Darshan 26 September 1978

Deva means divine, rasal means full of juice - full of divine juice. My teaching is of life-affirmation.

The old religions were based on life-negation; they denied life, they were against it. Their God could only be reached if you denied life. That was a false God, because God cannot be against life. God is the source of life - in fact God is another name for life. The creator iS not separate from his creation.

He has disappeared into his creation, he has become it. Now you cannot find God anywhere. He is in the trees and the mountains and the rivers and men and women and stars... he has become all this. So God is this wholeness of existence. He blooms as flowers, he sings as birds. He is here, he is now.

But the old religions were against life. They were negative. They made man feel guilty. They repressed man, because that is a way to exploit and enslave. The priest can enslave you only if he makes you feel guilty, and the best way to make you feel guilty is to condition your mind against life; then you are always feeling guilty. Because you have to live your life, and it iS always wrong to live it. You cannot drop living it, because then you will be dead. That will be suicide Only a few suicidal people can do that, hence in a religious country very few people commit suicide because religion becomes a protection for them; those suicidal people become saints.

For example, in India, very few people commit suicide, and the reason is very strange. The reason is: they can become great saints. Why should they commit suicide? They have a far better way of committing suicide. In a religious garb they can start killing themselves slowly. They are against the body, they are against food, they are against love, they are against relationship, they are against the world, they are against everything. It is a slow way of poisoning yourself.

Whenever a country becomes non-religious more people start committing suicide. In the West more people commit suicide, and the reason is: now there is no religious way of committing suicide available, so they have to commit it in a secular way, in a simple way, straightforward. There

is no indirect way possible - they have to commit it directly: through poisoning, through drugs, through jumping from a high tower or drowning themselves in alcohol or in the ocean or just shooting themselves. This is the secular way of committing suicide.

But all the old religions were a little pathological, and when I am saying that I don't mean that Buddha was pathological or Jesus was pathological - they were full of juice, they were full of life - but the priesthood that developed afterwards was. When Christ became Christianity then the problem arose, then something went wrong.

He was a very joyous man but Christians say he never laughed. It is impossible to conceive of Jesus never laughing. He enjoyed eating, he even enjoyed drinking... he enjoyed company, friends. It is impossible to conceive of him never laughing, but the way Christians have been painting him is as a very serious, long-faced man.

If this is the true Jesus then it is impossible to conceive how he became friendly with a prostitute, Magdalene, how he was friendly with drunkards... it iS impossible. This Jesus must be false. A totally different kind of Jesus existed which has been falsified by Christianity. The church has to falsify because the church is an effort to dominate people.

Jesus never tried to dominate people. Even when there were opportunities available, he never used those opportunities to make people feel guilty. When a woman was brought to him by the people - and the people wanted to kill her because it is said in the sCriptures that if a woman commits adultery, she has to be stoned to death - Jesus didn't use that opportunity. He could have made that woman feel guilty, but, on the contrary, he saved the woman. And when the woman herself felt guilty, he said, "Don't feel guilty. Who am I to judge you? Whatsoever you do, you are accountable to God. You have to encounter God, so think about facing him. Who am I to judge you?

And he told the people, 'Yes, it is written in the scriptures, but I make a condition: the first stone has to be thrown by a man who has never committed adultery and has never thought of committing it." The people had to slowly slowly disappear, because they had all thought to or had committed adultery And it is the same whether you think or you do When you think, you have done it already in your heart; you have committed it. And when Jesus and the woman were left alone the woman fell at his feet and asked to be forgiven, but he said, "Who am I to judge you?" This man cannot be a priest.

His very strange statement is: "Judge ye not... not even the evil should be judged." The priest cannot exist without judgment. He has to condemn, he has to command, he has to say, "This has to be done and that has not to be done. If you do it, you will be punished in hell, and if you follow me you will be rewarded in heaven." That's the whole strategy of priesthood.

So when I say "old religions" I mean old priesthoods - Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Judaism - but I don't mean Buddha, Jesus, Krishna. They are a totally different kind of people; they are life-affirmative. If any day some priesthood arises after me it will be life-negative. A priesthood cannot be life-affirmative. It cannot live on life-affirmation. It has to condemn, of necessity; only then does the priest become powerful. And that is the difference between an enlightened person and a priest a priest is a businessman; an enlightened person is here to help you to become enlightened.

