saint is cheerful, like a child, blissful like a flower, joyous like the stars, unless a saint is always in a dancing mood, in a singing mood, he is not a saint at all.

And I am pointing it out particularly because your name "helga" means holy, pious, religious. If you don't understand that cheerfulness has to become the very foundation of your religiousness, there is a danger, the word "helga" is dangerous. Without cheerfulness, without blissfulness, it creates a very egoistic personality. Then holier-than-thou becomes your very personality, your very vision.

You start living in a kind of higher world than other people. In your eyes there is condemnation for

others: they are sinners and you are holy, pious, religious. A really holy person cannot think of others as sinners. A really holy person sees God in everyone, and how can God be a sinner? A really holy person is always worshipful. The ordinary life also is sacred for him. Mundane activities are no more mundane: they are all holy, they are all religious, because the world is God-full.

Once blissfulness becomes your flavor, then being holy is beautiful, being pious is beautiful, being religious is beautiful, but without cheerfulness, all those three qualities can be dangerous. Beware of it.

[God gives us the gift of freedom.]

And by God I mean the whole universe.

Man alone is very weak, very small. Separate from existence man is just a dewdrop, a dewdrop on a leaf of grass: just a little breeze and it will be gone, or the sun rises and it will evaporate. It is momentary. Howsoever beautiful it looks, it is very fragile.

So is man. Separate from existence he has no strength, as an ego he is impotent. But if you can drop the ego, you become omnipotent, because the moment you drop the ego, you are part of God.

You are rooted in God, you are one with God. And that oneness brings freedom.

Ego is the bondage - egolessness is freedom.

[Monique: aloneness and wisdom]

When love is possible in your deep aloneness, then love becomes a fragrance of meditation, because meditation is nothing but entering into your aloneness. It is tremendously beautiful to know your aloneness because that is the only way to know your being, to know who you are.

And remember it is not negative: aloneness is an absolutely positive phenomenon. Others are absent but you are present, and because others are completely absent, you are fully present; you are filling the whole space.

And the second meaning of Monique... If love and aloneness are together, you become wise; wisdom arises out of this meeting. Love and meditation meeting create wisdom. They create Buddhahood, they create Christ-consciousness. They make you aware of God - not as a separate entity, but enshrined within you as the very center of your being.

[Devadharma, the one true religion]

The true religion can only be one. If true science is one and true art is one, how can true religion be three hundred?

Truth is one, hence religion is bound to be one. The religion of Buddha and Christ and Krishna is one, it is not different. Of course they speak different languages but the message is exactly the same. If one does not get lost in the jungle of words, then the message of Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Zarathustra, is exactly the same... not even a bit of difference. Difference is impossible because they all speak from the same plenitude of being, from the same height of being; they speak from the same peak of existence.

Of course Lao Tzu speaks Chinese, Buddha speaks Pali, Jesus speaks Aramaic, Mohammed speaks Arabic; that is natural. And they use different metaphors, different symbols, different similes. They used whatsoever was available to them in their time and in their place to express the inexpressible. But those who have eyes can see that their message is the same. That message I call true religion, divine religion. But the only way to know it is to go within yourself.

You cannot know it from the Bible, you cannot know it from the Geeta, you cannot know it from the Koran. They have always been possessed by the priests, interpreted by the priests, destroyed by the priests, corrupted by the priests. They are no more the same as they were delivered; many things have been dropped and many things have been added. Whatsoever was dangerous, rebellious, has been dropped; whatsoever was helpful to establish a business has been preserved. And whatsoever more was needed to create a dogma, a church, an establishment, has been added to it.

The only way to know the real Bible, the real Geeta, the real Koran, is not through the scriptures, it is not through study, but through meditation; by going to the innermost core of your being, by reaching the same space where Buddha reached. Then you will know what his message is; it is not his, it is God's, and the message is the same.

Once you have tasted something of the nectar of your own being you will know that there is only one religion, there can only be one religion, and that religion has no priests, no church, no dogma. Each person has to discover it on his own, it is a self-discovery.

Sannyas is just an invitation to go on this journey of discovery.