Aloneness is Celebration of Being

Deva means divine, gariba means poverty. Jesus says 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of god.' To be poor in spirit means to be egoless. It means to be humble. It means to be a nobody. To be poor in spirit does not mean to live in poverty - because one can practise poverty and can be very egoistic about it. That's what happens to people who renounce the world: they start having a pious kind of egoism, which is far more dangerous and poisonous than the ordinary kind.

One has to be aware that inside all is empty. One has to live without any ambition. One has to live without any desire to be powerful over others. That makes one poor in spirit. But those who are poor in spirit become rich in spirit. That's the miracle, and that is the meaning of the Jesus' saying 'Blessed are the poor in spirit...'; that is the first part. And the second part is:'... for theirs is the kingdom of god.' It means that those who are poor are rich, and vice versa too: those who are very rich in their egos are really very poor spiritually.

The way to inner richness is the way of inner poverty.

Anand means blissful, suviro means courage - blissful courage. And that is one of the most important qualities because the search for god needs great courage, it needs guts - because it is going into the unknown. No map is available, no guide book either. One has to find one's path by groping. There is no ready-made road to it; just by walking on it one creates it. Hence great courage is needed. And one has to go alone, one cannot be accompanied by anybody else. Plotinus says 'It is a flight of the alone to the alone.' Hence, unless one is really courageous it is impossible to move a single step into it.

And the second thing: the courage has to be very blissful. It should not be enforced, it should be spontaneous. If it is enforced then sooner or later you will have to come back. Enforced courage means that deep down you are a coward and just on the surface you have painted courage. It cannot help, it cannot take you far. One needs the courage to go dancing into the unknown. And the more blissful you are, the shorter is the way, because the length between you and god is the length of your misery. The distance is not measured in miles, the distance is measured in misery.

If you are utterly blissful then even a single step may do... or maybe not even a single step is needed.

If one really dances, in this very moment - totally, utterly, with no holding back - one will find one has arrived, because in fact from the very beginning we have never left this place.

Deva means divine, nayano means the eye - the divine eye, the third eye. You have to search for it, and those who seek and search always find, because it is there; it is waiting for you. It just has to be remembered. And once it starts functioning you are no more a body, no more material. Suddenly the whole sky opens up. Then life never knows any darkness, any gloom, any sadness; the night is over. And without the third eye functioning, the night cannot be over. Whatsoever we do is going to fail, is bound to fail.

People do all kinds of things to create a little joy in life but all efforts fail, fail utterly. They go on changing from one to another, but slowly slowly hopelessness settles in. By the time a person becomes old he is completely disillusioned. Life has been nothing but a long frustration, a tragedy.

The only thing that has ever succeeded is the opening of the third eye. Then joy is natural, bliss happens of its own accord; it does not depend on anything from the outside. Whether you are rich or poor, whether you are in a palace or a hut, it doesn't matter - wherever you are it is with you. It is you.

So all these talks on THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER are really for you. [morning discourse series] Listen, meditate and start searching.

Prem means love, and devi means goddess - goddess of love. And this is love that wants to explode, this is love that wants to find an outlet. It is love crying in the wilderness. It is love searching, seeking, groping in darkness. It is love that needs fulfillment.

This love will become a flower soon, and the same phenomenon that looks like crying today will change into a great laughter, and the same sounds become great music. As you start going deeper into your being, all that looks chaotic starts falling into a certain order and a great harmony arises.

All that is needed is to be centred in one's being, and all the meditations are ways and means to force this centering in you, to enhance it, to facilitate it.

People are just going round and round around the centre; they move on the periphery, and on the periphery there is nothing to be found. You can go on and on for lives together but you will never find anything, because it is the same circle that you have been travelling again and again. Unless one jumps out of this vicious circle and rushes towards the centre of one's being, nothing is ever found.

At the centre of your being all is - god is, love is, bliss is. All that one desires is available there.

On the periphery, only desires and desires and no fulfilment. At the centre, no desire, and all is fulfilment.

