Darshan 31 August 1979
Anand Silke. Anand means bliss; silke comes from a Latin word "cecilia. Cecilia was a virgin martyr, and she became very famous because while she was tortured she danced and she sang. She died with a song; singing she died, hence she became the patron saint of music. That's the way to live and die, singing Be a blissful silke: let your whole life become a dance, a song, a celebration. Look at the differences there are people who live crying and weeping for the whole of their lives... and there are people like Cecilia, who even die singing and dancing. It all depends on us. We create our own lives; misery is our work, so is bliss.
Becoming a sannyasin means that now you will always choose bliss against misery.
Anand Sabrina. Anand means bliss; sabrina is a name of a river. Your full name will mean a blissful river... because it is an ongoing process. It is not an event, it is a process. It is dynamic, not dead.
It is not a thing that you can hold in your hands it is a wind blowing through the trees.
People destroy their bliss because they don't understand its riverlike quality. They want to possess it and it cannot be possessed. It is not a thing to be possessed, it is not an object. You can live it but you cannot possess it. You cannot own it, you cannot lock it in with your treasures. It has to remain flowing; in the very flow it exists. The moment the flow stops, bliss disappears. Bliss is the very essence of life, but life also is a river. Remember it: when bliss comes, enjoy, dance, sing, but don't try to possess it. That's the sure way to kill it. Don't try to cling to it; the moment you start clinging, you have already destroyed it.
Allow it to come and go on its own, and it will be coming more often. If there is no clinging, it may start flowing around you. If you become absolutely aware of the phenomenon, that it is a river not to
be clutched in your hands, then it may be with you each moment, it may become your very breath.
But the art is non-possessiveness.
Anand Bertil. Anand means bliss; bertil means distinguished.
Bliss always makes a person distinguished, because the whole world is in misery. Nothing else makes you unique other than bliss. Misery is common; everybody is miserable. It is very rare that a person becomes aware enough to be blissful. It certainly makes a person distinguished. Money cannot do that - many people have it. University degrees cannot do it - millions have them. Political power cannot do it Only one thing can make a person distinguished, that is bliss, because only bliss proves that the person has been intelligent in his life, that he has lived intelligently. Bliss is sure proof.
The miserable person simply proves that he has been living stupidly. The tree is known by its fruit Either you grow the fruit of bliss or the fruit of misery - and you will be known by the fruit.
Bliss requires only one thing, to be more aware in your life, just as misery also requires only one thing - to be unconscious, more unconscious in your life. Do anything out of unconsciousness and misery will be the result, and do anything out of awareness and bliss will follow you like a shadow.
Anand Wim. Anand means bliss; wim means will, willpower. Every person is born with tremendous willpower. That is built-in, that is an intrinsic part of life. Nobody is born without will. But very rarely do we see people of will, and the reason is not that people don't have will; they have it, but they have divided it into many things. It has become fragmentary, it is there in thousands of pieces. It has lost that togetherness which makes it a power.
And these fragments are not only divided, they are divided against each other. One part of your will is fighting with another part of your will; it is a kind of civil war that goes on inside. And that's what the so-called saints have been telling people to do: fight with yourself, fight with anger, fight with greed, fight with sex. Sex has a part of your will, and then you fight with it - another part of your will. This way you become entangled in a civil war, and to be in a civil war is to be in misery.
You dissipate energy. You can't live, you lose all vitality. You can't be fresh and young and you can't be intelligent either. You become poorer and poorer every day. As time passes a person becomes more and more ugly, loses all peace, silence, integrity, and the war goes on and on, day in, day out.
It is this war that destroys all the joy of life, makes people insipid, lusterless. It is a miracle that people still manage to live at all. Somehow they go on pulling themselves together, dragging, but this is not life. Life is a dance, not a dragging. Unless it is a dance it is not life at all. All these fragments have to be joined together again, welded together, and then you become a great energy.
