Darshan 18 September 1978
Prem means love, anado means silence - soundless silence. Love is silence - it is the music of silence. That's why love cannot be expressed. And the moment you express it, you falsify it. It is no more the same experience that was felt in the heart. The moment it comes into the words it is already far away from the heart, because no word can enter the heart and the heart cannot enter into any word at all they never meet.
The word belongs to the head, love belongs to the heart. And when the heart has to use the head to express itself, it is no more the same. It is such a tremendous change - the translation from the heart to the head is such a great gap - that the moment it is uttered, the heart feels sad. The words have betrayed it.
Love always feels that language is inadequate; hence lovers sit in silence. More communion happens in silence because energies can move directly without passing through the head, without being distorted and disfigured by the head. When energies can move direct from heart to heart there is communion. Love knows what communion is but love cannot be communicated. Out of this dichotomy many beautiful things have also happened.
In the effort to convey it, music was created. Because music is wordless it is closer to the heart than to the head. Poetry was created. Poetry is less structured than prose - more fluid, less frozen - and real poetry is not structured at all. Real poetry knows no grammar, no rules, real poetry is freedom.
It plays with language. It is not confined to the language - it hovers around it. Hence sometimes poetry can give a little glimpse of what love is, but only a glimpse, a reflection. Dance was invented...
all the ancient societies were dancing societies, and all primitive people are dancing people. Even birds dance and sing when they are in love; that is the natural language. It is not a language at all, still it expresses.
This is the case with our so-called human love; what to say about divine love? When one falls in love with a Master or when one falls in love with God, then even dance cannot express it, even songs cannot sing it, even poetry falsifies it. Then silence, and only silence....
This is the meaning of your name: be loving and be utterly silent in your love. Let silence and love become two aspects of your energy, and you will know what God is. That is the way to God.
Prem means love, nirajo means cloud - love cloud. Again, love is very similar to the cloud. The cloud has no form, or its form is constantly moving and changing. So is the case with love. It has no form; hence it cannot be formulated. It has no form, that's why it cannot be defined. By the time you have defined it, it is something else. You see an elephant in the cloud and by the time you have figured it out, it is no more the same; it is something else. It is constantly changing... it is movement.
Love is not a static thing but a growing process.
It is never the same for two consecutive moments, and that is one of the problems people have to face. They want it to be static, they want it to be always the same, they want it like it was yesterday - and it cannot be. No yesterday can contain it. It is always going ahead, it is always moving towards some unknown reality, towards some unknown land. It is like a cloud. And it has no will of its own.
The cloud is simply at the mercy of the winds; it moves by the grace of the winds. It has no direction of its own.
So is the case with love: it moves through the grace of God. Nobody can create it, nobody can bring it into existence; it comes when it comes, it goes when it goes, and man is utterly helpless. When it comes you are possessed by it, and when it is gone it is gone. There is no way to force it to linger a little while more. And if it is not, there is no way to will it. If you are ordered to love somebody it is impossible. Even if you want to obey the order it is impossible; at the most you can pretend. At the most you can go through empty gestures and movements but there will be no love. You can hug the man, you can kiss the man, you can even make love to his body, but there will be no love in it.
The English phrase "making love" is very ugly. Love cannot be made, it cannot be manufactured.
Love is. There is no way to make it or unmake it. When it is there you are madly in it, possessed, utterly helpless. When it is gone, you can cry and weep for the spilt milk but nothing can be done about it. The wise person accepts this coming and going. He does not hanker for it to linger more than its own stay, and he does not want it to come when it is not coming. He simply accepts it. He is surrendered to reality, so whatsoever happens, he allows it. He is in a let-go.
Love is a state of let-go, and that's how a cloud is: a constant state of let-go.
Anand means bliss, bhaven means feeling - feeling of bliss. Bliss is not a thought - it is a feeling.
Hence millions of people live a blissless life, because they have forgotten how to feel. They know how to think: they have been taught to think, they have been brought up to think. From the nursery school to the university the whole program is to make them more and more efficient in thinking. For almost one-third of his life a person is conditioned to think cleverly. And this is the most important time, the most important years of his life, the first twenty-five years. Then I for the whole of one's life one goes on repeating the whole program that has been put into the bio-computer of the brain; then it is a repetition. And in these twenty-five years feeling is starved; it is deliberately killed, destroyed.
And bliss is a feeling; hence the world has become so blissless and so miserable. Unless feeling is introduced into life again, there is no possibility and no hope for humanity.
My effort here is to bring you down from your head to the heart, to give you a new opening in your being, a new dimension. And feeling functions just in the diametrically opposite way to thinking:
thinking functions through doubt; feeling functions through trust. These are their diametrically opposite ways. Thinking is basically logic, feeling is love - and love and logic never meet.
They are parallel lines. Maybe they run very close - the heart and the head are not very far away, just a few inches distance - but they are like a railroad track: just the two parallel lines running always at the same distance. They never meet, they cannot meet. They are Euclidean parallel lines.
But one can jump from one line to the other, and that jump is what sannyas is all about. It is not a gradual process; there cannot be any gradual process. All gradual processes belong to the head.
