Love is a Jumping Board

Prem means love, mouna means silence. So learn two things: be loving to everybody - to people, to trees, to animals, even to the rocks - and the second thing: learn to be silent. Whenever you have time just sit silently with closed eyes. If these two things are attained you become a sannyasin!

Deva means divine, vasant means spring - divine spring. Sannyas is divine spring, and the colour orange is traditionally the colour of spring in India, because it is the colour of flowers. I have chosen it as a symbol of becoming yourself, flowering into your being. And the ultimate goal is that one should become what one is carrying within oneself as a potential. One should become that, the seed should become the flower. It is possible and it is within our grasp; it is just by the corner. One simply needs to go on an adventure - an adventure to find oneself.

The only problem is that we have been taught to imitate. If we imitate, we miss, because you cannot be anybody else except yourself; you can flower only as yourself. A rose has to become a rose - it cannot become a lotus; and the lotus has to become a lotus - it cannot become a rose. But when both bloom to their uttermost, it is the same flowering. The joy is the same, the benediction is the same. You cannot become a Jesus or a Buddha - there is no need to either - you can only become yourself. In trying to become somebody else you will miss becoming that which you are; that is the only trouble.

Once that trouble disappears from the mind there is no hindrance. The river starts flowing and reaches the ocean of its own accord.

Anand means bliss, veetman means beyond the ego.

Bliss is beyond the ego. The ego consists only of misery; the ego is another name for hell. The more egoistic one is, the more one suffers. Nobody else is responsible for the suffering. All that is needed to get out of suffering is to drop the ego. By dropping the ego all misery simply disappears - it cannot exist without it. One is simply silent, empty, but that emptiness is not negative; it is overflowing. The ego is absent but god is present. And to have the feel of god in your being is what bliss is all about.

Remember these two things: one has to go beyond the ego; there is no way otherwise. This has to be allowed to sink into the heart as deeply as possible. Once this understanding takes roots in you - that the greatest thing has happened - then the path is very simple And to drop the ego is not very difficult; only this understanding - that the ego only creates misery and nothing else - is enough to drop it. We carry it because we think 'This is our cherished treasure.' It is not! It is simply poison.

We are deluded.

Just watch the functioning of the ego. And whenever you are feeling very miserable, look inside and you will find the ego hurt, wounded or something has happened to the ego; it is always the ego behind the misery. And whenever you are feeling blissful, watch: you will not find the ego inside.

Once this becomes your understanding - not my statement, but your understanding, that you always find the ego with the misery, misery with the ego, bliss without the ego, and whenever you are without ego suddenly the bliss starts descending in you - once this has become your understanding, your experience, in a single step the journey is over.

Prem means love, animo means the smallest of the small. Jesus says 'Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of god.' The poor in spirit is one who has no idea of the 'I', who has no idea that he is somebody, who is utterly at ease with his nobodiness. To be at ease with one's nobodiness is 'animo'. That is what Jesus again says 'Those who are the last will be the first in my kingdom of god, and those who are the first will be the last.' That is the meaning of 'animo': the smallest of the small, the last... one who is in no competition to be ahead of anybody, one who has no desire to have any conflict.

When one drops comparison completely, one is simply happy by being oneself. One does not think in terms of comparison - that 'I am richer than that' or 'I am poorer than that' or 'I am more intelligent than this' or 'I am less intelligent than that.' When one stops thinking in comparison, when one compares not, one is utterly happy just as one is, that is 'animo'. And that is the greatest spiritual quality to evolve in oneself. The more it is there, the more one feels the presence of god.

Yes, blessed are those who are poor in spirit.

Anand means bliss, Rama is a name of god, almost synonymous with god. The full name will mean 'god of bliss'. That is our ultimate destiny, and until it is achieved one has to strive for it. Unless one becomes a god of bliss - just pure bliss and nothing else, eternal, endless bliss - one has to work.

One has to cleanse oneself, purify oneself. One has to drop a thousand and one toxins from the soul. One has to destroy many conditionings that surround the mind. One has to transform the very armour that this society has created around each one.

We are imprisoned in a subtle armour. It is not visible to the eyes but it is very solid. People only appear to be free; they are not. Each one is carrying his prison cell around himself; that's why they look free. The prison is just surrounding their bodies... a very invisible phenomenon but very solid.