And to feel that great energy pulsating in you creates bliss. Bliss is a simple outcome of overflowing energy. The child is so happy, for a single reason: he has nothing - no money, no bank balance; he is not the president of a country nor the prime minister; no body knows him, he is not famous, nobody talks about him. Sitting in his comer he is so joyous. From where does this joy come? It is nothing but overflowing energy. He is bubbling with it - he can't contain it.
A real sannyasin will become a child again, he will put his fragments together again; he will not fight with himself. That is the first rule of sannyas: not to fight with yourself. Rather, try to understand, and through understanding, greed disappears, anger disappears, and they don't leave a trace; they don't leave wounds and marks behind. If they disappear through understanding, the energy is transformed into the opposite. Anger becomes compassion; passing through understanding the same energy is purified. Greed becomes love.
You will be surprised to know that the Sanskrit word for greed is "lobha", and the English word "love"
has come from that word "lobha". It is a very strange coincidence that the word "lobha", greed, has become "love" in English. But there may be a certain significance hidden behind: in fact, it is greed that becomes love - if transformed; if it passes through understanding, awareness, it becomes love, it becomes sharing.
Don't fight, that is the first rule; and the second rule: try to understand with no prejudice. Don't decide beforehand, don't move with a priori conclusions. Don't say greed is bad. If you say that, you will never understand. Greed is greed - don't label it. It is an unknown energy. You have to understand this energy, what it is. Go with an open mind and you will be surprised: just watching it, seeing it, becoming aware of it, it is transformed into its opposites. And when all your energies are transformed, great bliss is born. Bliss is nothing but the experience of becoming one.
Anand Renata. Anand means bliss; renata means reborn.
Sannyas is a rebirth; you are starting your life from ABC again. Don't count the life that you have lived up to now as your life, because you have not lived it consciously. Count only those moments as yours which you live consciously. From this moment count your life: tomorrow you will be only one day old.
Jesus said to Nicodemus... Nicodemus was a professor, a rabbi, a very famous man, a very powerful man too; he was a member of the small clique that ruled the great, ancient temple of Jerusalem. He could not gather enough courage to see Jesus in the day. In the night, when nobody was there, he approached Jesus and asked, "Why am I not happy? I have everything - knowledge, money, power, prestige - still I am not happy. How can I also enter the kingdom of your God?"
Jesus said to him, "Nicodemus, unless you are born again you will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God."
What Jesus was really saying Nicodemus missed completely. He thought that "So nothing can be done in this life. I can be born only after death." Jesus laughed and said, "That is not my meaning.
You can be born again in this life. It is a change of consciousness: from a sleepy consciousness move to having more awareness. Then you are moving from the dark night of the soul to the full daylight."
That's exactly the purpose of sannyas, of all disciplehood: a disciple is seeking a rebirth through the Master. One birth has been given by your parents; that is physical. The other birth has to be given by the Master; that is going to be the spiritual.
Just remain open - it is going to happen. It is destined to happen! Just remain receptive... And I can see that your heart is open and receptive. Just help it to open more, help it to become more receptive, and something immensely significant is on the way. Be of great cheer! To be a disciple is a great blessing - very few people are even aware of the phenomenon.
Deva Julia. Deva means divine. Julia literally means the soft-haired one, but that is only a metaphor.
Your hair is soft when you are very young; as you become older it loses its softness. So julia represents youth, freshness, the early youth when life is at its peak. Your name will mean divine youth.
A meditator never becomes old. The body certainly becomes old - it follows the law of the earth - but the meditator never becomes old because he knows that he is not the body. He is consciousness and consciousness is beyond time. It is always young, always fresh. In that dimension of your being all is always young, eternally young. And once we have even tasted that youth, that inner youth, we have tasted something of immortality.
Meditation is the only real alchemy. All else that goes on being written in the name of alchemy is just bullshit, occult nonsense, esoteric rubbish. The true science consists of only one thing - that is meditation, because that is the bridge from the body to consciousness. Once you have reached your center of being and once you have known that you are consciousness, you are beyond birth, beyond death.
And when one is beyond time, great joy arises because all fears disappear, all darkness disappears.
