When one's whole Being is in Celebration...

Prem means love, nityo means eternal. Love is the only phenomenon in life which has the quality of eternity in it. Hence even a single moment of love takes you beyond time, takes you into timelessness. A single moment of love is a moment of eternity; it is not an ordinary moment. It is not horizontal, it is vertical.

All other moments are horizontal. You are eating, you are sleeping, taking your bath, earning your bread - these are all horizontal. One moment is followed by another in a sequence; it is a chain.

Each present moment of the ordinary life is surrounded by two other moments: the one that is disappearing and becoming the past, and the one that is just coming on the horizon, the future.

The ordinary present is sandwiched between past and future; but love knows no past and no future.

It is a very extraordinary moment; it is vertical. It is not part of our time process. And that is the meaning of the Christian cross: one line is horizontal, the other line is vertical. It is not just a symbol of the crucifixion; it is a symbol of time and eternity. Eternity penetrates the river of time only when you are in love. Jesus is a man of immense love, hence he could say 'God is love.' He represents love.

So remember it, that the more you become loving, the more you transcend death.

That's why a lover is never afraid of death. Only the people who don't know how to love are afraid of death, because the people who don't know how to love remain in their egos. And they know only one kind of time. They know everything begins and ends; they don't know the beginningless and the endless, they have never tasted of it. They have lived only in one-dimensional time; eternity has

remained completely unknown to them. They are afraid of death - they know that they are going to die. And they are going to die, because time is a process that begins and ends.

Once you know what love is you have tasted something that is beyond death, you have tasted something that is never born and never dies. To taste love is to taste god. And only those who know love know what god is all about. Others simply talk, others know not.

Remember it: love is the existential meaning of god. God is only a philosophical term, non- existential, for love. Love is god alive and the concept of god is love dead. The concept of god belongs to theology: love belongs to existence. So forget all about god and go deeper and deeper into love... and you will know god! That's the only way there is.

Prem means love and sheila in Sanskrit means a peak, a mountain peak - a mountain peak of love.

To live without love is to live on flat land. There are no peaks and no valleys either, because peaks and valleys exist together; they are aspects of the same phenomenon, two sides of the same coin.

The higher you move, the lower becomes the valley by your side. The greatest valley is always around the greatest mountain, and naturally so.

That is the risk of love: love takes one very high but one cannot remain on those heights forever.

One has to come back, and when one comes back, one falls into a dark valley. Love gives you great ecstasy and also great agonies. People who are afraid of the agony will by and by become afraid of the ecstasy too, because they always come together. That's why millions of people have decided not to love - the risk is too great. They are afraid of the valley which always comes with the peak.

They would like to have the peak but they would like to have it without the valley; that is not possible.

If you want the day you will have to accept the night too. If you want life you will have to accept death too.

That is the polarity of existence: it exists through opposites, and the opposite is really a complementary. In fact the peak is created by the valley just as the valley is created by the peak.

If you really love the ecstasy you will also be ready to welcome the agony that follows it. Never be afraid of the valley; otherwise people become flat, their lives become flat. Of course they live in comfort and convenience, no problems in their lives, but no life either.

Life exists in risk, in danger. The lover has to encounter many problems, and the greater the problems are, the more they help you grow. Only lovers grow. Others have escaped from the challenges. They are hiding, they are cowards. Non-lovers are cowards. They live in convenience.

There is no fear of falling into sadness because they never aspire to happiness; they simply live a mundane, day-to-day life. They don't try to reach the moon, hence they can never fall. They are secure, but security is not life; security is death. Life is intrinsically insecure, uncertain, and that's the thrill of it and the joy of discovery and the great ecstasy of balancing oneself between the opposites.

That very balancing is integration.

Aspire to the peaks and be not afraid of the valleys. Let a higher valley, a greater valley, a deeper valley, be welcomed, because that is the only way to reach a higher peak.

Deva means divine, masto means madness - divine madness. And that is the highest form of sanity.

The really sane man is drunk with the divine; and only those who are drunk with the divine, utterly

drunk, are sane. Others are only neurotic, more or less. The whole of humanity exists in a kind of neurosis. The difference between the mad people in the mad asylums and the people who are not mad and live in the outside world is not much. It is only a question of degrees; no difference in quality, but only in quantity. And any person who is sane this moment can become insane the next; everybody is on the verge. Just a little push, accidental - the bank goes bankrupt, your husband dies or you fail in an examination - anything, any trivial thing and your balance is lost and you have crossed the border. It is as if you were almost always boiling at near about ninety-nine degrees...

just one degree more, and any excuse is enough to give you that much heat, and you have crossed the border: you are mad.

