My Journey | Udana Power

My Sannyas

Ma Prem Udana – Udana Power

This is the transcript from my meeting with Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1979. This is when I was led through the back of the Ashram to his house with a small group of other Sannyasins for a private Darshan. That’s where I received my mala and the following words are what he told me. This is when my life was changed forever with love.

Sunday, October 14, 1979, Poona, India

Mukta calls: “Udana?”

Udana kneels in front of Bhagwan. He speaks.

“Come here! So you have come. That’s good!

“This has been a long search, of many lives. But if one goes on and on, one day one arrives. Now this is your home. Think of it as your home, your ultimate home!

“Close your eyes.

“Good. Come close to me. Just look at me. Good.”

Udana starts to weep and she takes off her glasses.

“This is the right way – to remove spectacles when you are looking at me! All spectacles are barriers. Then you cannot see what is. You only see what your specs allow you to see.

“Very few people are capable of seeing that which is. Before it reaches their being, it is distorted. The mind plays all kinds of tricks. First it prevents the major part…almost ninety-eight percent of reality is debarred. The mind only allows two per cent to enter in. Only that which fits with the mind is allowed. Only that which strengthens the mind and the ego is allowed, and then too the mind colors it, it gives it artificial flavors, it makes it adjust totally to itself. Hence it becomes an accumulation for the mind but not a revelation for the soul. Otherwise each moment is revelation, and at each moment reality is available in its totality, but we are not available to reality.

“All concepts, all philosophies, religions, theologies, ideologies, are barriers. And the real has to pass through so many barriers that by the time it reaches you it is no more the same.

“To be a Sannyasin means: remove all spectacles, remove everything that can distort, that can project; let your eyes be naked. Being with a master means being with naked eyes, a naked soul, with nothing to hide, with nothing to cover. When the disciple is totally nude before the master, only then something of immense value and beauty transpires. It is a love affair. The greatest love affair that can happen on earth happens between the disciple and the Master.

“This is your new name: Ma Prem Udana. Prem means love: Udana means richness.

“Love really is the only thing that is valuable. Everything else is valueless. Yes, things have prices, but no value. Love has no price, but it has value. It is not a commodity so it can’t have any price. It is an experience, and the experience is so inner it is not marketable. This is the only experience that is not available in the marketplace. This is the only experience which is not of the world and yet exists in the world, hence it becomes the bridge between God and man. It is the boat that belongs to the other shore but can arrive on this shore. It needs great courage to be loving.

“The original root of the word ‘courage’ is very beautiful: it means of the heart. Mind is a coward. Courage is never of the mind, it is always of the heart. Minds are cowards; hearts are courageous. Minds are always conformist, conventional, because mind is nothing but the past—memories. It has no idea of anything new, unknown. It can’t have. Only the heart can penetrate the unknown, only the heart can move into the uncharted. Hence the word courage is beautiful; if we go to its root, only then is it decoded: it means of the heart, a quality of the heart.

“Love is the quality of the heart. Love is courage and love is richness. Logic is poor. Howsoever skillful one becomes in logic, one remains poor: the scholars and the professors are the poorest people in the world. Only lovers know the richness of existence, the poetry, the music, the creativity of life. Love is the source of all that is good, all that is worthwhile, all that is meaningful, significant. Love gives dignity, glory, and opens the doors to the mysteries. Love is the key, the master key; it can unlock all the locks, it can help you to enter the innermost shrine of god.

“Let love become your life. The color orange is the color of the heart, the color of spring, the color of flowers, the color of the sunrise – the color of life, the color of blood. So it is not only that you have to be in orange clothes; you have to become orange. And only love can do this miracle! And it is going to happen, because I can see you are ready, ready for the plunge, ready for the quantum leap.

“How long will you be here? How long will you be staying?”

Udana: “Until the twenty-seventh.”

Bhagwan: “The twenty-seventh? Then come back soon! And finally come back forever! Good, Udana!”