Satya means truth, devi means goddess - goddess of truth. Truth is not far away; it is just within you. It is not even close by, because to say it is close means it is at a certain distance from you. It is synonymous with you: you are truth. Truth is not a property that you will possess some day. It is your innermost core, your very being, your soul.

That's why philosophy thinks about truth but never finds it - religion never thinks about truth and finds it - because philosophy starts moving outward, thinking about a thousand and one things, and gets lost. There are millions of questions to be solved, and you solve one question and ten more arise out of your answer, so it goes on and on ad infinitum.

Truth is a simple phenomenon: you just look within and it is as truth is concerned. Truth cannot be thought, and if you think you will miss. It can be seen in a thoughtless state of mind. It is an experience... an existential experience.

And your truth is your truth; nobody else can deliver it to you. Yes, the master can point the way but you will have to walk. And once this seed gets deep into your heart 'I am carrying truth in my own womb,' the search becomes very easy, great hope arises, because even if we don't know it, it is there and it is within us. So the only question is: how to see it, how to know it? The question is not of finding, the question is only of remembering... as if we had known before and we have forgotten it, fallen asleep and started dreaming.

The purpose of all the meditations is tc wake you up, to pull you out of your dreams so that you can see who you are. Once you have seen you cannot go back into your dreaming state again. Just as the fallen flower from the tree cannot jump back to the branches again....

Prem means love, and das means a servant - a servant of love. And that is the only way to become a master. In the world of the inner to be poor is to be rich, to be a servant is to be a master, to be a beggar is to be a king. It is just the opposite of the outside world. Jesus says 'Those who are first in the world will be the last in my kingdom of god, and those who are the last will be the first.' This is a saying of immense importance. In a very simple way he has put the whole philosophy of the inner, the whole mathematics of the inner.

If you want to be somebody in the world you will have to fight to be somebody, you will have to be ambitious, violently ambitious, aggressive. You will have to strive; you will have to push and pull and manipulate people; you will have to use people as stepping stones; you will have to be cruel - only then can you reach the top. That is the mathematics of the outer world.

In the inner you have just to be a nobody. You have to stand last in line. You have to give way to everybody; whosoever wants to be ahead of you has to be allowed. And if you can be the last, you will be the first! And to be nobody inside is to be really divine. All that is beautiful happens in that nobodiness, blooms in that emptiness, because it is spacious.

Prem means love, pavitro means purity - purity that comes through love. Love is a great process of purification. It is an inner bath, a soul bath. Without love the inner consciousness of man remains very muddy, full of dust, much garbage. Unless you start loving, that garbage goes on accumulating in you. Love starts circulating in your inner energies just as blood circulates in the body and keeps the body pure, keeps the body alive, takes all the impurities of the body out of the body, takes all the toxins out of the body - dead cells and anything that comes on the way. Blood goes on circulating and taking in its flow all the dead parts. If the blood circulation stops you will die; physically you will die immediately.

The same is the case with the inner world, the soul: love is its circulation. It keeps it alive, young, pure; love is the holiest quality. To be loving is all that is needed, required of a religious person.

Nothing else is needed: if one is loving, all is fulfilled. It will make you so pure that god will long to become a resident in you; god will like to be part of your inner being.

We need not search for god. If we are pure enough, he searches for us. The ancient saying is:

Whenever the disciple is ready the master appears. It is true about the outer master, it is true about the inner master too. And what is the readiness of the disciple? - a purity, a humbleness, a simplicity.

And all those qualities come as consequences of love.

Forget the old name - feel disconnected from it. From this moment start a new life, from ABC...

fresh and clean, unburdened by the past, as if you are born again.

In fact sannyas is a new birth and the real birth too, because in the ordinary birth only the body is born. It is not the beginning of real life, because sooner or later the body is going to die. -In sannyas your soul is born. And if you really work sincerely to remember yourself, something is bound to happen which will never die, which will be deathless.