He is here to help you to become free. His message is bound to be of freedom, joy, celebration.

And that is the meaning of your name. I would like you to become more and more full of divine juice, divine song, divine dance. Love totally and live totally - that is the only way of becoming whole and holy. Live unconditionally, without any strings attached. Risk all in living. Never be afraid. Fear is irreligious: fearlessness is spirituality.

Never live according to any commandment. Live according to your consciousness. Don't live out of the conclusions of others... not even your own conclusions of the past, because they also are no more relevant. Live moment to moment without any conclusion. Let the moment be there and respond to it. Don't bring in your memory of the past. Don't try to be consistent with your past, otherwise you will not be able to live totally. Be consistent with the moment, not with the past; don't think of the future either.

The person who lives with "don'ts" lives not. His life is shallow, his life is pseudo, and his life is dry of all juice. He lives as a tree uprooted, he has no more roots in existence. Then he cannot bloom.

It is impossible that he will have green sap running through his life.

Man is also a tree, man also has roots - those roots are of love, of joy, those roots are of a kind of drunkenness with life, being drunk with life. Then you have roots, and then you will have great foliage and many branches and much fruit and many flowers. Only then is there fulfillment. And that is enlightenment - to be fulfilled is to be enlightened. To be fulfilled is to know God, is to be God.

[A sannyasin says she is afraid - of a black space she goes into while meditating, and also about returning to the west for a few months.]

Just go and do it fast, and there is no problem - nothing to be worried about. And the fear that is coming has nothing to do with anything that is harmful. It is something beneficial. You should not take it as an enemy; it is a friend. It is how the ego dies - this is the way. And when the ego dies great fear grips one, one becomes overwhelmed by fear. It has nothing to do with anything in particular. Sometimes you may find that it is focused on something but those are just excuses.

For example, going to the West - it has nothing to do with it. Even if you don't go it will be there. That is just an excuse right now; you will find another excuse. If you don't go, if I say, "Stay here," then you will find some other excuse, because the mind cannot conceive of a fear which has no object to it. The mind can always conceive of a thing when it is objectively focused on something. When it is a very general thing the mind is incapable of understanding it.

It is a very general fear of the ego disappearing, but because you are identified with the ego it will feel as if you are disappearing. You are not disappearing. You Will appear for the first time now if you allow the ego to disappear. The life of the ego is not your life. The ego is a parasite: it lives on you, it sucks you. It drinks your blood, your soul.

When it is gone, for the first time you will be free to live, for the first time you will feel yourself... you will feel the presence of your being. Right now it is all ego covering you from everywhere. But this is how everyone is. And the feeling of fear arises only when some holes start happening in the ego, when chunks of the ego start disappearing.

And in fact sending you back to the West is a device, so make it a meditation. Go, and just keep it in mind that you have to finish things as fast as possible. So finish things there and come back. If the ego disappears, allow it. Let it go, allow it to go, say goodbye to it. And don't be afraid of the fear, because this fear is a friend. Not all fears are enemies - some fears are friends. So fear as such is nothing to be afraid of.

For example, if you come across a snake on the road you will jump out of fear, but that fear is a friend; it is not your enemy. It helped you, it saved you. This fear is also a friend - it is going to kill the ego and save you. But right now it will be difficult because right now you cannot see the difference between you and your ego; you don't see the distinction and the distance. They have been together so long that they have become almost one.

When the ego disappears it is not like throwing your clothes away, it is like peeling your skin: it hurts... it hurts like hell. So there will be great pain, but accept this pain as a growth pain. It is just as when a child is born: the mother accepts the pain, in joy, in ecstasy, because it is going to give birth to a new being - she is going to become the mother. She is thrilled although the pain is there.

This too is a birth pain. You are going to be born. So this fear has to be accepted, welcomed, and allow it to do the work it wants to do; it wants to destroy your ego. And the death of the ego will be a new beginning Then one really becomes a sannyasin, then the real initiation happens.

So go, finish things and come back, and you will not be caught anywhere - I will take care.