Psychology tries to bring you back to the so-called normal state which is nothing but ordinary neurosis, 'normal' neurosis, 'average' neurosis.

The whole effort of psychology is to bring you back so that you can be capable of doing your ordinary things again in a more or less consistent way. Deep inside you remain the same. The same thoughts rush - relevant, irrelevant, consistent, inconsistent - the same crowd, so many selves inside, so many minds, and such a noise that continues day in, day out. But psychology is not worried about it; its only concern is to give you a face that looks sane.

Religion's concern is not just that. Religion's concern is to give you a being that is sane, not just a face - not just to give you a face-lift, but to give you a being that is sane. And that means a being that is thought-less, a being that is tranquil, calm, cool, a being that lives in the herenow. But to live in the herenow one has to get rid of the so-called mind. Hence the state is called 'a state of divine madness' - madness in the eyes of the world, but not in the eyes of those who understand.

Jesus is mad - in this sense people think he is mad; so is Buddha, so have all the great masters been. The ordinary world has always thought them a little eccentric, gone off the track, outlandish, or something like that. One thing is certain, that they are no more the average person. Another thing is certain: that they are more blissful than the average person, more full of light. A new kind of being, a new radiance and a new joy surrounds them. They are drunk with god - they have found the very fountain of nectar. And they don't care what the world says about them. Once you have tasted inner joy then it doesn't matter whether people agree with you or not, whether they approve of you or not. Who cares about their approval? Once you have your own being, you need not beg for your being from others and from others' opinions.

That hurts the crowd very much, hence they poisoned Socrates, crucified Jesus, stoned Buddha - because these people seem to be so happy with themselves, so utterly happy in themselves, as if they don't need the world. It hurts the crowd - that they are no more needed, that their opinion makes no difference to them. You can call them mad and they will laugh and they will still love you.

You can crucify them and they will laugh and they will still love you. The last words of Jesus were 'Father, forgive these people because they know not what they are doing. They are mad but they think me mad. They need me but they are destroying me. I had come for them but they have rejected me. Forgive them, because they know not what they are doing.'

That is the meaning of the word 'masto'; it is a Sufi word of immense value. Slowly slowly move towards that. Become less and less a mind and more and more a heart, less and less logic, more and more love; less and less concerned with the trivial, more and more concerned with the essence.

Prem means love, karuno means mercy, compassion: love compassion. Compassion is the fragrance of love; you cannot cultivate it, and a cultivated compassion is not a true compassion.

It is false, it is pseudo, it is a hypocrisy. That is what is being cultivated by the so-called religious people. They try to be compassionate but just the very effort to be compassionate shows that they have no compassion; otherwise why the effort? You don't make any effort to breathe - it is natural, it is spontaneous. Effort always means that the inner reality is just the opposite.

You try to be loving; that simply shows you are not loving. You try to be good; that simply shows you are not good. The very effort is absolute proof that just the opposite is the reality. And once you are a hypocrite, you will never be religious. You have learned the ways of being schizophrenic, you have learned the double standard of life. You have become two, you are split. You have two faces:

one, the real that you never show to anybody - not even to yourself - and the other that you show to everybody. By and by you start believing in the other yourself; when you see so many people are convinced by your outer face, the mask, you become convinced yourself. So the mask becomes the face and the original face completely disappears. The Zen masters say 'The first thing for the initiate is to discover his original face; only then can the journey start.'

There is a compassion that is not cultivated at all, that comes only as a fragrance of love, which follows love like a shadow. And love is a quality of our essence. Just as the body lives by breathing, the soul lives by loving. Just as breath is an absolute necessity for the body to exist, to survive, love is an absolute necessity for the soul to exist and to survive. Love is your soul's breath. So only people who are tremendously loving have great souls. They are soul people. Others are only for the name's sake; others are only personalities, not souls. A personality is a cultivated phenomenon; a soul is a natural growth. Everybody brings the potential but very few people develop it. And for those who develop it, great is their reward.

Remember, there are two things in you: one I call the essence or the soul, the other I call the personality. The personality is learned from the society, family, culture. It is a learned phenomenon; others give it to you. The essence is that which you bring with yourself; nobody can give it to you.