So the really worthwhile is that which gives you a life which is immortal. Sannyas is a search for immortality, deathlessness, eternity. The whole problem of the mind is the problem of time. Time is very short... so many things to do, and death is always imminent. It does not give you space enough to be; it does not allow you freedom to move at your own pace. It hangs over your head like a naked sword from a thin thread. It can fall any moment and your head will be cut off. How can you be at ease? How can you relax? How can you avoid anxiety, anguish? It is just hanging there; any moment the next breath may not come back. Because of this constant presence of death man remains in constant fear and trembling. Because of that trembling he cannot do anything. To do something significant one needs to be calm and quiet and at ease. But death will not leave you alone even for a single moment; it is always surrounding you. It is like an octopus, reaching towards you from everywhere. You are always in its grip. And nobody knows when the last moment is going to happen.

We live in a kind of prison where everybody is sentenced to die and everybody is waiting for his date, that's all. This world is like a prison and everybody is sentenced to die, everybody is waiting for his death to come. It is just a question of the date. But once it is decided that death is going to happen, how can you live? How can you dance? How can you sing? One remains paralysed. Unless something in you is found which is deathless, dance is not possible, celebration is not possible.

Sannyas is the search for something immortal in you. And it is there, because you are not your body.

It is there, because you are not that which is born through the mother's womb. You were before that womb, you were before your mother was born. You were before your birth and you will be after your death. But one has to recognize that element in oneself, and the best way to recognize it is to go on dropping the past. As fast as it becomes the past, die to it, don't accumulate it. If it becomes accumulated around you it does not allow you to see yourself. Too much accumulated past functions like a barrier. Hence the change of the name. It helps: the old identity disappears; you start thinking of yourself in a new way. Hence the change of the dress.... These are outer things but they give you a good start.

And once you start feeling clean of the past, a great burden, like a mountain, disappears from the head, and then things become very much easier, clarity comes easily. All confusion is confusion because of the past.

So forget the old name. Just tell your friends 'The old man is dead. I am a new person and I have to start everything from the very beginning.' And you will be surprised how much can happen just through this small strategy. And then start meditating....

This will be the name for your centre: Habibo.

It means the beloved. And think of god as the beloved... not as father because that is very institutional, not as mother because the mother loves the child but it is not the same from the child's side. Sooner or later the child will have to fall in love with somebody else and go away from the mother. As the child grows he grows away and away from the mother. He will have to find a beloved.

So think of god as the beloved. That is the most intimate relationship, and the most beautiful too. It comes closer to prayer, because prayer is a love relationship with existence.

And help people!

Prem Madhava It means god of love. Prem means love, Madhava is a name of Krishna, a name of god. Literally it means: one who is sweet. The Eastern concept of god is that of immense sweetness. It is not so with the Jews and the Mohammedans. The Talmud actually says that god is not sweet, god is not your uncle - god is an earthquake. A very ferocious idea of god! That too is an aspect of god.

because all that is, is divine. But to think of that makes people afraid. To think of god as ferocious, as an earthquake, does not help people. It makes them frightened, and if you are frightened of somebody, you cannot love. Fear can create hate but not love. How can you create love when you are afraid of somebody? If there is fear, no possibility of love; if there is love, no possibility of fear.

So the insistence in the East is on god's sweetness, his loving qualities, his feminine face. In the East god is depicted as a dancer, as a lover, a flute player, a singer. He is not a very ferocious father-figure, sitting on a golden throne, just waiting for you to be caught and punished and thrown into hell, for small, tiny reasons... in fact, silly reasons that don't mean much.

What great sins can man do? Somebody drinks alcohol, somebody smokes cigarettes, somebody plays cards and somebody has fallen in love with somebody else's wife - things like that. What do you call it in Italian, Deeksha? 'Peccadillos'?...

... Peccadillos? That's right... just small sins. God must be very mean if he counts these things, really mean.

The Eastern concept is that god is love, sweet. Yes, god is your uncle. And god is not an earthquake but a flute player. From there you can start becoming more and more available to god.

That is the meaning of your name. God is love - you also become love, then you are bridged with god. Good, Madhava... good!