The head person moves in steps, gradually, cautiously. If you are very cautious and move step by step, you will never be able to drown yourself in that blissful state. That is your birthright - you are born for it. It needs a quantum leap, just a jump.
And I am not against the head, remember. It can be used and it can be used beautifully, but it is very superficial. Its function is only on the periphery of your life, not at the center; at the center is the heart. And a man should be capable of being at the center as much as he is capable of being at the circumference.
When in the marketplace be on the circumference, but when you are at home then be at home, be at the center. When you are working in a scientific lab function through the head, but when you enter a temple or a church then function through the heart. When you are bargaining, mathematics is right, absolutely right; but life is not only bargaining and man cannot live by bread alone. There are higher things, far more valuable. There is a higher nourishment too without which the soul dies... and one has to be alert about that dimension. That dimension is of feeling.
Think when thinking is needed, feel when feeling is needed, and remain capable of moving, absolutely capable. That is the total man, and a total man lives in a balanced way. He is extrovert and introvert both; he is Eastern and Western both; he is man and woman both, because he is logic and love both. The head is yours and it has to be used, but the head is a servant, it is a machine - just like a beautiful car. But it is not the driver and it should not be the driver.
The driving force should come from the heart, from the very core of your being. When feeling dominates, when feeling is the master, life has joy. It has the quality of celebration around it, it has the aura of bliss. This is the meaning of your name.
Anand means bliss, bela is a beautiful Indian flower. It blooms in the summer nights and has one of the most penetrating fragrances... haunting too. Your full name will mean: a flower of bliss. And remember, this flower blooms only in the summer when days are hot and difficult.
The journey towards bliss is an arduous journey; it passeS through a summertime, and only those who are ready to go through the summer attain to the flowering of bliss. Because people are not ready to pay anything for blissfulness they remain miserable. Misery is cheap, it costs nothing to be miserable; hence so many people purchase it. It is so cheap and you can have as much as you want, to your heart's Content. You can have mountains of misery around You. But even to have a small flowering of bliss, just a small fragrance of bliss, one has to pay tremendously.
And the thing that is needed, the thing that makes the journey very arduous is: the center of the ego has to be dissolved, has to be dropped, has to be renounced. The world is not to be renounced, only the idea of the "I" has to be renounced. And the moment you function without the "I" there is bliss. But to drop the "I" is difficult because we have cultivated it with great care; we have invested all that we have in it. Our whole life is an investment in the idea of the ego: I have to be somebody, I have to be special. And I have to be separate and different and unique. This ambition is what ego is.
The reality is that we are not separate, and the reality is: either all and everything is unique or nobody and nothing. We are one with the reality, constantly one - not even for a single moment is there a separation. We breathe reality in, we breathe reality out. We are bridged. Our idea of the ego is as stupid as if a leaf on a tree starts thinking, "I am separate," because sometimes when a small breeze comes it dances, and the whole tree is not dancing... and sometimes the sunrays are reaching it, and sometimes the moon is there, just very close to it, sometimes a cuckoo comes and starts singing around it. The leaf can start thinking, "I am separate and I am special - the cuckoo comes to me and the sun reaches to me and the moon too. I am the very center of all this existence.
Everything is moving around me." The leaf can completely forget that it is joined with the tree and that it is joined with the earth, that not even for a single moment can it live without the tree. It is nourished constantly.
We are leaves of the divine. We can also become flowers of the divine, and that is the meaning of your name. We can become flowers of the divine if we drop the idea of separation; then the divine can flow more into us. The ego prevents it - it hampers its speed, its quantity, its quality. The divine can enter into us only from the back door because of the ego; it cannot come from the front door as a guest. The ego dissolved, God flows from every place, nook and corner towards you; suddenly one is overflowing with energy. And energy is delight, energy is celebration. When there is so much energy that you cannot contain it, you bloom in a flower and the fragrance is released.
So sannyas is going to be an arduous journey... but one cannot attain anything valuable without paying for it. And when one has arrived, attained, then one comes to know that what we have paid was nothing and what we have gained is immense. That is only when you have attained, that is only when you have arrived. But on the way many times the mind starts thinking, "Why should I drop this? Why should I drop that? I am dropping so many things - doubt I am dropping, ego I am dropping, negativity I am dropping - and what am I gaining?" The gain is only in the end, and you have to drop the whole way. The gain comes only when all is dropped. This is the risk that the seeker has to go through; this is the summer I am talking about.
One has to go on dropping and nothing comes back. If something starts coming, one can go on dropping; one can start thinking that more will be coming and there is no worry. But that is not the way things work. You have to go on dropping, dropping, dropping. When you have dropped all, utterly....
There is a beautiful parable: A great king came to Buddha. He had brought one of the most valuable diamonds he had, a rare, unique diamond. Many kings were jealous of his diamond. He had brought it as a present for Buddha, but his queen said to him, "Buddha has renounced all wealth. It may look a little stupid of us to bring a diamond to him - it is just a stone for him. The value is in our eyes, not in his, so my suggestion is: take it with you but take a rose flower also. He may like the rose flower more than the diamond. He himself is a flower, and it is far better to bring a fragrant flower to him than a dead stone. His whole teaching also is that everything is momentary - the flower represents his teaching: in the morning the flower is there and by the evening it is gone. The diamond represents permanence, not momentariness. But take both, and as you feel: if you think that it is not good to give the diamond, give the flower. Or you can do both: first you can present the diamond, and if you see that he does not feel anything for it, you can immediately present the flower.
