December Remain Ignorant, Innocent and you will Again Enter the Garden of Eden

Prem means love and gandha means fragrance - fragrance of love. And that is the highest possibility of consciousness. It is just like a tree. First it is a seed, then it is a tree, then it flowers, and then the fragrance is spread to the winds... offered to god.

Many people exist at the stage of seed - then their life remains just sexual. They know only one rut.

Their whole life remains obsessed with sex. Even those who are against sex, they remain obsessed with sex - more so than those who indulge. The indulgent and the renunciate, both remain obsessed with sex; their life is like a seed.

The seed is beautiful, but its beauty is in its sprouting into a tree. If a seed insists on remaining a seed, then it is suicidal, because the whole function of the seed is to become a plant. The whole meaning of the seed is in its disappearance. It is not a state where one should get stuck; it is a bridge to be passed. Good - but one cannot make a house on the bridge; one has to pass beyond it.

Sex is the seed, and very few people go above sex and start feeling love. Love is the tree - human love... love of the woman for the man, of the man for the woman, friendship, love of the mother for the child.... Human love - not yet pure enough to become a flower. Many impure things - jealousy, and possessiveness, anger, hatred - all sorts of poisons are still loaded on it.

Because of the fear of those poisons, a few people escape from love. But that is foolish; that is throwing the child out with the bath water. Love has to be sorted out from all of the poisons that it is found with. Those poisons have to be dropped.

EDEN When hatred, possessiveness, jealousy, anger, are dropped, love becomes prayer... love has flowered. Flower is the prayer. And when the flower releases its fragrance, that is the ultimate ecstasy of the energy.

William Blake has said, 'Energy is delight.' So wherever energy is released, there is delight. Hence in sexuality also there is a little bit of delight. A tiny energy is released in a very limited way. In love there is more delight - you go deeper. In prayer there is even more delight. You don't connect now with human, person-to-person; you start connecting with the whole existence.

When it has become fragrance, there is tremendous delight - satchidananda. Then it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss. That is the eastern definition of god.

And I give you this name so that you can remember. Never be satisfied unless you have become a fragrance - never settle anywhere before that. Stay for the overnight rest, but remember, one has to go far away.

Then the whole life becomes a pilgrimage. Not a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or to Mecca or to Kashi, but a real pilgrimage towards god. And god is known only to those who have come to know the innermost quality of love.

Prem means love, and puratan means ancient - ancient love. And as I see you, you are not a new seeker - a very ancient one... have been seeking for many lives. Not in continuity - on and off - but god has been your very ancient search, your ancient love.

You don't come to me as a new pilgrim. You have been coming and coming for many lives. And as you move deeper into meditation, you will become aware of that. That's why I give you that name....

Deva means divine, and riktam means emptiness, nothingness, zeroness. So simply empty yourself nothing else is needed.

That is the meaning of the crucifixion in Jesus' life. That is emptying - he emptied himself completely on the cross He had wavered a little... just in the last moments it was human to waver. But up to that moment he was simply Jesus; just a second later he was Christ.

He had complained. For a complaint to arise you need an ego; so a very subtle ego was there. He was thinking that god would save him, would do something for him. And it was not too much to ask.

He was sacrificing all that he had; he had simply surrendered himself... and it was natural. If that part was not there in the story, the whole thing would have been fictitious. In fact that part says that the story is not fictitious - it did happen, otherwise disciples would not have put it in. If it had not happened, there is no question. They may even have thought to drop it, because it shows wavering.

Suddenly on the cross jesus shouts in agony, in great pain, in great complaint, 'Why have you forsaken me? I lived for you, I worked for you. I was just a messenger - and this is unjust! What is happening to me? And why are you allowing it to happen?'

Jesus was saying, 'You have failed me,' but then immediately he understood that this was the last test of the surrender. A little bit was there hanging inside, in the darkmost corners of the soul. Still, he was.

EDEN This was the moment - just a single moment - and eternity happened in that moment. Just a moment before, Jesus is a son of man - Joseph's son, Mary's son - but the crisis came to a point where he found that a little bit was still there which had to be emptied. He emptied that too and he said, 'Okay.' And this 'okay' is not out of desperation; it is out of great understanding.

He says, 'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done'.... He is ready, so whatsoever is, is good. Who is he to complain? God knows better. Who is he to advise ? Forgive him. Immediately, Jesus emptied himself - and when Jesus was not, Christ was.

In fact to call him Jesus Christ is not right, mm? because both things never existed together. There was a time when Jesus existed, and then there was a time when Christ existed, but both never existed together. So to call him Jesus Christ is not really right. He was Jesus once, and then he became Christ.

Now from the outside it looks the same person; from the inside. it is a totally new phenomenon, a mutation - he is transfigured.

And that is the meaning of resurrection. When he died on the cross, he emptied himself totally. He would not even cling to life - and that is the last clinging. He says, 'Okay. That too is okay. If death is your will, then that is my will too. I welcome it. I will be a host to death.' He passed the last barrier, hence, resurrection; he is reborn.

Christianity would have been a better religion. if, rather than emphasising the cross, they emphasised more the resurrected christ - because this is just half of the process; the completion is in resurrection. And making too much fuss about the cross, they missed the whole thing, and the cross became the symbol of christianity. I call it 'crossianity!'

And to be concerned too much with the cross is a sort of death-worship. To be concerned too much with the cross means a certain morbidity of the mind, a perversion. Death has to be accepted, welcomed even, but death is just a background to life - never the end... is a means, certainly - but never the end.

And because they worshipped the cross, churches became very very serious and sad places.

Had they worshipped the resurrected christ, they would have danced. Then churches would have become gay, joyful. People would have danced, and sung and loved and hugged each other, because their lord was the resurrected.

But churches became morose, sad, depressed. Their whole architecture became very sad, and the moment you move in a church, you start feeling that you are getting into a certain space where life is denied - a life-negative space. Suddenly you are surrounded by a chill when you move in a church.

And one starts feeling as if one is in a gaol, or at the most in an old type of school.

Christianity lost the joy, and the reason is only because they could never really understand what happened on the cross. Resurrection is the real story. The cross is part of it, but Jesus' life does not end on the cross; it culminates in resurrection - and that is the meaning of the word 'riktam':

emptying oneself totally.

EDEN So carry your cross on your shoulders. Don't wait for some pontius pilate Everybody has to carry his own cross - everybody is. Carry it deliberately, knowingly, and accept it - its misery, its suffering, its pain, its anguish. They will purify you, and go on emptying you.

The day you find that the ego is no more there, and your inner house is totally silent - nobody there - then suddenly you will find that something is descending from the above. That descending energy is god.

We never ascend to god - god descends to us. We just have to make the space.

I used to stay in a house where there was a small kid. He was very naughty, and the mother was much worried. The whole day she was after him, and he was after her.

So I talked to the child and I said, 'This is too much. You have to help her. She works hard for you.

She loves you, mm? Don't be too much of a nuisance.'

Next time when I stayed with them, I asked the child, 'How have you been doing?'

He said, 'I've been of tremendous help.'

I said, 'Tell me exactly what you have been doing? What type of help have you been?'

He said, 'Really only one thing: now I never come in her way.'

But I understood - that's right... that is enough help from a child.