One is a Christian, one is a Hindu, one is a Mohammedan - these are prison cells. Unless one is simply human, one has not accepted freedom. One is a Chinese, another is Indian, another one is German, somebody is Italian - these are prison cells. Unless these are dropped, unless the very idea of nation disappears from the mind and one belongs to the whole, one lives in prison. It does not matter what that prison is - Italy or France or Sweden, it doesn't matter - if one thinks of oneself as black, as white, as this and that, it is all slavery. And one can never feel at ease with all these prisons surrounding one.

Just think of the moment when all these ideas disappear... then you are the sky. Then the sun rises in you and the stars move in you; you contain the whole within you. That is the meaning of becoming a god of bliss. Then all is joy, because nothing can be taken away from you. Then there is no death, because the whole never dies. Only parts change, the whole continues. One tree dies, another tree is born. One river dries up, another starts flowing. One cloud disappears, another comes into existence. Earths disappear, planets disappear, stars disappear, but somewhere else... but the total remains the same. It always contains the same.

When one feels one with the total there is no death any more. Waves die, the ocean remains. To be identified with the wave is to be miserable. To know that one is the ocean, to be oceanic, is to be blissful.

Deva means divine, dipam means light - divine light. Light is the fundamental constituent of existence. In the ancient days they used to call it fire. Hence Zarathustra started fire-worship. It was a technique to create your inner fire, to kindle it, to provoke it.

Modern physics calls it 'electricity'; that is only a change of the name. But modern physics agrees perfectly with Zarathustra that something called electricity is the basic constituent of existence. I say 'something' because modern physics has not yet been able to define it. In fact the ultimate cannot be defined. With what will you define it? - it is the last. You can call it fire, you can call it electricity, you can call it life, you can call it love, you can call it light - all these names indicate the same phenomenon, but light seems to be the best.

The Bible says 'In the beginning God said "Let there be light."' The world starts with that statement; it is immensely significant.

Search for this light inside; it is there in you. It is the innermost core of life, and once you have found it, you have found the source. To find the inner light is to find god. The inner light may be just a ray, and god is the sun from where the ray comes. But if you have found the ray then the thread is in your hands; you can just follow it and go deeper and deeper into it. One day suddenly you have reached to the very source of it all.

Light has to be your meditation; meditate on light - outwardly, inwardly. Let light become your companion; think of it, contemplate on it. Just watch, observe a star appearing or disappearing in the sky, the sun rising or the sunset, the moon, or just a candle in the room. Then sometimes just close your eyes and start searching for the inner light. One day you will stumble upon it, and that day is a day of great discovery; no other discovery is comparable to it. That day you become an immortal.

Sannyas is an initiation into light.

[To a sannyasin going to the West] Continue to meditate. Make it a regular thing. Even if you cannot do anything, just sit silently. Just to give specific time, deliberately, to meditation is enough... just the very idea that for one hour you will be sitting for meditation, and then you sit. Even if you don't do anything, you simply sit under a tree or in your room, slowly slowly that one hour becomes the most precious time.

You start waiting for it. You look forward to it. Slowly slowly something starts settling in you; that one hour becomes sacred. And you can see the difference between your other twenty-three hours and that one hour. It is like a diamond in a heap of pebbles: it shines, it has a grandeur of its own. And that one hour finally becomes the only time saved. All else has gone down the drain. One day one understands that those were the only moments that one lived.

When the German poet, Goethe, was dying, somebody said 'In your long life you must have enjoyed many beautiful moments.' He was a man of great calibre, one of the greatest geniuses of the world, and multi-dimensional. But the question made him very sad. He said 'If I count then it can't come to more than two weeks in my whole life. But those are the only two weeks that I have really lived - a few moments far and few between; those were the real moments. I have lived only two weeks, the rest has been just a wastage.' If Goethe said that, what about an ordinary man? - not even two weeks.

But if one meditates, one simply sits for meditation, one keeps that one hour sacred and separate, slowly slowly that one hour becomes a window: it starts giving you glimpses of the beyond. In that one hour you become open to something unknown, mysterious. You start feeling the presence that can only be called divine; there is no other word to express it. That one hour becomes a transforming process.