The essence comes with you, it is your in-born potential. And people are lost in their personalities.

They have completely forgotten their essence; they don't know who they are.

Love is a fundamental quality of the essence. So if you allow love to happen more and more... and I will not say to love, because then you can misinterpret it and again you can fall into the trap of hypocrisy. I will say: Allow love to happen more and more, and whenever an opportunity is there, don't hinder it. If you are standing by the side of the tree and the feeling arises to hug the tree, allow it, don't hinder it. Just allow it. If seeing a flower tears start flowing from your eyes, allow it!

Don't hinder it for any cause for any reason. Don't think that others will think you mad. Why are you crying just seeing a rose flower? But poor is the man who has not cried on seeing a rose flower.

Really poor is the man who has not cried out of joy hearing the cuckoo calling from the mango grove.

Poor is the man who knows not how to cry when something wondrous happens... and it is always happening. And the person who cannot cry and love cannot laugh either.

So allow laughter. crying, dancing singing... allow loving. Become more and more vulnerable to love - that is my message to you - and then compassion will follow. You will find you have become compassionate... not that you have done anything for it. Allow love and compassion comes automatically.

Anand means bliss, hadio means divine - divine bliss. Pleasure is of the body, joy is of the mind, bliss is of the soul; and they are very distinct from each other.

Pleasure is gross. Somebody may have pleasure through sex, somebody may have pleasure through eating - it is gross. Joy is subtle: listening to music or listening to great poetry or just the wind passing through the pine trees or the sound of running water... seeing a great painting or just a sunset - it is more subtle.

Pleasure is bound to create competition. If one is interested in a man there is competition because other women may also be interested in the man. If one is interested in a woman there is bound to be conflict because others may be interested in the woman too; then you have to struggle. And when you get the woman, others are miserable; you may have gained a little pleasure but you have made others miserable. It is an ugly affair, it is political. It creates conflict, clash, and people become violent through it. Whenever a society is too obsessed with pleasure it becomes violent. It is not an accident that America has become very violent, because the whole society has only one concern:

how to have more pleasure. So everybody is at the other's throat. If you want to have more money, naturally somebody will have less. And there is violence.

Joy is more non-violent. It is non-competitive. If you love music nobody is deprived of it. If you love a sunset it is not that you have possessed it: millions of people can share it. Pleasure cannot be shared; it is very possessive. It is a kind of property: one claims 'This is mine.' Joy can be shared.

In fact the more you share it, the more you have of it. It has a higher quality. If you enjoy a poem you would like to read it to your friends, because if they can also enjoy it they enrich your enjoyment.

You don't lose anything by sharing, you really gain. It is better to search for joy than for pleasure.

Bliss is the ultimate. Joy has some objects just as pleasure has some objects; the objects are different but still the objects are there. In pleasure a woman is the object; in joy music is the object.

But in bliss there is no object, only subjectivity. You simply are... and the bliss, the bliss of just being.

To be-is enough, more than enough. For joy you will need something, something outer - a poem, music, a painting, a sculpture, a sunset - something outside. It may be available, it may not be available. You will remain tethered to the object, you will remain dependent. Bliss is independent; you need not have anything. You can simply close your eyes and just be and it is there.

That is the meaning of your name: go from pleasure to joy, from joy to bliss. Ordinarily people remain hung-up with pleasure. A few people, very few, move to joy, and even fewer, very few, move to bliss.

Those who have moved to bliss have known something of the eternal.

By repetition pleasure becomes unpleasant - it can even become painful. One gets bored. You may have enjoyed a certain food today but tomorrow it will be less enjoyable and the day after tomorrow, even less. If you have been given the same food every day you will be bored by it by the end of the week, bored to death. Certainly you had enjoyed it the first time but the repetition destroys it.

Joy is not so easily destroyed, but still over a longer time repetition destroys that too. If you listen to the same poetry again and again and again, a few times repetition will give you more and more joy because you will understand more on different planes - new doors will open, new meanings will arise - but that too has a limit. It is bigger, wider than the pleasure, but still it is limited. There comes a moment when you have explored the whole poem; then you are finished with it, there is no more in it. You can't get anything more out of it - you will have to move to something else.

But bliss is qualitatively different: the more you sit silently, just enjoying your being, the more and more blissful it becomes. Every day it becomes deeper and it knows no end, it is infinite.

