Darshan 18 September 1979

[We are trying to grasp that which we already have.]

Everyone is blessed by the divine. A few know it; many more remain oblivious of the fact, hence there is so much misery. Misery is fictitious, it is not real. It is only there because we have not known our blessedness. It is the absence of our knowing that we are already blessed that makes us miserable, and then we try to find bliss, joy. But you cannot find it because it is already there. The very effort to find it is utterly absurd; it is bound to fail.

One has simply to relax, be still and know that one is blessed. It is not a question of achieving. The moment you know your blessedness, all misery evaporates, as if it has never existed at all.

My effort here is to make you aware of what you are; it is not a question of achieving anything. You are holy, you are divine, you are blessed; it is just that you are fast asleep. You have to be awakened so that you can know your own treasure - the kingdom of God within.

The English word "passion" is beautiful; it comes from "passive". The moment passion becomes aggression it is ugly; when passion remains passive it is prayer.

The ancient meaning of the word "passion" is "suffering", hence "the passion of Jesus". That too is beautiful, because love knows how to suffer. Love cannot make anybody suffer. It knows how to suffer, it is ready to suffer, but it is incapable of creating suffering for others.

Love and you will be loved by God, love and you will be loved by the whole existence.

[Conquer, but through the heart]

Victory can either be of the body or of the mind or of the heart. The victory through the body is the lowest: it is animalistic, it is violent, it is ugly. The victory through the mind is a little better than the victory through the body, but not much better, only a little more sophisticated. The animal is decorated but remains the animal. In the body it is naked, in the mind it is camouflaged. The victory through the mind is human, and man is nothing but animal camouflaged, animal dressed up, polished, educated, with a mask, but if you scratch a little bit, you will find the animal coming up; it can surface any moment.

The third victory is the real victory; the victory through the heart - it is divine. The animal has completely ceased to exist. The body is far away and the mind too is left behind - one is simply pure love. And the way of love is totally different from the way of the body-mind. The body and the mind, both are aggressive; they enforce victory on others. Love is passive; rather than enforcing victory on others, it surrenders. Its ways are strange; through surrender it becomes victorious.

Love is so confident of its victory that it can surrender. The body and the mind are not so confident - they know that if they surrender there is no possibility of being victorious. Then the other will dominate them. They can't trust themselves, the trust is lacking. But the heart is so trustful, so overflowing with trust, that it knows "Nobody can be victorious over me." It is an intrinsic feeling that "Even if I surrender, my victory remains intact. In fact by surrender it becomes absolute."

Sannyas is the way of love, the way of surrender, but through surrender comes the victory of the heart and the victory of the heart is the victory of God.

[Satyam Bob: truth, a light that cannot be hidden]

It is like a star: howsoever far away it may be, it shines forth. You cannot hide a Buddha you cannot hide a Jesus. You can kill them but you cannot prevent them from shining. Jesus was killed, but even though twenty centuries have passed, his light remains growing, spreading, reaching to more and more people. It is impossible to destroy that light.

Truth need not propagate itself, it need not advertise. It spreads like a wild fire, it reaches all the nooks and comers of the earth without any effort Lies need to be advertised, propagated, argued for, proved; they need support. They have to prove that they are not lies. They have to create the appearance of being true. Great effort is needed to make a lie appear as truth - still, it can fall any moment. You can befool a few people for the time being, but you cannot befool all people for all time.

Truth has its own light. The lie has to borrow it from somebody else, from somewhere else. The lie is like darkness: you cannot see anything. The truth is as bright as the day. That is another meaning of rob: bright, as bright as the day.

It is just as when you see the sun rising, no proof is needed: the sunrise is enough proof unto itself.

So is truth: when you see it rising within you, no proof is needed, no witness is needed. Even if the whole world is against it, you know you are right. Hence the power of truth. People cannot be against it for long; sooner or later they start falling in love with it. It is natural. In the beginning they resist, they fight back, they are afraid, they cling to their darkness, but it is natural in the beginning.

Soon they become aware that they are clinging to darkness and that the darkness cannot fulfill. Only truth can fulfill, only truth can liberate. Only truth can bring bliss, freedom, joy.

[The message of all those who have known is that love is God]

Love is the very essence of the spiritual experience. The moment one's consciousness blooms like a lotus, this is the fragrance that is released - that love is God.

It is not a conclusion arrived at through the mind, it is not a syllogism: it is a song of the heart. It is not part of thinking at all: it is all and all feeling. It is intuitive, not intellectual, so one cannot argue for it or against it. Either you know it or you don't know it. And blessed are those who know it, because by knowing it they have known the very foundation of life and existence.

Love is the stuff that the universe is made of. God is just another name for it... a religious name for a poetic experience.

[Knowledge grown in meditation]

Meditation includes knowledge; knowledge does not include meditation. Knowledge can be mere information, it can be borrowed; then it is not virtue. Just to be a great scholar does not mean that you are virtuous. You may know all about prayer and you may never have prayed at all. You may know all about God, still, God may not be in your heart, there may be no feel for God. You may know all about truth but it may not be your own experience.

Knowledge can be mere information. That is the danger: it can make you scholarly, learned, sophisticated, but it can't give you grace. It cannot transform you, otherwise all the academicians would have become Buddhas - they are not. Still, the statement of Socrates contains fifty percent of truth. Real knowledge is certainly virtue, but real knowledge means knowledge that arises within you, that grows within you; not information but your own authentic experience. How is it going to happen? It can happen only through meditation.

Through study you collect information from outside sources, from others, from the past. Through meditation you go deep into your own being. You come into contact with your own consciousness, and that contact gives you a light, a vision, a capacity to see. When your eyes are unclouded, and when your inner being is open, available to existence - when you are not living in the head, in the ego you have gone far deeper, leaving the surface behind, to the very depth of your being - a totally different kind of knowledge arises which cannot be gathered from anywhere else. Universities cannot give it to you, libraries cannot give it to you, teachers cannot impart it to you. You have to be a light unto yourself, you have to dig deep within your own being.

Hence I say that Socrates is right, fifty percent. Knowledge in the true sense, certainly, is virtue; it transforms your whole character because it connects you with God. How can you remain untransformed? It connects you with the very source of life, and when life's juices start flowing in you, you cannot be the same. You whole vision changes, your whole lifestyle changes - but it is possible only through meditation.