So even if nothing happens in the beginning, don't be worried; just go on sitting for that one hour. It brings great fruit. If you can, do Dynamic, Kundalini, or simply dancing will be good. If you cannot do anything - the situation does not allow - then simply sit silently. The whole question is: you should be deliberately in meditation for one hour. What you do is not so important, so all kinds of meditation help, because the basic thing is there: the deliberate effort to keep a few moments apart, away from the marketplace.

[To a sannyas couple who are going to the West] ... now the life has to start here on a new plane. The first steps have been taken already; the journey has started. You have fallen in tune with me, and that is the most fundamental thing. If that doesn't happen then nothing happens. Once that happens then everything starts happening, then nothing is difficult. Once a sannyasin is in tune with me and feels a harmony, and once I start overlapping your being, then all is very simple.

When people try to keep their identities separate then everything is difficult because then they have to do the thing on their own; I cannot be of any help. I have to be just a helpless watcher. I can suggest, I can advise, but that's all - they have to do it on their own; and they are not capable of that. If they had been capable they would have done it already.

So whenever somebody falls in tune with me and starts feeling a kind of unity, an inner unity, then all becomes so simple. Things start happening without one doing them, and then they are beautiful.

When you have to do something it is never as beautiful as when it happens on its own.

So you are perfectly in tune with me. The seed of the miracle has already fallen into the heart. Now you just have to watch many things happening - they will happen. Come back soon!

[To a sannyasin who left the primal group] That is not good. If something is terrible one should never leave it; one has to go through it. That's how one grows. Never leave any challenge. One has to fight the challenge and go into it. Never escape - an escapist never grows. And that's how there are so many juvenile people in the world, because everybody has escaped from challenges.

Real therapy is a challenge - a challenge to your manhood, a challenge to your potential, a challenge to your possibilities. And certainly it is painful; one has to leave many consolations, many deep- rooted habits, many patterns of the mind. One has to change the whole gestalt of the personality.

It is painful. It is not like taking off your clothes, it is like peeling your skin. But the conditioning has gone deep into your body, it has become part of you. It has to be destroyed, and it feels as if you are being destroyed. You are not being destroyed - just your chains have to be broken, but you have lived with chains so long that you think they are ornaments. So when somebody takes your chains away you feel you are being cheated or it is terrible and you start escaping. Your treasure has...

Somebody was trying to take your treasure away. It is not your treasure.

If all this rubbish disappears you will find your treasure for the first time. You will find who you are.

Sometime you will have to go through it; whenever you decide to. But then you will have to go through it again from the beginning. That's the way: if you miss you have to go through the whole misery again! (laughter) But whenever... I will not say to do it right now. Whenever you can gather courage again...

... One just has to relax - one has to relax and accept things, that's all. There is no problem. You could not accept things, you could not relax. You became more and more tense - that's why you had to leave. If you had relaxed and accepted you would have passed through it very easily. You became resistant.

Have you sometimes seen? - a drunkard falls but he is not hurt. Lao Tzu is very fond of saying again and again that if a bullock cart falls into a ditch, everybody else is hit; only the drunkard in the bullock cart remains unharmed. When everybody is crying and weeping and people are having broken bones, the drunkard is fast asleep in the ditch. He has not even been aware of what has happened. Why is he not hurt? Because he is not at all tense! He goes with it, he is so relaxed.

When you fall consciously and you know that you are falling, you become tense, you become resistant. Because of your resistance you will have fractures. Those fractures are not because you fell but because you were resistant; a drunkard falls every day and never has those fractures.

Small children fall every day - they simply fall, they go with it!

That's what has to be done. That's the way: relax and go with it. Accept the pain, in fact, enjoy that it is surfacing. And you will be relieved of it soon, because whatsoever surfaces, evaporates; you are relieved of it. But even nine days is good. Mm, you tried hard. Next time, eleven days!

... So whenever you feel like it, when courage rises again, enquire. Or if you have enough courage you can book on your own, no need to enquire... because it has to be done whenever you feel like it, whenever you feel very lucky.

I have heard about one man: he went to his dentist and said 'Now you can drill anywhere.' But the dentist said 'Why?' He said 'Because I am feeling very lucky today!'

So whenever you are feeling lucky, you can go to [Primal] - it is time that dentistry.... One feels afraid, but there are days when one can even face the dentist!