Anand Klaus. Anand means bliss; klaus means victory.
The only victory worth calling victory is the attainment of bliss. Bliss is a shift of your attention from the circumference to the center. Just as on the surface of the sea there are always waves - sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes small, sometimes big... But the surface is always relatively disturbed because winds are continuously passing, clashing. But at the very center, in the depth of the ocean, there is no turmoil, no waves, not even ripples, because no wind reaches there.
The surface is in contact with the outside world, hence it is being pulled and pushed, but the depth is not in contact with the outside world. Exactly like that our being also has two dimensions.
One is the circumference. The mind is the circumference. It is always disturbed, sometimes more, sometimes less. When it is less disturbed you call it happiness, when it is more disturbed you call it unhappiness. The difference is only of degrees; not of quality, but only of quantity. But there is a point within your being - at the very core - a center where silence is eternal, where no disturbance ever reaches, no wave ever arises.
The so-called religious people go on teaching how to still the surface, how to make it calm and quiet.
It never happens, hence religious people become much more frustrated than the non-religious, because they are trying to do the impossible.
It is not possible to make the mind still, because it has to be in contact with the world. It is natural that waves will be there, turmoil will be there. So I don't teach how to still the mind; I teach how to go beyond the mind, how to shift your whole attention from the mind, from the circumference, to the center.
When you exist at the center suddenly there is peace, absolute peace, virgin peace; it has never been disturbed. And once you know your center and you start existing there, the disturbance of the mind is nothing to make any fuss about. You simply accept it; it is natural, just as you accept the waves in the ocean. It no longer disturbs you, it loses all power over you. this is the victory.
To exist at the center, to live from the center, is the victory. And this is bliss.
Anand Rob. Anand means bliss; rob means of shining fame.
The ego always wants to be famous. It makes all effort to be famous, to be known by others. Even though you don't know yourself, you want to be known by others - that's the stupidity of the ego.
But there is a totally different kind of fame also which is not of the ego. When you become blissful, when your being becomes luminous, you attain to a shining fame. Not that you strive for it, not that you hanker for it; on the contrary you may like to avoid it, but still it happens, because bliss cannot remain hidden.
Truth reveals itself. Jesus or Buddha or Kabir - people like these become famous, not that they want to become famous; it is unavoidable. Their very light creates ripples of joy around them. And the people who are living in darkness, how can they avoid looking at them? They may even be afraid of their light, scared of their light, but still they have to think about Jesus, Buddha or Kabir.
Remember that the fame the ego strives for is the wrong kind of fame, but the fame that comes out of egolessness is the right kind of fame. It has nothing to do with you; it has something to do with truth itself, because truth is such a shining phenomenon. It is fire - it is bound to become famous. It resounds down the centuries. The voice of truth cannot be destroyed. People crucify Jesus, but what he says goes on resounding. People poisoned Socrates but what he said is still alive, breathing.
Anand Gyaneshwar. Anand means bliss; gyaneshwar means god of wisdom. The full name will mean god of bliss and wisdom.
We carry the seeds for both bliss and wisdom. Unfortunately many are unaware of the seeds, so they go on accumulating wealth and a little prestige, and a little power, and life goes on slipping out of their hands; the seeds remain seeds. And to die without transforming the potential into the actual is the only sin. I call this the original sin.
By becoming a sannyasin you have to remember continuously that life is a great opportunity for transforming seeds into flowers.
Anand means blissful; dasi means a servant of God, surrendered to God - a blissful surrender, not for any motive, not to gain anything, but out of sheer joy and gratitude. When somebody surrenders to attain something, the surrender is not true. Surrender is true only when there is no motive at all, and that surrender is a great revolution in life. If you can do such an act of totality without any motive you will be reborn. The old will be gone and something new from the beyond will penetrate you. You will become pregnant with the unknown, with the beyond, with God.
So your name is a key to be remembered. Dasi means total surrender. Remember it again and again. Don't forget the meaning, the significance, and act in such a way that your whole life becomes a worship of God.