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[NOTE: This is an unedited tape transcript of an unpublished darshan diary, which has been copy-typed. It is for reference purposes only.]
[Note: There is no transcript for February 1st; probably no darshan that evening.]
Swami Anand Peter. Anand means bliss. Peter literally means a rock, but symbolically it means eternity.
The rock represents the unchanging element. Ordinarily everything is changing, constantly -- even rocks are changing. So it is only a metaphor, but it has great significance.
Man can live either in time or in eternity. Both alternatives are open because there is nothing like destiny, nothing like fate. Man is freedom: he comes without a fate. The future is open, always open; it is not determined when you are born -- each act determines it. In each act is your choice, and each step you can change the very direction of your life.
Millions of people live in time, for the simple reason that they are born in a crowd which knows nothing of eternity. Their parents have lived in time, their teachers have lived in time, their leaders have lived in time, the whole society around them lives in time, between birth and death; hence every child starts imitating. That's the way the child learns, but that's also how he becomes conditioned.
It is rare phenomenon to get out of the rut of time, only a few people have managed up to now. Not even all the names which are thought to have escaped, not all the so-called saints and mahatmas and sages, not more than one per cent of your so-called saints, have been able to escape from the prison of time. Although it creates much misery its walls are very invisible; hence there is a desire and longing to get ride of the misery, but you need great intelligence to see that the misery is bound to be there if you choose time as your lifestyle. Time means change -- and when everything is changing you cannot cling to anything, you don't have any support, no security. There is no earth underneath your feet, you are on shifting sands; hence one feels afraid, worried, anxious, and all this becomes the root cause of one's misery, despair, hopelessness.
But there is a way, and the way
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