The Further Shore

CHAPTER 1

Blessings on your journey to the further shore beyond darkness
1 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: Just that I hope to make more progress with myself. I’ve been working on myself,
and I hope I get somewhere with it.... It’s so joyous being here.]
You will grow every day. Just relax and meditate and sing and dance and forget the whole world!
This community is to forget the whole world. Now this community is your world and nothing else
exists, so get lost in it, utterly lost.

And you will grow.... Growth is very easy if we allow it to happen, and the way to allow it to happen is
to be joyful, cheerful. Growth happens in laughter... growth happens in innocence. Growth happens
when you are dancing and singing. When you are moving, your spirit moves too. When you are not
moving, your spirit also gets stuck.

Spiritual growth is just like a shadow: if you dance, it dances; if you become sad, it becomes sad; if
you laugh, it laughs. So let laughter be your goal. Mm? – that is the virtue to be learned. Never be
sad! Let there be a thousand and one reasons to be sad, but don’t be sad; find a way to be happy
and to laugh. And if one is insistent, one can find something to laugh about and something to be
happy for in every situation.

It is only a question of our choice. The world consists of both things: of bliss, of misery. If you want
to choose bliss, it is available; it is only a question of choice. You have to just shift your awareness
and it is there.

So if sometimes you find some cause to be unhappy, immediately start looking for something to be
happy about; there is no reason to be unhappy, and you will always find something to be happy
about. I have never seen any situation in which something cannot be found.

There are people who can find something wrong in every situation and who will be unhappy. And
there are people who will find something good in every situation and who will be grateful... and that’s
what I call being religious.

The irreligious person goes on looking for the negative, for the dark, for the black side. He is
negative; he lives in the no. The religious person lives in the yes. His life is nothing but a’yeasaying’;
he says yes! And he always finds something or other to be happy about.
There are thorns and there are flowers – it depends on you what you are going to choose. So be
careful and choose flowers.

It is going to happen... growth is going to happen!
My blessings for your journey to the further shore beyond darkness!

Prem means love and pranava means the primal sound. The mystic experience is that life consists
of a subtle sound. The basic element, the basic constituent of existence is not matter, it is sound. It
is not even electricity as physicists say; it is harmony. But the sound is not a word; it has no meaning,
it is meaningless. It is pure music. That’s why we become thrilled so much by music. It touches
something primal in our energy.

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