The Taste of God is Love

Kusum means flower, swarna means gold - a golden flower. It is still in the seed but it can come; it has to be provoked, it has to be ca]led forth. One should not dissect the seed. If you dissect the seed you will not find the flower. That's what people are doing all over the world. If you dissect man you will not find god... and then they think there is no god.

Man is a seed, god is a flowering. You cannot find the flower in the seed if you search for it directly.

You have to give the seed the right soil, the right climate, and you have to work on it for years; then one day, the miracle. And that is the greatest miracle - when a seed becomes a sprout. Just those two small leaves coming out of the earth is the greatest miracle in the world, the greatest revolution.

That which was dead has become alive. That which was potential has become actual. That which was invisible has become visible. Now the journey has started... but it happens only when the seed disappears. You cannot find god in man: god happens only when man disappears. And to allow oneself to disappear is what sannyas is all about.

It is an effort to efface oneself. to empty oneself of oneself, and when one is not, suddenly god takes possession. Those first two leaves start growing. Now the flower will not be far away; the real thing has happened. Now the flower is only a question of time. The spring will be coming and the tree will bloom.

Don't go and cut a tree to see where the flowers are hidden; wait for the spring. If you cut the tree and its branches to find the flowers, you will not find them. And that's what science goes on doing:

cutting branches looking for flowers, and there are no flowers; hence the conclusion. It looks very logical that there are no flowers at all. Wait for the spring, and then out of nowhere, thousands of flowers will be arriving. That arrival is the kingdom of god. Begin by dropping the seed into the soil; help the seed to die, don't hinder its death. Let the ego die and wait: in the right time the tree starts growing.

So wait again and wait prayerfully, because there is no other way to wait. Waiting is prayer, because waiting means trust. Only one who trusts can wait and know that the spring and the blossoms will come. And it is really difficult to believe, because you cannot see any signs anywhere of those blossoms coming. The leaves are green and they don't give any indication of the red flowers, but one day the flowers come and there is all joy.

That flowering is known as the golden flower. It is golden because it is the most precious thing in the world.

Deva means divine, pantho means path - divine path. Sannyas is a divine path. You are not to do much on it; you only have to allow god to do something to you. The path on which you have to do much and god is just a spectator is a human path. And the path on which you are just a spectator and the god has to do much is a divine path. The human path is a path of will, and the divine path is a path of surrender. All that is needed from your side is vulnerability, openness, let-go. So if god wants to do something to you, he is not hindered... and god certainly wants to do something with you. He wants to do something with everybody!

It is not only that man is seeking god; far truer is vice versa: god is intensely seeking and searching for man. Man has forgotten god: god has not forgotten man. Man is not an abandoned project, yet.

God still hopes, god still enquires, tries to reach each human being, because the failure of man is his failure. Man is his project after all.

Your name is an indication for you to learn let-go, to surrender, to just go with the river wherever it leads, to go with the wind like a dry leaf, with no resistance... effortlessly. joyously, dancingly.

Dhyana means meditation, yogesh means god of the yoga: god of the yoga of meditation. Meditation is the ultimate yoga. All that is known in the name of yoga is just introductory. Those body postures, asanas, breathing techniques, they are just to prepare the body. But many get lost in that; they think 'This is all', and their whole life is simply wasted in a kind of gymnastics. Good in itself, nothing wrong in it - health-giving, vitality-giving, prolongs the life - but ultimately it is meaningless. Whether you live seventy years or eighty years does not matter, if you lived in a nonsense way. It doesn't matter at all whether you were healthy or ill. In the ultimate sense only one thing matters: whether you were able to know yourself or not; everything else is irrelevant. And I am not saying don't try to be healthy; be healthy, but remember that's not the goal. It is good to have a good body, a good vehicle is always good. But it is just like a car: you have a good car, perfectly good, but unless you have a direction to go in even the most perfect engine is useless; it will take you into trouble. If you go on simply rushing here and there with no direction you will go mad. The body is a mechanism, a very beautiful mechanism; use it, but it has to be used for something higher than it.

The meaning always comes from the higher. Unless you are committed to something bigger than you, you will remain meaningless. And 'dhyana' is that something that is bigger than you: bigger than your mind, bigger than all your dreams, expectations, bigger than you can ever conceive. And once a man is committed to meditation, life starts having meaning. Suddenly you start falling into a pattern. You are no more a crowd, you start becoming integrated - a centre arises in you. The whole purpose of meditation is to create a centre in you. Right now you are just a circumference, no centre.

There are many 'i's', but no 'I': and each 'i' pretends in its own time 'I am the capital "I".' When you are angry you have one kind of 'I' which becomes dominant, and when you are loving it is a separate kind of 'I' which becomes dominant; and they are not even on talking terms with each other. So what you decide in anger is cancelled in love, and what you decide in love is cancelled in anger. And you think you have one 'I' - you don't. If you have one 'I' your life will have an order, it will not be a chaos.

But ordinarily people are living in a chaos, they don't have any order. And remember: order is life and chaos is death. To live in chaos is not to live at all.

