Prayer is a Love Affair with Existence

Prem means love, gitama means a song - a song of love. Life cannot be more enriched by anything, except love. Life remains poor without love and life remains a hell without love. Love is the only quality that transforms life from misery to bliss. Love brings the transformation. So if one can love then the impossible becomes possible, then each moment is joy and each breath is a song. Then just to be is enough... nothing else is needed. So let this secret become your very foundation of life.

Deva means divine, paritosho means contentment. And contentment is the door to god. If one is contented, one has already arrived. And the meaning of contentment is absolute acceptance as you are. Contentment means acceptance, discontentment means non-acceptance. A wants to become B - that is discontent. A is perfectly happy in being A, there is no desire to become B - that is contentment.

In the state of contentment desiring disappears, and when there is no desire there is no tension, no anxiety, no anguish. When there is no desire there is no mind either. The mind can only exist in desiring. The mind is the name of the whole process of desiring. And desiring is based in non- acceptance.

The moment your mind says that things are not as they should be, desire arises. The moment you say that things are as they should be, desire disappears. And the disappearance of desire is the appearance of the divine. Hence I call contentment the door to god. To be contented is all.

Prem means love, lauree means a lullaby - a loving lullaby, a love song... a song that can relax you totally, that can take you to the deepest core of your being, that can help you release all the tensions, anxieties, that can create a possibility for god to descend in you. And love is that song, that lullaby.

It not only helps people to fall into a tremendously deep sleep; it also helps people to fall tremendously into awareness. In India, down the ages we have been searching into human consciousness very deeply and we have come across four stages of consciousness. One is the ordinary state of day-to-day awareness - the state in which we say we are awake, the daytime state of consciousness. The second we call dreaming - the state in which we fall before we enter into sleep. Between the so-called waking and sleep we have to pass through the passage of dreaming. Then the third state is dreamless sleep. And there is a fourth state also that is thoughtless awareness; that is deeper than deep sleep.

So first, love can help you to go into dreaming. It always helps people to go into dreaming, so many people stop there. Love creates a kind of fantasy worLd and that's all, the romantic. But if love goes a little deeper it helps you to go into deep sleep. Very few reach that state. And if love goes still deeper it can create the fourth state of consciousness - of full awareness, of Buddhahood.

Prem means love, baulo means mad - one who is mad because of love. And that is the highest kind of sanity possible. There are people who are mad for money; that is the worst kind of insanity.

There are people who are mad for power; and there are a thousand and one kinds of madness in the world. But the only redeeming madness is that of love: that takes you beyond all madness.

Once love enters into the heart you are transported into another reality. Love is the only psychedelic there is; all others are just pseudo imitations of it, chemical imitations of it. And because the world has become less and less loving, so many drugs are needed. Because people have forgotten how to be in love they need drugs. The drug gives you a little glimpse of how beautiful reality can be, how colourful reality can be. It gives you a little glimpse of expanding consciousness. That is the meaning of psychedelic: that which expands consciousness. I call love the most important, significant, natural psychedelic, and it is given by god as a gift. Those who know how to love will not need any kinds of drugs in life - alcohol, or marijuana or LSD - because they will be all pale. They will not make reality more beautiful, they will make reality more ugly.

Now this has been an experience of people, that the drug cannot automatically make the reality beautiful; it depends on you, on where you are. If you are living in a high consciousness the drug will pull you down. If you are living in a very low consciousness the drug will help you to come up a little bit. It depends where you are. Those who know how to love will always feel that any kind of drug makes them less sensitive, makes them less part of the beautiful world that they are already in.

Then trees are not so green as they were. So once a person knows the beauty of love he is freed from all kinds of drugs.

Otherwise the whole world is moving towards drugs, and particularly the modern generation, because the modern generation is very unfortunate: it knows not what love is. The family has disappeared, the parents are nothing but an institution, and they are constantly quarrelling. The children never know what love is. They have never seen it happen anywhere. They only see quarrel, fight, anger, rage, struggle, competition, war, violence, murder. They are surrounded by hell from everywhere. They are helpless. They cannot find a way out of it, hence the attraction of drugs. And they will go more and more into drugs if they are not redirected into the alchemy of love. Hence my insistence on love, because to me love is the only redeeming kind of madness. Beyond love there is nothing but god.

