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starts experiencing life in its utter beauty. That experience is God.
(To Mauro) -- This is your name: Swami Anand Mauro. Anand means bliss. Mauro means dark.
Bliss can be looked at in both ways, as light and dark, because it is both it is neither. It is light certainly, because there is great luminosity, and it is dark also, because there is great depth. That depth gives it darkness, but the darkness is luminous, that is its paradox. That darkness is full of light, that darkness is light itself.
The same paradox persists in all religious experiences: death becomes eternal life, darkness becomes infinite light, matter becomes divine... because existence is basically one.
Darkness and light are two polarities of the same phenomenon. One has to learn to be blissful in both ways; one has to be blissful in life and one has to be blissful in death, blissful when one is succeeding and blissful when one is failing. When you are blissful irrespective of the situation, then only you are blissful.
This is your name: Ma Iaia. It is a beautiful name... it means the creative heart.
For centuries religion has been uncreative, because it was escapist, because it believed in renouncing the world; hence it could not be creative. It was afraid of beauty, it was afraid of form, it was afraid of everything. It knew only one way to reach god and that was slow suicide. It created a very suicidal humanity.
My approach is just the opposite: god is not against life, god is life; god is not against beauty, god is the ultimate beauty. God is the very heart of existence and god is the creator. The only way to participate in his space is to create something. The creative person comes closest to god; not the worshipper, but the creator, not the people who go on doing religious rituals, but the people who sing, the people who make art, the people who paint; the musicians, the dancers, the scientists -- all the people who in some way create.
Creativity to me is real worship. And when you are lost in your creativity you are in god, you pulsate with him, your being is in rhythm with his being, and those are the moments of eternity. You transcend
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