So he brought both things.
First he presented the diamond and Buddha said "Drop it!" Very unwillingly of course, but when Buddha said "Drop it!" he had to drop it. It was almost as if he was dropping his own heart; that was his most precious thing. And Buddha said "Drop it" as if it was just an ordinary stone! But he had to drop it, and thousands of people were there watching. He wanted to say no, his heart was saying no, but it was impossible to say no to Buddha and before so many people, so he dropped it.
Then he presented the rose flower with his other hand. He was thinking that Buddha would accept it. He said "Drop it!" He dropped that too. Now there was nothing left with him.
So with empty hands he bowed down to Buddha and Buddha said "Drop it!" Now he was very puzzled and he said, "I don't understand you, sir, at all. Now I have nothing to drop." And one disciple of Buddha, Ananda, started laughing and he said, "Now the real thing has to be dropped: drop yourself! It is easy to drop a diamond. Although we could see that your heart was saying no, still in spite of all that you dropped it. It is easy to drop the flower... now the real problem is: drop yourself! That is the only present one can bring to a Buddha: dropping of the ego." And that is the only thing you can bring to me: dropping of the ego.
Let your initiation into sannyas become a beginning of this dropping. Slowly slowly, part by part, layer by layer, go on dropping the ego, and keep patience. One day when the ego has disappeared, God descends. The energy starts dancing and the flower blooms, and for the first time your fragrance is released to the winds. And that is the moment of fulfillment, the moment of enlightenment.
Get ready for the summer!
[The new sannyasin says: In the morning I feel so full of panic and I want to go immediately and start an education for the handicapped in South Africa. Then it turns around and in the day.... I feel that there are curtains gone away and I don't know what to do. I'm very torn.]
Wait a little, because you yourself are handicapped right now! The idea is good, but first become whole yourself. Then you will be of immense help; then service comes naturally, spontaneously.
Otherwise it becomes an ego trip. All service can be very dangerous: serving the poor and the handicapped and the blind and the deaf and the dumb or people who are in any misery can give you a great ego trip. It is so subtle and it is so appreciated by the society that you will never become aware of it.
The first thing is not to help others; the first thing is to become healthy in oneself, and then out of that health sharing will come. Then it will not create any ego, it will not become a trip. And then it will take its own natural course. One never knows what course it will take. One has to wait and let things start happening on their own. The first thing is to go deep in meditation; then compassion comes as a by-product.
This is the basic difference between the Western and the Eastern religions. Christianity teaches service - go and serve people, and through service you will attain to God. In the East, just the opposite has been our experience: Attain to God and then comes service, because nothing is left - you are all love, and you have to share love. And my own observation is that the East is absolutely right about it.
Christianity has created great missionaries but those missionaries are not mystics. They serve people and they do good work, but they themselves are in great misery. They themselves are like dark nights trying to bring light to other people. They themselves are mad inside and trying to help people towards sanity. Their whole effort is dangerous. It is like a blind man leading other blind men.
They will all fall into a ditch or a well.
First open your eyes and become a light unto yourself and then things start happening. Then certainly one has to serve somewhere or other. What will you do with your energy? What am I doing with it? - helping handicapped people! And physically handicapped people are nothing compared to spiritually handicapped people!
The idea is not bad - keep it alive as a seed; one day it will sprout. But first be ready and prepare for it. I would not like you to become a Christian missionary or something like that. That is an ugly phenomenon. I would not like you to become a public servant. I would like you to become one who shares his or her love with no motive at all: just because he has, he shares. Then you go anywhere - Africa is as good as any other place, because the whole earth is a dark continent - not only Africa - and everywhere people are in great need of being helped, but first be ready.
What happens actually is that getting involved in other people's problems is a way of avoiding one's own problems. It is an escape. I know many people who have served their whole lives. When they come to me and I talk to them and I make them aware, then suddenly like lightning they can see what has happen d :
e It is as if you have a headache and you want to get rid of it and you can't find any way. I set your house on fire - you forget all about your headache! It is, like that. Bring a bigger misery and the lesser misery I is forgotten, but it is only forgotten. It is not changed, you are not transformed.
Many people become missionaries, servants, and do good work, but basically they are just avoiding encountering themselves. So early tomorrow morning when you again feel that idea, just think first of 1 yourself: are you capable of helping? Don't take it for granted. Are you ready to help? Are your problems dissolved? Is your mind at ease? Are you fulfilled? Are you contented with yourself? Are you happY with yourself as you are? When this idea comes again tomorrow morning just think of these things, because this is what you are avoiding.
I will make you ready to help many people. Each of my sannyasins has to become a great help to the suffering humanity. But that is only possible when you have arrived, not before it. So wait a little, keep a little patience. Good.