Jaya means victory, ananda means bliss - bliss that comes through victory. Man ordinarily lives like a slave - a slave of the society, a slave of the state, a slave of a thousand and one things. But one has become so accustomed to all that slavery that one takes it for granted. And it is because of this slavery that man lives in misery. One has to become free from all this slavery, one has to become free from all conditioning. Only an unconditioned mind is a victorious mind.

That is the whole effort through all these meditations and therapy groups: to bring you to a point where you can see that this is only a conditioning enforced on you from the outside and it is in your power to keep it or to drop it, that it is not inevitable, that it can be dropped. And the moment it becomes your understanding that it can be dropped, who would like to carry slavery? One drops it. In fact it drops of its own accord the moment it is understood that it is not part of one's essential being; it is just hanging around one, and it is in one's capacity to be detached, disconnected from it.

That moment is one of freedom and that moment is one of bliss. To be a slave is to be in misery. To be a master of one's own self, to be free, is to be blissful.

It means eternal bliss. And less than that cannot satisfy anyone. All the pleasures that life makes available are just momentary. Through them one becomes even more frustrated than one was before, because they create great hope and that hope is never fulfilled. That's why you see children so happy and old people so unhappy. It is not because of bodily age, it is because of the experience of life. The child lives in hope, the old man is disillusioned. He lives in a kind of chronic frustration.

He knows through his experience that all is momentary, that all is illusory, that all has been just a dream, that he has been cheated by life. He simply feels used and ready to be thrown on the junkyard.

But there is a different kind of life too. That's what sannyas is all about. It is an initiation into a kind of bliss that is non-temporal, which begins but never ends. And once you have tasted of it there is no way of going back. Just a single drop of it and you are transformed. And this bliss is not outside of you either; it is just hidden in you. It has only to be dug up. Just as a man digs a well, meditation is a kind of digging a well inside your being. There is much rubbish and mud to be thrown out, but once you have worked on it you will find the eternal source of joy, eternal waters of life.

This will be the name of the centre: Leela. It means divine play. Religion has not to be taken seriously. The moment you take it seriously, you destroy it. The spirit of seriousness is a very destructive spirit. It does not belong to life, it belongs to death. Life is the spirit of playfulness: the more playful you are, the more alive you are.

My whole approach towards religion is that of play. And all that is great in humanity has happened through play. All the great inventions, all the great paintings, all the great works of art, poetry - they have all happened out of play. The state of seriousness is basically uncreative because it is heavy.

To be creative one needs to be light, light-footed, so that one can dance easily, so that one can even fly.

Help people... and that will be a great help to you too.

Prem means love, kovida means wisdom. There is a wisdom that arises out of the heart. It is totally different from the knowledge that is of the head. The head can never give you wisdom, it can only give you knowledge. Knowledge means borrowed. Others have given it to you - it is not yours, it has not arisen in you. It is like an adopted child: it has not been born out of you. You have not carried it in your own womb, you have not nourished it with your own blood, with your own life juices. You can adopt a child and you can pretend that you are his mother and he is your son, and legally it is okay, but deep down you are not the mother and he is not the son... because you never became a mother! To be a mother is a long journey.

In exactly the same way, knowledge is adopted wisdom. You have not paid for it, you have not earned it. You have not drowned your heart in it. It is not your song. It is sung by others; you have heard it sung, you have learned to repeat it. Knowledge is ugly - as ugly as currency notes because they have passed through so many hands. The dirtiest thing in the world is the currency note; it carries all kinds of infections.

Wisdom is fresh. Wisdom is spontaneously arising in you; it is your own fountain. It is out of love, not out of logic; it is out of the heart, not out of the head. That is the meaning of your name: a loving wisdom.

Anand means bliss, pravino means skilful - skilful or artful in being blissful, the art of being blissful.

I have no doctrine to teach, no philosophy to offer, but only a kind of art that can make you blissful - that is what my sannyas is - not a kind of indoctrination, because I have no doctrine. By becoming a sannyasin you don't start belonging to a church, because I have none. By becoming a sannyasin you don't start believing in something, because I don't believe in anything; I don't believe in belief.

