Chapter 23

Anand means bliss and sandesh means a message - a message of bliss... and you have to become one. Walking, sitting, doing something, not doing something, remain blissful. Allow bliss to happen more and more; don't obstruct it. It is nothing to be positively achieved; only negative barriers should be removed. One needs nothing to be blissful except the readiness to surrender to it.

So whatsoever you do, just carry one thing continuously inside you: that you have to be blissful in it. Even when sometimes there are clouds in life and the night is very dark and one is feeling very low, still one can remain available to bliss. Because bliss does not need high energy; it has not any connection necessarily with sunshine. It can exist even with dark clouds. And it has no relationship with the day. It can exist in the darkest night of the soul. Because bliss is simply your nature - it is you. So let it vibrate more and more.

When I say be blissful, I mean be yourself. And be unconditionally blissful. Once you decide, it starts happening. It is a question of decision. So let this sannyas day be a decision for it, mm?

[A new sannyasin says he has been doing a basic breathing meditation and observing the meditations in the ashram.]

Continue that, but start doing something here. Because a meditation cannot be observed from the outside. It is not something objective, it is not a thing. You can observe the meditators, you can observe their movements, their gestures, but that is not meditation.

Meditation is something that is happening deep in their souls, at their centre. What you are observing is the periphery. Maybe a few ripples come to the periphery also, but through those ripples you cannot deduce, you cannot conclude what is happening inside. Because somebody can pretend:

on the periphery he can look very silent, and inside he may just be a volcano. Somebody can look very chaste and pure on the periphery - nothing is difficult in it - and inside is a hell.

So there is no way to observe a meditator from the outside, no way at all. The only way to observe a meditation is to do it. Then you observe what happens to you from the inside. So remember that:

if you want to observe any meditation, do it, participate in it; that's the only way. Have the taste of it.

And then you can decide whether it is for you or not - but never watch others.

Sometimes it happens that a meditation may not be for somebody you are watching. It may be for him but may not be for you, or it may be for you and not for him. Meditation is a certain in-tuning, and everybody is so different. Everybody exists on a certain wavelength, so what suits somebody else may not suit you. Sometimes one's poison can become another's nectar, and vice versa. So never observe anybody; that is not of any relevance.

That's the difference between science and religion. Science has something objective to observe and religion has nothing - just something very intimate to feel. It is not right even to say that one knows it. One simply feels it, becomes it. That's the mystery of religion. But the western mind is scientific, very deeply trained for scientific work. The attitude has gone into the blood, into the bones, into the very marrow.

So even when you think about meditation, you think on the scientific lines; you start observing.

Start participating. Participation does not mean that you have to commit yourself or that you are committing yourself. Participation simply means that you are ready to be acquainted with it Then if it suits, you continue. If it doesn't suit, there is no obligation; you simply drop out of it. But only you can decide, and you can decide by participating; there is no other way.

Continue your basic meditation - it is perfectly good - but much more will be needed. It is right, necessary, but not enough. It will give you the base, but the whole temple cannot be constructed only on it. It will give you a very very strong base, foundation, but then you have to do more things to make the whole temple, the whole shrine of your being.

Sometimes it happens that one can become addicted to one sort of meditation. That brings a sort of impoverishment. One should allow many dimensions to penetrate oneself. One should allow at least two meditations: one inactive, one active. That is a very very basic requirement; otherwise the personality becomes lopsided.

What you are doing is a passive meditation - watching and nothing else. Watching is a passive process. You have not to do anything really. It is not a doing; it is a sort of non-doing. It is a buddhist meditation - very good, but incomplete. So Buddhists have become very lopsided. They became very quiet and calm, but they missed one thing - what I call bliss. They missed it. Hence I have given you the name 'message of bliss'. Anand means bliss; you have to remember it.

You will never feel that a buddhist monk is blissful. He will look very silent - he is silent - but there is no ecstasy in it. Something seems to be missing. He is quiet, collected, very composed, but he cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot love. He cannot enjoy this tremendous beauty of the world that surrounds us. He cannot pray, he cannot worship, he has no God. He has simply a silent aloneness.

Good, when you are not very much disturbed; good, when you are not very tense - but it cannot be the ultimate goal. It is as if health is defined by the absence of illnesses. If you have no illnesses, the doctor declares you healthy. It is not necessarily so. It need not be so. You may not have any illness and you may not be healthy, because health has something which is not just absence of illness. It is a positive phenomenon. It is a presence, not an absence only. That presence is missing from the disease. It is absence - no illness, no misery, no unhappiness - but it is absence. It is not 'satchit-anand'; it is not eternal bliss.

So remember it, because this meditation that you are doing can lead you deeper and deeper into a sort of desert-like, cod aloneness; silent, but with no flowers and no fragrance. It will be empty...

empty of the world but not full of God. So, Buddhism is one of the most beautiful approaches - but incomplete. Something is missing. It has no mysticism in it, no poetry, no romance; almost bare mathematics... a geometry of the soul but not a poetry of the soul. And unless you can dance, never be satisfied. Be silent, but use your silence as an approach towards blissfulness, because the ultimate must be positive. That is the meaning of god, of the word 'god' - that the ultimate is positive.

Buddhists use the word 'nirvana'. That's a negative word. It simply says that there are no desires, there is no ego. The emphasis is on the 'no'. They don't say what is there. They simply say what is not there. That's the beauty of the religions that talk about God. They also agree that these things are not there - there are no desires, there is no ego, there is no misery; right, perfectly right - but there is something that they call God... a beautiful, ecstatic presence, and you are full of it. The room may be empty but it is full of light.

The emptiness is just a method to invoke the presence, to invite the presence, otherwise there is no point in being empty. Unless in your emptiness the whole descends, something has been missed.