So put your whole energy into meditation. Keep one goal in your vision: that you have to create a centre in you. With that centre arising, with that master coming in, all your senses simply start following; you need not control them. The very presence of that 'I' inside you is enough; the very presence puts everything in order. So think, contemplate, meditate more and more, find ways and means... and there are millions of ways and means. Once the goal is fixed you will find the right techniques. Once your energy is motivated it starts finding its own way.

I am just an occasion to motivate you, to give you a certain goal. Once the goal becomes so important to you that it is a question of life and death, then there is no fear, no problem: you will find the right track to it. The goal just has to become such an intense longing that you become aflame with it.

Prem means love, anurodh means invitation - a loving invitation... a loving invitation to the unknown.

We don't know its name - it has none. All our names are just inventions. You can call it 'god' or 'tao'

or anything else that you like, but it is nameless and it is formless. And it is not only unknown; it is unknowable. One can live it but one cannot know it. One can love it but one cannot know it. In fact the very idea of knowing it is a sacrilege; it is vulgar, profane. It is an effort to de-mystify existence.

That's what the scientific endeavour has been in the past ages. The whole effort has consisted of only one single desire: how to de-mystify existence. And by de-mystifying existence it has de- humanized human beings. People have become knowledgeable and have forgotten all joy and wonder; they no longer know what awe is. They have become smug - smug about their knowledge.

They have become snobbish, they have lost the innocence of the child.

God cannot be known but can be loved, lived. Invite him: you be the host, let him be the guest.

That's the meaning of your name. Become a loving invitation to god.

Prem means love; hassid is a Hebrew word it means 'the in-dwelling spirit': the in-dwelling spirit of love. Love is the very core of our being. Everything else is peripheral. Love is the centre of all.

And a man who misses love misses all. He never comes to know who he is. He may succeed in everything else but he has failed in his very humanity.

The only religion I teach is the religion of love; that is my whole theology. Love in every possible way so that love can grow in you in all its dimensions, so your every act becomes infused with love.

When your whole life is permeated with love you have become a hassid. When your every act is out of love you have become a hassid.

Anand means bliss, gora means whiteness - blissful whiteness. And white symbolizes purity, clarity, innocence and unity. When all the colours are mixed in one they become white. Light is white but when it passes through a spectrum, through a prism, then the seven colours of the spectrum are created. The rainbow is nothing but the white ray broken into seven colours. The whole world is a rainbow - god is the white ray.

And another thing to be remembered: Gora was a great Indian mystic. He was a poor potter but one of the greatest mystics the world has ever known. Pottery was his method. Through pottery he would teach centering, through pottery he would teach meditation. It was not an easy process. One can learn about pottery within one or two years easily, but to be with Gora meant to be with him for at least ten, fifteen, twenty years. Only then would you be a real potter.

The process would go on very very slowly, and the very patience would transform the person. More than the pottery, the patience was important. For one year the person would have to learn just how to mix clay with water - one year. It can be learned within days. Just kneading clay for one year....

One would become angry with the master, one would become resentful towards the master, one would see the whole absurdity of it. But slowly slowly one would relax... what else to do? And the moment one relaxed, one would come to know that the real thing was not the kneading Of the clay:

the real thing was to learn patience.

This way the process would continue for twenty years. By the time one was a potter, one would be almost enlightened. This was a great mystic.

[To a sannyasin who wants to be an actor] That's perfectly good - become an actor! That's what I do here: make actors...(laughter) create actors. Just act in the world as if it is a drama, that's all. Acting is perfectly good. Go and act!

[To a sannyasin in who 'just waiting'] That's very good! That's what prayer is. Just wait. Things are going perfectly well; the energy is good.

... Just wait with joy, with hope, with great expectation... as if it is an emergency, as if it is going to happen right now....

Prem means love, biju means seed. Man is a seed, and man can die as a seed without growing. If one does not start working on oneself consciously, one is bound to die as a seed, and that will be very unfortunate; then one opportunity is missed again. The seed has value only if it starts growing.

And the essence of the seed is love, the soul of the seed is love. If one works upon oneself, sooner or later something starts growing; but it never happens unconsciously.

The body is given to you when you are born but the soul has to be earned; the soul is not given to you. Only the potentiality of it is given to you. You can become a soul, that's all. You may not become, you may become; it is just open. If you work hard you can become, if you don't work you will live a life of futility, meaninglessness, absurd... doing a thousand and one things but for no purpose.

One has to take hold of oneself very consciously. And that is the purpose of sannyas: to start working consciously upon your being. Then great is the treasure. The name of that treasure is love.

You can call it god or enlightenment or what you will, but love seems to be the most beautiful name for it - unpretentious, simple. That is the meaning of your name: you are a seed, but the value of the seed is only when it grows and blooms. Otherwise it is valueless.

If you keep it waiting, sitting, it will simply become dead, it will go rotten. That is not the place for it to be. Its place is there under the open sky, under the rain and the sun, in the soil where it can die and resurrect. It is going to die anyhow, but to die just as a seed will be pointless - you died and nothing was born out of you. That's how millions of people die; don't be one of them. Try to die in the way Jesus died, Buddha died... then great resurrection happened. This life disappears but a greater life takes its place. The mundane existence becomes meaningless but the sacred descends.

To be a sannyasin is to be in a great experiment. This is the experiment of helping people to become themselves, to be that for which they are born, to help them attain their destiny.

You have a beautiful name there but you will have to work hard!