... and the new name is a new birth. It is the beginning of life again on a different plane, in a totally separate reality. Life is multi-dimensional, and we live only on one plane, the mundane. That's why life becomes tedious, a boredom, because sooner or later one finds that it is just all senseless, it makes no sense. Even existence seems to be meaningless, because meaning does not exist on the plane of the mundane; meaning exists on another plane, the sacred.

You can call it anything - the holy, the sacred, the divine, the religious. Meaning is a phenomenon of a totally different dimension. You cannot find it in the mundane. It is not in the marketplace: you cannot purchase it, you cannot sell it; it is not a commodity. You cannot create it, because all that you can create will be false.

One has to become receptive. One has to be open in a totally new way from what one has been before. One has to open a window that one has never opened. Maybe one has not even thought that there is a window; one has not become aware of the fact. Sannyas is an effort to open another window.

The ordinary life is always a life of motivation. The life of a sannyasin is a life which is not one of motivation - it is festive. And that is the name of that dimension: the festive dimension. One dances because one enjoys dancing. There is no profit in it, there is no purpose in it, there is no motivation beyond it.

The life of a sannyasin is the life of play - what in the East we call 'leela' - not of work. In the ordinary life even play becomes work. To the sannyasin the work becomes play. He simply plays with so many things. He is a child on the seabeach running hither and thither, collecting seashells and coloured stones, as if he has found a treasure. He is utterly lost in the moment. He has forgotten the whole world.

The sannyasin lives in a life of play - all is play for him. He is not serious; sincere, certainly, but not serious. He is festive. He enjoys each opportunity that comes his way, lives it in its totality... not thinking of any profit, not thinking of gaining anything out of it. Not that he does not gain - only he gains, but he is not concerned with that. His gain is great, but that is a natural by-product; it happens of its own accord.

So from this moment think of life as a play and then it will have meaning.

Think of life as a holiday, a rest, a play, a drama, but don't think in terms of profit, motive, gaining, reaching somewhere, finding something. There is nothing to be found, there is nothing that can be reached - we are already there. From the very beginning we are that which we are going to become, so there is no need to worry about it. Relax and enjoy.

This will be your new name: Swami Deva Amrito.

Deva means divine, amrito means immortality: the source of immortality, the juice of immortality, nectar, elixir. The secret is in being festive... and suddenly nectar starts showering on you, it pours

down in torrents. Life becomes a multi-splendoured phenomenon. Just forget the ideas that have been given from the world and become a child again.

Jesus says 'Unless you are a child, you will not enter into my kingdom of god.' And to be a child is to be a sannyasin - to be a child again so that you can destroy all that has been forced upon you by the society. Your freedom has been crippled, you have been surrounded by walls upon walls from everywhere. Destroy all those walls, jump out of them, be a child again and start playing with life. And to be playful is to be prayerful. Prayer is the highest form of play, and if you understand it, immediately a new meaning to prayer arises. It is the highest form of play playing with existence.

Somebody is praying, talking to the sky. Mm? Just listen to Jesus calling god 'Abba.' There is no god like a person there, but see the immense play of Jesus calling existence 'Abba', relating to it, communicating with it.

To an outsider it is nonsense, it is neurotic. Psychologists say that, that Jesus is neurotic, because with whom is he talking? This is a monologue and he thinks this is a dialogue. There is nobody there! Jesus also knows that there is nobody there but the sheer joy of calling 'Abba' to existence...

the sheer joy of relating to our own original source. It is a playful activity.

Jesus is not worried about whether god is there or not. God is not the point - he is enjoying praying.

There is no other motive in it. The motivated person will think 'If there is somebody, then there is meaning in praying. If there is nobody, why are you praying? For what purpose?' He cannot understand that prayer can be its own purpose. See the tears flowing from Jesus' eyes and the joy that's there on his face, and the aura of delight. You are thinking of god and you are not seeing the joy. That is the reality, and it is created by the prayer. God is not the point at all. The point is to be prayerful, to be playful.

So think in terms of play, prayer, and don't think in terms of getting anywhere, reaching anywhere, attaining something. All that is nonsense. We are already there. We have never for a single moment been anywhere else, so that is not the point. We are in paradise. Adam has never been expelled; he has just fallen asleep because he has eaten from the tree of knowledge. Knowledge makes people serious. He is no more a child - that is the whole meaning of the parable - he has become mature, adult.