The meditation that you are doing is good. It is called 'anapan sati yoga' - consciousness of the in-and out-going breath, awareness of the in/out-going breath. It is good, but don't get fixed, fixated with it too much. Do a few dancing meditations, singing meditations, music, so at the same time, side by side, your capacity to enjoy, your capacity to be joyful, also increases.

So with one hand create emptiness, with another hand create fullness, so that when you are really empty, your fullness can descend into it. It is double work. And that's my whole emphasis here: be empty, but emptiness is not the goal. It is just preparing the house for the guest, and if the guest never comes, then all preparations are futile, in vain. Go on preparing the house, and go on writing love letters to the guest, so by the time your house is ready, he comes and knocks at the door.

Prem means love and mukul means the opening bud of a flower... just opening, not yet a flower and no more a bud, mm? just on the way to becoming a flower. So prem mukul will mean 'an opening bud of a flower'.

That's how every human being is, and unless you open perfectly, you will never feel content. So the only problem that has to be solved is how to flower perfectly. So become more and more loving.

Make love your very style, your very climate. It is difficult, it is very difficult, that I know, but it is not impossible. It is not easy, it is arduous, because there are deep complications.

The basic problem with love is what zoologists call the 'territorial imperative'. Have you watched birds sitting on telegraph wires? They always sit a certain distance from each other. There is an invisible line, a demarcation beyond which it becomes a trespass. Sometimes you may have seen that a cat is Lying down, resting, relaxing. You pass by and she is not at all disturbed. When you start coming closer there is a certain point beyond which she will become alert, angry, annoyed, ready for fight or flight. But up to that certain point she will not take any note of you. That is her space.

Each animal has his own space - that is his territory. If you enter that territory, you are trespassing.

You are dangerous and the concerned person, animal, man or woman, becomes defensive, gets ready for fight or flight.

That is the whole problem of love, because in love the distance has to be dropped. You have to allow others to trespass your being. That's the problem. It is a very subtle boundary.

[The new sannyasin says: I have been afraid of something... when people get near me.]

Yes, you are afraid. I can see it. That fear has to be dropped. That fear has to be consciously dropped. That's what I am saying to you. I can see that you are afraid. You don't allow anybody to enter your territory or, if you do allow them, you allow them very reluctantly, and then too you keep aloof.

Man has learned that too - how to allow somebody physically near and yet psychologically far away.

Man has learned it, because in many situations.... In a train it is too crowded and people are sitting touching you and you cannot fight - there is no point - but you stand shrunken in deep down. The body may be touching, but you don't allow psychological closeness.

So humanity has learned how to allow people physically close but not to allow them psychologically.

But love is to allow people psychologically close to you. Love means dropping the territorial boundary. That invisible line has to disappear, hence fear arises, because it is our animal heritage.

That's why, once you are in a loving state of mind, you go beyond animal heritage. For the first time you become human, really human.

It is arduous, it is very subtle, but one has to watch and work on it. Just watch.... Whenever you see that you are becoming tense because somebody is entering your territory, relax. Remember that he is just like you. We live in people, we grow with people, our whole life is entangled with people. We exist through people. We cannot exist without them. People are like the ocean and we are like fish.

If the fish is afraid of the ocean, there will be trouble. One has to trust the ocean. It is our very life...

we are born in it.

If you were afraid of people then you would not have even been born. You entered a woman's womb; you became part of two people's love affair. You allowed two people to bring you to earth.

You allowed two people to create a body for you. The very birth is in society; it is with people, in people. In fact people are the stuff we are made of. So the more people there are in your life, the more rich it will be; the less people, the less rich. It is simple arithmetic.

If you really want to live rich, fulfilled, tremendously vibrant, then there is no other way. The only way is to make more and more contact with people. Allow more and more people to trespass your

being, allow more and more people to enter you. There are risks, because when you allow people too close to you, there is a possibility that they may hurt you. One becomes vulnerable, soft, tender.

One opens one's soft parts when somebody comes close.

So one can be hurt - that's the fear - but that risk has to be taken. It is worth it. Even if you protect yourself for your whole life and nobody is allowed near you, what is the point of your being alive?

You will be dead before you are dead. You would not have lived at all. It would be as if you had never existed, because there is no other life than relationship. So the risk has to be taken.

Sometimes people may hurt you. I'm not saying that they will not - but even that hurt will teach you something. You will learn something from it - about People, about yourself, about fear, about love.

You will grow through it. So, pain can be used as growth; there is no problem in it. Even if you are hurt, you can use it as a lesson, as a deep understanding. It will make you more mature.

But all are not going to hurt you. A few may hurt you, a few may give you tremendous joy. And this is my understanding - that even if one person gives you tremendous joy and ninety-nine percent of people hurt you, then too it is worth it. Even if there is one roseflower on the bush and ninety-nine thorns, it is worth it. One has to take the risk and love the roseflower.

So, by and by allow. As you allow you will become more confident. You will see that no, everybody is not your enemy. They are people just like you, as much afraid as you are, as much trembling inside as you are, as much afraid of being hurt by you as you are afraid of being hurt by them. They are just people like you! All human beings are just like you. Essentially the human heart is the same.

So allow them to come close. If you allow them to come close to you, they will allow you to come close to them. When boundaries overlap, love happens. Overlapping boundaries create in your being ripples of joy, of new energy infusing in you... a new thrill of being. And one day, when not only peripheries overlap but centres overlap, then happens what has been called in the old books 'perfect love'. 'Perfect love casteth out fear.' That is the meaning of perfect love.

When two persons are so available to each other, so open to each other to the very core of their being, then fear disappears. Love helps fear to disappear, and if you allow fear to drop, it will help love to grow. So love more, fear less.