The very word 'belief' is against the whole spirit that I represent. The word 'belief means: believing others' experiences as your own. It is made of two words: 'be' and 'lief', 'be for me'. You see and I will think I have seen; you taste and I will think I have tasted. The other has lived and you think you have lived... as if anybody can live on your behalf. Nobody can live on your behalf. You have to live it yourself. And that is the difference between belief and faith. Belief is a deception; I have seen god and you start believing my eyes - that is not going to help. At the most just look into my eyes, take up the challenge, be provoked, and start searching for your own experience. Then one day faith will arise; through your own experience it will come in.

So to be a sannyasin is simply entering into a kind of apprenticeship to learn the art of being blissful, and that is the meaning of your name.

Anand means blissful, garibo means inner poverty - a blissful inner poverty. And by poverty I mean egolessness. By poverty I mean a feeling of utter nobodiness, as if 'I exist not,' because in that very absence the kingdom of god becomes available. When you are not, god is; when you are, god is not. So those who want to see god are never going to succeed, because while they are, god is not possible. Only one can be: either god or you.

The great Indian mystic Kabir has said 'The path of god is so narrow that it cannot contain two - either "I" or "thou".' Again he says 'When I was, you were not, and now you have come, but where am l? You have come a little late. I waited so long for you. I cried and wept so much for you and you never came. Now you have come but I am no more. so what is the point?'

He is saying an immense truth - that the disciple has to disappear for the master to be, the devotee has to disappear for god to be. That is the meaning of 'garibo': become so poor inside, utterly absent, and then you are spacious. In that very spaciousness god can become a guest.

People are so full of themselves that the host occupies the whole space and the guest cannot enter. Become emptiness and you can be the host. Become emptiness and you are the host, and immediately the guest comes. The guest has been waiting long - just outside you, knocking on the door - but you are so full of the noise of your own ego that you don't hear that sound. Or even if you hear sometimes, you misinterpret. Sometimes you think it is the wind knocking on the door or sometimes you think it is the clouds and the thunder in the sky. But you never come out and you never see who is standing there. It is god. It is always god who is knocking on the door.

Once you are silent, absent, you will be able to hear the knock.

Prem means love, saralo means simplicity - a loveful simplicity. Love knows no complexity; it is very simple. The unloving person is very complex. The unloving person is in a kind of confusion and chaos. The loving person is innocent. Love makes one sincere, authentic, and the sincere and the authentic need not be complex. Only lies are complex; truth is simple. If you speak one lie, you will have to speak one thousand and one to protect it; there is no end to it.

But truth is very simple. It needs no protection, it needs no proof, it needs no hiding. It needs no cunning, no calculation. With truth one can be as open as the sky. And love is the greatest truth of life. Be loving and you will find simplicity coming of its own accord.

[A sannyasin asks about tension in her back] I think acupuncture will be needed, so find some acupuncturist there, or when you come back here you can do it here, but acupuncture will immediately help. I can just see - your body electricity is not running in a harmony. Acupuncture will immediately help you, and once your body electricity starts running in harmony, falls in accord this pain will disappear. So find an acupuncturist there.

[A sannyasin says she doesn't know what surrender is.] Don't be worried - just continue as you are and it will happen. It is happening; it just takes time.

The first surrender that one feels is almost a kind of excitement of the new; it is like a honeymoon.

Soon you settle down, mm? Then the honeymoon and the euphoria disappear; then the real work starts. And one day, if one continues to work, the real surrender happens; then it is not a honeymoon.

But it is natural: first it has to be like a honeymoon; it is a kind of love, falling in love. But when you are too excited and the euphoria is there, you feel that the surrender has happened. Soon you will have to take note of the reality and the hard facts of life, and there will be a thousand and one situations when you will say 'The "yes" is not coming; the "no" comes, the doubt comes. The trust is not total.' And it is natural - nothing special about you; it happens to everybody.

This is how one grows: hesitating, doubting, saying yes, saying no, wavering. This is how one grows. But if one persists, if one remains patient enough, then one day all those noes disappear.

The ultimate victory is always of yes. But one has to wait. The impatient ones miss - the patient ones win. So just be patient.

Things are going perfectly well. You are moving on the right track. It may look very dark to you, but I can see: the morning is very close by. And then the real surrender happens. It is not something that you do - it simply happens. Any moment it can happen, and when it has happened then you know exactly what it is; you cannot know before it has happened. But then you will feel grateful for the first euphoria too, because without it the second would never have happened. So nothing to be worried about.