We say to people 'Don't be childish'; in fact we should be saying 'Don't be adultish.' Adam has become an adult and lost the joy of a child, the innocence of a child. Now he is hiding his nakedness; he has become cunning and clever and calculating. He has not been expelled. God cannot expel you, because there is nowhere else to expel you to. It is all his existence, it is all paradise. But if you become too cunning you have expelled yourself; you live in it and yet you have forgotten where you are. Become a child and suddenly one remembers; suddenly eyes open and the wonder, all the wonder is there, and paradise is there.

So let sannyas be the beginning of a new dimension, a rebirth.

Anand means bliss, tosho means contentment. Bliss comes only to those who are contented.

Contentment is the preparation for it. The ordinary state of mind is that of discontentment, that of desire; desire is discontent. It means 'l am not there where I should be.' It means 'I don't have that which I need.' A is trying to become B, B is trying to become C, C is trying to become D; that

is the process of the mind, the process of desire. And it is not that when you have what you had desired you will be fulfilled. The moment you have it, it is useless. The mind only asks for that which you don't have. Once you have it, it is no more concerned with it. It is finished with it, it is of no more import.

The mind lives in constant discontent. Not that desires are not fulfilled, they are fulfilled, but the moment they are fulfilled the mind is no more interested in them. You wanted to purchase a house; once you have purchased it, suddenly the mind starts jumping into other things. You wanted to have this, and that is there and suddenly you find new discontents arising in you. The mind cannot live without discontent. In fact, the mind is discontent and the mind is misery. To understand it, to see through and through, and to cut this discontent to the very core, is what I mean by contentment.

Contentment has not to be practised. One has only to see the futility of discontent, that's all. Once the futility has been seen discontent disappears, and what is left is contentment. And remember the difference: contentment has not to be practised at all; if you practise it you will simply repress discontent.

That's what the so-called religious people have been doing down the ages: they only repress desiring. But a repressed desire is even more dangerous than an expressed desire. It becomes a wound in your being. It remains there, it gathers pus, it becomes cancerous. It is better to live it than to deny it, it is better to indulge than to repress, because through indulgence one day you may see the futility of it all, but through repression you will never see the futility. It will remain green and it will remain alluring. So I am not for any kind of repression.

Contentment has not to be practised, one has not to become content. One has just to see the futility of discontent, the vicious circle of it. Watch, see, become more aware: again and again you have a desire; it is fulfilled, and nothing is fulfilled. The begging-bowl of the mind always remains empty.

Even Alexander dies a beggar with an empty begging-bowl. Seeing it is enough; nothing else has to be done. Once you have really seen it, it is dropped; in that very seeing it is dropped. Seeing is dropping it. Not that you have to drop it, seeing it is enough: it is dropped, no effort is needed to drop it. And then suddenly you find a new quality to your being - contentment, you are utterly contented.

And then very small things, a few things are enough... just to be is enough.

And remember: I am not against the world, I am not against enjoying and I am not against anything.

You can have all that the world gives to you, but only a contented man can enjoy it. This is a paradox: the discontented wants to enjoy the world and cannot because of his discontent; and the contented is no more worried and has the capacity to enjoy infinitely because of his contentment.

So whatsoever he touches becomes gold and whatsoever he drinks is nectar and wherever he looks is god. And to be in a state of contentment is to be blissful.

[To a sannyasin who is 'tired of himself'] Things will be settled - nothing to be worried about. This is a common disease: everybody is suffering from himself. But this can be dropped very easily; if you are really suffering you will have to drop it. All that is needed is to make you aware of your suffering, of the intensity of the suffering.

Once you see the hell of it, you will drop it. You have not yet seen all; you have just seen the tip of the iceberg. These groups will help you to see the whole of it and then you will drop it. Good!

Maya can have many meanings. Deva means divine; maya can mean magic; the English word 'magic' comes from the root 'maya'. Maya can also mean illusion, but illusion does not mean illusion.

Illusion itself comes from a Latin root 'ludere' - it means 'to play'. Illusion does not mean that it doesn't exist; it simply means it is a play, it is a game. Don't take it seriously; that's the whole meaning of it. It is like seeing a movie... not that it is not - it is, otherwise how can you see it? - but it is just a game, a game of light and shadow. Enjoy it but don't take it seriously.

This whole existence is like a drama. Play it and remain unaffected by it. Remain detached, distant, far away, in it and yet not in it. That is the whole message in the world 'illusion'. Think of life as a divine play. Think of yourself only as a witness, a spectator, and that will bring great bliss and great silence.